BMA lesson 2

WHAT IS BUSINESS MANAGEMENT?

Several schools of thought have attempted to define business management from several perspectives. 

According to the book - business management and administration, written by Graham Whitehall, business management is defined as, ‘ the process of determining the objectives of an enterprise; deciding how these objectives are to be achieved in general terms; devising an appropriate organization to pursue the objectives; providing funds which will enable the organization to be adequately supplied with staff, equipment and other items necessary; making initial arrangement to commence operations and then keeping them under constant review’.  

A careful look at this definition from Whitehall reveals the following activities:

1. The determination of an enterprise’s objectives. This informs us about the vision the organization has it written down. 

2. The stating of a clear mission statement with a strategy to achieve these objectives. This is about planning.

3. The creating of an organizational structure to be used to achieve objectives. This involves developing departments, deploying adequate workforce and setting up of roles to operate.

4. Provision of financial resource for the supply of other capital assets and human resource.

5. The commencement of business activities with operational plans.

6. The reviewing of operations, based on daily, short and long term targets.

Management is purely decision making body or level of any organization.

Let us consider the features of management:

1) It is a level that lays down all the major policies and objectives of the organization.

2) It gives instructions to administration for the preparation of company budgets for various departmental operations.

3) The level is responsible for crafting internal and external policies suitable for running the company.

4) This level guides administration in the right direction it needs to achieving the goals and objectives outlined in the company’s vision statement.

       5) It has all the power to make major decisions.

       6)  It is independent of its operations

       7) It is mainly seen within business Enterprises.

       8) Finally, it is responsible for the supply of funds and resources into the organization for operations to be carried out effectively.

 The key people found on the management level include the founder(s) and shareholders, The Chief Executive Officer, the board chairman, and company secretary.

Most organizations have their management team differently from others. In all, they seek to do one common thing, which is, to formulate ideas and run the entire organization. 

BMA lesson 1

 INTRODUCTION TO BUSINESS MANAGEMENT AND ADMINISTRATION

 The subject of business Management and business Administration looks at decision making and decision execution taking  within the framework of business organizations. 

It is a well established fact that, within any organization, the responsibility of decision making and objectives formulation lie on one part of the organization, whiles another  part gets to execute the formulated objectives. For this course, a school of thought takes a stand to relate management to the part which formulates decisions, whereas administration is considered to be that part of the organization which seeks to execute the objectives or decisions made.

From this angle, we take our stand and align our editorial works with the above definition, in which  the British educational curriculum, under management and administration program, also is set around this notion.

We can therefore conclude that the part of any organization which formulates ideas is classified as Business Management whereas the other side which seeks to implement any decision made is known to be called Business Administration. 

This notion has been considered, studied, accepted and maintained by the British and European communities, including  some eminent writers  like E.F.L Brech, Barry Pichman, Melwyn Copen, and Theo Haiman. For this consideration, we make management superior over administration.

 ICM aligns herself with the above proposition.