Hello Everyone!

Welcome to the blog of Principles of Organisation and Management.

Management is a vital aspect of the economic life of man, which is an organised group activity. A central directing and controlling agency is indispensable for a business concern. The productive resources – material, labour, capital etc. are entrusted to the organising skill, administrative ability and enterprising initiative of the management. Thus, management provides leadership to a business enterprise. Without able managers and effective managerial leadership the resources of production remain merely resources and never become production. Under competitive economy and ever-changing environment the quality and performance of managers determine both the survival as well as success of any business enterprise. Management occupies such an important place in the modern world that the welfare of the people and the destiny of the country are very much influenced by it.

Understanding the Organisation
One of the ways of understanding organisation is by using the 7S frame work designed by Mckinsey.

7S Framework is a management model developed by well-known business consultants Robert H. Waterman, Jr. and Tom Peters in the 1980s. This was a strategic vision for groups, to include businesses, business units, and teams. The 7 S are structure, strategy, systems, skills, style, staff and shared values.

The 7-S model can be used in a wide variety of situations where an alignment perspective is useful, for example, to help you:

·         Improve the performance of a company.

·         Examine the likely effects of future changes within a company.

·         Align departments and processes during a merger or acquisition.

·         Determine how best to implement a proposed strategy.

 Let's look at each of the elements specifically:

·         Strategy: the plan devised to maintain and build competitive advantage over the competition.

·         Structure: the way the organization is structured and who reports to whom.

·         Systems: the daily activities and procedures that staff members engage in to get the job done.

·         Shared Values: called "superordinate goals" when the model was first developed, these are the core values of the company that are evidenced in the corporate culture and the general work ethic.

·         Style: the style of leadership adopted.

·         Staff: the employees and their general capabilities.

·         Skills: the actual skills and competencies of the employees working for the company.

Unity of Command and Direction

Unity of command and unity of direction, are both important management principles. But there is difference between them. In this post we will look at the difference of unity of command and unity of direction.

Principle of Unity of Command

According to this principle, a subordinate (employee) must have and receive orders from only one superior (boss or manager). To put it another way, a subordinate must report to only one superior. It helps in preventing dual subordination.

This decrease the possibilities of “Dual subordination” which creates problem is function of managers. One boss and he is the boss and order comes from him nobody else.

Principle of Unity of Direction

One head and one plan for a group of activities with the same objective. All activities which have the same objective must be directed by one manager, and he must use one plan.

This is called Unity of Direction. For example, all marketing activities such as advertising, sales promotion, pricing policy, etc., must be directed by only one manager.

He must use only one plan for all the marketing activities. Unity of direction means activities aimed at the same objective should be organized so that there is one plan and one person in charge.

Boss, subordinates, members; all in a same organization might have different responsibility and position but the motive behind only all their activities have to be single, which is to attain organizational goals.

The principle of unity of command should not be confused with the principle of unity of direction as both do not mean the same thing. The principle of unity of command is concerned with functioning of people while unity of direction is related to the activities.