Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, and Practices

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Over the past hundred years management has continuously been evolving. There have been a wide range of approaches in how to deal with management or better yet how to improve management practices in our ever changing environment. Some may define a manager as the person with responsibility for the work of others. However, in the book Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, and Practices by Peter F. Drucker, one learns that a manager’s real job is to take “responsibility for contributing to the results of the enterprise (233).” Parts IV and V of this book give great detail into the aspects of a managerial job as well as the practices a good manager should partake in. The mistakes, decisions, performance expectations, definitions, and the importance of management all play into the story of what management should really look like.

The design and content of a managerial job will differ from company to company; however, there are common mistakes that should be avoided when developing a managerial job. The first and most common mistake that Drucker points out is designing a managerial job that is too small. This will cause a good manager to become uninterested or bored and advancement will diminish. There must be room for a manager to learn, grow, and develop for many years (240). A manager’s performance should provide them satisfaction, not promotion. This is because rapidly promoting managers for doing a decent job will only frustrate the company’s young managers and will create an unbalanced age structure within the company. The next mistake to avoid, which is even more harmful than a small job, is a manager that doesn’t have a real managerial job at all; this is referred to as a “nonjob” (241). When a manager does not have a ...

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...nd reporting results one can then compare the results to the expectation.

One of the most important decisions that manager’s often have to make involve people. These “people decisions”, hiring someone or assigning someone to a job, require the practice of five steps. The first step is thoroughly thinking through the assignment. Once the specific assignment is recognized one can look at several different qualified people. Drucker says, “in order to find the best candidate one must take into account at least three to five candidates” (310). Then the performance records of these candidates must be analyzed and discussed with past employers or co-workers. Once a candidate has been chosen they must fully understand their assignment. It is the manager’s responsibility to make sure their subordinate has all the information needed to complete their assignment.

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