Richard Branson, Rupert Murdoch, Alan Sugar and Bill Gates:

Given the above, why study management? What relevance can theories about management have for the practising manager?

There are many definitions of management, the most widely quoted one attributed to the famous management philosopher, Mary Parker Follett is that, ‘management is the art of getting things done through other people’. Daniel A. Wren says that management is an activity essential to organised endeavours that performs certain functions to obtain the effective acquisition, allocation and utilization of human efforts and physical resources for the purpose of accomplishing a particular goal. Two essential elements are implicit in most definitions of management; firstly it takes place in formal organisation, involving people in organised interaction, secondly it includes directing and facilitating the work of others. The processes of management represent the functions of primary activities engaged in by mangers, these functions are labelled as, planning, organising, leading and controlling. M

There are many theories that can be used by the practising manger in which they can assist managers through their job. Such theories that might be relevant are as follows:

Whenever there is a need for people to work together accomplishes a particular goal there is a need for management. The managerial role is critical for economic performance and human satisfaction at work. The value of study in management cannot be overestimated. Whatever your interests in life and work and whatever your future hopes, wishes and goals, management will help you succeed. Everyone in a position of responsibilities needs management skills. For example the top jobs in manufacturing, education and healthcare will include managerial responsibilities. A management major is an essential component for all those who wish to participate and succeed in the business or organisational world.

In 1954, Abraham H. Maslow wrote ‘Motivation and Personality’ a study that became the foundation for the content theories of motivation. As Maslow put it ‘my effort was synthesis the hostilic the dynamic and the cultural emphasis which… excited so many young psychologists of the times I felt that they were related to each other in that they were sub-aspects of a single, larger encompassing whole’. According to Maslow, human needs can be ordered into hierarchy within physical needs being the lowest and most basic. These are basic needs are followed in ascending order, by the needs fort security, social activity, esteem, and self-actualisation. In this set of hierarchy a higher, less basic need does not provide motivation unless all lower and most basic needs have been generally satisfied, it no longer motivates. The relevance of Maslows theory for the practising manager and management in general is that as long as employees lower-order needs at unsatisfied, it will be difficult to motivate them by fulfilling higher-order needs. Once those lower levels needs are reasonably well satisfied, management will have to shift its

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