Abstract
The concept of management is well established and very familiar to scholars and practitioners alike. However, it is also very vague, with traditional text book definitions containing almost no concrete characteristics. This chapter aims at developing a more precise definition of management that clearly and fully captures the meaning and the content of the term. This is done by conducting a broad survey of literature and subjecting the main elements to critical analysis. Essential new definitory elements are also conceptualized. As a result, we suggest that management is a steering influence on market, production and/or resource operations in an organization and its units that may address both people and non-people issues and is exerted by multiple organizational actors through either anticipatory norm-setting or situational intervention with the aim of achieving the unit’s objectives.
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Notes
- 1.
This attribution to Mary Parker Follett is probably wrong. Montana/Charnov (2008, p. 2) instead ascribe it to the president of the American Management Association (AMA) in 1980.
- 2.
Own translation.
- 3.
Own translation; German original: “Lenkungshandeln/Gestaltungshandeln”
- 4.
Own translation
- 5.
Intervening by setting rules is still intervention, but creates regulation for the future.
- 6.
Conversely, constitutive management creates not only governance, but also non-formalized behavior norms that can be regarded as pre-governance, which, in most cases, eventually becomes formalized (e.g. a fundamental change at first only introduced in a CEO’s speech, but nevertheless binding).
- 7.
Since many organizations and authors use the term “strategy” for permanent, constitutive regulations, it is necessary to have a close look at the respective sources in order to determine whether they actually refer to strategy or rather to governance under the term of “strategy”.
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Kaehler, B., Grundei, J. (2019). The Concept of Management: In Search of a New Definition. In: HR Governance. SpringerBriefs in Business. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94526-2_2
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