The Role of the Administrator: Planning and Organizing for Success
The Role of the Administrator
The administrator’s role varies depending on their level within the organization. Administrators must handle daily routines and operational uncertainties. At the intermediate level, they plan, organize, direct, and control activities within their department or division. At the institutional level, they engage in decision-making, considering the external environment the company aims to serve.
Planning
Planning is the process of envisioning the future, determining and achieving goals, and choosing a course of action.
Importance of Planning
- Promotes company development
- Reduces risk
- Maximizes resource and time use
Classifications of Planning
Mission
A company’s mission is its reason for existence—the work or service it intends to achieve long-term. For example, a university’s mission is higher education and research.
Vision
Vision is the administrative capacity to project the company into the future—where it wants to be in five years. For example, a bank’s vision might be “to be the leading provider of financial services throughout Europe.”
Objectives
Objectives are the desired results toward which joint efforts are directed. For example, a commercial enterprise’s objective might be to increase sales in 2004 compared to 2003. Objectives can be short-term (one year), medium-term (1 to 3 years), and long-term (over 3 years).
Goals
Goals are the specific purposes that must be met to achieve an objective. For example, if a commercial company wants to increase sales, a goal might be to train the sales team during the first two months of 2004.
Policies
Policies are guidelines that indicate the framework within which employees can make decisions using their initiative and good judgment. For example, a policy might be to compete based on market prices.
Rules
Rules are specific regulations governing particular situations. They dictate specific actions or omissions and offer no leeway. Examples include “no smoking” or “no eating on this site.”
Strategies
Strategies involve projecting an expected future and the mechanisms to achieve it, shaping the organization’s future behavior. Strategies are courses of action prepared to address changing internal and external environments to achieve objectives. For example, a strategy could be to “permanently conduct market research and provide efficient information to the sales team to increase sales.”
Programs
Programs are plans that include goals, policies, strategies, procedures, rules, roles, resource allocation, and the actions needed to achieve objectives, establishing the time required for each stage.
Budget
A budget is a plan representing expectations for a future period, expressed quantitatively (e.g., money, hours worked, units produced). Budgets can be operational (sales, production, inventories) or financial (cash, capital, pro forma financial statements).
Procedures
Procedures are plans outlining a series of sequential tasks performed chronologically to achieve predefined objectives. An example is the procedure for paying employee salaries.
Organization
Organization provides everything necessary for the company’s operation.
Planning and Organization
Planning establishes objectives and prepares plans and programs. Organization designs and develops a structure to achieve those plans. It is the technical structuring of relationships between functions, levels, and activities of human and material elements to maximize efficiency within the identified plans and objectives.
Why Organization is Important
- Collects, complements, and finalizes details anticipated in planning
- Provides necessary resources for the work plan
- Organizes structurally
- Places people appropriately within the organizational structure
- Coordinates various tasks
- Acts as the liaison between theory and practice
Functional Organization
Advantages
- Concentrates staff competence effectively (specialized functions)
- Facilitates interaction between specialists and the pursuit of technical excellence
- Works well in stable environments
Disadvantages
- Shrinks interdepartmental cooperation
- Highlights business results but creates poor coordination and lacks flexibility
- Each department is judged by its effectiveness in meeting standards and budgets
Organization by Product
Advantages
- Each department manager is responsible for a “mini-company”
- The manager is judged by the success of the company marketing a product (achieving cost, schedule, and profit goals)
- Facilitates innovation, is more flexible, and allows adding/removing organizational units to respond to changing conditions