Understanding Administration: Functions, Management & Decisions
Understanding Administration: Key Concepts
Administration: The scientific discipline, technique, and art that aims to study organizations.
Scientific Discipline: Develops theories, models, etc., using the scientific method to examine reality and derive laws from it.
Art: Knowing how to apply knowledge using experience, talent, and virtue.
Technique: A set of tools, principles, and procedures (e.g., accounting).
Branches of Administration
- Public Administration: Studies organizations in the public sector.
- Financial Management: Studies financial resources in organizations generally.
- Human Resources: Managing yourself and studying human resources within an organization.
Basic Functions of Management
- Setting Goals: The administrator must set achievable objectives.
- Planning: Having identified the objectives, planning involves determining the means to achieve them, developing strategies, policies, programs, etc., to define what is to be done and how. This planning should be adaptable to address and resolve possible changes.
- Integrating Resources: An administrative task to integrate resources and monitor their efficient use.
- Organization: To carry out plans and achieve the set targets, work should be divided properly.
- Application: To achieve good application, procedures should create a climate within the organization where people feel motivated to act appropriately.
- Control: An administrative task to measure and evaluate the results to see if objectives were met.
Capacity Manager: Characterized by creativity/innovation, goodwill, firm decisions, and a willingness to listen and dialogue. To be an efficient administrator requires not only knowledge and skill but also the experience to bring wisdom to any situation that arises.
Decision-Making Process
Choices: A rational mental process to choose a course of action from a set of possible alternatives.
Stages:
- Identify the problem in question.
- Find possible alternatives or paths to follow.
- Choose only one alternative.
It Depends On: The genius of common sense who can make the decision and the research or advice available for that purpose (e.g., lack of small tools in the stores, the annual loss of approximately 100,000).
Alternatives:
- To watch.
- Install an electronic control.
- Have both systems.
Evaluate and select, taking into account the cost and risk reduction.
Organizational Decision Types
Depending on the level of hierarchy:
- Strategic: Decisions that guide the direction of the organization (e.g., launch of new products or suspension of others).
- Tactical: Relates to the activities the organization performs (e.g., increase in labor, raw material purchasing, payroll).
According to schedule:
- Scheduled: Follow a defined procedure that is repeated over time (e.g., pricing items in the new season, adding a certain percentage of gains when inventory reaches a certain level, resetting when the market starts to reset).
- Unscheduled: Created by new or unexpected situations and are important for the organization; taken by managers (e.g., if the competition decides to move closer to our trade, we should decide what action to take).
According to the number of people involved:
- Group Decisions: Involve several people.
- Individual: In this case, the decision depends on the scale of values and knowledge of the individual who chooses.