Vocabulary

Vital - жизненный

to composed of – состоять из

charge - ответственность

planning - планирование

organizing - организация

directing - управление

controlling - контроль

goal - цель

to evaluate - подсчитывать

to involve – включать в себя

staffing – подбор кадров

skill – умение, навык

II. Answer the questions

1. What plays a vital role in any business or organized activity?

2. What is management composed of?

3. What are the duties of managers?

4. What are the main functions of management?

5. What does planning involve?

6. How is planning listed among other management’s functions?

7. What is the second management function?

8. What does organizing involve?

9. What is staffing?

10. What does the third function mean?

11. What do the managers do concerning the third function of management?

12. What do the managers do in the last management function?

III. Make up your own examples with the vocabulary

IV. Complete the sentences

1. Management plays a …

2. Their duties include …

3. Planning is listed as …

4. … is the process of putting the plan into action.

5. In this phase managers decide on the positions to be created and …

6. Effective direction, or supervision, by managers requires …

7. … managers evaluate how well company objectives are being met.

8. … then changes need to be made in the company's organizational or managerial structure.

9. In making changes, managers might have to go back and replan, reorganize, and redirect.

10. Effective managers meet the objectives of the company through …

V. Agree or disagree with the statements

1. Managers’ duties include making sure company objectives are met and seeing that the business operates efficiently.

2. Regardless of the specific job, most managers perform thee basic functions.

3. Planning is listed as the second management function because the others depend on it.

4. Organizing, the second management function is the process of putting the plan into action.

5. Staffing, choosing the right person for the right job, may also be included as part of the controlling function.

6. In the last management function, controlling, managers evaluate how well company objectives are being met.

7. If major problems exist and goals are achieved, then changes need to be made in the company's organizational or managerial structure.

8. Although all four functions are managerial duties, the importance of each may vary depending on the situation.

VI. Retell the text

VII. Read and translate the texts:

A

The basic mechanism of interaction between people in a company exists in three forms: to order someone to do something — “authoritarizm”, to ask someone to do something on certain conditions or without them — “compromise”, to wait until your partner takes the initiative and performs corresponding actions — «consensus”.

Consensus is a Japanese style of decision-making, i.e. keep discussing until the decision appears and becomes obvious, or until participant takes the responsibility for some decision. Thus, the decision is accepted only in case it is clear for all the participants or at least for several ones. This system of decision-making is the most effective one from the point of view of the minimization of risk. It is characterized by a strong discipline of its participants, and consequently high product quality.

However this system is rather slow, having a high risk of refusal and breakdown in strong dynamic processes. As a rule, such management systems are used on the top management level. One of the important criteria of its use is almost equal social position of the participants. However, the last thesis is not obligatory, but the involving of less socially provided members requires professional growth prospects.

B

In Russia this system is used as a means of operation for one of the two reasons: either it does not suggest any growth prospects, or the latter do not assume growth of social well-being. Human factor in the given system almost does not influence the decision-making, because the decision, even though accepted by one person, is supposed to represent the essence of a collective product of thinking, because every member believes in the correctness of accepted decisions.

« You give me — I give you», i.e. a decision is accepted at the level of some compromises. The decision can be right or wrong, and the one is responsible for it will either be rewarded or not. This system of decision-making is very dynamic and guarantees asocial growth to its participants. This system presents the basis of any young business.

However, this principle cannot always give the best results due to the subjectivity of both problem statement and the evaluation of product quality (are the best results so necessary, if the time of the product use is limited?). This is a typical principle according to which the American society works, where everything has its own cost, where professional rises and falls depend on correct and timely accepted decisions, and the latter is very well paid. This method is strongly subjective, being dependent on certain people and used as a rule for building average management levels.

C

Authoritarian is the style of management accepted in the military forces. The responsibility for accepted decisions lays at the top level of hierarchy, while the bottom levels of hierarchy implicitly carry out the orders of the higher ones.

This style of management is highly operative not only in terms of time, but also in terms of the scale of ranks (otherwise it wouldn't be used in the army), it is also completely subjective and conservative. The efficiency of this principle depends entirely on the accurate and detailed statement of the problem on higher levels. The given system requires strong rules and algorithms for performance of various actions; otherwise the system stays idle or carries out false commands.

Along with that the system is conservative and has a slight feedback, as the principles of management in military forces have hardly changed for many years. It will be wrong to say, that any of the three listed systems is ideal from the point of view of management and decision-making. Each of them is good enough only in case it is properly used in specific time and conditions. That means that the style of management may change if the external changes occur. For example, in crisis period the transition from the compromise to the authoritative system for the bottom management staff can significantly increase labour productivity (this method was used by lots of enterprises during the second war).

D

Unfortunately, there are not so many companies in the world, which have the rules of control systems usage. It is quite clear, that a skilled manager, using his own experience, applies principles of management style variation. However, it is rather dangerous to make a manager the only one responsible for it, as it has often caused the crash of many companies. The manager accepts a wrong decision, and using the authoritative principle, forces the whole company's structure to work accordingly («They misunderstood me, so they made it all wrong» — how often we hear it).

On the other hand, if we use the consensus principle, a sluggish decision-making can provoke an effect of delay. In this case no one will be responsible for the company's crash — it will be regarded as a bad destiny. It is necessary to mention that while creating management algorithms it is important to determine the management concepts accepted in the company, i.e. one staff member can understand something well, while for another one it may be so apparent.

All the three principles are usually in state management. A consensus principle is used by legislative bodies or consultative («we keep discussing until we find the truth»). The principle of compromise is used by executive bodies (carry out our orders, and we will pay your wages, and later pension). Authoritarian is used in church, where the true is undisputable and subject to obligators' execution («do not kill, do not steal, do not be vulgar, etc.») all these directions should naturally exist in a certain balance, otherwise there will occur different kinds of dictatorships and bum the fires with heretics, and the democracy (or parity relations between the authorities) will remain a dream.