Read the text and find the answers to the following questions. 1. What does the success of any company depend on?

1. What does the success of any company depend on?

2. What do you know about Peter Drucker?

3. How did he divide the work of a manager?

4. What does Peter Drucker’s idea of measuring performance mean?

5. Do company’s top managers have to consider the future? Why?

6. Is management a science or a human skill?

7. In what way do managers develop people?

Text A

Management

Management is important. The success or failure of companies, public sector institutions and services, non-profit organizations, sports teams, and so on, often depends on the quality of their managers. But what do managers do? One well-known classification of the tasks of a manager comes from Peter Ducker. Drucker was an American business professor and consultant. He is often called “The Father of Modern Management”.

Drucker suggested that the work of a manager can be divided into five tasks: planning (setting objectives), organizing, integrating (motivating and communicating), measuring performance, and developing people.

● First of all, senior managers and directors set objectives, and decide how their organization can achieve or accomplish them. This involves developing strategies, plans and precise tactics, and allocating resources of people and money.

● Secondly, managers organize. They analyze and classify the activities of the organization and the relations among them. They divide the work into manageable activities and then into individual tasks. They select people to perform these tasks.

●Thirdly, managers practice the social skills of motivation and communication. They have to make the people who are responsible for performing individual tasks form teams. They make decisions about pay and promotion. As well as organizing and supervising the work of their subordinates, they have to work with people in other areas and functions.

●Fourthly, managers have to measure the performance of their staff, to see whether the objectives or targets set for the organization as a whole and for each individual member of it are being achieved.

● Lastly, managers develop people – both their subordinates and themselves.

A company’s top managers also have to consider the future, and modify or change the organization’s objectives when necessary, and introduce the innovations that will allow the business to continue. Top managers also have to manage a business’s relations with customers, suppliers, distributors, bankers, investors, neighboring communities, public authorities, and so on, as well as deal with any crisis that arises.

Although the tasks of a manager can be analyzed and classified in this fashion, management is not entirely scientific. There are management skills that have to be learnt, but management is also a human skill. Some people are good at it, and others are not. Some people will be unable to put management techniques into practice. Others will have lots of technique, but few good ideas. Excellent managers are quite rare.

Use your answers to write down the summary of the text. (Look at Appendix 1 on page 172 for the sample).