Despite the failure of numerous business, all the thunder,lightning and tumult that surrounds establishing and maintaining business today, it is interesting that there are still people who do successful business and stay atop the business world. Lack of information is notorious for crumbling business, thus a good knowledge of business management makes successful businessmen and entrepreneurs.
Management is the process of designing and maintaining an environment in which individuals working together in groups efficiently accomplish selected aims (Weirich & Koontz). Management applies to any kind of organisation, it applies to managers at all organisational levels and is concerned with productivity. Management is an art and it is doing things in the light of realities of a situation.
The functions of managers provide a useful structure for organising management knowledge that is expanding with the more research being carried out in management field under various approaches to study of management. All new ideas, research findings and techniques can be placed in the classification of Planning, Organising, Staffing, Controlling and Leading (Koontz & O’Donnell).
Harold Koontz and Cyril O’Donnell in their book “Principles of Management: An Analysis of Managerial Functions” clearly described the principles to be used in performing various functions of management. Managers have to set in a procedure to revise these principles periodically so that they can recollect the relevant principles when performing the managerial tasks and explicitly consider the relevance and application of these principles in their practice.
The principles of management as explained by Henry Fayol, a renowned theorist of the 19th century are division of work, authority, discipline, unity of command, unity of direction, renumeration, centralisation, order, scalar chain, initiative and equity. Although these principles are now considered to be common sense, they were revolutionary concepts for organisational management and can offer guidance ti today’s managers.
There is a veritable need for the knowledge of these principles to increase efficiency, crystalise the nature of management and attain social goals.