In this paper I will discuss my understanding of the meaning of the word "management" and how it affects my every day life. Management is applied to every aspect of my life. In my assessment of management I determined that it has a complex as well as simplistic application to life. Writing this paper allowed me to acknowledge the level of importance for the need of having a balance in life, to which I equate to effective management.
In undergraduate school I learned the theories and history of management. According to Mosley (1997) management can be defined as the process of working with and through people to achieve objectives by means of effective decision-making and coordination of available resources. Gibson (1995) there is five primary functions of a supervisor: .
Planning - deciding on a course of action for future needs and deciding how to achieve the desired results.
Organizing - deciding how resources and employees should be allocated, deciding what activities are needed to reach goals.
Directing - leading people through example, motivation, communication; recruiting, training, promoting, and rewarding people to do the organization's work.
Coordinating - getting staff to work in groups/individual team effort .
Controlling - evaluating the difference in planned and actual staff performance.
Prior to obtaining this formal knowledge, I never actually gave much thought into the role that management plays in my life. However, now that I have been challenged to think about the phenomenon of management I realize that the acts of preparing for work to raising a family requires different levels of management. I have applied management in my experiences of rearing my six year old daughter, pursuing my graduate degree, and even a simplistic task as organizing my daily tasks.
The responsibility of raising my daughter has required many changes in my life which involved a high degree of management.