business management essay

business management essay

The Evolution and Impact of Modern Business Management Practices

1. Introduction to Business Management

Descendants of these general systems continue to underpin much management of today’s organizations. Unsurprisingly, attention has also focused on management activity in specific organizations in these earliest stages of modern business management. These businesses have generally been the ones where success depended most on effective management, with the agricultural businesses at the most rules governed or capital managing simply entities, and thus the first industries with more. The past seventy years or so have seen a number of new significant changes in business management. None have brought such a major shift in management activity to such a wide range of organizations as did the early industrial revolution, and the development of more central management activity in agriculture in place of the detailed influences over individual activities of the landowner, manager, and worker. Little theory is available about management paradigms that accompanied these early changes. At an aggregated level, we usually talk about general management principles, primarily derived from analysis of large American corporations in the 1950s.

Business management today is so pervasive as to be almost invisible. Its purpose is to manage organizations, making decisions and assigning goals to, and through, the people in them. The evolution of business management as a practice is significant, not least for its impact on a country’s wealth. Early approaches to business management began in agriculture and other activities with success depending on multiple small inputs of unskilled labor under fairly routine and predictable conditions. These activities expanded to the first industries where capital was the new limiting factor. After long debates, management largely came to be seen as a unique function in the late 19th century and modern management was born.

2. Key Theories and Concepts in Business Management

It is difficult to imagine business without a plan, or business decisions being made outside of a management and organizational doctrine. Notably, formal business management has been around since ancient times. Ancient Babylonians, for example, were among the first to approach economic processing equitably and with a set of formal managerial practices. Dividing labor among different functions, including managerial functions, and applying an early codification of regulations, Babylonians became the first large-scale commercial society worldwide during the second millennium BCE. In ancient Greece, merchant activity begins developing around the 8th century BCE which also led to an early formalization of commercial procedures, the division of labor, and social organization.

As businesses and commercial performance have grown in importance and capabilities over time, scholars and business leaders alike have sought to understand and explain the many dimensions of business and performance, and business and society. Formal business management practices can be traced back to the earliest of human commercial activity in ancient Mesopotamia, extending right through ancient times to modern times. In the 20th and 21st centuries, the pace and scale of business management evolution and change have accelerated dramatically, due in significant part to advances in operational and technological innovation.

3. The Role of Leadership in Effective Business Management

At some stage, the idea or decision leads to a statement of company policy that has to be implemented. Managing the implementation sets the business into operational mode, and it is then that its effect on the business needs controlling. Managing the business operationally and exerting overall control over its affairs is, therefore, an additional part of the management function. Business management, therefore, tends to be seen more as the management of operations and control.

The five main activities involved in successful modern business management are those associated with planning, influencing, controlling, organizing, and managing. Each of them is important to the success of the company. Their relative importance will depend on the company’s nature, its markets, its aims, and the style and abilities of its managers. It is usual to regard planning as the most important principle at the top of any list. Every plan of a company will embody decisions on the required resources and will, therefore, be a subset of its objectives. Modern business management is about driving a business. It is hard to see planning areas as driving activities; how can someone be driven by an idea or a decision?

4. Innovative Strategies for Successful Business Management

We have seen how in the eighteenth century, Adam Smith provided an argument for the importance of business education and how the emergence of formal university curricula on business management in the current century. In the process, we have examined a new environment characterized by a greater variety of types of business, a need to train people to work in international settings, and rapid technological change. With all this in place, we believe the basic importance of knowledge, of new business ideas and of having young business leaders educated in the best possible programs has never been greater. To seize the opportunities of the new millennium we must do much more than establish programs to train business professionals – we must use them well and ensure that they are among the best people in our society.

One way to encourage sound business management practices is to establish first-rate management programs within universities. Educating the business leader of the millennium is an enterprise affecting not only businesses but the universities and the country as a whole. Graduates with business training will become the leaders who shape the operations and performance of the nation’s complex global enterprises. They will also guide the institution’s participation in societal and public affairs. As part of the university community, business graduates will have a significant impact on the education and aspirations of the nation’s young adults. There are many paths to success, but superior business leaders must possess a wide range of skills. Some, like creativity and innovation, are partly inborn. Others, like technical expertise, can be learned. Better schools can enhance the learning of these critical elements, and it is this area that can most significantly improve the potential for business success over the long term.

5. The Future of Business Management: Trends and Challenges

Graham (2002: v – vi) notes that, in doing so, we should carefully separate what is really new from the hyperbolic preconceptions that have peppered management writing over the past decades. He is critical of authors who claim originality seemingly without first surveying the very substantial knowledge base of the specialist area that they approach. He argues that business management is tragically wasteful, with contemporary authors and management consultants blindly trotting after today’s idols without the sense of perspective that would allow their clients to recognize the validity – or otherwise – of each novelty. Yet there is little substance in his call for humility and a renewed commitment to evidence-based research when he further decries the ‘unschooled ignorance’ of rival management authors.

Over the past 100 years, there has been a substantial expansion in the management literature and development of the process of management founded on rigorous, systematic empirical observation, study, and experimentation. Management thought has evolved in response to the changing reality of the business environment. In 1912, this journal aggressively espoused the new scientific principles of management, and for us, it is inspirational to review the subsequent evolution of the subject as we enter the noughties. As the journal of the British Academy of Management, we believe that our task is to consider how the continuing development of future management thought can be usefully influenced by current expedient pressures, as well as by focusing over the horizon to anticipate the management patterns and needs of future generations.