Importance and nature of management

Why management matters: it helps achieve group goals; it increases efficiency, by cutting costs and raising output; it creates a dynamic organisation that can handle change; it helps people achieve their personal objectives; and it helps develop society, with better products, jobs and new technology.

Is management an art, a science or a profession? Test it against each one's features.

• Art: theoretical knowledge, personalised application, and skill built through practice and creativity. Management fits: two managers who learn the same principles still work in different styles.
• Science: systematised knowledge, principles found by experiment, and universal validity. Management fits partly: its principles come from observation, but they deal with people, whose behaviour cannot be predicted exactly. So it is an inexact science.
• Profession: a body of knowledge; restricted entry (by an exam or degree); a professional association; a code of conduct; and a service motive. Management meets only some of these. Anyone can be appointed a manager without a degree, and there is no compulsory association (the All India Management Association, AIMA, is not compulsory to join). A lawyer, by contrast, must join the Bar Council.

So management is an art and an inexact science, but not a full profession. Practice is the art; principles are the science, and they complement each other.