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Principles of Management

v5.0 Talya Bauer, Berrin Erdogan, and Jeremy Short

Chapter 1 Introduction to Principles of Management

Check please! Due to a high-stress environment and frequent turnover, the restaurant industry poses many challenges to the successful management of individuals and groups. This dynamic has only increased with analysts predicting 1 in 5 restaurants may close permanently in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Young African American barista in apron standing with arms folded in restaurant.

Long Description

Chapter Learning Objectives

Reading this chapter will help you accomplish the following:

  1. Learn about managers and the nature of managerial work.

  2. Understand the importance of psychology, leadership, entrepreneurship, and strategy within organizations.

  3. Know the dimensions of management articulated in the planning-organizing-leading-controlling (P-O-L-C) framework.

  4. Understand the relationship between economic, social, and environmental performance.

  5. Understand how the concept of performance is understood at the individual and group levels.

  6. Create your personal survivor’s guide to learning and developing principles of management.

Thomas Edison once quipped, “There is a way to do it better—find it.” This simple challenge is at the heart of the study and practice of management. Most of us have pondered better ways to manage others at work or considered ways to manage tasks better at home. As you’ve visited or worked at restaurants, coffee shops, schools, or other organizations—and talked with friends and family in numerous settings—it’s likely you’ve encountered many instances where different personal interactions would have led to better experiences.

Chief Bogo’s bigotry against small mammals in Disney’s Zootopia is an example of a potential bias against management positions common in films that may hinder children from effective organizational readiness as they prepare for their future careers.

Cartoon Chief Bogo Character Line

This book focuses on a number of skills that are critical to business success. For example, a recent article by Forbes magazine noted a number of skills that managers desperately need but often lack. Examples include learning to accept feedback, being able to empathize with the perspectives of others, and understanding how different aspects of individual efforts contribute to greater organizational goals. These kinds of “soft skills” are critically important to employers, and demonstrating skills such as effective communication through body language, highlighting the ability to process feedback by nodding, and other active listening activities, and asserting strategic thinking in an interview such as proactively learning key facts about a potential employer is key to successfully landing a job. By simply reading the first paragraph of this chapter you have, at some level, managed a soft skill such as the challenge of time management and procrastination that plagues many individuals (especially if you are taking a largely self-paced or online class). The need for managerial talent is so large that a recent study by Burning Glass Technologies estimated 1.3 management or supervisor roles available for every worker. However, scholars that study  examined over fifty Disney films and found that common themes of manipulation and deception often paint managers in a bad light creating potential biases against management positions. Whether you’re a Disney villain plotting a scheme of world domination or a benevolent social entrepreneur hoping to change the world for good, you need strong management skills to continually master organizational challenges.

Management is the art and science of managing others. Knowledge of management will help you identify and develop the skills to better manage your career, relationships, and the behavior of others in organizations. A manager’s primary challenge is to solve problems creatively, and often refers to “the art of getting things done through the efforts of other people.” The  are the means by which you work to accomplish tasks through others individually, in groups, or in organizations. Formally defined, the principles of management are the activities that “plan, organize, and control the operations of the basic elements of [people], materials, machines, methods, money, and markets, providing direction and coordination, and giving leadership to human efforts, so as to achieve the sought objectives of the enterprise.” For nearly a century, principles of management have been discussed using the P-O-L-C framework, which refers to the management functions of planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. While managers do not necessarily spend all their time managing, everyone employed in an organization is affected by management principles, processes, policies, and practices. Consequently, finding a “way to do it better” is a challenge that helps all individuals to meet their personal and professional goals.