Management - Miles to Go Before I Sleep

Abstract

Seven times McKinsey Award Winner and management guru Peter Drucker had once said: “the few of us who talked of management 40 years ago were considered more or less deranged”. The same Drucker wrote on another occasion “the management boom is over”. The two statements are testimony of the fact that in this short span of time, management has completed a long odyssey marking its presence and significance worldwide from giant organizations to small ventures, from corporate houses to religious trusts, from hospitals to schools et al. Half a century ago management was largely misunderstood as a concept and virtually unrecognized as a profession. Today it is discussed and practiced not only in the board rooms of CEOs but also in the barber shop of a small town. The fall and then phenomenal revival of empires like Ford Motor in US, Siemens Electrical in UK, Mitsubishi in Japan had one thing in common-the denunciation of management practices by their charismatic founders Henry Ford, Werner Von Siemens and Iwasaki respectively and later the introduction of management by their heirs. The list is endless and all signify the great and untiring service management has rendered to the institutions worldwide in the last 70 years. But we know if there is any thing that is constant, it is change. Environment and consequently organizations have changed and are changing at never witnessed pace, so are their structure, their processes, their technologies, their culture, and their people. This is a world of uncertainty, discontinuity, innovation, entrepreneurship, obsolescence any organ that fail to adapt itself becomes extinct. Management we all know is an organ to the institution and the growth or survival of any institution is collateral on the performance of management than anything else. Management as such is still in its infancy and has miles to go in the wake of future challenges and opportunities not only for the survival and growth of the institutions but also to avoid its own pre-matured death. The author has studied the journey traveled hitherto and the journey to be traveled by management as a profession taking extensively the case studies of different organizations.

Keywords: Management, Learning Organization, Organizational Learning.

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