Organizing and Controlling are Related Essay

Functions of management consist of organizing, planning, controlling, staffing, delegation and leading. (Koontz & Weihrich, 2000). These functions work together simultaneously as one can assist in the functioning of the other hence all managerial functions are important for the function. By this the opinion is that the function of organizing and controlling are related. These functions are implemented in the same direction. In order to show the relation between organizing and controlling, it is important to look into the functions of both of them. Organizing function comes into play when people work together in groups to achieve goals. They must have roles that they play. These roles are developed by people, are defined and structured by the organization to make sure what is contributed is a group effort. What workers do has a definite purpose and they know how their job objective fits into group effort hence the organization gives their authority, tools, information to accomplish the task. Organizing is that part of managing that involves establishing a structure of roles for people to fill in an organization. The purpose of an organization structure is to help in creating an environment for human performance. (Gareth, 2003). A structure will define the tasks to be done, the role established looking at abilities and motivation of the people available. The organization structure make it easy for managers to organize workers’ activities hence it will be easy to control them as each one know the role they should play, which makes supervision of work less, which saves time as well as resources of the organization. By organizing, the organizations must identity and clarify required activities, group activities necessary to attain objective, assign each group to a manager with authority necessary to supervise it and provision for coordination on the same level and among departments in the organization structure, which make controlling of activities manageable. Organization structure should clearly state who is to do what tasks and who is responsible for what results to eliminate difficulties while exercising control function because difficulties can be caused by confusions and uncertainty of assignment. The structure must reflect objectives and plans because activities come from them. It must also reflect the authority available to an enterprise management. It must be designed to work to permit contributions by members of a group and to assist people gain objectives effectively in the future, which is changing. An organization is staffed with people, the groupings of activities and the authority relationships of an organization structure must take into account people’s limitations and customs to be able to control their roles so as to know if the organization goals are being achieved. The organization process consists of establishing enterprise objectives, formulating supporting objectives, policies and plans, which are of planning. Also identifying and classifying the activities necessary to accomplish these, grouping activities in the light of the human and material resources available and the best way, under the circumstances, of using them, delegating to the head of each group the authority necessary to perform the activities and tying the groups together horizontally and vertically through authority relationships and information flows. Koontz & Weihrich, 2000). The span of management is influenced in two ways, narrow span where a great deal of time is spent with subordinates, which is related to little training, inadequate authority delegation, unclear plan of non-repetitive operations, fast changes in external and internal environment, complex task, use of poor communication techniques, ineffective meeting. (Black & Porter, 2000). The wide span is where little time is spent with subordinates and is related to thorough subordinate training, clear delegation to undertake well-defined tasks, well defined plans for repetitive operations and slow changes in external and internal environment, simple task and effective meetings. If the organization wants to use the controlling function effectively, it can use the wide span management. Delegation of authority, if it is poor, it will affect the span of management due to unclear authority hence organizing can be difficult, which can make the controlling function difficult as they function simultaneously. If a manager delegates authority clearly for a task to be undertaken, a well trained subordinate can get it done with the manager little supervision, but if the task is not clearly defined, then the subordinate does not have the authority to undertake it, which can lead to the staff not doing it and hence the manager spending a lot of time supervising it. Staffing is done by identifying workforce requirements, getting the required people who are available and recruiting them, selecting, placing, appraising, compensation, planning the careers and training. (Preble, 1992). If staffing is done effectively, the candidates will be developed as the current jobholders to be able to accomplish their tasks effectively and efficiently. If the candidates are given the right roles hence it will be through controlling that managers compare actual performance against goals, identify any significant deviations and take necessary corrective action. Leading assists in influencing people so that they contribute to organization and group goals. Managers can say that their problems arise from people, their desire, attitude, and behavior. (Robbins & Coulter, 2002). Since leadership implies followers hip and people tend to follow those who offer a mean of satisfying their own needs, wishes and desires. Leading involves motivation, leadership styles and communication. With no effective leading in an organization it can be very difficult to organize the employees and this will affect the controlling function as reports, statement produced to access control might have mistakes. Planning involves selecting mission and objectives and the actions to achieve them. It requires decision-making that is, choosing future causes of action from among alternatives. Jones & George, 2003). Plans range from plans of overall purposes and objectives to the most detailed action to be taken. Before a decision is made, only what exists is a plan study or a proposal not a real plan. Controlling activity relate to the measurement of achievement. Some mean of controlling like the budget, inspection records, each measure and show whether plans are working out making organizing easy. Compelling events to confirm to plans means locating the persons who are responsible for results to differ from planned action and taking necessary step to improve performance. These results are controlled by what people do. Control is where performance is measured and corrective action is taken to ensure the accomplishment of organization goals. Control also coordinates various activities, decision-making related to planning and organizing activities and information from directing and evaluating each worker’s performance. Control is concerned with records, reports, organizational progress toward aims as well as effective use of resources. Control uses evaluation and regulation. These reports are what assist in assigning roles to employees. Control uses evaluation and regulation. It can be separated into mechanical and sociological elements. There are three stages of control. The mechanical elements are predetermined definition of standards for a level of performance; measurement of current performance against the standards and corrective action when indicated is the sociological element. If an organization uses the three stages of control, it will have a flexible organization structure. The best approach of control will contain time, a high degree of mutual support, open and authentic communication, clear understanding of objective, utilization of resources and a supportive environment. These approaches will lead to conflict resolution, charged beliefs and attitudes, genuine innovation, commitment, strong management and prevention of consequence of control, which were unintended. A good control system has the following characteristics; it must reflect the nature of the activity, should report errors promptly, should be forward looking, it should point out exceptions at critical points, should be objective, flexible, reflect the organization pattern, economical, understanding and should indicate corrective action. With these conditions adhered to, it will be fast to organize people in the organization so as to meet the organization goals. Controlling mechanisms include procedures, evaluating devices, reports, inspection, audits, which all require planning and organizing hence the function must be performed simultaneously. For controlling to occur, there must be directing. All functions of management go together as if one of the functions lacks or does not follow the proper channel then the organization goals can fail to be achieved. Control can be used as a management tool to measure the degree to which predetermined goals are achieved and of applying necessary corrective actions to improve performance, policies, and procedure as standards. Among the controls are rules that are needed to let employees know what is expected of them and how functions are coordinated. Self-control includes being up to date in knowledge, giving clear orders, being flexible, helping others improve increasing problem solving skill, being able to handle pressure and planning ahead. Delegation is often viewed as a major means of influence and therefore, it can be grouped as an activity in leading rather than controlling. Delegation include assigning responsibility to an employee to complete a task granting the employee sufficient authority to gain the resource to do the task and letting the employee decide how that task will be carried out. This will make the organization decide which goals to pursue and course of action to adopt so as to attain the organization goals and how to allocate organization resources to attain those goals. Once the organization has established goals and associated strategies, funds are set aside for the resources and labor to the accomplishment of goals and tasks. As the money is spent, how it was spent and what it obtained. Review of financial statements is one of the more common methods to monitor the progress of programs and plans. In the organizing process, the key issue in accomplishing the goals identified in the planning process is structuring the work of the organization. The purpose of the organizing function is to make the best use of the organization’s resources to achieve organizational goals. Organizational structure is the formal decision-making framework by which job tasks are grouped and coordinated. The organizing function deals with all those activities that result in the formal assignment of tasks and authority and a coordination of effort. The supervisor staffs the work units, trains employees, secures resources and empowers the work group into a productive team. The first step in the organizing process is departmentalization. Once jobs have been classified through work specialization, they are grouped into manageable units and can be controlled. An organization chart displays the organization structure and shows job titles, lines of authority and relationships between departments. The nature and scope of the work needed to accomplish the organization goals needed to determine work classification and work unit design, so as to have control. Work process requirements and employee skill level determine the degree of specialization. Placing capable people in each job ties directly with productivity improvement. In order to maximize productivity, the organization must have the required resources and be able to control its expenditure by auditing its reports. Supervisors must match employee skill levels with task requirement to achieve organization goals. Teamwork is achievable if people can work together cooperatively and effective if they know the part they are to play in the team activity and the way their roles relate to each other hence making the control function attainable. By designing and maintaining these systems of roles is organizing. Koontz, 1958). The effort spent on improving predictions and forecasts are spent on increasing control, learning not only will the need for predicting and forecast be reduced, but managers’ ability to get what they want to increase. By organizing managers can design and create an organization structure, which is flexible to enable the function of control to be handled properly. Control aspects are emphasized on the basis of observation of the control process in terms of feedback or adaptive control. (Hitt & Mathis, 1986). Feedback is always introduced as one of the controlling functions, hence managers encourage that the feedback system be used a lot in the organization so as to know which organization goals have been achieved. Feedback is a type of control that takes place after a work activity is done. Managers can implement controls before an activity begins and after the activity has been completed. In order to measure whether plans of the organizations are being followed it is necessary for managers to compare planned performance with actual performance. (Ishikawa & Smith, 1972). Feedback can be used to give information in this area, as it is the forward and backward flow of information hence the supervisor will be able to know how the performance of a certain employee is. This will enable the supervisor check on the targets he sets for the employees if they have all been achieved or if they have been partly achieved and see the gap created. (Dixon, 2003). The actual performance and the planned performance show the gap. This will make it easy for the organization to determine which employees require training so as to get more skills and by this the organization will eliminate the gap. Plans cannot be effective unless managers monitor how well planned actions are matching actual achievements as implementation processes. Therefore, plans should not be just laid aside while being on the process or even after being decided on. Managers are responsible not only for making plans for the organizational goal but also for watching the plans to the end. Hence, to make sure that plans are organized the control function has to be effective to make sure that organization goals are achieved. If managers do not control, they would have no way of knowing whether their goals and plans were on target and what future actions to take. The plan can be meaningless if it did not help to accomplish the organizational goals. This can be avoided by controlling because the manager organizes and compares the actual performance against the goals, identify any significant deviations and take any necessary corrective action. Controlling provides the answers to whether or not the current performance of the organization should be continued or what corrections might be needed to make the performance satisfactory. Controlling cannot be implemented unless there is some resource hence the organization should have a structure, which takes this into consideration. There must be some organization and control on how resources will be allocated. Without an organization goal, no management functions can be put into practice. If the manager does not know which direction the company is going, they cannot choose what course of action to take hence controlling will be difficult. It seems that controlling is regarded as looking back considering the main role of controlling, which are feedback and monitoring. Managers can put controls when an activity begins. If the actual performance of employees in an organization is not as expected then plans and goals have to be set so that they are put in the right way. For control to work if the plans put in place by the organization are going in the wrong directions the manager needs to indicate the problem and also suggest how to solve it. The manager should also explain how the plan should be proceeded and guide toward the right direction. This will make it easy for the person organizing activities of the workers as workers will be given the roles they are able to achieve hence making organization goals attainable. The main role of planning is choosing appropriate goals and courses of action and controlling is monitoring systems to evaluate how well the organization has achieved its goal. Planning process steps include deciding which goals the organization will pursue, deciding what courses of actions to adopt to attain these goals and deciding how to allocate organization resources to attain these goals. Considering that organizing process looks at accomplishing goals identified in the planning process it will be good for an organization to evaluate the performance of employees so as to check if the goals are being attainable and if they do not look attainable performance assessment should be carried out as well as regulation of other activities, which can be time consumed due to lack of skills by the employees should be eliminated. In conclusion if managers are keen on the organization structure that the organization adopts be it flat, tall, product, geographical to make sure that the one implemented caters for the organization goals as well as objectives. The control function can be used to generate reports and audits will be done effectively in less time. This shows that control and organizing function has to work parallel for the effective achievement of organization goals.