Chapter 7: Functions of Management and Coordination

A trader who buys, sells and serves his own customers manages his business without ever naming what he does. The moment the firm grows — a second branch, a warehouse, forty employees, a purchase department that must know what the sales department has promised — the work has to be settled in advance, divided among people, manned, driven day to day, and checked against what was intended. These five activities are the functions of management, and they are performed in every enterprise, whether it manufactures cement or runs a school. Dividing work, however, creates a difficulty of its own. Once purchase, production and sales each pursue their own targets, their efforts can pull apart: goods are produced that no one has ordered, or orders are accepted for goods that were never made. Bringing separated efforts back into a single line of action is coordination — not a sixth function performed after the rest, but the thread running through all of them. This chapter distinguishes managerial functions from operative functions, sets out how the functions of management have been classified, and examines coordination — its nature, need, principles, and its standing as the essence of management.

Figure

Fig. 7.0-1 — Department Heads At A Weekly Production Meeting Photograph of managers from the purchase, production and dispatch departments of an Indian manufacturing firm seated around a table with a production schedule between them.

7.1 Managerial and Operative Functions

Every business does two kinds of work. There is the work of the business itself — buying materials, making the product, finding buyers, arranging money, engaging staff — and there is the work of seeing that all of this is settled in advance, divided, manned, driven and checked. The first set is called the operative functions of a business; the second set is called the functions of management, or the managerial functions.

Definition

Functions of Management The functions of management are the interrelated elements of the management process — planning, organising, staffing, directing and controlling — performed by every manager, at every level and in every organisation, to achieve stated objectives through the efforts of other people.

The Operative Functions

Operative functions are the specialised activities through which a firm earns its living. Purchasing, production, marketing, finance and personnel are the usual heads, and a firm’s departments are normally built around them.

These functions are not universal. They differ from one organisation to another because they follow the nature of the business: a retail store has no production department, since it sells what others manufacture, and a firm of chartered accountants buys no raw material at all. What is central in one enterprise may be missing altogether in the next.

The Managerial Functions

Managerial functions are the activities a manager performs in getting results through other people — planning, organising, staffing, directing and controlling. Taken together they form the process of management.

These functions are universal. They are performed in every enterprise, whether it is a cement plant, a bank, a school or a hospital, and at every level of the organisation, from the managing director down to the supervisor on the shop floor. The retail store that has no production still prepares a plan for the season, fixes duties, engages and trains staff, directs them daily and checks sales against the target.

Business Example

No Production, Still Managed A supermarket chain manufactures nothing. It has no plant, no production department and no factory workers. Its buyers place orders, its warehouses hold stock and its stores sell. Yet the head office still prepares an annual sales plan, fixes duties store by store, recruits and trains staff, supervises them daily and compares each store’s takings with its target. The operative work of a factory is absent; the managerial work is not.

The two sets of functions are set against each other in Table 7.1.

Table

Why The Distinction Matters

Because the managerial functions are the same everywhere, they can be studied as a body of knowledge and carried from one industry to another. This is why a manager trained in a textile mill can go on to run a hotel, while the mill’s weaving master cannot; his skill is operative and stays with the loom.

The distinction also settles what the study of management is about. Operative work is taught as engineering, accountancy or salesmanship; managerial work is taught as management. In practice the two are performed side by side, since a production manager spends part of his day on production itself and part on planning, directing and controlling the people who carry it out.

7.2 Classification of Management Functions

There is no single list of management functions on which every writer agrees. The disagreement is not about what a manager does but about how finely his work should be cut up, and about which activities deserve a separate name.

Classifications Offered By Different Writers

Henri Fayol — grouped a manager’s work under forecasting and planning, organising, commanding, coordinating and controlling. His list treats coordinating as a function in its own right.
George Terry — described the functions as planning, organising, actuating and controlling, using ‘actuating’ for the work of setting people in motion.
Luther Gulick — offered the keyword POSDCORB, formed from the initials of Planning, Organising, Staffing, Directing, Coordinating, Reporting and Budgeting.
Koontz and O’Donnell — settled on planning, organising, staffing, directing and controlling, holding coordination to be not a separate function at all but the very essence of management.

The Accepted List

The classification given by Koontz and O’Donnell is the one commonly followed, and it is the one this book uses. Almost every authority agrees on planning, organising and controlling; the differences lie in how staffing and directing are treated.

Classical writers placed staffing within organising, on the view that filling a post is part of creating it. Modern writers treat it as a separate function, because the size of organisations and the growing importance of human resources have made the manning of positions a specialised task of its own.

Directing is admitted as a separate function because plans do not execute themselves. To get work done a manager must guide, motivate, lead and communicate with his subordinates, and this activity is known by different names — executing, commanding or actuating.

Each of the five functions covers a group of narrower activities, set out in FC 7.1.

Flowchart

FC 7.1 — Managerial Functions And Their Sub-Functions Planning → forecasting, decision-making, policy-making, programming, budgeting; Organising → activity analysis, departmentalisation, task allocation, delegation, decentralisation; Staffing → manpower planning, recruitment, selection, training, appraisal, promotion; Directing → supervision, motivation, communication, leadership; Controlling → fixing standards, measuring performance, reporting, corrective action

Innovation And Representation

Ernest Dale added two further activities to the manager’s list. Innovation is creative thinking directed at change and improvement — new products, new methods, new processes — and it prepares the enterprise to face fresh challenges. It is treated as part of the broader function of planning, since planning is carried out not merely to survive but to grow.

Definition

Innovation Innovation is creative thinking designed to bring about change and improvement in an enterprise, through the creation of new products, ideas, methods and processes, so that the firm is prepared to meet new challenges. It forms part of the function of planning.

Representation means acting as the spokesperson of the company before shareholders, customers, government and other outside groups. It is not accepted as a managerial function, because the authority to speak for the company rests with the chief executive alone and not with managers generally.

The Functions Are Not A Sequence

The five functions are so closely intertwined that they cannot be separated from one another in practice. A manager does not finish planning before he begins to organise, nor stop directing while he controls; the functions are carried on side by side and are constantly feeding back into each other.

They are therefore best understood as one integrated process rather than as a fixed order of steps. The order in which they are studied is a convenience for the student, not a timetable for the manager.

Business Example

Naming The Same Work Differently A firm that calls its head of a division a ‘commanding officer’, another that speaks of ‘actuating’ the sales force and a third that simply says its managers ‘direct’ their teams are all describing the same function. The vocabulary of management differs between writers and between firms; the work being described does not.

7.3 The Management Process: The Five Functions in Brief

The five functions are not five unrelated jobs. Each one hands something to the next: planning settles what is to be achieved, organising builds the framework for achieving it, staffing puts people into that framework, directing sets them to work, and controlling reports whether the result matches what was planned. Together they form the management process, outlined in FC 7.2 and studied function by function in the chapters that follow.

Flowchart

FC 7.2 — The Management Process Planning: deciding the objective and the course of action → Organising: dividing the work and fixing authority and responsibility → Staffing: manning the positions created → Directing: guiding, supervising and motivating people at work → Controlling: measuring results against the plan and correcting deviations → Planning: revised objectives and fresh plans

Definition

Management Process The management process is the series of interrelated functions — planning, organising, staffing, directing and controlling — carried on continuously and side by side by every manager, through which the resources of an enterprise are turned into results.

Planning

Planning is deciding in advance what is to be done, how it is to be done, when it is to be done and who is to do it. It is a mental exercise, carried out before action, and it rests on forecasting and decision-making.

Planning comes first because every other function takes its direction from it. Without a plan there is nothing to organise around, no basis on which to judge how many people are needed, and no standard against which performance can later be measured.

Organising

Organising is the process of identifying the work to be done, grouping it into convenient units, assigning it to people and fixing the authority and responsibility that go with each position. The framework so created is the organisation structure.

Organising answers the question of who is to do what and who is to report to whom. Where it is neglected, the same work is done twice over in one place and left undone in another.

Staffing

Staffing is the manning of the positions that organising has created — assessing how many people are needed and of what quality, then recruiting, selecting, training, appraising and rewarding them.

A sound structure filled with the wrong people yields nothing. Staffing exists to put the right person in the right job and to keep him fit for it as the work changes.

Directing

Directing is the guiding, supervising, motivating and leading of people so that they work willingly towards the objectives set. It is carried on through supervision, communication, motivation and leadership.

Planning, organising and staffing are preparatory; work actually begins under directing. For this reason directing is called management in action.

Controlling

Controlling is the measuring of actual performance against the standards laid down in the plan, the finding of deviations and their causes, and the taking of corrective action.

Control is what closes the circle. Without plans there is no standard to control against, and without control a plan is merely a statement of intention that no one is obliged to meet.

Business Example

Five Functions In One Decision A bakery decides to open a second outlet. It fixes the site, the product range and the opening date; settles who will run the counter, the kitchen and the accounts; engages and trains the new hands; briefs and supervises them through the opening weeks; and then compares daily takings against the target it had set. Five functions, one decision.

The Process Runs In A Circle

The last function returns to the first. What control reports — a target missed, a cost overrun, a standard that proved unrealistic — becomes the raw material of the next round of planning, so the process is continuous rather than a job that is finished.

The functions are also performed together rather than in turn. On any given day a manager may be revising a plan, reallocating duties, briefing a subordinate and examining last month’s figures, and in every one of these he is holding the parts of his organisation to a single line of action. That work of holding them together is coordination, which the rest of this chapter takes up.

Case Snippet

Case 7.1 — Everything But The Check Ashray Furnishings prepares a detailed sales plan for the year, divides its market among four area managers, appoints and trains salesmen for each territory, and briefs them at a meeting every Monday. At the close of the year the proprietor finds that sales have fallen far short of the plan, and that no record was kept of how any territory performed month by month. Q. Name the function of management the firm has neglected and state one consequence of neglecting it.

7.4 Coordination: Meaning and Nature

Organising divides the work of an enterprise so that each department and each person may specialise in one part of it. That division is what makes large-scale business possible, and it is also what creates the problem this chapter now turns to: once the work has been split, the separated parts must be brought back into a single line of action.

A purchase department buying at its own convenience, a production department fixing its own output and a sales department promising its own delivery dates will together produce shortages, unsold stock and broken promises, however well each of them performs on its own. Coordination is the deliberate work of preventing that.

What Coordination Means

Coordination means harmonising, synchronising and unifying the efforts of individuals and departments so that they move towards the common objectives of the enterprise. According to Fayol, to coordinate is to harmonise all the activities of an organisation so as to facilitate its working and its success.

Mooney and Railey describe it as the orderly arrangement of group effort to secure unity of action in the pursuit of a common purpose. McFarland puts the same idea from the manager’s side: an executive develops an orderly pattern of effort among his subordinates and thereby secures unity of action.

Definition

Coordination Coordination is the orderly arrangement of group effort to provide unity of action in the pursuit of a common purpose. It consists of harmonising, synchronising and unifying the efforts of individuals and departments so that the objectives of the enterprise are achieved.

Unity Of Action, Not Uniformity

Coordination does not require everyone to do the same thing. It requires different things to be done in the right proportion, at the right time and in the right order, so that they fit together.

Three parts of the same task will illustrate the point: raw material bought too early ties up money in the store, bought too late stops the machines; goods produced beyond what the market will absorb pile up in the warehouse. What coordination secures is the proper amount, timing and quality of each effort, so that the separate efforts add up to one result.

Kinds Of Coordination

The efforts to be harmonised do not all lie inside the enterprise, and those that do lie inside run in more than one direction. Coordination is accordingly of the kinds shown in FC 7.3.

Flowchart

FC 7.3 — Kinds Of Coordination Coordination → Internal, External; Internal → Vertical, Horizontal; Vertical → between a superior and his subordinates, that is, between different levels of management; Horizontal → between departments and officers of the same level, such as purchase, production and sales; External → with suppliers, customers, financial institutions, government departments and other outside agencies

Internal coordination — harmony established within the enterprise, whether between the levels of the organisation or between departments standing at the same level.
External coordination — harmony established between the enterprise and the outside agencies it depends on, such as its suppliers, its bankers, its customers and the departments of government that regulate it.

The Nature Of The Function

Coordination is not confined to the top of the organisation. A managing director reconciling the plans of two divisions and a foreman fitting the work of two machine operators are performing the same function at different levels, and every manager performs it as part of his ordinary duties.

Nor is it occasional. As long as work is divided and circumstances keep changing, the parts keep drifting apart, and the effort to hold them together has to be continuous.

Business Example

When The Parts Do Not Fit A garment exporter accepts an order for delivery in six weeks. The fabric ordered by the purchase department arrives in the fifth week, and the packing material ordered separately arrives after the consignment is ready. Every department has done its own work; the shipment still misses the ship. The failure is not of effort but of coordination.

7.5 Elements of Coordination

The definitions of the previous section are not merely descriptions. Each of them carries certain conditions, and unless those conditions are present what a manager is doing is something other than coordination. Five such elements are essential.

Orderly arrangement of group effort — coordination applies to the effort of a group, not to the work of one person. Where a single trader does the whole job himself there is nothing to harmonise; the need arises only after work has been divided.
Unity of action as its purpose — its object is to make different efforts point at the same objective. What is secured is agreement of direction, not sameness of work, since the departments being harmonised are doing different things by design.
A continuous and dynamic process — it is not settled once at the beginning of the year. Orders change, people change and conditions change, so the parts of the enterprise keep drifting apart and have to be brought back into line again and again.
The responsibility of every manager — it is not the special duty of one officer or one department. Each manager harmonises the work of his own subordinates, and the higher his position, the wider the field he has to hold together.
A deliberate effort — it does not arise of its own accord. Goodwill among employees helps it along, but harmony between departments has to be planned for, arranged and insisted upon by management.

The last of these is the one most often missed. Because coordination is deliberate, it is not achieved by appealing to employees to pull together; it is achieved through the ordinary functions of management — by planning that fits the parts to one another, by a structure that fixes who must consult whom, and by control that reports when the parts have gone out of step.

Figure

Fig. 7.5-1 — Sub-Assemblies Meeting On An Assembly Line Photograph of an assembly line in an Indian factory where components arriving from two feeder lines are being fitted to the main product.

The Marks Of A Well-Coordinated Enterprise

Fayol laid down three conditions that a well-coordinated enterprise must satisfy. They are worth reading as a test that a manager can apply to his own organisation.

Each department or division must be precisely informed of its share in the common task — a department that does not know what is expected of it, and by when, cannot fit its work to anyone else’s.
Each department must work in harmony with the others — its own targets have to be pursued in a way that helps rather than obstructs the departments on either side of it.
Working schedules must be kept attuned to circumstances — a schedule fixed months ago and never revised will send the departments out of step the moment conditions change.

Business Example

Timed To One Another Milk reaches a dairy’s retail booths before six in the morning only because the collection vans, the chilling plant, the packing line and the delivery routes are timed against one another. An hour’s delay at any one stage wastes the work done at every other. The timing is not a happy accident; it is worked out in advance and enforced daily.

7.6 Need and Importance of Coordination

An enterprise is not a single mind at work. It is a body of people who differ in training, temperament and interest, placed in departments that are deliberately kept separate so that each may specialise. The need for coordination arises out of that arrangement, and it grows as the arrangement grows.

Why The Need Arises

Division of work and specialisation — a specialist judges every question from the standpoint of his own function. The production manager wants long runs of one design, the sales manager wants variety, and each is right within his own department and wrong for the firm as a whole.
Interdependence of departments — no department can complete its work alone. Sales depends on production for goods, production on purchase for material, and purchase on finance for money, so a delay in one becomes a stoppage in the next.
Difference of opinion among people — individuals differ in their habits of work, their background and their approach to a situation, and they carry personal goals into the workplace alongside the organisation’s goals.
Growing size and complexity — a firm with three branches, four product lines and a thousand employees cannot be held together by conversation, as a small workshop can. The larger the organisation, the more deliberate the machinery of coordination must become.
A changing environment — prices, technology, competition and government policy do not stay still. Every change requires the departments to adjust together, and an adjustment made by one department alone throws it out of step with the rest.

Business Example

The Cost Of Pulling Apart A firm running two shifts found its dispatch section idle each morning and overworked each night, because production planned its output to suit the machines while dispatch had been staffed to suit the transporter’s timings. Neither department had done anything wrong by its own reckoning. The remedy lay not in working harder but in fitting the two schedules to each other.

What Coordination Achieves

It reconciles differences — opinions, motives and personal interests are harmonised so that they support the common objective instead of competing with it.
It prevents conflict and duplication — where each department knows its share and its limits, the same work is not done twice over in one place and left undone in another, and disputes over shared resources are settled before they harden.
It secures economy and efficiency — men, machines, materials and money are put to their best combined use, because the parts are matched to one another instead of each being made efficient on its own.
It improves morale and job satisfaction — an employee who can see how his work fits the work of others, and who is not repeatedly obstructed by another department, works with better will.
It integrates outside interests — the claims of customers, employees, investors, suppliers, government and the community are brought into balance with one another and with the objectives of the firm.
It makes the other functions effective — coordination makes planning purposeful, the organisation well-knit, direction harmonious and control regulative. This is the point taken up in 7.9.

Coordination And The Survival Of The Firm

Where coordination fails, the failure rarely shows itself under that name. It appears as goods that could not be delivered, stocks that could not be sold, orders that were accepted twice and machines that stood idle for want of material.

The quality of coordination is therefore a fair measure of the quality of management itself. A firm whose departments are individually efficient and collectively out of step is a badly managed firm, however good its separate departments may look on paper.

Case Snippet

Case 7.2 — Fifteen Tonnes For A Ten-Tonne Order At Sarvesh Polymers the purchase department bought fifteen tonnes of raw material because the rate was favourable, though the production department needed only ten. Production used the whole quantity rather than let it lie in the store, and the sales department, which had been given no notice of the extra output, could not find buyers for it. Part of the stock remained unsold at the end of the season. Q. Name the aspect of management that is lacking at Sarvesh Polymers and state two consequences of its absence in this case.

7.7 Principles and Techniques of Coordination

Coordination has to be worked for, and two questions follow at once: when and how should the work be done. The principles answer the first; the techniques answer the second.

The Principles Of Coordination

Early beginning — coordination should be started at the earliest stage, while plans and policies are still being framed. Departments that are fitted to one another at the drawing stage need not be forced together later, when each has already committed its money, its material and its reputation to a course of its own.
Direct personal contact — differences are settled most surely face to face. A discussion across a table clears up a misunderstanding in minutes, allows objections to be heard and answered, and conveys meaning that a written order carries badly or not at all.
Reciprocal relations — every department both affects the others and is affected by them. A decision of the sales department alters the load on production, which alters the demands made on purchase, which alters the burden on finance; each part must therefore be treated as one member of a whole rather than as a separate unit.
Continuity — coordination is a process and not an act. Conditions change, people are transferred and orders are revised, so harmony achieved today has to be achieved again tomorrow.

Techniques Of Coordination

Clearly defined objectives — departments can be fitted to one another only where the goal of each is known and consistent with the goal of the enterprise. Vague objectives leave every department free to interpret its task in its own way.
Sound organisation structure — clear lines of authority tell every officer whose orders he takes, whom he must consult and for what he answers. Overlapping authority and divided responsibility are a standing source of conflict, and no amount of goodwill will remove them.
Unified policies, programmes and budgets — one master plan, broken into departmental plans that are drawn from it, binds the parts together at the outset instead of leaving them to be reconciled afterwards.
Effective communication — most failures of coordination begin as failures of information. Prompt and accurate exchange between departments, downward, upward and sideways, keeps each of them aware of the position of the rest.
Committees and joint meetings — where a decision affects several departments, a committee allows them to settle it together, and a disagreement that would otherwise travel up to a common superior is disposed of at the level where it arose.
Sound leadership and supervision — a leader secures willing effort rather than mere compliance, and supervision at the point of work fits the tasks of individuals to one another day by day.
Voluntary cooperation — where employees are willing to help one another, coordination is achieved with less effort. Cooperation cannot take the place of coordination, for reasons taken up in 7.8, but it makes the manager’s task easier.

Business Example

The Weekly Meeting Many manufacturing firms hold a short meeting every week at which the heads of purchase, production, sales and dispatch review the coming fortnight together. The meeting produces no goods and sells nothing. What it produces is a common picture of what each department is about to do, which is exactly what none of them can obtain from its own records.

Case Snippet

Case 7.3 — Circulars That Were Never Read Bhavani Engineering issues a printed circular whenever a delivery schedule is revised. The circulars are placed in the departmental files, but the works manager learned of the latest change three days after it was made, by which time material had been drawn for the earlier schedule. The general manager has proposed a short joint meeting of the department heads every Monday morning. Q. Name the principle of coordination the general manager’s proposal relies on, and state one reason why it is likely to work better than the circular.

7.8 Distinction between Coordination and Cooperation

In ordinary speech the two words are used as though they meant the same thing. In management they do not. One describes an attitude that employees bring to their work; the other describes an arrangement that managers make.

What Cooperation Is

Cooperation is the willing effort of people working together to help one another towards a common objective. It springs from the attitude of the members themselves, grows out of informal relations, and cannot be commanded; a manager may encourage it, but he cannot order goodwill into existence.

Cooperation is valuable precisely because it is voluntary. Where it is present, instructions are carried out with better will, information passes more freely between departments, and small difficulties are settled without reference to a superior.

How Coordination Differs

Coordination is deliberate. It is the orderly arrangement of group effort by management, established through the authority and responsibility that go with managerial positions, and it is achieved through formal relations as much as through informal ones — through plans, schedules, structures, meetings and reports.

It is also the wider term. Cooperation is one of the means by which coordination is secured, and is therefore contained within it; coordination, however, includes a great deal that no amount of willingness can supply, such as a schedule that fixes which department must finish first. The differences are set out in Table 7.2.

Table

Neither Is A Substitute For The Other

Cooperation without coordination wastes the effort it produces. Three willing hands who all rush to load the same consignment while nobody prepares the invoice have cooperated fully and achieved nothing; the goodwill was real, the arrangement was missing.

Coordination without cooperation is enforced rather than achieved. Schedules can be imposed on unwilling departments, but they will be kept to the letter and no further, and every unforeseen difficulty will be referred upward instead of being settled where it arose. This is why a manager works for both at the same time: he arranges the effort, and he takes the trouble to make people willing to give it.

Business Example

Willing, But Out Of Step During a rush order, employees of one department volunteered to stay back and help pack the consignment. They packed the wrong batch, because nobody had told them which lot was due for shipment first. The willingness cost the firm a night’s wages and a day’s rework — an illustration of why cooperation, however genuine, is not a substitute for arrangement.

7.9 Coordination as the Essence of Management

Fayol and Gulick both listed coordinating among the functions of a manager. Koontz and O’Donnell did not, holding instead that coordination is the very essence of management, and it is their view that is generally accepted today. The reason lies in when and where coordination is performed.

Why It Is Not A Separate Function

A separate function occupies a place of its own in the process. Planning is done before organising, staffing before the posts can be directed, control after performance has taken place. Coordination occupies no such place. There is no hour of the day at which a manager stops planning or directing and begins to coordinate.

What he does instead is coordinate while he plans, while he organises, while he staffs, while he directs and while he controls. Coordination runs through the whole process as a thread runs through a garland — invisible in the finished article, and the only thing holding it together.

Coordination Inside Each Function

In planning — harmony is required between the master plan of the enterprise and the plans of its departments, and between the objectives fixed and the resources available to reach them. A departmental plan that does not fit the master plan is not a plan but a private intention.
In organising — authority has to be matched with responsibility at every position, the same work must not be assigned twice over, and the departments created must be so related to one another that the structure holds together instead of falling into separate parts.
In staffing — the abilities of employees are balanced against the jobs assigned to them, and the number engaged in one department is fixed with regard to the work the other departments will send it.
In directing — supervision, communication, motivation and leadership are the means by which the day’s work of many people is brought into harmony. A supervisor settling the order in which two jobs will go on a machine is coordinating at the same moment that he directs.
In controlling — actual results are compared with planned results and deviations are corrected, which is nothing other than bringing the parts back into step with the plan and with one another.

Flowchart

FC 7.4 — Coordination Within The Functions Of Management Planning → departmental plans matched with the master plan; Organising → authority matched with responsibility, work divided without overlap; Staffing → people matched with the jobs created; Directing → supervision, motivation and leadership harmonising the day’s effort; Controlling → results brought back into line with the plan

George Terry put the same point in terms of binding: coordination is the work of binding effort together so that an objective is successfully attained, and it is accomplished by means of planning, organising, actuating and controlling. Each function is thus an exercise in coordination rather than a preparation for it.

The Manager As Conductor

An orchestra is made up of players who read different parts, enter at different moments and produce entirely different sounds. Nothing in the individual skill of the players guarantees music; what produces music is a conductor holding them to one score, one tempo and one balance of volume.

A manager stands in the same relation to his organisation. The departments are meant to do different things, and it is only his work of holding them to one plan and one timetable that turns their separate activity into a single result.

Figure

Fig. 7.9-1 — A Conductor Before An Orchestra Photograph of a conductor directing an orchestra, with the sections of players visible on either side of the podium.

What Coordination Does For The Process

Where coordination is achieved, each of the functions is improved by it. Planning becomes purposeful, because the plans of the parts add up to the plan of the whole. The organisation becomes well-knit, because the positions created relate to one another. Direction becomes harmonious and control becomes regulative, because deviations are corrected in the light of their effect on the rest of the enterprise.

Coordination is therefore not one more thing a manager does after planning, organising, staffing, directing and controlling. It is what he is doing when he performs those functions well, and a manager succeeds to the extent that he achieves it. This is the sense in which coordination is called the essence of management.

Business Example

The Same Parts, A Different Result Two firms in the same trade may own similar machines, employ men of similar skill and buy from the same suppliers, and yet one of them delivers on time while the other does not. What separates them is seldom a resource. It is the extent to which each has managed to bring its purchase, production and dispatch on to one timetable.

7.10 Summary

Every business performs two kinds of work. Operative functions — purchasing, production, marketing, finance and personnel — differ from one organisation to another and form the basis of its departments. Managerial functions are common to every organisation and are performed at every level of management.
There is no universally accepted list of management functions:

Henri Fayol — forecasting and planning, organising, commanding, coordinating and controlling.
George Terry — planning, organising, actuating and controlling.
Luther Gulick — the keyword POSDCORB: Planning, Organising, Staffing, Directing, Coordinating, Reporting and Budgeting.
Koontz and O’Donnell — planning, organising, staffing, directing and controlling, with coordination treated not as a function but as the essence of management.

Ernest Dale added innovation and representation. Innovation is creative thinking directed at change and improvement and forms part of planning; representation is not accepted as a managerial function, because only the chief executive has authority to speak for the company.
The five functions of the management process are:

Planning — deciding in advance what is to be done, how, when and by whom.
Organising — identifying and grouping the work, assigning it, and fixing authority and responsibility.
Staffing — manning the positions created, through manpower planning, recruitment, selection, training, appraisal and remuneration.
Directing — guiding, supervising, motivating and leading people at work; it is called management in action.
Controlling — measuring performance against the standard, finding deviations and taking corrective action.

The functions are interdependent and are performed side by side rather than in a fixed order. Controlling returns to planning, so the process is continuous.
Coordination is the harmonising, synchronising and unifying of individual and departmental efforts towards the common objectives of the enterprise. It becomes necessary because work has been divided.
Coordination is internal or external. Internal coordination is vertical, between a superior and his subordinates, or horizontal, between departments of the same level; external coordination is with suppliers, customers, competitors, financial institutions, government and the community.
Its essential elements are that it applies to group effort, that its purpose is unity of action, that it is continuous and dynamic, that it is the responsibility of every manager, and that it must be deliberately created rather than left to arise on its own.
According to Fayol, a well-coordinated enterprise is one in which each department is precisely informed of its share in the common task, each works in harmony with the others, and working schedules are kept attuned to circumstances.
The need for coordination arises from the division of work and specialisation, the interdependence of departments, differences of opinion among people, growing size and complexity, and a changing environment.
Coordination reconciles differences, prevents conflict and duplication, secures economy and efficiency, improves morale, integrates outside interests, and makes the other functions of management effective.
Its principles are an early beginning, direct personal contact, reciprocal relations and continuity. Its techniques include clearly defined objectives, a sound organisation structure, unified policies and programmes, effective communication, committees and joint meetings, sound leadership and supervision, and voluntary cooperation.
Coordination differs from cooperation. Coordination is deliberate, is created by management through formal as well as informal relations, and is the wider term; cooperation is voluntary, arises largely out of informal relations, and is one of the means by which coordination is secured. Neither is a substitute for the other.
Coordination is not a separate function of management but its essence. It is exercised within planning, organising, staffing, directing and controlling, and a manager succeeds to the extent that he achieves it.

Flowchart

FC 7.5 — The Spine Of The Chapter Work divided among departments and people → separate efforts begin to pull apart → coordination applied within planning, organising, staffing, directing and controlling → unity of action → objectives of the enterprise achieved

7.11 Points to Ponder

If the managerial functions are the same in a hospital, a bank and a cement plant, why do firms so often insist on appointing a manager who has already worked in their own industry?
Coordination is said to cost least when it is begun early, yet most firms coordinate hardest only after something has gone wrong. What is it about early coordination that makes managers reluctant to spend time on it?
Committees bring departments together and settle differences at the level where they arise, but they also slow decisions down. Where should a firm draw the line between deciding together and deciding quickly?
Can a departmental head whose own department performs well, but whose work constantly obstructs the departments on either side of it, fairly be called an efficient manager?
Cooperation cannot be ordered into existence, while coordination can be arranged. Does that make cooperation less useful to a manager, or more valuable precisely because it cannot be commanded?
As an enterprise grows, it adds coordinators, review meetings and reporting systems to hold its parts together. At what point does the machinery of coordination begin to cost the firm more than the disharmony it was created to remove?

7.12 Objective Questions

A departmental store carries on no production, yet its head office prepares a seasonal plan, fixes duties, engages staff, supervises them and compares sales with the target. This shows that: [1]

operative functions are common to every organisation
managerial functions are common to every organisation
production is not an operative function
managerial functions differ from one organisation to another

The keyword POSDCORB was given by: [1]

Henri Fayol
George Terry
Luther Gulick
Ernest Dale

Read the two statements and choose the correct option: [1] Assertion (A): Coordination is not counted as a separate function of management. Reason (R): Coordination is achieved within planning, organising, staffing, directing and controlling, and not at any separate stage of its own.

Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is the correct explanation of (A).
Both (A) and (R) are true but (R) is not the correct explanation of (A).
1. is true but (R) is false.
1. is false but (R) is true.

Fill in the blank: ________ means creative thinking directed at change and improvement in an enterprise, and is treated as a part of the function of planning. [1]
State whether the following statement is true or false: Cooperation is the wider term and includes coordination within it. [1]

7.13 Check Your Concepts

Distinguish between managerial functions and operative functions on any two bases. [2]
Modern writers treat staffing as a separate function of management, while classical writers placed it within organising. Explain why the modern view is now generally accepted. [3]
State any three techniques by which a manager may secure coordination in his enterprise, and explain each in one sentence. [3]
‘Coordination is not the same thing as cooperation.’ Distinguish between the two on any four bases. [4]
‘Coordination is the essence of management.’ Explain this statement with reference to each of the five functions of management. [6]

7.14 Case-Based Questions

Trisha Metals manufactures water tanks. Its purchase, production and sales departments each fix their own targets at the beginning of the year and meet only when a difficulty has already arisen. This year the sales department accepted a large order for a new size of tank without informing production, whose capacity had been committed to the existing sizes, while the purchase department had bought sheet metal for the old sizes alone. The consignment was delivered five weeks late and the customer was lost.

Name the aspect of management that is lacking at Trisha Metals, and state two of its essential elements that the firm has ignored. [2]
State any two techniques the management could adopt to prevent a repetition of this failure, giving one reason for each. [2]