Management is the organisation and coordination of work to produce a desired result. A manager is a person who practices management by working with and through people in order to accomplish his or her organisation’s goals. When you think of the term manager, you may be imagining your supervisor as he or she hires and terminates employees and makes major decisions above your authority. However, although you may not view yourself in this way, you yourself may also be a manager. In fact, many of us practice management skills in the workplace every day. You may have a team of employees that you manage, or lead a project that requires management strategy, or demonstrate leadership qualities among your peers. These are all scenarios that require you to apply the principles of management.

In this course, you will learn to recognise the characteristics of proper management by identifying what successful managers do and how they do it. Understanding how managers work is just as beneficial for the subordinate employee as it is for the manager. This course is designed to teach you the fundamentals of management as they are practised today.

This course will illustrate how management evolves as firms grow in size. It is based upon the idea that the essential purpose of a business is to produce products and services in order to meet the needs and wants of the marketplace. A manager marshals an organisation’s resources (its people, finances, facilities, and equipment) toward this fundamental goal. In this course, you will explore the tasks that today’s managers perform and delve into the key knowledge areas that managers need to master in order to run successful and profitable businesses.