What is business administration?
Constantly changing socio-economic realities in the modern world require continuous improvement of the management system at the enterprise, search for new directions of activity. Business administration is the system of the most popular methods and strategies of business analysis; it is an opportunity to manage a business or enterprise effectively, analyze complex tasks and make grounded decisions.
Business administration — definition and meaning of the concept
Business administration is the art of business management. It is a concept that is inextricably linked with management and covers a wide range of tasks:
- analysis of the competitiveness of firms and the attractiveness of markets;
- assessment of the financial market;
- development of a strategic management plan for the company;
- organization and management of the structural subdivisions of the company;
- crisis management etc.
The need for such specialists is becoming ever acuter as the business develops. Scientific methods of business analysis and competent administration are especially important in an unstable competitive business environment.
The term "administration", which determines the purpose of this activity, comes from the Latin "administrare", in which the ancient Romans, famous for the rigid centralization of government, spoke and means "to serve for". Therefore, it refers to the highest part of the administrative hierarchy.
Business administration and management — what’s the difference?
Administration should not be confused with management. Although there are a lot of similarities in the content of the work of managers and administrators: both of them are engaged in planning, organizing work, motivating, coordinating, monitoring the activities of employees, etc., there are also significant differences. The main difference between them is that:
A manager is engaged in current affairs, exercises mainly operational control over the enterprise, connected with really developing circumstances and conditions. He manages resources, people, finds customers and is responsible for the implementation of projects.
The administration is the implementation of general and strategic organizational management of the enterprise.
In addition, if the term "administrator" is only applicable to high-ranking executives, then the term "manager" refers to all levels of management. The administrator sets the value base of the organization, determines the prospects for its development and the program for implementing this perspective, that is, it implements the organization's policy. And his role can be defined as creative. The manager, on the contrary, performs the prescribed technical and technological functions that support the life activity of the team; it engages in daily routine work.
Thus, administration is the highest level of management of the organization as a whole, structurally the highest level of the organizational hierarchy, which has access to external relations. Administrative activity is the activity of managing a team aimed at solving external problems and creating the best conditions for it.
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What tasks are solved by the business administration?
The main features of management activities can be listed as:
- a wide variety of activities at different levels of the management hierarchy;
- non-algorithmic, creative spirit of the activity, carried out with a lack of information and in conditions of a frequently changing, often contradictory situation;
- prognostic nature of the management tasks being solved;
- a significant role of the communicative function;
- high mental tension, caused by great responsibility for the decisions made.
Briefly, the range of problems solved by management activity boils down to the following: identification of specific development goals, identification of their priority, and sequence of solutions. On this basis, economic tasks are developed, the main directions and ways of their solution are determined, a system of measures is developed to solve the identified problems, the necessary resources and sources of their provision are determined, and the control of the fulfillment of the assigned tasks is established. Thus, in order to consolidate certain types of work for certain performers, and thus to give the order to manage, to ensure the high professionalism of implementation, - all content of the management process, - is broken down into specialized functions.
Each of these functions is a specific type of work for the management of the enterprise as a whole. The practical meaning of the functions is that they cover the entire control cycle (from setting goals, tasks in planning and subsequent accounting, monitoring actual results)
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Source: Legit.ng
