What is Management?
Complete the text using these verbs:

analyse; improve; select; communicate; measure; train; contribute; commercialise; understand; divide; perform; use;f orm; risk; work out

You want me to explain what management is? Well, I guess I can manage that! Actually, management as we (1) …………….. . it today is a fa idy recent ideao Most economists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for example, wrote about factors of production such as land, labour and capital, and about supply and demand, as if these were impersonal and objective economic forces which left no room for human action. An exception was Jean-Baptiste Say, who invented the term "entrepreneur", the person who sees opportunities to (2) …………..resources in more productive ways.
Entrepreneurs are people who are alert to so~far undiscovered profit opportunities. They perceive opportunities to (3) ………….. new technologies and products that will serve the market better than it is currently being served by their competitors. They are happy to (4) …………….their own or other people's capital. They are frequently unconventional, innovative people. But entrepreneurship isn't the same as management, and most managers aren't entrepreneurs.
So, what's management? Well, it's essentially a matter of organizing people. Managers, especially senior managers, have to set objectives for their organization, and then (5) . ……………. how to achieve them. This is tme of the managers of business enterprises, government departments, educational institutions, and sports teams, although for government services, universities and so on we usually talk about administrators and administration rather than managers and management. Managers (6) ……………. the activities of the organization and the relations among them. They (7) ……………. the work into distinct activities and then into individual jobs. They (8) ……………. people to manage these activities and perform the jobso And they of ten need to make the people responsible for performing individual jobs (9) ……………. effective teams.
Managers have to be good at communication and motivation. They need to (10) .……………. the organization's objectives to the people responsible for attaining them. They have to motivate their staff to work well, to be productive, and to (11) ……………. something to the organization. They make decisions about pay and promotion.
Managers also have to (12) ……………. the performance of their staff, and to ensure that the objectives and performance targets set for the whole organization and for individual employees are reached. Furthermore, they have to (13) ……………. and develop their staff, so that their performance continues to (14) …………… .
Some managers obviously (15) ……………. these tasks better than otherso Most achievements and failures in business are the achievements or failures of individual managers.
(MacKenzie, Ian:Management and Marketing, LTP Business, Hove 1997)