General Management

Guides

Business Management is the discipline of coordinating and organizing business activities and resources in order to achieve specific organizational goals and objectives. This multifaceted field involves the core functions of planning, organizing, directing, and controlling an enterprise's human, financial, and material assets. It encompasses a broad spectrum of responsibilities, from strategic decision-making and operational oversight to financial stewardship and leading personnel, all with the ultimate aim of ensuring the company's efficiency, profitability, and sustainable growth.

Business Administration is the comprehensive process of managing an organization's resources, operations, and people to achieve its strategic objectives. It encompasses the core management functions of planning, organizing, leading, and controlling across all essential business areas, such as finance, marketing, human resources, and operations. As a foundational discipline within general management, it focuses on ensuring the efficient and effective performance of a company or non-profit, steering the entire enterprise toward its goals.

International Management is the process of applying management concepts and techniques to business operations in a multinational environment, coordinating activities that cross national borders. It extends the principles of general management by addressing the unique challenges and opportunities that arise from operating in different countries, requiring leaders to navigate diverse cultural norms, legal systems, political landscapes, and economic conditions. The core focus is on developing global strategies, managing a diverse international workforce, and adapting organizational practices to effectively control and integrate dispersed operations to achieve a firm's objectives on a global scale.

Strategic Management and Business Policy is the comprehensive process by which top management guides an organization to achieve its long-term objectives and secure a sustainable competitive advantage. It involves a continuous cycle of environmental scanning, strategy formulation (defining the mission, vision, and corporate goals), strategy implementation (allocating resources and designing organizational structures), and evaluation and control. This field provides the overarching framework and policies that direct the functional areas of a business, ensuring that all decisions and actions are aligned to navigate the complexities of the market and steer the entire enterprise toward its desired future state.

Strategic Planning and Decision Making is a fundamental management process that involves defining an organization's long-term vision and objectives and then making the critical choices necessary to achieve them. It requires a systematic analysis of an organization's internal strengths and weaknesses, as well as the external opportunities and threats present in its environment. The insights from this analysis inform high-stakes decisions about resource allocation, market positioning, and competitive actions, ultimately charting a course designed to secure a sustainable competitive advantage and ensure long-term success.

Business Process Management (BPM) is a systematic management discipline focused on improving corporate performance by discovering, modeling, analyzing, measuring, improving, and optimizing an organization's end-to-end business processes. A core component of this approach is process modeling, which involves creating visual, often standardized, representations of workflows to facilitate clear communication, analysis, and simulation of potential improvements. By systematically managing its processes, an organization can achieve strategic goals such as increased operational efficiency, reduced costs, enhanced customer satisfaction, and greater agility in responding to market changes.

Change Management is a structured approach and a core competency within general management focused on transitioning individuals, teams, and entire organizations from a current state to a desired future state. It involves applying a set of processes, tools, and techniques to manage the people-side of change to achieve a required business outcome. The primary goal is to minimize resistance and disruption while maximizing employee adoption and usage, ensuring that changes—whether in technology, processes, or organizational structure—are implemented smoothly and that their intended benefits are realized and sustained.

Crisis and Disruption Management is the strategic process by which an organization prepares for, responds to, and recovers from significant unexpected events that threaten its operations, reputation, and overall stability. This discipline involves proactive risk assessment, the development of robust contingency plans, and the establishment of clear communication protocols to guide leadership and stakeholders through turmoil. The primary goals are to ensure business continuity, protect employees and assets, minimize financial and reputational damage, and ultimately, learn from the experience to build greater organizational resilience against future threats.

Decision making in organizations is the fundamental management process of identifying problems or opportunities, evaluating alternative solutions, and selecting a course of action to achieve specific organizational goals. This critical function spans all hierarchical levels, from high-stakes strategic choices made by top executives that shape the company's future, to the operational decisions made by frontline managers that guide daily activities. The process is influenced by a range of factors including the quality of available information, cognitive biases, ethical considerations, and group dynamics, requiring managers to utilize various models and approaches—from rational analysis to intuitive judgment—to navigate uncertainty and drive effective outcomes.

Management Research is the systematic and rigorous inquiry into management practices, organizational behavior, and business performance. It involves the application of scientific methods to collect and analyze data—both qualitative and quantitative—in order to develop, test, and refine theories about how organizations function and how they can be led more effectively. By investigating topics such as leadership styles, strategic decision-making, employee motivation, and operational efficiency, management research aims to generate reliable knowledge that can inform evidence-based practices, solve complex organizational problems, and ultimately contribute to improved performance and sustainable success.

Organizational Behavior (OB) is an interdisciplinary field dedicated to understanding, predicting, and influencing human behavior within organizational settings. Drawing heavily from psychology, sociology, and anthropology, it examines behavior on three distinct levels: the individual (exploring topics like motivation, personality, and decision-making), the group (analyzing teamwork, leadership, and communication), and the organization as a whole (investigating culture, structure, and change). The ultimate goal of OB is to apply this knowledge to improve organizational effectiveness, enhance employee performance and job satisfaction, and foster a healthier and more productive work environment.