Principles of management

Layam Anitha
Principles of Management

• What do principles mean?

• George R. Terry has aptly defined a principle as .. a fundamental truth
providing a guide to thought and action.
• Principles are guidelines formulated on the basis of past experiences of
managers in related situations, through a process of recording mentally or in
writing, the effects of decisions taken in the past.
• Certain basic guidelines can be formulated by every manager to help in the
successful management of his/her establishment, therefore there can be very
different principles that are applied in various organizations according to past
experiences and judgment of managers in their particular situations.
• This is also because no two situations are exactly alike to demand prototype
decisions taken in the past, and people involved also change their behaviour at
different points in time.
• Present decisions however, can be based on the results of past decisions taken
under fairly similar circumstances, depending on future goals to be achieved.
• Principles are not rigid fool proof rules which can provide definite
solutions to problems or needs but are flexible, practical, consistent
and relevant guidelines for use in similar sets of situations.
• They help to predict the results of decisions taken when used with the
manager’s own judgment of when to apply or use them.
• When managers take decisions that have constantly proved wrong, the
fault does not lie with the principles, but in the judgment made and the
principle applied by managers in a particular situation.
Question
• Suppose a catering manager follows the principle of serving lunches
strictly between 12.30 and 2.30 pm every day, but one day finds that
there is an unexpected rush of customers, and meals get finished by
2.00 pm. How will he apply his principle to manage the situation with
respect to customers who habitually come to the establishment
between 2.00 and 2.30 pm?

Give your individual answer thinking you as a manager.

• There are 14 principles which have formed the basis for management
activity, but each manager may use as many as they think useful in a
particular situation.
• In fact, every manager can create principles to suit their own particular
field of work which could form reference points for success in the
future.
• According to Koontz, O’ Donnel and Weihrich, principles of
management are descriptive or predictive and not prescriptive.
• In other words, they do not tell a manager what he should do, but only
give him an idea of what may be expected if certain variable interact
in a situation.
• Let us list what decision choices he has in the situation.
• — Close down service at 2.00 pm on that day.
• — Use some ready to serve foods held in stock to make up extra meals to cover the demand
between 2.00 to 2.30 pm.
• — Request staff to make sandwiches and arrange for making eggs to order to make up a meal
platter for customers.

In this manner there can be many different reactions to a particular situation and it may seem
confusing to make a decision.
But the principle if applied with a manager’s value judgment helps to make decision making easier
and more effective.
Let us see how different managers use their value judgments to make decisions.

• A manager who places greater value on the goodwill of customers will not think
twice about keeping the food service open, and providing whatever he can to his
customer. He would not take the risk of turning away even a single customer.
• Another manager might value his own image vis-à-vis his staff, in which case he
will treat the situation as a challenge and think of quick preparations, being guided
by the principle of keeping the food service open till 2.30 pm.
• A third manager may value good relations with his staff and take the opportunity
to give them half an hour off, based on the fact that the number of customers in
the last half hour are not significant enough to make his staff prepare meals all
over again and create stress in the environment.
• Which of the above decisions would you choose if you were the
manager of the establishment and why?
• It is possible that when you apply your value judgment you may come
up with a fourth decision absolutely different from that of the three
managers cited above.
• Principles therefore represent the historical collection of cause and effect data
obtained from experiences gathered by managers in various situations, from which
practicing and potential managers can draw for making effective decisions.
• There are therefore, no fixed numbers of principles that a manager may adopt as
the basis for developing an organization.
• As experience is gained very different guidelines emerge, some principles helping
to predict, others providing guidelines for decision making at various levels of the
organization.