The nature of management: functions and roles This concept discusses what is meant by the term management, the different functions of managers and the different roles that managers undertake. Although there have been many interpretations regarding the nature of management, we can identify planning, organising, co-ordination, control and motivation of work as representing the key tasks of management. These general tasks or functions can be summarised in the following way: planning and decision-making: managers must consider their goals and determine the objectives that must be achieved to accomplish those goals; organising: once a decision is taken regarding the work that needs to be completed, managers must plan their approach and organise the work, dividing tasks into their component parts. Organisation requires managers to address the issue of how to divide work and then to consider how to co-ordinate the disparate activities; co-ordination: managers must oversee the production of the work. This can be done by face-to-face contact as well as through co-ordinating devices such as plans and schedules to link various interdependent activities; control: the personal output of disparate individuals needs to be controlled by a manager in order to ensure that tasks are performed in the correct manner at the required time. motivation: because managers rarely make products or provide services themselves, much of their work being accomplished through people, it is important that they understand how to motivate staff and create the conditions that give rise to superior job performance. A study of managers at work by Mintzberg concluded that the key roles of the manager could be grouped under the headings of handling people, processing information and making decisions. "Managers work through people to get things done. Management is also dependent on the gathering, interpretation and dissemination of volumes of information which is indispensable for planning, decision-making,