PRINCIPLES OF BUSINESS MANAGEMENT 1. Administration at close range.—We are now ready to consider the subject of administration at closer range. Administration, as we have interpreted it, applies to the big policies, and is therefore more in clusive than the word "management." We shall be concerned henceforth with the control of these poli cies thru systems and offices, which may be termed "management." As here used the term applies to the direction and control of the forces which produce re sults in factory or office operations.
2. Cardinal lies three things—a force, a purpose or re sult to be accomLshed, and a director Of thii force to _ ward the desiend. With any mie-Orii=lree things lacking in an activity, no such thing as manage ment is possible.
In a baseball team, for example, the members rep resent the force to be managed ; each player is a human dynamo. The winning of the game is the pur pose, and the captain directs the general play to this end.
The use of the word "force" to indicate the body or machine employing force is significant in itself. We often speak of the "police force," the "working force," etc., when we mean the body of men which supplies the energy or force to be used in carrying out any project.
3. Every principle implies a force.—The most im portant thing about management, then, is that it deals with forces, i. e., energy. This fact alone raises busi ness management into the realm of those subjects worthy of being treated scientifically. "Scientific management" would be meaningless jargon if forces were not involved. And it is well for the business man who has thousands of dollars invested in plants, of fices, men, fixtures, etc., to realize this point at once. It will enable him to discriminate between the real efficiency engineer and the fake systematizer. The latter knows nothing of forces. He, knows only of forms. The man who knows and realizes the nature of the forces working in a modern factory or mercan tile establishment, is conservative. He realizes the consequences of getting in the way of these forces. A fool will try to stop a flywheel with a piece of card board. Yet unfortunately, simply by reason of his assurance born of ignorance, a fool may gain the ear of an executive. But the manager who thinks of his
business in terms of the forces which he is guiding can soon put to rout the "business doctors." 4. Nature of business forces.—The promotion of a business enterprise is at bottom nothing more or less than an attempt to bring the forces of capital, labor and land together in such proportions and with such effectiveness that the highest profits will result from their combined efforts. There is no common business name for the manager of an enterprise in the earliest or formative period of an undertaking. The econo mist calls such a man an enterpriser. If the title of had not become so closely associated with the raising of capital or the effecting of combinations of capital to the almost total exclusion of the other two forces of business, this name would more fully express the function of such a person than any other word. But whatever his name, a man of this sort is a manager par excellence. His plans involve the primary union of the three business forces, capital, labor and land. Poor management at this point means hampered production, poor distribution or lean markets after the business is started.
Let the reader adjust himself at once to the point of view that management is interested in forces and not alone in things, methods and forms. If the idea seems abstract that management begins before the money is raised or the factory started, the notion can be given concreteness by thinking of the numerous failures of managers of production whose efforts and plans were useless because some incompetent enter priser had started the business with too little regard for his labor supply. Or it might be well to look into the history of many managers of distribution, men who were doomed to failure from the start because some en terpriser bad overlooked the important place which location holds in relation to freight rates or delivery advantages. Or, again, the reader may find number less examples of good sales managers whose efforts were handicapped for years because they could not develop their markets, owing to a lack of sufficient working capital.