Future of Management and Differentiate Between Management Concepts and or Trends

Future of Management Trends/Concepts In today's highly competitive business world, it is important to keep pace with the changes in management trends and practices in order to stay ahead of one's competitors. When every major firm in an industry is just as important and influential as its closest rival, then the winner is not determined by the amount of capital invested or technologies implemented, rather it is the management practices that determine the future of a firm.

The better and more flexible one firm's management practices are, the better are its chances of beating competition and emerging a winner. However a set of good management practices is not enough. To compete successfully, management practices must be flexible and sensitive to new trends and concepts. As trends change and new concepts emerge, management practices must be flexible enough to keep pace with them and management should quickly adopt new trends without any significant friction or hiccups. Managers play an important role in this connection.

They are the ones who sense changes in management concepts and implement them in the manner that best serve the objectives of the firm. In today's world, a manager is often seen as the leader and boundaries of their roles have blurred somewhat. However Management and leadership are two different concepts with distinct features and qualities. It is important to understand the difference between the two in order to fully comprehend the roles played by managers in an organization.

Managers may possess leadership qualities but this should be treated more as an asset than a pre-requisite. Management is responsible for performing the four important functions of Planning, Organizing, Leading, and controlling while the leader has no such specific job. He is required to bring fresh perspective and vision to the organization and his experience is not as important as his ability to detect change and stay one step ahead of it.

"Managers do things right, while leaders do the right thing."(Pascale, 1990) Managers must possess a great deal of experience because their job description requires application of factual knowledge to their work instead of intuition or vision. If they choose to lead the organization, it should be through knowledge alone and not a charismatic personality or bold ideas. "Leaders stand out by being different. They question assumption and are suspicious of tradition. They seek out the truth and make decisions based on fact, not prejudice.

They have a preference for innovation."(Fenton, 1990) Managers on the other hand choose to stay with the facts and previous experience when making decisions. However in today's highly demanding corporate world, managers must possess leadership qualities or else others may find it difficult to follow them. We need to understand that conflicts are bound to arise when a manager cannot perform the functions of a leader. Completion of tasks and projects require consistent motivation and support that only a leader can provide.

Therefore while older generation managers were more interested in solid facts and conventional style of management, their strategies can no longer survive in the dynamic corporate world of today. Aggressiveness, ability to detect change, motivation power, communication of vision and ideas are some of the new qualities that managers need to possess in order to perform their four key functions successfully.

New concepts are emerging in the field of management, as managers are now required to play dual role of manager and leader in order to avoid conflicts and motivate others to achieve organizational targets. No matter how important leadership skills are for a manager in today's dynamic business environment, they must still be seen as an additional asset and cannot replace the core functions of a manager. Still the greatest challenge for a manager is to reduce costs and increase efficiency thereby improving performance and productivity of the organization.

Managers therefore need to stay in touch with new concepts and trends, which assist them further in taking care of their core responsibilities. One such concept for example in TPM, which is a "new concept in management which leads to dramatic increases in business efficiency. It is a general management technique that aims at general improvements in management. The concept is aimed at raising the productivity of a company's facility.