“This provides the requisite amount, quality, timing and sequence of efforts which ensures that planned objectives are achieved with a minimum of conflict”. Identify the function of management:
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → Coordination
Option (1) Planning — Incorrect. Planning decides in advance what is to be done and how. It sets the objectives but does not bind the efforts of different units together.
Option (2) Directing — Incorrect. Directing is instructing, guiding, motivating and leading people. It deals with people’s work, not with fitting the work of all units into one pattern.
Option (3) Organising — Incorrect. Organising divides the work, groups it into departments and assigns authority. It creates the separate units that coordination later has to link.
Option (4) Coordination — Correct. Coordination is the process of synchronising the activities of different departments. It makes sure each unit does the right amount of work, of the right quality, at the right time and in the right order. So the units do not clash, and the planned objectives are achieved with a minimum of conflict. That is why coordination is called the essence of management: it runs through all the functions.
NCERT (2026-27 Edition): “Coordination — The Essence of Management … It is through the process of coordination that a manager ensures the orderly arrangement of individual and group efforts to ensure unity of action in the realisation of common objectives. Coordination therefore involves synchronisation of the different actions or efforts of the various units of an organisation. This provides the requisite amount, quality, timing and sequence of efforts which ensures that planned objectives are achieved with a minimum of conflict.” |