This article is extracted from review of literature.
LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 INTRODUCTION
An
office cannot function effectively without a management system. This system manages
and controls the office and helps office to work smoothly.
Office management system
works with an office manager who will help plan, organize and control the
office in order to achieve the goals of the organization (Bliss: 1998). He
helps in determining the manpower requirements, recruiting, selecting, and
training people to perform the office work efficiently and effectively.
The manager acts as the
line executive for his own department and staff executive or advisor for other
departments (Muhamed: 1981).
He selects, design and plan the office layout so as to ensure smooth
flow of work. He is also in charge for safeguarding and maintenance of building
and other assets of office and observes the rules, procedures and policies of
the management within the office, designs and improves system, procedures and
methods. He maintains good relation with the outsiders or general public in
order to create good image for the organization. He has to influence, inspire,
and guide subordinate and get the best out of the office staff. He is
responsible for procuring suitable machines, equipment, furniture, stationery
and other suppliers and for maintaining good working conditions so that
efficacy can be increased.
2.2 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
Concept
of office management
An organization without office is
unthinkable. Office management is needed in all organizations. It manages
support services of various departments in the organization. No organization
can run effectively without efficient office management. Office management is
needed at all levels of management.
Elements Of office management
1. Jobs: Office
management gets the office jobs done. The jobs are management of information,
records, supplies, properties and people.
2. People: The
jobs are done by people. Human resource management is an important aspect of
office management.
3. Functions: Office management performs management
functions. They are planning, directing, and controlling.
4. Objectives: Office
management achieves office objectives which are:
a. Efficient provision of services to
other departments
b. Coordination of activities of
various activities
c. Efficient performance of office
work.
Office management is concerned with
smooth and efficient performance of office work and It includes
planning, organizing, human resource management, directing and controlling
functions to achieve office objectives.
2.2.1 The concept of an office
management system
Office
management system is a branch of management which is concerned with the
services of obtaining,recordingand analyzing information of planning and
communication, by means of which the management of a business safeguards its
assets, promotes its affairs and achieves its objectives (Blessed: 1990). By
that definition, office basicallyperforms five types of activities which are:
receiving information, recording information, preparing and arranging information,
communicating information, safeguarding assets.
Traditional
Office management functions were limited to basic clerical servicesand to
office personnel, but now officemanagementhas changed significantly due to
corporate downsizing,the economy, and technology (Goodwill: 2001). The main
responsibility is to manage the organizational informationby enablingthem to
enhance their productivity. In the future, this function and services will
become even more systems oriented and will use even greater amounts of
technology.
Objectives
of AOM
1. Maximize individual and unit productivity.
2.To provide effective management of the
organization’s information.
3.To maintain reasonable quantity and quality
standards.
4.To develop effective work process and procedures.
5.To
provide a satisfactory physical and mental working environment for the organization’s
employees.6.Assigned duties and responsibilities of Office staff
7.To
develop communication line.
8.To help
employees maintain a high level of work effectiveness.9.To enhance the
effective supervision of office personnel.10.To assure the efficient and proper
use of specialized office equipment.
Importance of office management
Office
management as an art of guiding and directing personal or employees in the
organization in the use of various means such as machines equipment, office
forms, manual, methods etc has the following importance;
Helps
in Achievement of Targets: Targets or goals are results in quantitative terms
which are to be achieved in a given time. Management makes people realize the
goals and directs their efforts towards the achievement of these goals.
Optimum
Use of Resources: Management helps in utilization of resources effectively.
Scarce resources arc put to use optimistically by managers. Managers bring
about coordination and integration of various resources. It is management which
guides the personnel in office in the use of resources. Minimization of Costs:
Office costs can only be reduced under the guidance and control of efficient
management. Office Management is concerned with doing the office activities in
a best and cheapest way. Cost reduction is one of the objects of management which
can be achieved through work simplification and mechanization (Bola). Through
better planning, sound organization and effective control, management enables a
concern to reduce costs and prepare an enterprise to face cut throat
competition.Smooth Flow of Work:Uninterrupted flow of work is only possible if
there is proper planning and control. Management ensures efficient and smooth
flow of work.Helps in Maintaining
Office Efficiency:Management helps in maintaining efficiency in an office. A
manager not only performs and produces results, but also does it in the most
efficient manner so as to contribute towards profit generation (Adenuga: 1990).
·
Managing
Survival and Growth:Management has to play an important role in keeping the
organization alive. Change in technology and methods must be anticipated and
adapted for survival and growth. It is only management which can do so and
moulds the enterprise in such a changing environment.
·
Provides
Innovation:Innovation is finding different and better method of doing existing
work. To plan and manage innovation, management has to play an important role.
Suggestions from customers, information from salesmen, and close watch on
competitor’s activities provide source of innovation.
·
Helps
in Retaining Talent and Inculcating Sense of Loyalty in Office Staff:
Efficient management
helps in retaining talented and hard working employees by providing them
comfortable work environment. Manager must motivate his employees by
recognizing and appreciating their talents.
·
Provides
Leadership:Management provides leadership by influencing and guiding office
personnel. Managers influence his subordinates to work willingly for achieving
organizational goals.
·
Managing
Change:Importance of office management is that it helps in planning the change
and introducing it at the right time and in the right manner. Due to change in
technology methods, work procedures etc. have to be changed for efficiency and
economy. People resist change due to lack of understanding the reasons for
change and lack of training in new methods. Management helps in minimizing
resistance of people and acts as a change-agent.
2.3.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
The
management theory of Max Weber
The Max Weber theory
of management, sometimes called bureaucratic management theory, is built on
principles outlined by Frederick Taylor in his scientific management theory.
Like Taylor, Weber advocated a system based on standardized procedures and a
clear chain of command. Weber stressed efficiency, as did Taylor, but also
warned of the danger of emphasizing technology at the expense of emotion.
Systems
theory
Systems Theory is based upon the
analytic division of the natural world into environment and systems. This
division constitutes the major foundational, axiomatic philosophical assumption
of Systems Theory. On the one hand there is an infinitely complex
‘environment’, and on the other hand there are self-replicating systems.
Systems are engaged in processing information. Systems also model the
environment, and can respond adaptively to environmental changes. The planet
earth presumably began as pure ‘environment’ with only simple, self-organizing
physical and chemical systems which arose by the chance contiguity of
components and energy. For instance, the
water cycle is a system by which water molecules associate and dissociate in
processes such as evaporation and condensation. More complex systems can only
be built incrementally, so that over time, simple physical and chemical systems
must have evolved into complex biological systems such as those observable and
biological systems eventually led to the social systems generated by human
culture. A system might therefore include entities such as a single cell, a
multicellular organism such as human or social organizations of varying sizes
from a corporation, to the UK National Health Service, to a whole nation. For
any given analysis, the 'environment' is everything that is external to such a
system under consideration. Systems are actually defined in terms of processes,
but sometimes processes coincide closely with physical structures so that a
cell's environment might (approximately) consist of everything outside the
cell, including other systems such as other cells, the whole organism and other
organisms. For a human organization such as an autonomous hospital, the
environment external to the system might include physical aspects such as
climate and geography, but also other organizational systems such as politics,
the law and the media. Management systems (where they occur) are a form of
social organizational system which is engaged in modeling the organization it
manages. For a system of management, everything other than itself is
‘environment’, but the organization that is being managed constitutes the most
immediate environment.
2.4.
EMPERICAL FRAMEWORK
Much empirical work has attempted to test the role
of social capital relative to socio-economic outcomes such as income, poverty,
crime rate, health and so on. Cross sectional analysis represents the main and
still most popular econometric methodology used so far. The reasons why this
standard practice has been dominating empirical papers are at least two. Firstly,
the use of survey-questionnaires allows social scientists to capture different
aspects of the life, habits and social conditions of individuals that might
affect their wealth. However, very often this type of data set is based on a
particular yea
r and it is not always repeated consistently in
subsequent years. Even when surveys are conducted with a regular frequency,
this might not always occur on a yearly basis.Secondly, opinions and
perceptions about attitudes, codes of conducts, norms, values and trust are not
likely to change dramatically on a yearly basis. On the contrary, unlike
popular economic variables such as investment, consumption and unemployment,
these “opinion-shaped-variables” might require a remarkable length of time in
order to change (for instanceit is likely that my opinion about trusting other
people in general might remain unchangedfrom one year to another. This means
that it might take more than three or four years for anopinion about a
particular value to change). Hence, under these circumstances, panel or
timeseries analysis might not produce the expected outcome. Hence, more
“consistent” analysis might apply pooled cross section methodologies that allow
the social scientist to detect, at least, the co-movements of the aggregate
variables over a period of time that is above theyear. The merit of these
approaches is to include socio-economic variables in the modelspecification in
order to capture what, quite reasonably, the pure economic model leaves aside
(Charley: 2010). However, the lack of data and a not yet established
theoreticalframework reduce somehow the consistency of the empirical analysis
leaving large room
(Maybe too large and too often) for the author’s
interpretation of the results. Relative to this issue, Durlauf and Fafchamps
(2004) identify some of the main problems which arecommon in the empirical
literature of social capital. Firstly, in analysis at the individual level
It is not always clear whether individual returns
from social capital are good indicators of aggregate returns. For instance the
employment relationship might create informal networks where individual returns
to social capital (inside the network) might exceed social returns and
Therefore generate unequal outcomes by reinforcing
the insider-outsider system. Secondly,model specifications might raise problems
of exchangeability linked to the problem of choosing the control variables in
the regression. This problem refers to the choice of a model that is not
correctly specified. In this sense, the model does not work across different contexts.
In other words, observations and specific models should be comparable across
different contexts. The unlucky alternative would be that “the residuals in the
sample will
contain forms of heterogeneity that call into
question the placement of the observations in a common regression” (Durlauf and
Fafchamps, 2004 p.32) with the unhappy consequence of aspecific model that work
only for that particular case study and from which it is not able to
deduct any “general regression” useful for other
studies and cases. Thirdly, some empirical analysis might suffer from model
uncertainty and more precisely from parameter heterogeneity