What is business management?
Business management is the discipline that studies the relationships between business administration, production processes and the elements of cost, quality, logistics and distribution, among others. Its objective is to guarantee and continuously increase the effectiveness and competitiveness of a given organization or corporation.
In other words, it is about applying constant innovation, from every point of view, to the world of business administration, as defined by the prominent Austro-American economist Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950). In a strict sense, it is a specific branch of business administration, often called Business Management today .
Business management goes hand in hand with the ever-changing world of technology, and finds in dynamics such as automation, computing and new technologies a set of tools that can be used to update and improve business performance in its different facets and levels.
See also: Management, Management in administration
Origin of business management
Although its antecedents can be traced in one way or another to any form of organization or company throughout history, this discipline took its first formal steps in the first half of the 20th century (academically in 1933 in Madrid, Spain), especially in the public sector and the military.
Its application to the private field came immediately, especially from the hand of specialists in certain productive stages, such as the Japanese Kaoru Ishikawa (1915-1989), one of the main exponents of the scientific or systematic method of constant improvement of administrative processes. . This process of continuous improvement in the quality sector is known by the Japanese name of Kaizen .
Importance of business management
Business management is a very broad discipline, to which more and more attention has been paid nowadays. This is due to the growing demand in the business world for professionals capable of (re)thinking the business world according to the changing needs of the times, which requires experience or, failing that, academic training.
Thus, as the business world demands more and better professionals to direct it and guarantee its survival, business management is a fundamental discipline when it comes to updating or updating production processes.
Functions of business management
Like other similar disciplines, business management focuses on the analysis of the organizational structure, taking into account the different aspects that can be improved. To do this, it usually emphasizes the four basic points of every production process:
- Planning. The prior arrangement of the objectives to be achieved, the methods and other characteristics of the business project.
- Organization. The ideal distribution of the company’s resources, taking into account their similarities, differences, destinations and other usable factors.
- Communication . The exchange of data and relevant information between the different parts of the organization, and also with the outside.
- Control . The making of strategic decisions based on the feedback dynamics possible from the information