Four Functions of Management: Defining the four functions of management and how they relate to the writers experiences at Catalina Marketing.

While the success of today's organizations depends on the innovation and drive of its workforce, there is no doubt management plays a very important part. In fact, having a properly educated, trained, mentored, and or experienced managerial staff can be the key between achieving success or failure. In this paper, the writer talks about his experiences with management at Catalina Marketing and points out the importance of having personnel in supervisory positions of all levels to be familiar with the four functions of management. For having a good understanding of planning, organizing, leading, and controlling can help to ensure better chances of success and aid a person to arise among the ranks of management.

The first of the four functions of management, planning deals with the act or process of developing goals and the plans, policies, and or procedures for reaching those set goals. "Historically, planning described a top-down approach in which top executives establish business plans and tell others to implement them."

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(Bateman, pg 17). For most organizations, this old hierarchy structure of management still operates to this day, where the top executives would go about looking over the organization's current projects, resources, and forecasting to see and determine what types of activities the organization can ensue. Then based on that information build the business strategies needed to pursue the new goals. "Now and in the future, delivering strategic value is a continual process in which people throughout the organization use their brains and the brains of customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders to identify opportunities to create, seize, strengthen, and sustain competitive advantage." (Bateman, pg 17). Since its foundation in 1983, Catalina Marketing executives took to this approach of involving all stakeholders in the development of its business strategies. Was the decision to pursue this type of modern day...