Business Management (a Brief Expose)

The links between manpower management, financial control and information management systems are clearly defined in Business Management (A Brief Exposé) where an analysis of budgeting for manpower needed for production and marketing; basic steps in accounting procedures; and stages in data processing are expounded. It is realised that whereas the factory processes raw materials and produces goods for sale, a data processing department processes basic data and produces basic business documents and control information for management to keep them informed of events within the business. This enables them to coordinate different activities of the organisation’s functional groups and to control the day-to-day transactions and be in a position to take whatever corrective action is necessary to achieve the objectives of the particular business. Furthermore, an efficient data processing system makes it possible to adjust the situation before it goes out of hand by adjusting income distribution and combating organisation inefficiency. With carefully structured data processing systems, a general method can be established for decision-making or policy-making in individual cases of manpower recruitment and development; investment projects; and income distribution. A brief description of the complexities of economic and business affairs may be necessarily misleading, but I hope that this booklet is not more misleading than the average of such materials. It is an attempt to explain the immense complexity of the real world by logical theories, which provide the student with worthwhile intellectual exercise and excitement. Business Management (A Brief Exposé) offers to the professional student, the start-up entrepreneur, the small- and medium-size businessman and the business executive a preliminary survey of the fields of manpower development, accountancy and electronic data processing. The wider public, whose enlightened interest is the mainspring of social progress, may, I hope, find in its pages something to stimulate reflection upon those larger issues which must be determined, if at all, by the consensus of their opinion. The purpose of this booklet is to give the reader an insight into the way organisations emerge and grow, and the relationships between manpower management, financial management and management information systems. In particular, Business Management (A Brief Exposé) will be of help to the busy Chief Executive Officer who hardly has time to read through different volumes associated with manpower management, financial control and computerised management information systems. Nevertheless, more reading and details may be found in A Handbook in Business Management by the same author. Jacob Wilson Chikuhwa has also published a number of books on Zimbabwe’s socio-economic developments.