ABSTRACT
Defining terms is not easy, particularly in the field of management and administration where ideas change from time to time and popular usage of words may vary. The consensus in recent years is that the word ‘administration’ implies some fairly detailed involvement in the activities of an organisation, and certainly business administration syllabuses seem to have developed into quite detailed lists of aspects of business organisation which students should study. We may therefore define business administration as ‘that part of the management of a business organisation which seeks to implement the decisions made by top management and achieve the objectives which it has specified’. Its true representative is the managing director, who is both the representative of the board to the ordinary workforce, and the representative of the workforce in any feedback to the board. As the representative of the board, the managing director must communicate the objectives to the staff and, no doubt, in the process arranges to break them down into a sequence of activities which can be achieved as time goes by. In the process of attempting to realise the objectives specified, some comparison between the actual results achieved and the plans made will become possible. This may call for reporting back to board level about various aspects; the difficulties encountered, the unrealistic nature of the original plans or possibly their inadequancy in view of the potential revealed. The managing director would present such a report, or arrange to have it presented by a suitable executive.
