OE-1.1 Management: Concept & Evolution
You can explain what management is, place Taylor and Fayol in the history of the field, distinguish manager from entrepreneur, and compare the main forms of business organization.
This unit answers the question engineers usually skip: what does a manager actually do all day. Taylor and Fayol matter not as trivia but as the two enduring answers - optimize the task, or organize the whole - and most modern practice is a blend. The common trap is memorizing the theorists as a list; instead notice that every later unit is one of Fayol's functions expanded.
Work through these
Concept of management; management as science or art
What management actually is, and the old argument about whether it is a science or a craft. The answer matters less than noticing that it is partly both, which is why the rest of the subject mixes measurable technique with judgement.
Manager vs entrepreneur
Two roles that overlap and are not the same: one runs something that exists, the other builds something that does not. Engineering students tend to want the second and are first employed as the first.
F.W. Taylor's scientific management and Henri Fayol's administrative theory
The two people the whole subject descends from: one measured the work, the other organised the organisation. Nearly every idea further down is a reaction to one of them.
Managerial roles and skills
What a manager does hour by hour, sorted into roles, and the three kinds of skill the job needs. The useful observation is that the technical skill you are studying for matters less the higher you go.
Types of business organizations: sole proprietorship, partnership, company
Who owns the firm and who is liable when it fails. Dry until you start something yourself, at which point it is the first decision you have to make.
How startups are built: an overview
The modern version of the item above, taken as an overview. It connects this subject to the entrepreneurship material other courses cover in depth.
Organization culture and environment
The unwritten rules of a workplace, and the outside forces it cannot control. Culture is the one most graduates underestimate and the one that decides whether they stay.
Contemporary management issues and challenges
What is unsettled in the field right now. Treat it as a survey rather than something to memorise, and revisit it when a later topic feels dated.
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