management

The process of governing a country or administering an enterprise including the development of corporate strategy and longrange planning on the top and the regulation, coordination and control of such activities as production, accounting, marketing, personnel, research and development in the middle, the supervised operations being performed below. One key to effective management is the adequate flow of information between and within strategic, functional and operational levels so as to allow for timely and appropriate decisions to be made (see intelligence ). Management information systems constitute a technological solution to information flow problems. Another key is the form of control exercised through spelling out objectives (e.g.see algedonic regulation ) providing incentive schemes for production as well as cooperation, etc. (Krippendorff )