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shahji
shahji
Student
College - Freshman

What is the difference between management and administration?

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Posted by shahji on Sunday August 23, 2009 at 6:33 AM and tagged with administration, business, management.


Answers:

  1. speamerfam
    speamerfam Teacher
    Community / Jr. College

    eNotes Editor

    There are differences between management and administration, but sometimes we refer to "manager" and "administrators" interchangeably.  Strictly speaking, management involves the making of decisions to promote the goals of an entity, while administration involves seeing to it that the management decisions are carried out.  Here are a few example to demonstrate the difference:

    A manager decides to impose a sales quota on the company's sales force.  The administrator is responsible for seeing to it that the quota is met through the maintenance of records.

    A manager decides that there will be a "no tolerance" policy for tardiness.  It will be up to the administrator to monitor the compliance of the policy through observation or through the review of records.

    So, the general idea is that an administrator is not a primary policy or decision-maker, while a manager is.  An administrator might make some decisions to implement the manager's policy's and decisions, but his or her authority is limited. 

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    Posted by speamerfam on Sunday August 23, 2009 at 9:39 AM

  2. krishna-agrawala
    krishna-agrawala Teacher
    Graduate School

    eNotes Editor

    As pointed out in previous answer, the terms management and administration may be used interchangeably, but as per current usage in management profession, that is more a case of inappropriate usage of these term rather than the terms having the same meaning.

    Management is a term appropriate for all activities undertaken to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of any kind of work. In contrast the word administration is used primarily for work concerned with maintaining discipline and order. Thus the work of government and many other public institutions is called administration. Even in business the activities that are primarily concerned with routines to maintain equity and discipline are labeled as administration function. Thus functions such as maintaining and operating facilities along with associated operations like attendance recording are usually called office administration. Also in matrix organizations this a concept of managerial responsibility. Thus a subordinate is reports to functional manager for functional supervision and guidance, while to project manager for administrative supervision.

    Thus we may say that the administration forms to part management function. All that is administration is also management. But all that is management is not administration. Administration is a subset of management.

    I believe that assertion made in previous post about difference between manager and administrator on the basis of responsibility for taking versus implementing decisions are not in line with common management practice or literature.

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    Posted by krishna-agrawala on Sunday August 23, 2009 at 10:32 AM

  3. ephirem
    ephirem Student
    College - Freshman

    Administration:it is concerned about the determination of objective and major policies.

    Management:it puts into action the polices and plans laid down by administration.

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    Posted by ephirem on Wednesday November 4, 2009 at 10:35 PM