Modern Management

This book was written to meet the teaching needs of the Business Organization and Management Course, for the students of HEIs (Universities and TEIs). However, it is also addressed to any interested party (scientist, business executive, entrepreneur, etc.) who wishes to get in touch with matters of Business Organization and Management. Of course, a teaching manual should not be too extensive. For this reason, we did not cover all the thematic fields of modern Management. Besides, there are so many publications and fields of research that are announced and developed every year in this subject, that it is very difficult to keep track of them, and even more difficult (if not impossible) to include them in a textbook. Our goal is to motivate the interested parties in order to get in touch with the basic mechanisms - action tools of Management in the business area. We attempt to answer questions such as: Why is Management considered the fourth factor of production? What are the elements that make it so necessary in today's complex conditions of the globalized market? What concepts must be known by the scientist, every executive, every worker, but also those who come into contact with business activities? What basic knowledge should he possess in relation to the operation of the market, who deals with the production process (of goods and services)? Is only the empirical knowledge that some invoke, enough for a company to face the complex conditions of the free, Greek or international market? What is the contribution of the new trends that are developing globally in terms of business activity? The above are just some of the critical questions posed by the Greek and international reality. In order for companies to become competitive, it is necessary to have informed partners and specialized executives. Every economic (and not only) activity becomes competitive with the contribution of its partners, who produce the goods and offer its services. Individuals are the ones who must produce outputs, which the firm will place in the market in order to gain comparative competitive advantages. Comparative advantages are neither created by chance, nor without effort and planning. They are created only after accumulating and exploiting combinations of knowledge: Theoretical and empirical. For this reason, in every business activity (and not only), there must be continuous and consistent and two-way cooperation of executives at all its levels. Our students, who will be staffing the companies in the coming years, should realize that in order to improve the competitiveness of the actions in which they will participate, they must introduce innovative methods and techniques. To propose improvement actions, both for the production processes and for the products or services themselves. In order to achieve this, they should possess a critical level of knowledge about the operation of both the businesses themselves and the environment in which they operate. In this direction, this manual tries to add a small stone, which we make available to our readers. We believe that it will find fertile ground in order to fulfill the objective for which it is issued. Of course, as in all things, it is not the intentions that matter, but the result. In writing this manual I was helped by my students at ATEI SERRON, to whom I dedicate it. Their observations and their judgments on certain issues have caused me to emphasize several points. However, I would like to express my special thanks to three people: Elizabeth MANZARI, graduate of the ODE department of the University of MACEDONIA and PhD candidate in the Accounting department of the University of Portsmouth and to the students of the Accounting department of the School of Management and Economics of the Technical University of Serres, Georgiadis Spyros and Kostas Vasiliadis for the help they offered me during the writing of this book.