Functions In A Business Firm

3 Key excerpts on "Functions In A Business Firm"

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  eBook - PDF

  Engineering and Commercial Functions in Business

  • William Bolton(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Newnes

    (Publisher)

  3 Business functions 3.1 Functional area This chapter indicates the types of activities that are likely to occur in a activities number of business function areas and inter-relationships which occur with activities in other areas. The business function areas that are considered in this chapter are the key ones of finance, purchasing, marketing, sales, production, product development, quality control, stores and personnel. The lists of activities given in section 3.1 for each of the functional areas and their inter-relationships with others are not intended to be exhaustive lists but merely to give an indication of the types of activities that might occur in a business. The inter-relationships involved in the necessary flow of information throughout a business are discussed in section 3.2. 3.1.1 Finance The finance function involves monitoring where money is coming from and going to, when it is coming in and going out and how much. The activities include: 1 Recording all financial transactions, i.e. the details of all the money coming into the business and all the money going out, and maintaining control over the cash flow. This is termed financial accounting with the main records being in the form of balance sheets, profit and loss accounts and cash flow forecasts. 2 Preparing accounts to submit to customers. 3 Keeping track of all credits and debts. 4 Establishing the costs of producing the products of the business (see chapter 5). 5 Planning for expenditure within departments. This is by the production of budgets (see chapter 6). 6 Overseeing the spending within each department. This is via budgetary control (see chapter 6). 7 Planning for expenditure on capital items such as plant, machinery, equipment, buildings, etc. 8 Allowing for the depreciation of capital items, i.e. the decrease in value with time of assets of the business such as plant, machinery, equipment, furniture, etc.

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  eBook - ePub

  The Management Task

  • Rob Dixon(Author)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Part Three   Management Functions Passage contains an image

  C H A P T E R 11

    Managers and departmental functions  

  Any organization has several common departmental functions, which, although they may not all have such clear labels, are the means by which the organization gets its work done. The functions of production, marketing, finance and personnel can be detected in all organizations which exist to provide goods or services to others, regardless of whether they are businesses or not.

  These departmental functions are easily recognized in any company which manufactures goods to sell to others, but they are also present in service industries and in other organizations. Take a college or university, for example: here the production function is obvious the lectures and courses it holds for its customers its students. It has to market these courses in order to attract a new intake of students each year; while the finance and personnel functions are also obvious in such an organization. These functions are less clear, but still exist, in a very different organization, such as a church. Here, the ‘production’ function can be seen in the provision of church services and facilities for the local community, while the ‘marketing’ function can be recognized in the outreach work of many churches to those people outside the church.

  Managers in any organization will be concerned with one or more of these departmental functions at some point in their careers, although there are also other, more specialized, departmental functions in some businesses (e.g. computer and data processing departments). As this is a book about the management task in general, this is not the place to consider any specific industry functions; but we can put the management processes we have just looked at in Part Two into the context of organizational functions.

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  Strategic Management

  Theory and Practice

  • John A. Parnell(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  Chapter Outline Marketing

  Pricing Strategies

  Promotion Strategies

  Product/Service Strategies

  Place (Distribution) Strategies

  Finance Production

  Quality Considerations

  Research and Development

  Purchasing Human Resources

  Human Capital and Knowledge Management

  Knowledge and Competitive Advantage

  Information Systems Management Functional Strategies and Industry Life Cycle Summary Key Terms Review Questions and Exercises Practice Quiz Student Study Site Notes  

  chapter 8

  Functional Strategies

  C orporate- and business-level strategies can only be successful if they are supported by strategies at the business unit’s functional levels, such as marketing, finance, production, purchasing, human resources (HR), and information systems (IS). Each functional area should integrate its activities with those of the other functional departments because a change in one department can affect both the manner in which other departments operate and the overall performance of the business unit. The extent to which all of the business unit’s

  functional strategies

  integrate can determine the effectiveness of the unit’s business- and firm-level strategies. Although it has more of a day-to-day, practical connotation, the term tactics is often used to refer to strategic considerations at the functional level.

  Functional and business strategies can overlap in terms of emphasis, but there are several key distinctions between the two levels. Functional strategies address a shorter time span and are much more specific than business strategies because they focus on strategy execution. For example, if a business strategy has a 3-year horizon, functional strategies or tactics may be developed on a quarterly or semiannual basis. Moreover, business strategies are usually developed by top executives in the business unit while functional strategies are typically crafted by departmental managers who are responsible for implementing them.

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