Co-ordination: The Essence of Management

Co-ordination brings unity of action and integrates different activities of organisation. Coordination is considered as the essence of management because of following reasons:

1.      Coordination is needed to perform all functions of management :

(i)     In planning coordination is required between main plan and supportive plans of different departments.

(ii)   In organizing coordination is required between different resources of an organisation and also between authority responsibility and accountability.

(iii) In staffing coordination required between skill of a person and job assigned to him, between efficiency and compensation etc.

(iv)  In directing function coordination is required between superior and subordinates, between orders, instructions, guidelines and suggestions etc.

In controlling function coordination is required between standards and actual performance.

2.      Coordination is required at all the levels :

(i)     Top level requires coordination to integrate all the activities of organization and lead the efforts of individuals in one common direction.

(ii)     Coordination is required at middle level to balance the activities of different departments so that these can work as a part of one organisation only.

(iii) Lower level requires coordination to integrate the activities of workers towards organisational objectives.

Coordination is the most important function of an organisation.          Any company which fails to coordinate its activities cannot survive and run successfully for a long period of time.

For example, Allwyn Company, established in 1942, was the first company to produce a double-decker bus. It was running successfully as a leading electronic industry, especially in refrigeration industry. By the end if 1980 the company faced the problem of co-ordination. There was lack of balance of integration of different activities; as a result the company started facing huge looses and by 1993 company had an accumulated loss of Rs.168 crore. Company failed to balance its departmental activities and product folios.

So in short we can say without coordination no company can work efficiently and earn profit.  

CO-ORDINATION

Apart from other functions, there is one more important function which every manager has to perform. This is called co-ordination. It is not only a function but it is essence of management.

Co-ordination can be defined as “Synchronization of efforts from the stand-point of time and the sequence of execution”. In general co-ordination means bringing together the activities and resource of organization and bringing harmony in them.

Coordination is the base or primary function of every manager because every manager because various departments of an organization are working independently and there is need to relate and integrate their activities.

Elements of Coordination

The key elements of co-ordination are:

        i.            Integration. It refers to the unification of all unrelated interests or activities bringing together the efforts and directing them to a common direction. Integration results is better performance of the organization

In the organization employees come from different backgrounds, they have different interests, different aspirations. The coordinate function is unify and bring together the interests of all the employees towards the interests of the organizations.

      ii.            Balancing. It means integrating the activities and efforts of different departments, working independently. It brings harmony in the working of whole company. Although the departments of an organization work independently but their activities must relate to each other, else there can be chaos and confusion.

 For example, the sales department has taken an order of 1000 units, it cannot execute the order unless and until production department produces 1000 units, production department cannot produce 1000 units unless and until purchase department provides raw materials and so on. So we can see that although departments seem to work independently but they depend on each other so there is need to balance and match the activities of different departments.

    iii.            Timing. It means scheduling the operations in a suitable order so that there is no interruption in the operating process due to delay in one activity. Integrating the timing of different activities lead to smooth flow and smooth working of an organisation.