Apparel Industry Management

Apparel Industry Management 3(3+0)

Lesson 5 : Top, Middle and Lower Management

Middle Management

This level of management is concerned with the task of implementing the policies and plans chalked out by top management. Middle management consists of departmental or sectional heads and other executive officers attached to different departments.

This group comes between the top management and supervisory management. Middle managers have pressures from three corners: (1) from above by his chief in the top management with whose ideas, policies and attitudes he must agree ; (2) from below by the supervisors who press the counsel, decisions and changes; and (3) sideways by colleagues whose departments or functions are interrelated in greater or lesser degree with his own.

Functions of Middle Management:

Middle management acts with and under top management to accomplish these broad objectives of administration:

1. To run the details of the organization; leaving the top officers as free as possible of their other responsibilities
2. To co-operate in making a smoothly functioning organization
3. To understand the interlocking of departments in major policies
4. To achieve the co-ordination between the different parts of the organization
5. To build up a contented and efficient staff where reward is given according to capacity and merit and not according to change or length of service.
6. To develop leaders for the future by broad training and experience.
7. To build up a company spirit where all are working to provide a product or service wanted by others.

Co-ordination is the central problem of management and the middle managers are the key people in achieving it; they affect and are in turn affected by three-way movement of sco-ordinative forces-upward, downward and sideways throughout the organization.