Chapter Two

Management Competencies for Today’s World

Management is the attainment of organizational goals in an effective and efficient manner

through planning, organizing, leading, and controlling organizational resources There are certain
elements of management that are timeless, but environmental shifts also influence the practice of
management. In recent years, rapid environmental changes have caused a fundamental
transformation in what is required of effective managers.

Technological advances such as social media and mobile apps, the rise of virtual work, global
market forces, the growing threat of cybercrime, and shifting employee and customer
expectations have led to a decline in organizational hierarchies and more empowered workers,
which calls for a new approach to management that may be quite different from managing in the
past
Instead of being a controller, today’s effective manager is an enabler who helps people do and
be their best. Managers help people get what they need, remove obstacles, provide learning
opportunities, and offer feedback, coaching, and career guidance. Instead of “management by
keeping tabs,” they employ an empowering leadership style. Much work is done in teams rather
than by individuals, so team leadership skills are crucial. People in many organizations work at
scattered locations, so managers can’t monitor employee behavior continually. Some
organizations are even experimenting with a boss less design that turns management authority
and responsibility completely over to employees. Managing relationships based on authentic
conversation and collaboration is essential for successful outcomes. Social media is a growing
tool for managers to enhance communication and collaboration in support of empowered or boss
less work environments. In addition, managers sometimes coordinate the work of people who
aren’t under their direct control, such as those in partner organizations, and they sometimes even
work with competitors. They have to find common ground among people who might have
disparate views and agendas and align them to go in the same direction.
Today’s best managers are “future-facing.” That is, they design the organization and culture to
anticipate threats and opportunities from the environment, challenge the status quo, and promote
creativity, learning, adaptation, and innovation.

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Industries, technologies, economies, governments, and societies are in a constant flux, and
managers are responsible for helping their organizations navigate through the unpredictable with
flexibility and innovation.5 Today’s world is constantly changing, but “the more unpredictable
the environment, the greater the opportunity—if [managers] have the … skills to capitalize on
it.”

The Definition of Management

What do managers have in common? They get things done through their organizations.
Managers create the systems, conditions, and environments that enable organizations to survive
and thrive beyond the tenure of any specific supervisor or manager. A key aspect of managing is
to recognize the role and importance of other people. Early twentieth-century management
scholar Mary Parker Follett defined management as “the art of getting things done through
people.”

More recently, noted management theorist Peter Drucker stated that the job of managers is to
give direction to their organizations, provide leadership, and decide how to use organizational
resources to accomplish goals. Getting things done through people and other resources and
providing leadership and direction are what managers do. These activities apply to top
executives, a supervisor of an accounting department, or a director of sales and marketing.
Moreover, management often is considered universal because it uses organizational resources to
accomplish goals and attain high performance in all types of profit and nonprofit organizations.
Management is: the attainment of organizational goals in an effective and efficient manner
through planning, organizing, leading, and controlling organizational resources. This definition
holds two important ideas: (1) the four functions of planning, organizing, leading, and
controlling, and (2) the attainment of organizational goals in an effective and efficient manner.
Managers use a multitude of skills to perform these functions.
 Planning: the management function concerned with defining goals for future
organizational performance and deciding on the tasks and resources needed to attain
them.
 Organizing: the management function concerned with assigning tasks, grouping tasks
into departments, and allocating resources to departments.

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  Leading: the management function that involves the use of influence to motivate
employees to achieve the organization’s goals.
 Controlling: the management function concerned with monitoring employees’ activities,
keeping the organization on track toward its goals, and making corrections as needed

Management Skills
A manager’s job is complex and multidimensional and, requires a range of skills. Although some
management theorists propose a long list of skills, the necessary skills for managing a
department or an organization can be summarized in three categories: conceptual, human, and
technical. The application of these skills changes as managers move up in the organization.
Although the degree of each skill necessary at different levels of an organization varies, all
managers must possess skills in each of these important areas to perform effectively.
Managers use conceptual, human, and technical skills to perform the four management functions
of planning, organizing, leading, and controlling in all organizations—large and small,
manufacturing and service, profit and nonprofit, traditional and Internet-based. But not all
managers’ jobs are the same. Managers are responsible for different departments, work at
different levels in the hierarchy, and meet different requirements for achieving high performance.

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Making the Leap: Becoming a New Manager
Many people who are promoted into a manager position have little idea what the job actually
entails and receive little training about how to handle their new role. It’s no wonder that, among
managers, the first-line supervisors tend to experience the most job burnout and attrition.
Organizations often promote the star performers—those who demonstrate individual expertise in
their area of responsibility and have an ability to work well with others—both to reward the
individual and to build new talent into the managerial ranks. But making the shift from
individual contributor to manager is often tricky.
One study followed a group of 19 managers over the first year of their managerial careers and
found that one key to success is to recognize that becoming a manager involves more than
learning a new set of skills. Rather, becoming a manager requires a profound transformation in
the way people think of themselves—called personal identity—that includes letting go of deeply
held attitudes and habits and learning new ways of thinking. Individual performers are specialists
and “doers.” Their mind is conditioned to think in terms of performing specific tasks and
activities as expertly as possible. The manager, on the other hand, has to be a generalist and learn
to coordinate a broad range of activities. Whereas the individual performer strongly identifies
with his or her specific tasks, the manager has to identify with the broader organization and
industry. In addition, the individual performer gets things done mostly through his or her own
efforts, and develops the habit of relying on self rather than others. The manager, though, gets
things done through other people. Indeed, one of the most common mistakes that new managers
make is wanting to do all the work themselves, rather than delegating to others and developing
others’ abilities.

MANAGER ROLES
Mintzberg’s observations and subsequent research indicate that diverse manager activities can be
organized into 10 roles. A role is a set of expectations for a manager’s behavior. These roles are

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divided into three conceptual categories: informational (managing by information);
interpersonal (managing through people); and decisional (managing through action). Each role
represents activities that managers undertake to ultimately accomplish the functions of planning,
organizing, leading, and controlling.
Three roles deal with the interpersonal behavior of managers (leader, liaison, figurehead), three
roles deal with information-processing behavior (monitor, disseminator, spokesperson), and four
roles deal with decision-making behavior (entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator,
negotiator).
 Leader Role. Managers are responsible for making their organizational subunit function
as an integrated whole in the pursuit of its basic purpose. Consequently, the manager
must provide guidance to subordinates, ensure that they are motivated, and create
favorable conditions for doing the work.
 Liaison Role. The liaison role includes behavior intended to establish and maintain a web
of relationships with individuals and groups outside of a manager’s organizational unit.
 Figurehead Role. As a consequence of their formal authority as the head of an
organization or one of its subunits, managers are obliged to perform certain symbolic
duties of a legal and social nature. These duties include signing documents (e.g.,
contracts, expense authorizations), presiding at certain meetings and ceremonial events
(e.g., retirement dinner for a subordinate), participating in other rituals or ceremonies,
and receiving official visitors.
 Monitor Role. Managers continually seek information from a variety of sources, such as
reading reports and memos, attending meetings and briefings, and conducting
observational tours. Some of the information is passed on to subordinates (disseminator
role) or to outsiders (spokesperson role).
 Disseminator Role. Managers have special access to sources of information not available
to subordinates. Some of the information must be passed on to subordinates, either in its
original form or after interpretation and editing by the manager.
 Spokesperson Role. Managers are also obliged to transmit information and express value
statements to people outside their organizational subunit. As Mintzberg (1973, p. 76)
points out, “To speak effectively for his organization and to gain the respect of outsiders,

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 the manager must demonstrate an up-to-the-minute knowledge of his organization and its
environment.”
 Entrepreneur Role. The manager of an organization or one of its subunits acts as an
initiator and designer of controlled change to exploit opportunities for improving the
existing situation.
 Disturbance Handler Role. In the disturbance handler role, a manager deals with sudden
crises that cannot be ignored, as distinguished from problems that are voluntarily solved
by the manager to exploit opportunities (entrepreneur role).
 Resource Allocator Role. Managers exercise their authority to allocate resources such as
money, personnel, material, equipment, facilities, and services.
 Negotiator Role. Any negotiations requiring a substantial commitment of resources will
be facilitated by the presence of a manager having the authority to make this commitment

Although the components of the manager’s job have to be separated to understand the different
roles and activities of a manager, it is important to remember that the real job of management
cannot be practiced as a set of independent parts; all the roles interact in the real world of
management. As Mintzberg says, “The manager who only communicates or only conceives
never gets anything done, while the manager who only ‘does’ ends up doing it all alone.

Management and Organization

Studying history doesn’t mean merely arranging events in chronological order; it means
developing an understanding of the impact of societal forces on organizations. Studying history
is a way to achieve strategic thinking, see the big picture, and improve conceptual skills. Let’s
begin by examining how social, political, and economic forces have influenced organizations and
the practice of management.

Classical Perspective
The practice of management can be traced to 3000 b.c., to the first government organizations
developed by the Sumerians and Egyptians, but the formal study of management is relatively
recent. The early study of management as we know it today began with what is now called the
classical perspective. The classical perspective on management emerged during the nineteenth

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and early twentieth centuries. The factory system that began to appear in the 1800s posed
challenges that the earlier organizations had not encountered. Problems arose in tooling the
plants, organizing managerial structure, training employees (many of them non-English-speaking
immigrants), scheduling complex manufacturing operations, and dealing with increased labor
dissatisfaction and resulting strikes.
These myriad new problems and the development of large, complex organizations demanded a
new approach to coordination and control, and a “new sub-species of economic man—the
salaried manager”—was born. Between 1880 and 1920, the number of professional managers in
the United States grew from 161,000 to more than 1 million. These professional managers began
developing and testing solutions to the mounting challenges of organizing, coordinating, and
controlling large numbers of people and increasing worker productivity. Thus began the
evolution of modern management with the classical perspective. This perspective contains three
subfields, each with a slightly different emphasis: scientific management, bureaucratic
organizations, and administrative principles

Scientific Management
Scientific management emphasizes scientifically determined jobs and management practices as
the way to improve efficiency and labor productivity. In the late 1800s, a young engineer,
Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915), proposed that workers “could be retooled like
machines, their physical and mental gears recalibrated for better productivity.”59 Taylor insisted
that improving productivity meant that management itself would have to change and, further,
that the manner of change could be determined only by scientific study; hence, the label
scientific management emerged. Taylor suggested that decisions based on rules of thumb and
tradition be replaced with precise procedures developed after careful study of individual
situations.
The scientific management approach is illustrated by the unloading of iron from rail cars and
reloading finished steel for the Bethlehem Steel plant in 1898. Taylor calculated that with the
correct movements, tools, and sequencing, each man was capable of loading 47.5 tons per day
instead of the typical 12.5 tons. He also worked out an incentive system that paid each man $1.85
a day for meeting the new standard, an increase from the previous rate of $1.15. Productivity at
Bethlehem Steel shot up overnight.

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Characteristics of Scientific Management
General Approach
 Developed standard method for performing each job
 Selected workers with appropriate abilities for each job
 Trained workers in standard methods
 Supported workers by planning their work and eliminating interruptions
 Provided wage incentives to workers for increased output
Contributions
 Demonstrated the importance of compensation for performance
 Initiated the careful study of tasks and jobs
 Demonstrated the importance of personnel selection and training
Criticisms
 Did not appreciate the social context of work and higher needs of workers
 Did not acknowledge variance among individuals
 Tended to regard workers as uninformed and ignored their ideas and suggestions

Bureaucratic Organizations
A systematic approach developed in Europe that looked at the organization as a whole is the
bureaucratic organizations approach, a subfield within the classical perspective. Max Weber
(1864–1920), a German theorist, introduced most of the concepts on bureaucratic organizations.
During the late 1800s, many European organizations were managed on a personal, family-like
basis. Employees were loyal to a single individual rather than to the organization or its mission.
The dysfunctional consequence of this management practice was that resources were used to
realize individual desires rather than organizational goals. Employees in effect owned the
organization and used resources for their own gain rather than to serve customers. Weber
envisioned organizations that would be managed on an impersonal, rational basis. This form of
organization was called a bureaucracy.
Weber believed that an organization based on rational authority would be more efficient and
adaptable to change because continuity is related to formal structure and positions rather than to
a particular person, who may leave or die. To Weber, rationality in organizations meant
employee selection and advancement based not on whom you know, but rather on competence

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and technical qualifications, which are assessed by examination or according to specific training
and experience. The organization relies on rules and written records for continuity. In addition,
rules and procedures are impersonal and applied uniformly to all employees. A clear division of
labor arises from distinct definitions of authority and responsibility, legitimized as official duties.
Positions are organized in a hierarchy, with each position under the authority of a higher one.
The manager gives orders successfully not on the basis of his or her personality, but on the legal
power invested in the managerial position.
Characteristics of Weberian Bureaucracy
 Division of labor, with clear definitions of authority and responsibility
 Positions organized in a hierarchy of authority
 Personnel selected and promoted based on technical qualifications
 Administrative acts and decisions recorded in writing
 Management separate from the ownership of the organization
 Managers subject to rules and procedures that will ensure reliable, predictable behavior

Administrative Principles
Another major subfield within the classical perspective is known as the administrative principles
approach. Whereas scientific management focused on the productivity of the individual worker,
the administrative principles approach focused on the total organization. The major
contributor to this approach was Henri Fayol (1841–1925), a French mining engineer who
worked his way up to become head of a large mining group known as Comambault. In his later
years, Fayol wrote down his concepts on administration, based largely on his own management
experiences.
In his most significant work, General and Industrial Management, Fayol discussed 14 general
principles of management, several of which are part of management philosophy today. For
example:
 Unity of command. Each subordinate receives orders from one—and only one—superior.
 Division of work. Managerial work and technical work are amenable to specialization to
produce more and better work with the same amount of effort.
 Unity of direction. Similar activities in an organization should be grouped together under
one manager.

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  Scalar chain. A chain of authority extends from the top to the bottom of the organization
and should include every employee.
Fayol felt that these principles could be applied in any organizational setting. He also identified
five basic functions or elements of management: planning, organizing, commanding,
coordinating, and controlling. These functions underlie much of the general approach to today’s
management theory.
The overall classical perspective as an approach to management was very powerful and gave
companies fundamental new skills for establishing high productivity and effective treatment of
employees. Indeed, the United States surged ahead of the world in management techniques, and
other countries, especially Japan, borrowed heavily from American ideas.

Humanistic Perspective
The humanistic perspective on management emphasized the importance of understanding
human behaviors, needs, and attitudes in the workplace, as well as social interactions and group
processes. There are three primary subfields based on the humanistic perspective: the human
relations movement, the human resources perspective, and the behavioral sciences approach.
Early Advocates
Two early advocates of a more humanistic approach were Mary Parker Follett and Chester
Barnard. Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933) was trained in philosophy and political science, but
she applied herself in many fields, including social psychology and management. She wrote of
the importance of common superordinate goals for reducing conflict in organizations. Her work
was popular with businesspeople of her day but was often overlooked by management scholars.
Follett’s ideas served as a contrast to scientific management and are reemerging as applicable for
modern managers dealing with rapid changes in today’s global environment. Her approach to
leadership stressed the importance of people rather than engineering techniques. She offered the
pithy admonition, “Don’t hug your blueprints,” and analyzed the dynamics of management–
organization interactions. Follett addressed issues that are timely today, such as ethics, power,
and leading in a way that encourages employees to give their best. The concepts of
empowerment, facilitating rather than controlling employees, and allowing employees to act
depending on the authority of the situation opened new areas for theoretical study by Chester
Barnard and others.

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Chester I. Barnard (1886–1961) studied economics at Harvard but failed to receive a degree
because he did not take a course in laboratory science. He went to work in the statistical
department of AT&T, and in 1927, he became president of New Jersey Bell. One of Barnard’s
significant contributions was the concept of the informal organization. The informal
organization occurs in all formal organizations and includes cliques, informal networks, and
naturally occurring social groupings. Barnard argued that organizations are not machines and
stressed that informal relationships are powerful forces that can help the organization if properly
managed. Another significant contribution was the acceptance theory of authority, which states
that people have free will and can choose whether to follow management orders. People typically
follow orders because they perceive positive benefit to themselves, but they do have a choice.
Managers should treat employees properly because their acceptance of authority may be critical
to organization success in important situations.

Human Relations Movement

The human relations movement was based on the idea that truly effective control comes from
within the individual worker rather than from strict, authoritarian control. This school of thought
recognized and directly responded to social pressures for enlightened treatment of employees.
The early work on industrial psychology and personnel selection received little attention because
of the prominence of scientific management. Then a series of studies at a Chicago electric
company, which came to be known as the Hawthorne studies, changed all that.
Under the guidance of two Harvard professors, Elton Mayo and Fritz Roethlisberger, the studies
lasted nearly six years (May 10, 1927 to May 4, 1933). Most early interpretations, however,
agreed on one point: Money was not the cause of the increased output. It was believed that the
factor that best explained increased output was human relations. Employees performed better
when managers treated them in a positive manner. The interpretation that employees’ output
increased when managers treated them in a positive manner started a revolution in worker
treatment for improving organizational productivity. This approach shaped management theory
and practice for well over a quarter century, and the belief that human relations is the best area of
focus for increasing productivity persists today.

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Human Resource Perspective
The human relations movement initially espoused a dairy farm view of management—just as
contented cows gives more milk, satisfied workers will produce more work. Gradually, views
with deeper content began to emerge. The human resources perspective maintained an interest
in worker participation and considerate leadership but shifted the emphasis to consider the daily
tasks that people perform. The human resources perspective combines prescriptions for design of
job tasks with theories of motivation. In the human resources view, jobs should be designed so
that tasks are not perceived as dehumanizing or demeaning but instead allow workers to use their
full potential. Two of the best-known contributors to the human resources perspective were
Abraham Maslow and Douglas McGregor.
Abraham Maslow (1908–1970), a practicing psychologist, observed that his patients’ problems
usually stemmed from an inability to satisfy their needs. Thus, he generalized his work and
suggested a hierarchy of needs. Maslow’s hierarchy started with physiological needs and
progressed to safety, belongingness, esteem, and, finally, self-actualization needs.
Probably the most famous content theory was developed by Abraham Maslow. Maslow’s
hierarchy of needs theory proposes that people are motivated by multiple needs and that these
needs exist in a hierarchical order. Maslow identified five general types of motivating needs in
order of ascendance:
1. Physiological needs. These most basic human physical needs include food, water, and oxygen.
In the organizational setting, they are reflected in the needs for adequate heat, air, and base salary
to ensure survival.
2. Safety needs. These needs include a safe and secure physical and emotional environment and
freedom from threats—that is, for freedom from violence and for an orderly society. In an
organizational workplace, safety needs reflect the needs for safe jobs, fringe benefits, and job
security.
3. Belongingness needs. These needs reflect the desire to be accepted by one’s peers, have
friendships, be part of a group, and be loved. In the organization, these needs influence the desire
for good relationships with co-workers, participation in a work group, and a positive relationship
with supervisors.
4. Esteem needs. These needs relate to the desire for a positive self-image and to receive
attention, recognition, and appreciation from others. Within organizations, esteem needs reflect a

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motivation for recognition, an increase in responsibility, high status, and credit for contributions
to the organization.
5. Self-actualization needs. These needs include the need for self-fulfillment, which is the highest
need category. They concern developing one’s full potential, increasing one’s competence, and
becoming a better person. Self-actualization needs can be met in the organization by providing
people with opportunities to grow, be creative, and acquire training for challenging assignments
and advancement.
According to Maslow’s theory, low-order needs take priority—they must be satisfied before
higher-order needs are activated. The needs are satisfied in sequence: Physiological needs come
before safety needs, safety needs before social needs, and so on. A person desiring physical
safety will devote efforts to securing a safer environment and will not be concerned with esteem
needs or self-actualization needs. When a need is satisfied, it declines in importance, and the next
higher need is activated.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Douglas McGregor (1906–1964) had become frustrated with the early simplistic human relations
notions while president of Antioch College in Ohio. He challenged both the classical perspective
and the early human relations assumptions about human behavior. Based on his experiences as a
manager and consultant, his training as a psychologist, and the work of Maslow, McGregor

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formulated Theory X and Theory Y. McGregor believed that the classical perspective was based
on Theory X assumptions about workers. He also felt that a slightly modified version of Theory
X fit early human relations ideas. In other words, human relations ideas did not go far enough.

McGregor proposed Theory Y as a more realistic view of workers for guiding management
thinking. The point of Theory Y is that organizations can take advantage of the imagination and
intellect of all their employees. Employees will exercise self-control and will contribute to
organizational goals when given the opportunity. A few companies today still use Theory X
management, but many are using Theory Y.
Theory X and Theory Y
Assumptions of Theory X
 The average human being has an inherent dislike of work and will avoid it if possible.
 Because of the human characteristic of dislike for work, most people must be coerced,
controlled, directed, or threatened with punishment to get them to put forth adequate
effort toward the achievement of organizational objectives.
 The average human being prefers to be directed, wishes to avoid responsibility, has
relatively little ambition, and wants security above all.
Assumptions of Theory Y
 The expenditure of physical and mental effort in work is as natural as play or rest. The
average human being does not inherently dislike work.
 External control and the threat of punishment are not the only means for bringing about
effort toward organizational objectives. A person will exercise self-direction and self-
control in the service of objectives to which he or she is committed.
 The average human being learns, under proper conditions, not only to accept but to seek
responsibility.
 The capacity to exercise a relatively high degree of imagination, ingenuity, and creativity
in the solution of organizational problems is widely, not narrowly, distributed in the
population.
 Under the conditions of modern industrial life, the intellectual potentialities of the
average human being are only partially utilized.

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Behavioral Sciences Approach
The behavioral sciences approach uses scientific methods and draws from sociology,
psychology, anthropology, economics, and other disciplines to develop theories about human
behavior and interaction in an organizational setting. This approach can be seen in practically
every organization.
One specific set of management techniques based in the behavioral sciences approach is
organization development (OD). In the 1970s, OD evolved as a separate field that applied the
behavioral sciences to improve the organization’s health and effectiveness through its ability to
cope with change, improve internal relationships, and increase problem-solving capabilities. The
techniques and concepts of OD have since been broadened and expanded to address the
increasing complexity of organizations and the environment, and OD is still a vital approach for
managers.

Recent Historical Trends

Despite recent heavy use of management science techniques by some managers, among the
approaches that we’ve discussed so far the humanistic perspective has remained most prevalent
from the 1950s until today. The post–World War II period saw the rise of new concepts, along
with a continued strong interest in the human aspect of managing, such as team and group
dynamics and other ideas that relate to the humanistic perspective. Three new concepts that
appeared were systems thinking, the contingency view, and total quality management.

Systems Thinking
System thinking is the ability to see both the distinct elements of a system or situation and the
complex and changing interaction among those elements. A system is a set of interrelated parts
that function as a whole to achieve a common purpose. Subsystems are parts of a system, such
as an organization, that depend on one another. Changes in one part of the system (the
organization) affect other parts. Managers need to understand the synergy of the whole
organization, rather than just the separate elements, and to learn to reinforce or change whole
system patterns. Synergy means that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The
organization must be managed as a coordinated whole.

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It is the relationship among the parts that form a whole system—whether a community, an
automobile, a nonprofit agency, a human being, or a business organization—that matters. System
thinking enables managers to look for patterns of movement over time and focus on the qualities
of rhythm, flow, direction, shape, and networks of relationships that accomplish the performance
of the whole. When managers can see the structures that underlie complex situations, they can
facilitate improvement. But doing that requires a focus on the big picture.

Contingency View
A second recent extension to management thinking is the contingency view. The classical
perspective assumed a Universalist view. Management concepts were thought to be universal;
that is, whatever worked in terms of management style, bureaucratic structure, and so on in one
organization would work in any other one. In business education, however, an alternative view
exists. In this case view, each situation is believed to be unique. Principles are not universal, and
one learns about management by experiencing a large number of case problem situations.
Managers face the task of determining what methods will work in every new situation. To
integrate these views, the contingency view emerged.
Here, neither of the other views is seen as entirely correct. Instead, certain contingencies, or
variables, exist for helping managers identify and understand situations. The contingency view
tells us that what works in one setting might not work in another. Contingency means that one
thing depends on other things and a manager’s response to a situation depends on identifying key
contingencies in an organizational situation.

Total Quality Management

The theme of quality is another concept that permeates current management thinking. During the
1980s and into the 1990s, total quality management (TQM), which focuses on managing the total
organization to deliver better quality to customers, moved to the forefront in helping U.S
managers deal with global competition. The approach infuses high-quality values throughout
every activity within a company, with frontline workers intimately involved in the process. Four
significant elements of quality management are employee involvement, focus on the customer,
benchmarking, and continuous improvement, often referred to as kaizen.

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Employee involvement means that achieving better quality requires companywide participation in
quality control. All employees are focused on the customer; companies find out what customers
want and try to meet their needs and expectations. Benchmarking refers to a process whereby
companies find out how others do something better than they do and then try to imitate or
improve on it. Continuous improvement is the implementation of small, incremental
improvements in all areas of the organization on an ongoing basis.

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