POSDCORB

1. POSDCORB
An Effective Tool for Work Management

POSDCORB Stands for: Planning, Organizing, Staffing, Directing,
Coordinating, Reporting and Budgeting.

Flourish
Palak Parikh
Flourish Purefoods Pvt. Ltd

It helps in taking the right managerial decisions and correct
information flow within the organization while performing any
particular task. It decides the number of persons that one
manager could manage effectively.

The Strength of POSDCORB:
1.Division of Work
2.Authority and Responsibilities
3.Discipline
4.Unity of Command
5.Unity of Direction
6.Subordination of individual interest to general interest
7.Remuneration
8.Centralization
9.Line of authority with peer level communication
10. Order
11.Equity
12.Stability of Tenure of personnel
13.Initiative
14.Esprit de corps

For Whom:

POSDCORB is a tool that any senior authority can use for a
governing the team effectively to achieve the organization goal
by directing the efforts of each team member.

2. POSDCORB: An Effective Tool for Work Management Page 1












“The one word that makes a good manager -
Decisiveness” - Lee Iacocca

In the year of 1937, social scientists Luther Gulik and L.
Urwick described seven major activities and duties of any
higher authority of organization. Those seven functions are
described as “POSDCORB”.

POSDCORB is an acronym widely used in the field of
Management and Public Administration that reflects the
classic view of administrative management. When Gulik
was asked “what is the work of a senior authority in any
organization?” He summarized his answer in acronym
POSDCORB which stands for Planning, Organizing,
Staffing, Directing, Coordinating, Reporting and Budgeting.

POSDCORB is a principle which focuses on the theory of
span of control or limits on the number of people one
manager could supervise, as well as unity of command to
the fields of management and the public administration.
This principle also helps to manage responsibilities, work
break down structure, Information and direction, budget
allocations, decision making and authorities‟ allocation.


Planning: It is the process of thinking about and
organizing the activities required to achieve a desired goal.
It involves creation and maintenance of plan. As such,
planning is a fundamental property of intelligent behavior.
This thought process is essential to the creation and
refinement of a plan, or integration of it with other plan.
Organizing: It is the act of rearranging elements following
one by one. Anything is commonly considered organized
when it looks like everything has a correct order or
placement. But it‟s only ultimately organized if any element
has no difference on time taken to find it. In that sense,
organizing can also be defined as to place different objects
in logical arrangement for better searching.

Staffing: is the process of acquiring, deploying, and
retaining a workforce of sufficient quantity and quality to
create positive impacts on the organization‟s effectiveness.
Acquisition comprises the recruitment processes leading to
the employment of staff. It includes human resource
planning to identify what the organization requires in terms
of the numbers of employees needed and their attributes
(knowledge, skills and abilities).

Directing: It means giving
instructions, guiding, counseling,
motivating and leading the staff
in an organization in to achieve
Organizational goals. Directing is
a key managerial function to be
performed by the manager along
with planning, organizing, staffing
and controlling.

Coordination: It is the
synchronization and integration
of activities, responsibilities, and
command control and structures
to ensure that the resources of
an organization are used most
efficiently in pursuit of the
specified objectives

Reporting: It is a brief guide to enterprise reporting. Target
roles include Managers, business analysts and system
architects. It deals with the level of comfort in sharing the
data by which a transparency can be maintained within
each level of staff. It also helps in taking the rapid decision
right.

Budgeting: It is the process of creating a plan to spend
your money. Creating this spending plan allows you to
POSDCORB: An Effective Tool
for Work Management


“The manager
is one who
contributes to
the
organization
goals indirectly
by directing the
efforts of
others, not by
performing the
task himself”
Palak Parikh

3. POSDCORB: An Effective Tool for Work Management Page 2

determine in advance whether you will have enough
money to do the things you need to do or would like to do.

Any management can be considered as successful if the
defined scope of work is achieved in right time and in right
budget.

The Role of Manager:

The manager is the one who always maintain balance
between organization goal and efforts of his people. He
always monitors, directs and suggests each of the team
members to achieve organization goal.

Few of their works can be explained as below:

1. Budget development and implementation
2. Purchasing and Accounting
3. Records management & MIS
4. Risk Management
5. Grants management and investment flow
6. Plan, Consult and manage flow
7. Decision making and direction
8. Responsibilities assign
9. Leading and Staffing
10. Resource management and allocation

Considering the diversity of functions, someone holding a
manager position expected to have many talents. Some of
the competencies which one is expected to possess are
problem solving and decision making abilities, integrity,
assertively, flexibility, accuracy and ability to cope with
pressure.

Leadership:

Among all the activities of any senior authority those Gulick
has mentioned in the POSDCORB Principle, something is
missing - something very important. It ignores leadership.
This vision for the manager is quite mechanical:
“Organizing,” for example, is about “formal structure of
authority through which work subdivisions are arranged,
defined and co-ordinated”. It ignores various informal ways
and relationships upon which most of the organization
must rely to get things done.

POSDCORB is all about process – about seven very
important functions that, today, have deteriorated into
exercise. Moreover, this list completely misses the main
responsibility to exercise leadership.


Few leadership responsibilities any one must possess in
which he/she has to participate, practices in which he/she
should be engage, he/should be front runner. This can help
everyone understand and appreciate the purposes to be
achieved and the results to be produced.

Any leader has to focus on “WE” instead of “I”. If not, this
leads to a pyramid where pressure and frustration level is
building up in the bottom line and hence leads to instability
of organization.

Next comes responsibilities of motivation and delegating.
To achieve the goal of the organization, any manager has
to motivate his/her people to pursue the target with energy
and creativity.

Instability and continuous changes in planning with a view
of better performance will not allow any person to jump on
the second element of POSDCORB principle, Organizing.
This will restrict the organization to grow in the direction of
goal.


Conclusion:

The POSDCORB view overlooks the fact that different
agencies are particular to the nature of the services, they
render and the functions they performed. The principle
takes in to consideration only the common techniques of
the administration and ignores the study of „Subject matter‟
with which organization is concerned.

It does not include any formula or any guideline to
implement the policy. Furthermore it does not focus on the
leadership skills mentioned in last chapter.

Apart from the all the loopholes principle has, It helps any
one to prepare a chart or sequence of essential activities to
perform any task. It also helps to highlight span of control
and limit of number of people that any manger can
supervise. The strength of POSDCORB principle can be
seen in the division of work, authority and responsibility
allocations, discipline, unity of command and directions
and in peer level of communications.

Reference:

1. ugwulashi, c. s. (2012). effective integration of
administrative processes in school administration.
academic research international .
2. vashistha, m. v. (2013, may). posdcorb: a
managerial overview. indian journal of reserach,
3(4), 248-249.