Difference between Administration and Management.

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Is Administration and Management the same?

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Management and administration are generally taken to mean as one and the same and ai u often used
interchangeably. But there has been a controversy because of these two terms. There are following
three views on the subject of distinction between administration and management.

(1) Management and Administration are different—Oliver Sheldon was the first person to make a
distinction between management and administration. According to him "Administration is the function
in industry concerned with the determination of the corporate policy, the coordination of finance,
production and distribution. Management is the function concerned with the execution of policy within
the limits set up by administration." Thus administration is formulation of policies and is determinative
function while management is execution of policies and is an executive function. Florance and Tead
also support this view. In their view administration involves the overall setting of major objectives,
determination of policies, identifying of general purposes laying down broad programmes, major
objectives etc. while management is the active direction of human efforts with a view to getting this
done.

(2) Management includes administration— According to Brech, "Management is a social process entailing responsibility for the effective and economical
planning and regulation of the operation of an enterprise in fulfillment of a given purpose of task."
Administration is that part of management which is conceerned with the installation and carrying out of
the procedures by which the programme is laid down and communicated and the progress of activities
is regulated and checked against plans. Thus, first and second viewpoints are exactly opposite to one
another.

(3) There is no distinction between management and administration. Other authors like Fayol, Newman
Williams, do not make any distinction between these two terms. This viewpoint is gaining popularity
these days. It is very difficult to demarcate between managerial and administrative functions because
the same set of persons perform both of these functions. We do not have two sets of people to
discharge administrative and operative management functions. Therefore, there is no difference
between the two. Conclusion:

In order to avoid the controversy, we can classify management into-(a) administrative management,
and (b) operative management. Administrative management is primarily concerned with laying down
policies and determining goals whereas operative management is concerned with implementation of
the policies for the achievement of goals. But both these functions are performed by the same set of
people. According to Spriegal and Lansbugh, at the higher levels the managerial authority is concerned
with administration and less with management and at lower levels, the managerial authority is more
concerned with management a nil less with administration. As shown in figure, every manager spends
a part of his lime in performing administrative management, functions and the remaining time on
operative management functions.