1.1 INTRODUCTION

 1.1 INTRODUCTION

As a participant in this programme of Master’s in Tourism Studies and Management you are either a practicing manager or are aspiring to be one. Your first concern, therefore, is to know the tasks which you are expected to fulfill as a professional manager. These various tasks are discussed in this Unit.

There is a lot of confusion over the much widely used terms, professional management and professional managers. Some researchers contend there is nothing like professional management. Management is a discipline. There are practitioners of this discipline who practice management as a profession and thus are professional managers. Just as there are doctors and lawyers by profession similarly there are professional managers. As doctors practice medicine, managers practice management. The only difference between professional managers and other professionals is that, while the latter must possess a formal degree in their discipline, a professional manager need not have a formal degree or education in management. He or she may have learnt the necessary skills and gained competence from one’s own experience.

The second characteristic of a professional manager is that his or her primary concern is the organization or the company with which one works. This may be in the private or public sector or in a multinational company. A professional manager always has the company’s overall perspective in mind and all the actions are guided by the company’s objectives irrespective of the managerial level one is working at.

The third most important characteristic of a professional manager is that he or she is responsible for performance. Managing involves collecting and utilizing resources (money, men, materials and machines) in the most optimal manner for achievement of some pre-determined objectives or results. It is the professional manager’s responsibility to utilize resources to produce the required results. Responsibility and performance are really the key words in defining a manager’s role. Performance implies action, and action necessitates taking specific steps and doing certain tasks. Let us first take up the various tasks which a manager is expected to do to produce results.