单项选择题

(2) Ever since the Industrial Revolution brought workers from small shops into factories, supervision have been required. Only during the last hundred years, however, has industrial management grown into a highly organized set of modern methods for achieving efficiency. Thus, management is a new human history, and it has already become vitally important for the success of all kinds of businesses and of national economies. Efficiency means getting results with the least possible waste of time, effort, and money. Therefore, efficiency is the aim of all management, both puplic and private. In private business, efficiency can be measured by profit, the surplus of income over expenditures. The manager’s a job, then, is to get people to do things efficiently. The top manager manages other managers, chooses and trains them, plans their operations, and checks the results. All managers have practical complex problems, but they utilize methods based on a growing body of knowledge. Shop managers carry out time and motion studies to improve workers’ efficiency, and foremen give on-the-job training to workers. Industrial managers employ specialists to keep machines working properly and to ensure the supply of spare parts. The flow of work is supervised to avoid any unplanned idleness of workers of equipment. Each step in manufacturing is planned in detail, and the cost of each step is carefully calculated. Supervisors consult experts regularly in order to master new techniques. Personnel managers have learned to obtain greater efficiency from workers by providing rest periods and by improving morale through better heating, lighting, safety devices, cafeterias, and recreation facilities – even when these have not been demanded by labor unions. The use of modern electronic devices had led to increasing automation, in which many automatic machines function without any need for human labor. Scientific management methods have spread to all branches of industry – not only manufacturing, but also accounting, finance, marketing, and other office work. There are planning systems, organization systems and control systems. Within these there are other systems for delegation of authority, budgeting, information feedback for control, and so on. The essence of all the functions of management is coordination, the harmonious combination of all individual efforts for the achievement of the objectives of the enterprise. The essence of all management functions is ________.