Management in all business and organizational activities is the act of coordinating the efforts of people to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively. Management comprises planning, organizing, staffing, leading or directing, and controlling an organization (a group of one or more people or entities) or effort for the purpose of accomplishing a goal. Resourcing encompasses the deployment and manipulation of human resources, financial resources, technological resources, and natural resources.

Since organizations can be viewed as systems, management can also be defined as human action, including design, to facilitate the production of useful outcomes from a system. This view opens the opportunity to 'manage' oneself, a prerequisite to attempting to manage others.

The verb manage comes from the Italian maneggiare (to handle, especially tools), which derives from the Latin word manus (hand). The French word mesnagement (later ménagement) influenced the development in meaning of the English word management in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Views on the definition and scope of management include:

• Management defined as the organization and coordination of the activities of an enterprise in accordance with certain policies and in achievement of clearly defined objectives

• Fredmund Malik defines, as Management is the transformation of resources into utility.

• Management included as one of the factors of production - along with machines, materials and money

• Peter Drucker (1909–2005) sees the basic task of a management as twofold: marketing and innovation. Nevertheless, innovation is also linked to marketing (product innovation is a central strategic marketing issue). Peter Drucker identifies marketing as a key essence for business success, but management and marketing are generally understood as two different branches of business administration knowledge.

• Directors and managers should have the authority and responsibility to make decisions to direct an enterprise when given the authority.

• As a discipline, management comprises the interlocking functions of formulating corporate policy and organizing, planning, controlling, and directing a firm's resources to achieve a policy's objectives.

• The size of management can range from one person in a small firm to hundreds or thousands of managers in multinational companies.

• In large firms, the board of directors formulates the policy that the chief executive officer implements.

Management involves the manipulation of the human capital of an enterprise to contribute to the success of the enterprise. This implies effective communication: an enterprise environment (as opposed to a physical or mechanical mechanism), implies human motivation and implies some sort of successful progress or system outcome. As such, management is not the manipulation of a mechanism (machine or automated program), not the herding of animals, and can occur in either a legal as well as illegal enterprise or environment. Based on this, management must have humans, communication, and a positive enterprise endeavor. Plans, measurements, motivational psychological tools, goals, and economic measures (profit, etc.) may or may not be necessary components for there to be management. At first, one views management functionally, such as measuring quantity, adjusting plans, meeting goals. This applies even in situations where planning does not take place. From this perspective, Henri Fayol (1841–1925) considers management to consist of six functions:

1.    forecasting

2.    planning

3.    organizing

4.    commanding

5.    coordinating

6.    controlling

Fayol was one of the most influential contributors to modern concepts of management.

In another way of thinking, Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933), defined management as "the art of getting things done through people". She described management as philosophy.

Some people, however, find this definition useful but far too narrow. The phrase "management is what managers do" occurs widely, suggesting the difficulty of defining management, the shifting nature of definitions and the connection of managerial practices with the existence of a managerial cadre or class.

One habit of thought regards management as equivalent to "business administration" and thus excludes management in places outside commerce, as for example in charities and in the public sector. More broadly, however, every organization must manage its work, people, processes, technology, etc. to maximize effectiveness. Nonetheless, many people refer to university departments that teach management as "business schools". Some institutions (such as the Harvard Business School) use that name while others (such as the Yale School of Management) employ the more inclusive term "management".

English speakers may also use the term "management" or "the management" as a collective word describing the managers of an organization, for example of a corporation. Historically this use of the term often contrasted with the term "Labor" - referring to those being managed.