A key to successful management of agribusiness is accepting responsibility for leadership and making business decisions through the skillful application of management principles.
The success of any human endeavor depends greatly on the quality of decision making associated with the nature of complex process surrounding the activity.
Thus, individuals are always confronted with sensitive and non-sensitive decisions making on human and material resources towards achieving its overall interests or goals.
Therefore, the efforts of ensuring that instructional objectives are set up, executed and evaluated describe what is called management process.
Different definitions and explanations of management abound, Kay (1986), Adegeye and Dito (1981), Reddy, Ram, Sastry and Devi (2006) and Dessler (2008) but Ebong (2007) asserted that management of agribusiness could be defined as the active process of decision making to ensure planned and controlled use of available human and material resources to achieve the profit motive of the practitioners.
For instance, the decision on how to produce, what to produce, where to produce, quantity of input to employ in production, whether these inputs should be owned or rented and the level of output to produce are decisions that affect the agribusiness profit.
Klonsky (2011) and Ebong (2007) admitted that management of agribusiness is extremely seasonal, it is products are perishable commodities and it goals in local commodities where long term interpersonal relationships coexist. The art of management has several elements, which include:
– Stating the goals or objectives
– Deciding on how to achieve the objective and the general procedure included planning and testing of plan.
– Evaluation of the plan: organizing, supervising and control. Evaluation of the whole process: in evaluating the entire process we try to spot out the mistake.
The result or the performance must be compared with the set standard and reasons for failure or differences must be identified.
To ensure harmony and effective managements of any agribusiness, top managers should be able to meet to review their achievement against the set objectives. This will in away minimize chances of failure.
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A manager can be defined as that person who provides the agribusiness with leadership and who must be a change agent. A good manager must therefore possess the following characteristics:
Should be a goal oriented individual
Should have analytical ability
Should not be afraid of taking risk
Must have a good initiative
Have ability to coordinate and motivate others for a greater productivity.
Must be highly intelligent and with enough to turn joke into naira and kobo
Should be technically competent.
Be one with an enquiring mind.
Should be ready to learn even from his subordinates.
Should be flexible, that is, know that today’s decision may be wrong tomorrow.
Five (5) Functions of Agribusiness Management
Dessler (2008) and Ebong (2007) view management of agribusiness as having a series of functions to perform. These functions include planning, organizing, directing, coordination and control.
1. Planning Function
This involves the establishment of the organizational goals and the strategies for accomplishing them. The planning function in agribusiness contains a number of steps.
These steps include the identification and definition of a problem, acquiring initial information, identifying alternative courses of action and analyzing each alternative.
It is the most basic management function as it means deciding on a course of action, procedure and policy. Nothing can happen in any agribusiness set-up until a course of action is selected.
2. Organizing Function
Organizing is an operational function of the agribusiness management, which depends heavily on the co-ordination of the entire system.
Organizing function involves arranging people and other resources together in the most effective way. This include:
- Setting up the structure
- Determining the job to be done.
- Selecting, allocating and training of personnel
- Establishing relationship with the business set-up and staffing them.
Organizing remains an action step in agribusiness management. Until the employees understand themselves and the agribusiness, cooperation and coordinated action become impossible to achieve.
3. Directing Function
It is the responsibility of the agribusiness management to direct resources. Directing implies routing resources to where they are mostly needed to ensure proper implementation of the plan.
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It involves such actions as assigning duties and responsibilities establishing the result to be achieved, delegating authorities where necessary, creating conducive working environment and carrying out the assigned duties effectively.
For a maximum result to be achieved, the agribusiness managers must take the interest of his staff into consideration and the need to re-evaluate every step in the directing function in order to achieve the desired goals.
4. Coordinating Function
The coordinating function of agribusiness management involves the pulling together of the actions of different group of people in such a way that the action of one group provides and aid to the working of the other.
Coordinating function can be effective only if conducive working environment is provided for success. It provides for free flow of information and the growth and development of the workers.
5. Controlling Function
Controlling in management describes an information system that monitors plans and process to ensure that they are meeting the established goals.
A warning note is necessary to effect any remedial action. Prices and other changes, which occur after the plan had been implemented, can cause the result to deviate from the expected. Controlling function therefore monitors and makes adjustment for the managers to stay on business.
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