Brani commerciali inglese - Riassunto esame, prof. Marino

The three sectors of the economy

Comprehension

We generally describe the economy as consisting of three sectors:

• The primary sector: agriculture, and the extraction of raw materials from the earth;
• The secondary sector: manufacturing industry, in which raw materials are turned into finished products;
• The tertiary sector: the commercial services, as well as activities such as education, healthcare, leisure, tourism, and so on.

Manufacturing and services

Two hundred years ago, the vast majority of the population lived in the countryside and worked in agriculture. Today, in what many people call ‘the advanced industrialized countries’, only 2-3% of the population earn their living from agriculture. But some people already talk about ‘the post-industrial countries’, because of the growth of service industries, and the decline of manufacturing, which is moving to ‘the developing countries’.

Management

What is management?

Peter Drucker, the well-known American business professor and consultant, suggests that the work of a manager can be divided into planning, organizing, integrating, measuring, and developing people.

• First of all, managers set objectives, and decide how their organization can achieve them.
• Secondly, managers organize. They analyse and classify the activities of the organization and the relations among them.
• Thirdly, managers practice the social skills of motivation and communication. They also have to communicate objectives to the people responsible for attaining them.
• Fourthly, managers have to measure the performance of their staff to see whether the objectives set for the organization as a whole and for each individual member of it are being achieved.
• Lastly, managers develop people – both their subordinates and themselves. Objectives have to be modified or changed. It is generally the job of a company’s top managers to consider the needs of the future, and to take responsibility for innovation. Top managers also have to manage a business’s relations with customers, distributors, bankers, public authorities, and so on.

Company structure

Most organizations have a hierarchical or pyramidal structure, with one person or a group of people at the top, and an increasing number of people below them. There is a clear line or chain of command running down the pyramid. All the people in the organization know what decisions they are able to make.

Today, most large manufacturing organizations have a functional structure, including production, finance, marketing, sales, and personnel or human resources departments. This means, for example, that the production and marketing departments cannot take financial decisions without consulting the finance department. Functional organization is efficient, but there are two standard criticisms. Firstly, people are usually more concerned with their own department's success than that of the organization as a whole.