Business Management (A Brief Exposé)

About the Book

The links between manpower management, financial control and information management systems are clearly defined in Business Management (A Brief Exposé) where an analysis of budgeting for manpower needed for production and marketing; basic steps in accounting procedures; and stages in data processing are expounded. It is realised that whereas the factory processes raw materials and produces goods for sale, a data processing department processes basic data and produces basic business documents and control information for management to keep them informed of events within the business. This enables them to coordinate different activities of the organisation’s functional groups and to control the day-to-day transactions and be in a position to take whatever corrective action is necessary to achieve the objectives of the particular business. Furthermore, an efficient data processing system makes it possible to adjust the situation before it goes out of hand by adjusting income distribution and combating organisation inefficiency. With carefully structured data processing systems, a general method can be established for decision-making or policy-making in individual cases of manpower recruitment and development; investment projects; and income distribution. A brief description of the complexities of economic and business affairs may be necessarily misleading, but I hope that this booklet is not more misleading than the average of such materials. It is an attempt to explain the immense complexity of the real world by logical theories, which provide the student with worthwhile intellectual exercise and excitement. Business Management (A Brief Exposé) offers to the professional student, the start-up entrepreneur, the small- and medium-size businessman and the business executive a preliminary survey of the fields of manpower development, accountancy and electronic data processing. The wider public, whose enlightened interest is the mainspring of social progress, may, I hope, find in its pages something to stimulate reflection upon those larger issues which must be determined, if at all, by the consensus of their opinion. The purpose of this booklet is to give the reader an insight into the way organisations emerge and grow, and the relationships between manpower management, financial management and management information systems. In particular, Business Management (A Brief Exposé) will be of help to the busy Chief Executive Officer who hardly has time to read through different volumes associated with manpower management, financial control and computerised management information systems. Nevertheless, more reading and details may be found in A Handbook in Business Management by the same author. Jacob Wilson Chikuhwa has also published a number of books on Zimbabwe’s socio-economic developments.

About the Author

A national of Zimbabwe, JACOB WILSON CHIKUHWA holds degrees in economics and international relations from the Kiev Institute of National Economy in Ukraine, and the University of Stockholm in Sweden. He has worked as an economist and administrator in the public and private sectors for over 35 years and has lectured on economics, finance, management information systems and administration in Zimbabwe, Sweden and the USA. Jacob Wilson Chikuhwa was born on 24th September, 1940 just one year after the outbreak of the Second World War. Being one of twin brothers, he almost became a victim of Shona religious belief. In those days it was considered taboo to give birth to twins. According to tradition, the younger twin was to be got rid of without delay. Jacob survived to go on to study at Hartzell Secondary School, Old Umtali (Mutare) Mission — an American Methodist institution established in 1898. After obtaining his Cambridge School Certificate, he briefly worked as a school teacher in 1963 and as a postmaster trainee in Salisbury (Harare) in 1964. In August 1964, as a youth activist for a democratic Zimbabwe, Chikuhwa was arrested by the white minority Rhodesian Front regime. He was released from detention in 1965 and in 1966 he escaped into Zambia where he was able to secure an Afro-Asian scholarship to study economics in the former Soviet Union. He graduated with an MSc (Economics) degree from the Kiev Institute of National Economy. Upon completion of his studies in 1972, Jacob Chikuhwa moved to Sweden. He enrolled at the University of Stockholm where he studied Economic Integration and International Relations. After completing his studies in 1975, Chikuhwa was appointed ZANU (Zimbabwe African National Union) publicity secretary in Scandinavia, West Germany and Austria. He was editor of ZANU’s monthly journal in Scandinavia — Zimbabwe Chimurenga, Impi yeNkululeko (Zimbabwe Revolution). To supplement his party allowance, he got a job as an economist in the Swedish Postverkets Industrier in 1976. Chikuhwa was able to return to Zimbabwe at independence in 1980. He worked in both the public and private sectors as a personnel and finance director until 1988. In 1989, he lectured in the Bachelor of Technology Programme at the Harare Polytechnic and at the end of that year, he went into voluntary exile in Sweden where he ended his career as a Bureau Director in the Swedish Postal Service Internal Audit in 1999. Because of his close contact with Zimbabwean liberation-movement nationalists dating back to his imprisonment and time in exile, Chikuhwa published his first book on Zimbabwe titled Zimbabwe: the Rise to Nationhood in 1998. In September 1999, Jacob Chikuhwa returned to Zimbabwe as a consultant in collaboration with the United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM). In April 2002, he once again went back to Sweden. He had a nine-month stint in the USA between 2005 and 2006 promoting his new book — A Crisis of Governance: Zimbabwe. Jacob has turned to writing full-time. His works include Zimbabwe at the Crossroads, Zimbabwe: Beyond a School Certificate, Shona Proverbs and Parables; In Communication with the Deceased; A Cheer for Sanity; A Handbook in Business Management. He is currently working on an HIV/AIDS-awareness film script entitled Venturing into the Unknown/Kumaziwandadzoka and another title called Sonnets of the Mind. Jacob Chikuhwa is married with two children; is a grandfather and lives in Stockholm with his wife.