Nature of Managerial Economics

Nature of Managerial Economics:

The primary function of management executive in a business organisation is decision making and forward planning.

Decision making and forward planning go hand in hand with each other. Decision making means the process of selecting one action from two or more alternative courses of action. Forward planning means establishing plans for the future to carry out the decision so taken.

The problem of choice arises because resources at the disposal of a business unit (land, labour, capital, and managerial capacity) are limited and the firm has to make the most profitable use of these resources.

The decision making function is that of the business executive, he takes the decision which will ensure the most efficient means of attaining a desired objective, say profit maximisation. After taking the decision about the particular output, pricing, capital, raw-materials and power etc., are prepared. Forward planning and decision-making thus go on at the same time.

A business manager's task is made difficult by the uncertainty which surrounds business decision-making. Nobody can predict the future course of business conditions. He prepares the best possible plans for the future depending on past experience and future outlook and yet he has to go on revising his plans in the light of new experience to minimise the failure. Managers are thus engaged in a continuous process of decision-making through an uncertain future and the overall problem confronting them is one of adjusting to uncertainty.

In fulfilling the function of decision-making in an uncertainty framework, economic theory can be, pressed into service with considerable advantage as it deals with a number of concepts and principles which can be used to solve or at least throw some light upon the problems of business management. E.g are profit, demand, cost, pricing, production, competition, business cycles, national income etc. The way economic analysis can be used towards solving business problems, constitutes the subject-matter of Managerial Economics.

Thus in brief we can say that Managerial Economics is both a science and an art.