Functional Areas of Business
MGT/521
October 12, 2012

Functional Areas of Business
The pursuit of the MBA focuses on developing leaders in the area of business administration. Business leader development includes the study on functional areas of business and roles that managers take to be effective leaders using this information. This paper will focus on two functional areas of business and also explain the role of the manager in our areas.
Human Resources and Project Management
The first area of business to examine is that of human resources. It is the responsibility of human resources (HR) to attract employees, ensure the employees are trained adequately for their jobs, help employees retain their positions, motivate employees
Lockheed Martin, for example, has five divisions, each of which breaks down into Business Units. These Business Units break down into Projects. It is not unusual for employees to work on multiple projects at one time but the manager of a project has it as his or her only concern. Unlike managers in other functional areas, like finance, marketing, and engineering, who specialize in his or her respective fields, project managers tend to be more of a generalist (Meredith and Mantel, n.d.). They, in fact, need to “put many pieces of a task together to form a coherent whole,” according to Meredith and Mantel (n.d.) The project manager, who usually comes from a specialized background, needs to take a systematic approach to management versus analytical. Project management utilizes many functional areas from engineering to finance. Project management is changing to allow projects to be completed with little to no down time during a project. The role of the manager is usually a specialized background and oversees the projects in an analytical manner due to the need to look at so many facets of the project. Looking at all of it as a whole the managers role is a guiding one which allows employees to feel confident and secure while having the knowledge to ensure department run well and according to the guidelines of project or vision of the company.
In line with the functions of the Human Resources and Project Managers’ roles, the