1. The decision-making role in organizations. The role of management is to provide strategic leadership for the organization.
2. The people who do the managing. This may involve a hierarchy, with junior, branch, or assistant managers exercising limited discretion, and the Managing Director in overall charge of an organization, laying down general lines of policy, and hiring and firing assistant managerial staff to carry out the decisions.
3. The academic discipline that analyses the decision-making role in organizations. Management aims at understanding how decisions are made and at producing managers who can make better decisions. See also demand management.