The word manage, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is derivative of the Latin manus, or hand and emerges from the Italian maneggiare, which refers to the handling or training of horses. Its use has since been expanded to represent a broader concern for the proper handling of things or people, particularly with regard to a company or organization. This is true across multiple levels of analysis. For example, at the most fundamental social unit, the individual, it can be said that people (to varying degrees) manage themselves. We formulate our goals, regulate our behaviors, and allocate scarce physical, emotional, and intellectual resources to our decisions and actions. Further to this, we frequently attempt to manage others; these could include our family, friends, colleagues, coworkers, cohorts, or competitors. We do this through efforts to motivate them, communicate with them, influence them, lead them, and resolve conflicts with them. People also attempt to manage their context and shape their environment; this might represent a group or team, project or venture, formal or informal organization, alliance or network, industry or institution, society or nation state, or perhaps even a transnational global movement. In doing so, there is a common thread to these actions that evidences unmistakable elements of “management”: orientation and
direction, coordination and control, authority and responsibility, planning and design, and administration and implementation. Thus, in a sense, we are all inexorably managers regardless of whether we are given a business card with the formal title.