Step 1: Understanding the Concept:
Management is defined as a process of getting things done through others to achieve organizational goals effectively and efficiently. This process is composed of specific functions: Planning, Organising, Staffing, Directing, and Controlling.
Step 2: Detailed Explanation:
The functions of management are not independent silos. Instead, they are a continuous process where each function is connected to the others.
1. Inter-related: Decisions made in planning affect how resources are organized. How people are staffed depends on the structure created in organizing.
2. Cycle: It is an ongoing cycle where the output of one (e.g., Controlling identifying a gap) leads back to the start of another (e.g., New Planning).
3. While options like "Mutually complementary" might seem plausible, "Inter-related" is the standard term used in business studies textbooks to describe the dependency between these functions.
Step 3: Final Answer:
Management consists of a series of inter-related functions.