Step 1: Understanding the statement about coordination.
The statement "the task of coordination is becoming increasingly complex and difficult" reflects the reality of modern business. As organisations grow larger and adopt greater specialisation, ensuring that every department, team, and individual works in harmony toward a shared goal becomes progressively harder to achieve.
Step 2: Why coordination is the essence of management.
Coordination is often described as the essence of management because it binds together all other functions (planning, organising, staffing, directing, and controlling) into a unified, goal-oriented effort. Without it, even a perfectly planned strategy can collapse due to fragmented execution across departments.
Step 3: Factor 1 - Growth in the size of the organisation.
Modern corporations employ thousands of workers spread across multiple locations, departments, and even countries. Each employee brings their own personal goals, working styles, and habits. Aligning such a diverse and massive workforce so that every individual effort contributes productively to the overall organisational objective requires extraordinary coordination effort. The larger the organisation grows, the more layers of potential misalignment are created.
Step 4: Factor 2 - Functional differentiation and specialisation.
Contemporary businesses divide their work into highly specialised functions such as marketing, finance, human resources, production, and research. Each department tends to develop its own professional culture, priorities, and language. Left uncoordinated, departments work in isolation (silos), sometimes even pursuing goals that conflict with one another, making it critical for management to integrate their differing activities.
Step 5: The combined effect of both factors.
When an organisation grows large AND becomes highly specialised at the same time, the challenge multiplies exponentially. A large marketing team may create demand that a disconnected production department cannot fulfil, or a finance department may enforce budget cuts that stall an innovation project. Only active coordination can prevent such costly breakdowns.
Step 6: Conclusion on the increasing importance of coordination.
These two factors together explain why coordination has become the most difficult yet most indispensable function of management in today's complex business landscape. It is no longer enough to have talented specialists; they must be made to work as a synchronised whole.
\[ \boxed{ \text{Coordination is vital in the modern era due to: (1) Growth in organisational size making workforce alignment difficult, and (2) Functional differentiation creating departmental silos that must be actively integrated.} } \]