Many imagine the economic life rather simplistically: as the use of land, material, labor and financial resources for the production of products, selling it and generating income. But such an understanding of the essence of the economy distorts the truth, simplifying the complexity of the problem of the formation of the cost of production and financial results.
A simplified understanding of the functioning of the economic system is due to the fact that in the early stages of the development of society, small individual home production of goods predominated, based on manual labor of members of the same family. The agrarian economy did not need a special apparatus for managing production, since all functions from the birth of an idea and its implementation, the production of a product and its sale, are completely performed by one person or several people on the basis of traditional knowledge, skills and habits obtained from previous generations .
The economic system is fundamentally changing in connection with the transition of patriarchal social relations of the agrarian way of life to the new capitalist, based on the industrial mode of production, which requires a different organization of joint labor of hundreds and thousands of workers.
During the formation of the industrial economy, the demand of owners of large capital for inventions of new tools, progressive technologies for the production of goods,
the introduction of discoveries into practice, the improvement of the organization of labor and management, and the like.
Mass production required the deepening of specialization, concentration, combination, diversification of production and mechanization of labor-intensive work and operations. A natural phenomenon is the unprecedented development of scientific research and the differentiation of many sciences from the eighteenth century to the present day. During this period, many scientists are aware of the complexity of the economic system and the need to study not only its material basis, but also intangible factors of development that are of no less importance for the effective management of the economy.
The consumption of resources in the production process and the receipt of money from the sale of manufactured products represent only a small (visible) part of the economic system that acts in material form, and its main part (invisible) is hidden from the eyes and is in a different element manifesting itself in an immaterial form - in the knowledge of the laws of the functioning of the system in the environment for the purpose of rational use of scarce resources and survival in the competitive struggle for markets. The presence of factors of production is not yet a sufficient condition for the organization of an effective work of an enterprise for the production of finished products and its sale, since this work requires a preliminary solution of many different problems concerning the objects of intellectual activity of specialists in the following areas:
- planning of assortment and development of new types of products (choice of methods of strategic, tactical and calendar planning in accordance with the possibility of economic business potential);
- rationing of resources and labor (development of norms and norms of consumption for all types of products and technological operations);
- supply and inventory management (acquisition of the necessary means of production and objects of labor in time and according to the technological need);
- organization of proportions in the use of material, labor, financial, managerial, information, energy and other factors;
- motivation of work (payment, incentives, training, productivity);
- control (accounting, analysis, audit, consulting, inspection, examination and other types);
- market research (development trends, prices, demand, competitors, logistics, infrastructure);
- marketing (various ways of influencing customers to increase sales and profits);
- Innovation (constant introduction of innovations in all spheres of economic and financial life of the enterprise, contributing to higher labor productivity and lower production costs);
- development strategy (vision of the future development of the enterprise for the long term with the development of a strategic plan for 3-10 years or more with the aim of adapting to environmental changes);
- information on the activity of the enterprise (reports with economic indicators characterizing the development tendencies and deviations from the planned plans with the aim of using the data to adjust the actions of the contractors);
- business management (the adequacy of the management system for the conditions and needs of business functioning in a complex internal and external environment).
There are other management objects that provide for the needs of the enterprise and contribute to the work of the main production (repair services, energy facilities, water supply, social facilities and others).
Technologically necessary expenses for the production of products due to scientific and technical progress tend to reduce their relative importance in the cost of production, but at the same time there is an increase in the costs of organizing and managing processes that contribute to the work of the main production. In order to reduce the total costs per unit of output, the management apparatus is constantly engaged in the analysis of production situations and the search for ways to reduce the cost of production and increase profits. In the course are different proposals aimed at the continuous introduction of innovations.
It is expenditures and incomes that are the main economic categories that are in the focus of attention of managers of all hierarchical levels of management, for which accounting should provide information for monitoring the activities of individual structural divisions of the enterprise. Information serves as an incentive for managers to respond to deviations from the modes of work envisaged in production, in the form of decision-making for changing situations. Without such a mechanism, management becomes impossible and it is necessary to complicate the management system as business complexity becomes more complex.
The state of affairs with business management is aggravated from the industrial stage of development of society to the postindustrial (information), when the role of material resources will fall into the background, since new nanotechnologies (the level of the atom) can produce new materials that do not require large volumes of natural substances, but for this a stock of knowledge is needed. The share of expenses for searching and receiving information in the cost of production will increase, and material resources will decrease several times.
The information economy will become cleaner, which will lead to an ecological balance of nature and new trends in the relationship between society and the natural environment. Obviously, economic systems are evolving from simple structures to more complex ones, so in economics one should pay attention to phenomena and processes not only in their static states, but also in dynamic ones. An analysis of the dynamic patterns of economic development can more accurately foresee positive changes in it and direct the efforts of society to achieve them. Lagging behind the world trend of changes in the economic sphere is always fraught with being an outsider among the countries that have caught the tendencies and adapted to them in a timely manner.