Resource Management

Resource management is the process in which individuals and families use what they have to get what they want. It begins with thinking and planning and ends with the evaluation of actions taken. Three fundamental concepts in resource management are values, goals, and decision making. Values such as honesty and trust are principles that guide behavior. They are desirable or important and serve as underlying motivators. Values determine goals, which are sought-after end results. Goals can be implicit or explicit. They can be short-term, intermediate-, or long-term. Decisions are conclusions or judgments about some issue or matter. Decision making involves choosing between two or more alternatives and follows a series of steps from inception to evaluation.

Through choices, individuals and families define their lives and influence the lives of others. The study of resource management focuses on order, choices, and control, and how people use time, energy, money, physical space, and information. As an applied social science, it is an academic field that is fundamental to our understanding of human behavior. "The knowledge obtained through the study of management is evaluated in light of its ability to make an individual's or family's management practice more effective" (Goldsmith 2000, p. 5).

Individuals and families have characteristic ways of making decisions and acting called their management style. Although similar styles are exhibited within families (such as a tendency to be on time or to finish tasks to completion), there are also wide ranges of styles within families making the study of management intrinsically interesting, especially from a socialization point of view. Why do such differences exist and how does the individual's style mesh with that of the other members' styles in the family?

Measuring devices, techniques, or instruments that are used to make decisions and plan courses of action are called management tools. For example, time is a resource and a clock or stopwatch is a management tool.

Resources can be divided up into human and material resources, assets that people have at their disposal. Material resources (e.g., bridges, roads, houses) decline through use whereas human resources (e.g., the ability to read, ride a bicycle) improve or increase through use. Human capital describes the sum total of a person's abilities, knowledge, and skills. Education is one way to develop human capital. Related to this is the concept of social capital. The term social capital is gaining in importance in the family-relations field and management is considered part of a person's or family's social capital. As a dynamic concept social capital can be considered a resource imbedded in the relationships among people that individuals, groups, and communities create, in which they invest, and which can be used to provide or develop resources or facilitate social and personal well being (Bubolz 2002).