Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) are an emerging paradigm in wireless communications that has recently attracted a lot of attention. Their inherent benefits such as unrestrained computing, lack of centralization and ease of deployment at low costs are tightly bound with relevant deficiencies such as limited resources and management difficulty. There is a need for new management approaches to handle the requirements and specific characteristics of these networks. We propose a hybrid approach, employing a hierarchical and distributed organizational model for MANET management. We adopt a policy-based network management (PBNM) approach together with context awareness and we present our system architecture that is capable of effectively managing a MANET. We present and evaluate our approach under various application scenarios.