The Managerial Challenge: Understanding Management Roles and Functions

1. LECTURE # 1 & 2 Chapter 1 – THE CHALLENGE OF MANAGEMENT

2. What is Management? • Management is the process of getting activities completed efficiently and effectively with and through other people. • Management is the organizational function like sales, marketing, finance or investment that get things done efficiently, to gain the best return on all the resources.

3. What Managers actually do • Most influential study conducted by Mintzberg (1980) • He found managers’ actual work methods differed drastically from their popular image. • Unrelenting pace • Brevity, variety and fragmentation • Verbal contacts and networks

4. Managerial Roles • Role is an organized set of behaviors • 3 roles Mintzberg observed were: • Interpersonal • Informational • Decisional Within these roles he outlined 10 more specific roles that managers play.

5. Interpersonal role: grows directly from a manager’s position authority and involves developing and maintaining positive relationships with others. • Informational role: relates to receiving and transmitting information so managers can serve as the focal point of the organization. • Decisional role: involves making significant decisions that affects the organization.

6. Figurehead: symbolic duties of social nature • Leader: builds relationships with subordinates • Liaison: maintains networks of contacts outside work unit • Monitor: seeks information about issues affecting organization • Disseminator: transmits information • Spokesperson: provides organization information to outsiders • Entrepreneur: acts as initiator • Disturbance handler: takes action when company faces unexpected difficulties • Resource allocator: distributes resources • Negotiator: represents the company in negotiations

7. Management Functions • Planning: done by top managers • Organizing: more important for top and middle managers • Leading: essential for first-line managers • Controlling: common to all hierarchical levels

8. Managerial Knowledge • Knowledge base includes information about an industry and its technology, company policies and practices, goals and plans, company culture, the personalities of organization members and important suppliers and customers.

9. Managerial Work Agendas Kotter (1982) suggested managers focus their various efforts productively through work agendas. • Work agenda is a loosely connected set of tentative goals and tasks that a manager is attempting to accomplish. • Managers develop agendas during first 6 months. • They address immediate and long run job responsibilities. • These agendas are used with formal organizational plans.

10. Factors influencing work agendas Demand, constraints and choices. • Job demands are activities a manager must perform in his job. E.g. achieving his targets. • Job constraints are factors which limit what a manager can do. E.g. resource limitations, legal restrictions or technological restrictions. • Job choices are work activities the manager can perform but they are not forced on him.

11. Management Skills Skill is the ability to engage in a set of behaviors functionally related to one another leading to a desired performance level in a given area. • Technical skills: skills of a specialized field • Human skills: interpersonal relationships with subordinates and others. • Conceptual skills: ability to visualize the organization as a whole and understand how it fits in the wider industry.

12. Performance Drucker (1967) pointed out that performance achieved through management is made up of 2 dimensions. • Effectiveness: the ability to choose appropriate goals and achieve them. E.g. • Efficiency: ability to make the best use of resources in process of achieving goals. E.g.

13. Managerial Job Types Managerial jobs vary on 2 dimensions: • Vertical dimension: focusing on different hierarchical levels • Horizontal dimension: addressing variations in managers’ responsibility areas

14. Vertical Dimension Managerial jobs fall in three categories: • First line managers/supervisors: managers at the lowest level of the hierarchy. • Middle managers: managers beneath the top levels of the hierarchy. • Top managers: managers at the top level of hierarchy.

15. Functions of Management • Planning is more important for top than for middle or first-line mangers. • Organizing is more important for top and middle than for first-line managers. • Leading is much more essential for first-line supervisors than for higher-level managers. • Controlling is common to all hierarchical levels.

16. Management Skills • Conceptual skills are most needed by top managers. • First-line managers have the greatest need for technical skills. Middle managers and even top managers must have some kind of technical skills. • Whereas human skills are required at all management levels.

17. Promoting Innovation • Innovation: a new idea • Intrapreneurs: individuals who engage in entrepreneurial roles inside organizations. • Intrapreneurship: process of innovating within an existing organization. • Idea champion: individual who generates a new idea. • Sponsor: middle manager who recognizes the organizational significance of an idea, also helps facilitate its implementation. • Orchestrator: high level manager who explains the need for innovation and provides funding.

18. Horizontal Dimension • Functional managers: managers with responsibility for a specific, specialized area of the firm. • General managers: managers with responsibility for a whole organization. • Project managers: managers with responsibility for co-ordinating efforts involving individuals in different organizational units working for a project.