__ MANAGERS ROLES
Henry Mintzberg, a prominent management researcher, studied actual managers at work. He says that what managers do can best be described be looking at the roles there play at work. His studies allowed him to conclude that managers perform 10 different but highly interrelated management roles. The term management roles refers to specific categories of managerial behavior. (Think of the different roles you play and the different behaviors you are expected to perform in these roles as a student, a sibling, an employee, a volunteer, and so forth.) As shown in Exhibit 1-4 Mintzberg's 10 management roles are roles that involve people (subordinates and persons outside the organization) and other duties that are ceremonial and symbolic in nature. The three interpersonal roles include being a figurehead, leader, and liaison. The informational roles involve receiving, collecting, and dissemination information. The three informational roles include monitor, discriminator, and spokesperson. Finally, the decisional floes revolve around making choices. The four decisional roles include entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator, and negotiator.
As managers "play" these different roles, Mintzberg concluded that their actual work activities involved interacting with others, with the organization itself, and with the context outside the organization. He also proposed that a manager's activities in these roles fall somewhere between refection(thoughtful thinking) and action(practical doing). When managers reflect, they are thinking, pondering, and contemplating. When managers act, the are doing something; they are performing; there are actively engaged. Wee can ae an example of booty reflection and action in our chapter opener. Reflection is shown in the way Tom dealt with three personal crises in a short period of time by developing a new managerial philosophy. Action is shown in the changes Tom implemented as a result of his new philosophy.
A number of follow-up studies have tested the validity of Mintzberg's role categories among different types of organizations and at different levels within given organization. The evidence generally supports the idea that managers--regardless of the type of organization or level in the organization--perform similar roles. However, the emphasis that managers give to the various roles seems to change with their organizational level. Specifically, the roles of dissemination, figurehead, negotiator, liaison, and spokesperson are more important at the higher levels of the organization; while the leader role(as Mintzberg defined it) is more important for lower-or top-level managers.
So which approach to describing what managers do is correct--unctions or roles? Each has merit. However, the functions approach still represents the most useful way of conceptualizing the manager's job. "The classical frictions provide clear and discrete methods of classifying the thousands of activities that managers carry out and the techniques they use in terms of the functions they perform for the achievement of goals." Many of Mintzberg's roles alight well with one or more of the frictions. For instance, resource allocation is part of planning, as is the entrepreneurial role, and all three of the interpersonal roles are part of the leading function. Although most of the other roles fit into one or more of the four functions, not all of them do. The difference can be explained by the fact that all managers do some work that is not purely managerial. Our decision to use the management functions to describe what managers do does not mean that Mintzberg's role categories are invalid, as he clearly offered important insights into managers work
Henry Mintzberg, a prominent management researcher, studied actual managers at work. He says that what managers do can best be described be looking at the roles there play at work. His studies allowed him to conclude that managers perform 10 different but highly interrelated management roles. The term management roles refers to specific categories of managerial behavior. (Think of the different roles you play and the different behaviors you are expected to perform in these roles as a student, a sibling, an employee, a volunteer, and so forth.) As shown in Exhibit 1-4 Mintzberg's 10 management roles are roles that involve people (subordinates and persons outside the organization) and other duties that are ceremonial and symbolic in nature. The three interpersonal roles include being a figurehead, leader, and liaison. The informational roles involve receiving, collecting, and dissemination information. The three informational roles include monitor, discriminator, and spokesperson. Finally, the decisional floes revolve around making choices. The four decisional roles include entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator, and negotiator.
As managers "play" these different roles, Mintzberg concluded that their actual work activities involved interacting with others, with the organization itself, and with the context outside the organization. He also proposed that a manager's activities in these roles fall somewhere between refection(thoughtful thinking) and action(practical doing). When managers reflect, they are thinking, pondering, and contemplating. When managers act, the are doing something; they are performing; there are actively engaged. Wee can ae an example of booty reflection and action in our chapter opener. Reflection is shown in the way Tom dealt with three personal crises in a short period of time by developing a new managerial philosophy. Action is shown in the changes Tom implemented as a result of his new philosophy.
A number of follow-up studies have tested the validity of Mintzberg's role categories among different types of organizations and at different levels within given organization. The evidence generally supports the idea that managers--regardless of the type of organization or level in the organization--perform similar roles. However, the emphasis that managers give to the various roles seems to change with their organizational level. Specifically, the roles of dissemination, figurehead, negotiator, liaison, and spokesperson are more important at the higher levels of the organization; while the leader role(as Mintzberg defined it) is more important for lower-or top-level managers.
So which approach to describing what managers do is correct--unctions or roles? Each has merit. However, the functions approach still represents the most useful way of conceptualizing the manager's job. "The classical frictions provide clear and discrete methods of classifying the thousands of activities that managers carry out and the techniques they use in terms of the functions they perform for the achievement of goals." Many of Mintzberg's roles alight well with one or more of the frictions. For instance, resource allocation is part of planning, as is the entrepreneurial role, and all three of the interpersonal roles are part of the leading function. Although most of the other roles fit into one or more of the four functions, not all of them do. The difference can be explained by the fact that all managers do some work that is not purely managerial. Our decision to use the management functions to describe what managers do does not mean that Mintzberg's role categories are invalid, as he clearly offered important insights into managers work