Read this lecture and write up a one page summary of important information presented in the lecture. LECTURETTE 1.2: An Examination of Managerial Roles

An increasing awareness of the management application has resulted in a significant change in the day-to-day work activities that are inherently a part of this dynamic process.

THE TASKS OF A PRACTICING MANAGER

Extensive studies in the duties and managerial activities have been done by Henry Mintzberg, Morgan McCall, Ann Morrison, Robert Hannan and others. A summary of their findings is presented below.

1. The managerial workday is long. Managers work long hours. The higher one goes up the managerial hierarchy, the longer the working hours.

2. Managers are busy and work at a hectic, unrelenting pace. They begin to work the very moment they walk into the workplace and continue working, without relief, until they leave many hours later. Managers cannot afford the luxury of leisurely coffee breaksthey drink their coffee during endless meetings. They do not enjoy a relaxed lunchlunch is skipped unless it is used to entertain a client or to orchestrate a group decision. In either case, the meal is secondary to the work that is accomplished during the meal.

3. The managers day is fragmented. A manager has so many work demands that there is little time to spend on any one activity. Therefore, the workday is fragmented with hundreds of brief episodes, few of which are brought to closure. Interruptions and discontinuity is commonplace. American executives tend to spend less than nine minutes on any one issue or activity. This pressure often extends throughout an organization. For example, a study found that U.S. foremen engage in an average of 583 separate activities over an eight-hour work shiftan average of one every 48 seconds.

4. The managers work is varied. Managers are involved in a wide variety of activities. They must deal with telephone calls, meetings (both scheduled and unscheduled), tours, visits, appearances, speech-making, negotiations, grievance hearings, performance reviews, scheduling, controlling, and interacting with all kinds of people, and dealing with all kinds of paperwork. All these activities deal with all the functional areas within the firm.

5. Managers stay close to home. Managers can be called homebodies because they spend the great bulk of their time engaged in activities within their own organization. However, as managers progress upward in the company hierarchy, increasingly more time is spent outside their own work area and outside the firm itself.

6. Verbal activities dominate the managers time. In two British studies, managers were found to spend 66 and 80 percent of their time in verbal communications. Another study found that U.S. CEOs spend 78 percent of their time in verbal communication activities. In fact, most managers prefer verbal communications to paperwork.

7. Managers use many contacts and tend to network. Because of their high-level involvement in verbal communication, managers tend to have contacts with many people. The incessant parade of telephone calls, interpersonal sessions, and meetings result in an almost continuous exchange of information with a growing number of people. This need to exchange voluminous information has led many managers to develop a set of cooperative relationships with certain people whose assistance is often needed.

8. A manager tends to develop an individual art of management. Management is rapidly developing the qualities that may someday qualify it as a science. However, in the meantime, managers must develop personal procedures, techniques, and styles that can help them plan, schedule, organize, control, and otherwise deal with the many fragmented tasks with which managers must cope every workday. Managers are forced to use intuition and judgment as the core of most decisions. As such, management becomes an art as developed and conducted by the individual manager.

9. Managers are proactive planners. Typically, managers find too little time for adequate planning. This is a proverbial catch-22 situation as many of the fragmented activities that disrupt the managers day result from an inherent lack of planning. Consequently, the manager becomes a reflective planner, constantly reacting to the work environment.

10. Information is the core of management. Because managers spend most of their workday collecting, assimilating, analyzing, and disseminating information, information is at the heart of the managerial process. Information management may then become the major key to managerial success.

11. Managers do not practice time management. Managers are seldom aware of the way they spend their time. They typically overestimate the amount of time they spend on reading, writing, production work, and just thinking. They tend to underestimate the time they spend in informal interactions and meetingsespecially unscheduled meetings. Thus, it is clear that most managers are not experts at managing their time.

12. Managers lose their rights. As a manager, you may lose your right to:

Lose your temper.

Be one of the gang.

Bring your personal problems to work.

Vent your frustrations and express all your opinions at work.

Resist change.

Pass the buck.

Get even.

Play favorites.

Put your own interests first.

Ask others to do what you wouldnt do.

Expect to be immediately recognized and rewarded for doing a good job.

THE ROLES A MANAGER MUST PERFORM

Mintzberg and others have identified ten major roles that managers must fulfill:

1. Interpersonal roles

Figurehead Entails symbolic duties associated with the formal organization.

Leader Creates and nurtures relationships with subordinates.

Liaison Builds informational networks of contacts outside the workplace.

2. Informational roles

Monitor Seeks appropriate information from both internal and external sources.

Disseminator Transmits information within the organization.

Spokesperson Addresses the transmission of information to outsiders.

3. Decisional roles

Entrepreneur Initiates and encourages change, creativity, and innovation.

Disturbance Handler Initiates the corrective action needed to deal with important, unexpected difficulties.

Resource Allocator Distributes organizational resources (funds, equipment, time, human resources, etc.).

Negotiator Serves as the organizations chief negotiator in the managers areas of responsibility.