Studies showed that managers devoted a small percentage of their time to planning, organizing and goal-setting in an explicit and systematic fashion. Furthermore, their efforts to coordinate and control were largely “reactive” as they respond to apparently unforeseen circumstances and events.
The adoption of computer based monitoring systems and the wider use of permormance indicators has in some cases reduced the managerial discretion of many junior and middle-level managers and reinforced the concentration of decision making among limited numbers of senior managers responsible for longer term corporate strategy.
The figure shows how men and women managers in different age groups report an increase in length of working week.
Research shows that managers argue that they are overwhelmed with an increasing volume of routine administrative tasks which they are expected to undertake with no additional resources. They complain that they have to work more than the usual 9:00-17:00 (some work up to 14hrs/day), they work during the lunch breaks as well as during occasions. They complain that they bring work home in order to meet the timescales.
Since many companies are pressurized to cut costs through staff reductions, managers that remain within the company are required to undertake tasks which are beyond their specialist competencies. Thus, managers are often required to perform duties for which they have neither ability nor inclination (pg 25). REPETITION OF THIS ARGUMENT OVER AND OVER.
Senior executives increasingly appear to monopolize strategic decision-making while middle and junior managers are delegated to routine administrative duties which are subject to tighter measures of performance.
There is evidence that junior managers recognize that they constitute an instrumentally exploited and, indeed, expendable human resource. As a result they grow feelings of cynicism as well as a heightened level of estrangement from the predominant goals and values of their employing organizations.
INTERROGATION APROACH HE USES IS REALLY USEFUL SINCE YOU GET THE VIEWS FROM PEOPLE IN THE MANAGEMENT AND ADMINISTRATION SECTOR.
As several observers (Barnard, 1983; Drucker, 1974) have pointed out, managers can only achieve their goals through others; they must allocate duties and then monitor their efficient performance. However, managers lack subordinates to whom they feel they can allocate tasks. As several recent surveys show, the majority of managers at all levels in Britain receive little or no formal training other than short-term induction programmes. As such, most are left to acquire their managerial skills through coping with day-to-day problems. (p.30)
Some managers may also recognize the fact that their own personal skills are inadequate. Most of them will have been promoted on the basis of their technical competences and personal compatability rather than their expertise in managerial skills.
Managers also experience tensions because of the increasing extent to which they are being made accountable for the achievement of performance-related targets. Frustrations associated with their bosses, to whom they are dependent for promotion and salary increases, since managers may not agree with them but, however, they are not always in apposition to argue with them. Since reporting lines are now much stricter and tighter, managers find it extremely stressing to come up with measurable results.
MEANS OF COPING WITH TENSION WITH BOSSES.(pg 33)
- Informal “lunchtime” and “drinking” groups offer opportunities to analyse, discuss and review the competences of their immediate bosses.
- Maintain a degree of cognitive distance between work role and self-identity. Perform your duties “adequately” and redirect your energy to leisure and home-based pursuits.
Some managers – a minority in the survey- are relatively optimistic about the implementation of new technology primarily because they feel it will increase their capacity to handle growing volumes of work and to monitor more closely the behaviour of their colleagues.
However, these views contrast with the argument that technological change will severely de-skill some managers’ jobs and consequently, reduce the need for them. If senior managers can now use the new tech for monitoring more closely the performance of their junior colleagues, it seems likely that the opportunities available to the latter for exercising discretion and responsibility will be diminished. As a result, many management tasks become “de-skilled”, performed by technicians whose primary function is to service computer-based information systems.
Major computer installations have often set off a radical review of management structures. That, in association with economic pressure, seems to be threatening many middle and junior management positions, especially those associated with routine information processing jobs.
It is worth asking whether those in management positions still feel they can derive a sense of personal satisfaction from their jobs. Their work preferences surely have changed. Large organizations can no longer offer, or even promise, the degree of satisfaction which the majority of managers expected from their jobs and careers. Because of that, managers ask for some important rewards from their employment:
2 Categories:
- Intrinsic rewards: For example, they want opportunities for decision-making and for exercising discretion and judgement. It is also argued that they prefer to work in relatively unsupervised circumstances where they can enjoy a high measure of autonomy and independence in the performance of their tasks.
- Extrinsic rewards: level of remuneration, opportunities for promotion, security and personal status etc.
The above tables show clearly that manager’s expectations are not fulfilled. They are discrepancies between their expectations and what they actually enjoy.
Intrinsic values
CHAPTER 3
Major tasks of senior management is to establish and maintain effective operating structures as well as determine “standards” and “values” which also regulate behaviour. (S0S pg 54).
The authors stress out that channels of communication should be “open and informal” rather than, as in bureaucratic structures, strictly defined by formally prescribed roles of authority. Small and medium-sized companies enjoy considerable competitive advantages because their chief executives, who are often owner managers, are able to exercise direct and simple control over their employees through cultivating open and informal communication systems.
Highly bureaucratized organizations tend to foster role cultures and procedures for operating efficiency. These often encourage the adoption of routinised behaviour and, accordingly, lead to a resistance to innovation and change. Within such organizations, predominant structures and cutures tend to be mutually reinforcing in that employees become moulded
Chapter 4
A number of organizational, technological and social changes during the closing decades of the century are combining to undermine career rewards and to create circumstances in which many managers, particularly at middle and junior levels, are being forced to reconsider their traditional assumptions about work. Changing corporate structures may be offering fewer opportunities for personal advancement and less job security.
MOST OF THE RESEARCH DONE, ON WHICH THE BOOK WAS BASED, WAS DURING 60’s-70’s.
Managers view promotion as their target in an organization not only for the extrinsic rewards but also for psychological reasons. Managers tend to describe who they are in terms of what they do, their self-images are traditionally derived from their jobs. Furthermore, notions of personal success tend to be closely linked with various age-related stages. If individuals have achieved particular positions within organizational hierarchies by a certain age, then they should feel satisfied about their career prospects.
4 Stages for the career model:
1st) Mid 20s: individuals experiment with a variety of occupations and test different career options.
2nd) Mid 30s: “Building Phase”, career routes become more firmly established.
3rd) Mid 40s: “Evaluation Phase”, when past achievements are reviewed and future possibilities are assessed.
4th) “Consolidation stage”: Individuals come to terms with their achieved occupational positions and are primarily concerned to optimize their experiences of job satisfaction.
The timing of these stages can vary according to a range of personal, occupational, organizational and industrial factors.
Fewer managers are likely to enjoy “orderly”, predictable career paths within bureaucratic organizations. Managers are well aware of their reduced promotion prospects and this might be the cause for their declining job satisfaction. Only 4/10 (men and women) managers expressed in a survey an optimism about their future career prospects. This revelation of diminished promotion opportunities, causes frustration to younger, junior managers. They wish to advance their careers but employment and promotions opportunities for the organizations they work for are static. “Expectations Gap” for younger managers: They have to compete for positions which, during their academic years, they assumed they would achieve almost automatically.
Women managers also perceive growing discrepancies between their career aspirations and the available opportunities. Women have been forced to adapt to restricted opportunities by becoming job rather than career oriented. They are more concerned with the immediate, intrinsic rewards of their tasks at hand rather with future, long-term career benefits.
Factors shaping career success
Many women feel disadvantaged in their careers, because they are excluded from “informal” networks of communication which can be vital for the purposes of managerial decision-making. Because of that they become isolated and thus their credibility is subject to scrutiny and their trustworthiness and commitment are regarded as doubtful. Women managers often place particular effort to “over-achieve” as they feel the need to demonstrate their competence according to various explicit measures of performance. But this, in turn, leads many to feel that they are subject to close scrutiny.
Both gender managers feel that to be successful in their careers, they must appear reliable, trustworthy, committed and capable of achieving consistently high levels of performance.
With promotion opportunities less well defined and prospects uncertain, individuals may be forced to review their careers seriously. Amongst a minority, resentment and depression can lead to “mid-career crisis” characterized by stress symptoms including insomnia, headaches and an increase in drug dependency and alcohol consumption. Some experience domestic crises which result in marital break-up and divorce. However, organizational pressures compel managers to hide their psychological problems and continue to perform their jobs in an apparently confident and assertive manner. Feeling that they are locked into organizations with few or no promotion prospects, they cope by developing survival strategies which allow them to come to terms with the reality of failure in their careers.
Major sources of satisfaction in life.
Men’s unfulfilled career expectations, their increasing frustrations associated with programmes of organizational restructuring and the continuous redesign of their jobs are leading them to withdraw psychologically from work and to seek greater personal rewards in their private lives.
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