Roles managers play at work
Henry Mintzberg stated that ‘what managers do can best be described by looking at the roles they play at work.’ (Robbins et al, 2003:11). Different levels of managers perform different roles. The following management roles will be discussed: interpersonal roles, informational roles and decisional roles.
Interpersonal roles ‘involve people and other duties that are ceremonial and symbolic in nature.’ (Robbins et al, 2003:11). Interpersonal roles include: figurehead, leader and liaison roles. For example, figurehead is the representative, whom performs a number of routine duties of legal or social nature, such as the deans of universities. A leader is someone who is responsible for motivating and activating subordinates, someone who is also responsible for training, staffing and other related duties. (Robbins et al, 2003:11-12).
Another management role is the informational roles, which involve ‘receiving, collecting and disseminating information.’ (Robbins et al, 2003:12). Informational roles include: monitor, disseminator and spokesperson. Managers holding informational meetings, making phone calls to pass on information, this is the disseminator rule. When giving information to the outsiders, or the media, managers perform a spokesperson role. (Robbins et al, 2003:12-13).
Finally, there are four decisional roles: entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator and negotiator. For example, entrepreneur set off and oversees new projects that will improve their organization’s performance. Managers also act as negotiators when negotiating and discussing with potential customers in attempting to gain benefits for their own units and organization. (Robbins et al, 2003:12-13).
From the concept of management roles above, it can be clearly appreciated that the roles of managers change and differ as their place within the pyramid changes. For example, entrepreneur, disseminator, figurehead, negotiator, liaison and spokesperson roles are more important, hence reserved for the higher managerial roles of the organization. On the other hand, a leadership role is more suitable to be allocated to a lower level manager within an organization. By looking at the activities, which these managerial roles perform, it is easy to make certain that different levels of managers perform different work and roles. The next aspect, being the most important notion, which must take into account, is the management skills.
The skills needed for managers
The previous section has discussed the roles managers play in different levels of an organization, because managers’ jobs are complicated, therefore managers need certain skills in order to perform their duties appropriately and adequately. Robert L. Katz found that mangers need three important skills: technical, interpersonal and conceptual. A very important finding by Katz was that ‘the importance of these skills varied according to the manager’s level within the organization.’ (Robbins et al, 2003:14).
Technical skills are the ‘knowledge of and proficiency in a certain specialized field’, such as computer, accounting etc. First line managers and many middle managers are concerned with the technical aspects of the organization’s operations. For example, IT managers must be proficient particularly in the administration software. Katz stated that technical skills become less important when a manager moves into higher position of the organization. (Robbins et al, 2003:15).
Conceptual skills are the ‘ability to think and to conceptualize about abstract and complex situation.’ Managers must think their organization as a whole, and understand the relationship among subunits, and they must also visualize how the organization fit into its environment. When decision-making takes place, conceptual skills are crucial. Katz proposed that conceptual skills become more important to top management positions, because those upper-level managers often deal with intangible ideas, where as lower-level managers normally deal more with obvious objects. (Robbins et al, 2003:15). The following section discusses examples of leading at an enterprise level and qualifications to develop generic management skills.
Leading at the enterprise level
The important challenge for companies is not just focusing on creating strong leaders of business and influential heads of functions, companies also need to develop leaders who see the enterprise as a whole and act for its greater good. ‘Many companies have outstanding business-unit and functional leaders but far fewer who can act in the interests of the corporate enterprise as a whole.’ (Ready, 2004:87). Therefore it is important to understand the enterprise leaders’ job and their task. An enterprise leader, on a simple level, is anyone who is responsible for the economic and social interests of the whole enterprise, across divisions, businesses, functions and locations. Keep in mind that an enterprise leader is not a job title; the term refers to thinking and behaving. Enterprise leaders should do extremely well in four tasks: ‘first, they focus organizational attention on the customer, setting priorities and driving out distractions. Second, they build multiple organizational capabilities at the same time. Third, they resolve tensions. Finally, they create alignment by building consistency between an organisation’s statement of purpose, its processes, and the skills and behaviour required of its people.’ (Ready, 2004:88). From this point of view, enterprise leaders’ jobs are distinctively different from managers working at the bottom level of the organization. The first-line managers and many middle managers will not do the tasks that enterprise leaders do, although managers deal with people, however, enterprise leaders and top level managers spend more time dealing with organizational situations. Price Waterhouse is a very good example to look at. The senior leaders of PwC focus on areas of interest where they could add value or distinguish their firm from other competitors. In this particular example, first line managers simply cannot do this kind of job, running in line with the contention of this essay in suggesting not all managers in the organization perform the same duties by using the same skills.
Develop generic management skills
Another example is the new qualification to develop generic management skills. This example will look at The BTEC Diploma in Training and Operational Management (TOM). This operational management is for supervisors and middle managers to develop skills in operations and training. Normally managers at this level lead and train teams as well as manage operations and implement any necessary change. (Management Service, 2004:6). From this point of view, first-line managers and middle managers need to train workers as well as lead them. Therefore, first-line managers and many middle managers deal more with people. Although some of them manage operations and oversee changes in the organization, however, top-level managers, as mentioned above, are responsible for making organizational decisions and establishing the policies and strategies that may affect the whole entity. In fact, top-level managers rarely have time to deal with non-managerial workers. (Robbins et al, 2003:7).
Conclusion
In conclusion, the evidences provided above have established that the responsibilities and skills of managers are not the same no matter what position or what level of management they are in. Managers can be classified as first-line, middle and top managers. Their roles can be described as a hierarchy, each level of management performing different and distinct duties and using their specialized skills. Basically, different levels of managers need to have interpersonal skills, informative skills as well as conceptual skills. Managers at the top level of the managers use mainly conceptual skills where as middle or first-line managers will use interpersonal skills or informational skills. The case studies illustrated previously provide ample support that in reality, differing levels certainly exist amongst organizations.
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Reference List:
“New qualification to develop generic management skills”, Management Services (2004), Vol. 48 Issue 7, p6.
Ready, Douglas A. (2004), “Leading at the enterprise level”, MIT Sloan Management Review, Vol. 45 Issue 3, pp. 87-91, 1 diagram.
Robbins, S.P., Bergman, R., Stagg, I. And Coulter, M. (2003), Management, 3rd Edition, Prentice Hall, Frenchs Forest NSW.
