What are Managerial Roles and His Job?
Management performs the functions of planning, organizing, staffing, directing and controlling for the accomplishment of organizational goals. Any person who performs these functions is a manager. The first line manager or supervisor or foreman is also a manager because he performs these functions. The difference between the functions of top, middle and lowest level management is that of degree. For instance, top management concentrates more on long-range planning and organization, middle-level management concentrates more on coordination and control and lowest level management concentrates more on direction function to get the things done from the workers.
Every manager is concerned with ideas, things, and people. Management is a creative process for integrating the use of resources to accomplish certain goals. In this process, ideas, things, and people are vital inputs which are to be transformed into output consistent with the goals.
Management of ideas implies the use of conceptual skills. It has three connotations. First, it refers to the need for the practical philosophy of management to regard management as a distinct and scientific process. Second, management of ideas refers to the planning phase of the management process. Lastly, management of ideas refers to distinction and innovation. Creativity refers to a generation of new ideas, and innovation refers to transforming ideas into viable relations and utilities. A manager must be imaginative to plan ahead and to create new Ideas.
Management of things (non-human resources) deal with the design of production system, and acquisition, allocation, and conversion of physical resources to achieve certain goals. Management of people is concerned with procurement, development, maintenance and integration of human resources in the organization. Every manager has to direct his subordinates to put the organizational plans into practice.
The greater part of every manager’s time is spent in communicating and dealing with people. His efforts are directed towards obtaining information and evaluating progress towards objectives set by him and then taking corrective action. Thus, a manager’s job primarily consists of management of people. Though it is his duty to handle all the productive resources, but the human factor is more important. A manager cannot convert the raw materials into finished products himself; he has to take the help of others to do this. The greatest problem before any manager is how to manage the personnel to get the best possible results. The manager in the present age has to deal efficiently with the people who are to contribute to the achievement of organizational goals.
Peter F. Drucker has advocated that the managerial approach to handling workers and work should be pragmatic and dynamic. Every job should be designed as an integrated set of operations. The workers should be given a sufficient measure of freedom to organize and control their work environment. It is the duty of every manager to educate, train and develop people below him so that they may use their potentialities and abilities to perform the work allotted to them. He has also to help them in satisfying their needs and working under him, he must provide them with the proper environment. A manager must create a climate which brings in and maintains satisfaction and discipline among the people. This will increase organizational effectiveness.
Recently, it has been questioned whether planning, organizing, directing and controlling provides an adequate description of the management process. After an intensive observation of what five top executives actually did during the course of a few days at work, Henry Mintzberg concluded that these labels do not adequately capture the reality of what managers do. He suggested instead that the manager should be regarded as playing some ten different roles, in no particular order.
Role Performed by Managers
What is Role Performed by Managers? Mostly manager has used three types roles on company or business: 1) Interpersonal Roles as used by heart, 2) Informational Roles also used by talking, and 3) Decisional Roles is mostly used by the brain. Following roles are explained here;
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Interpersonal Roles
Figurehead: In this role, every manager has to perform some duties of a ceremonial nature, such as greeting the touring dignitaries, attending the wedding of an employee, taking an important customer to lunch and so on.
Leader: As a leader, every manager must motivate and encourage his employees. He must also try to reconcile their individual needs with the goals of the organization.
Liaison: In this role of liaison, every manager must cultivate contacts outside his vertical chain of command to collect information useful for his organization.
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Informational Roles
Monitor: As the monitor, the manager has to perpetually scan his environment for information, interrogate his liaison contacts and his subordinates, and receive unsolicited information, much of it as result of the network of personal contacts he has developed.
Disseminator: In the role of a disseminator, the manager passes some of his privileged information directly to his subordinates who would otherwise have no access to it.
Spokesman: In this role, the manager informs and satisfies various groups and people who influence his organization. Thus, he advises shareholders about financial performance, assures consumer groups that the organization is fulfilling its social responsibilities and satisfies the government that the origination is abiding by the law.
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Decisional Roles
Entrepreneur: In this role, the manager constantly looks out for new ideas and seeks to improve his unit by adapting it to changing conditions in the environment.
Disturbance Handler: In this role, the manager has to work like a firefighter. He must seek solutions to various unanticipated problems – a strike may loom large a major customer may go bankrupt; a supplier may renege on his contract, and so on.
Resource Allocator: In this role, the manager must divide work and delegate authority among his subordinates. He must decide who will get what.
Negotiator: The manager has to spend considerable time in negotiations. Thus, the chairman of a company may negotiate with the union leaders a new strike issue, the foreman may negotiate with the workers a grievance problem, and so on.
In addition, managers in any organization work with each other to establish the organization’s long-range goals and to plan how to achieve them. They also work together to provide one another with the accurate information needed to perform tasks. Thus, managers act as channels of communication with the organization.
