Interrelationship Between Management Functions

 ROLES OF MANAGERS

Some of the characteristics that are common to most of the managers are as follows:

1. Managers spend a major portion of their time in achieving coordination between human and non-human resources.
2. Managers do much work at an unrelenting pace.
3. Managerial tasks are characterized by brevity, variety, and fragmentation.
4. Managers prefer live action–brief, specific, well defined activities that are current, non–routine,    and non-reflective.
5. Managers prefer oral to written communication.
6. Managers maintain a vast number of contacts, spending most time with subordinates, linking them with superiors and others in a complex network.

It has already been observed that management involves certain functions. While performing these functions, a manager has to play multiple roles. A role consists of the behavior patterns displayed by a manager within an organisation or a functional unit. Henry Mintzberg conducted a comprehensive survey on the subject of managerial roles and integrated his findings with the results of a study of five practicing chief executives. He identified ten basic roles performed by managers at all levels from foremen to chief executives and classified them under three heads:

i. interpersonal,

ii. informational, and

iii. decisional.

These roles describe both managers actually do, whereas functions of managers had historically described what managers should do. A brief description of the managerial roles is given below.

Interpersonal Roles

The first set of behavior concerns interpersonal roles, which include the following:

i. Figurehead. Executive managers perform a number of ceremonial duties, such as representing their firm at public affairs and overseeing official functions. Lower level managers have ceremonial duties as well, perhaps on a lesser scale, including attending employees'  weddings, greeting visitors, and hosting customers.

ii. Leader. This encompasses a range of duties suggested earlier including motivating workers, guiding work-related behavior, and encouraging activities that help achieve organisational objectives.

iii. Liaison. Managers find themselves acting as liaison between groups and individuals which are part of, or come in contact with, an organisation. The liaison role is important for establishing contacts with suppliers, coordinating activities among work groups, and encouraging harmony needed to assure effective performance.

Informational Roles

As the term implies, informational roles are concerned with communication among individuals and groups, but managers must also be skilled in gathering and using information to help make effective decisions. More important, they should be able communicators who can transmit information and articulate decisions. Mintzberg's three informational roles are as follows:

i. Monitor. Managers monitor activity, solicit information, gather data, and observe behaviour. Well-informed managers are prepared for decision-making and can redirect behaviour to improve organisational performance.

ii. Disseminator. Here communications are reserved. Rather than receiving information, managers transmit information. Obviously, this is a crucial aspect of management. Subordinates, superiors and managers of similar work group rely on timely information disseminated with clarity.

iii. Spokesperson. Top executives find themselves more involved as spokespersons than lower-level managers. A firm’s policy on competition, its philosophy of customer care, and its commitment to safety are topics common in executive speeches. However, managers at all levels are spokespersons who may be called upon to represent their groups. For example, when department heads meet to discuss operating budgets, they must be prepared to present information and support budget requests of their respective departments.

Decisional Roles

Mintzberg identified four roles within the list of his behavioural sets. These are as follows.

i. Enterpreneur. In recent years, entrepreneurs have been identified with a commitment to innovation. Managers in Complex Organizations act in entrepreneurial way, by constantly trying to improve their operations. They seek new ways of using resources, new technologies for enhanced performance, and new system of organizing human resources.

ii. Disturbance Handler. Historically, this may be the best understood role of managers because they have always had the primary responsibility for resolving problems. It may also be the most successful role as managers seem to find themselves constantly faced with disturbance that threaten the harmony and effectiveness of their organisations.

iii. Resource Allocator. The third Role links planning and organizing functions. Managers must plan to meet their objectives and distribute resources accordingly. There will never be sufficient time, money, materials, or manpower to accomplish all that is expected, so resource allocation often involves carefully assigning scarce resources.

iv. Negotiators. The allocation process bears on the role of negotiator. When scarce resources must be shared among many operating units, managers with superior negotiating skills will have advantages over others. However, negotiating extends to many managerial activities both inside and outside the firm. Purchase manager, for example, negotiates material prices and terms. Personnel manager negotiates union contracts. Negotiation, of course, does not mean conflict, but it does imply face to face bargaining between managers and employees to resolve problems or formulate performance expectations.

The above description of the managerial roles shows that managers must ‘change hats' frequently and must be alert to the particular role needed at a given time. The ability to recognize the appropriate role to be played and to change roles readily is a mark of an effective manager. However, it may be concluded that at the lower level, some of the decisional roles and informational roles are more important whereas at the top level interpersonal roles and decisional roles are of greater significance. At the middle level of management, informational roles are found to be more common.

Reconciliation of Managerial Roles and Functions

Mintzberg's roles approach describes ‘what managers do' and provides important insights into the problems and issues involved in managing. The functional approach, on the other hand, provides the general framework for analyzing the job of a manager. It prescribes what managers should do. The roles and functional approaches are two sides of the same coin. They are two different but related ways of analysing the job of a manager. The relationship between the two approaches has been shown in Fig.

While planning, managers play informational and decisional roles. They receive, store, monitor, and disseminate information. They also take policy and operative decisions. In organizing, managers play interpersonal and decisional roles. They establish relationships between activities and people, take decisions about utilization of resources and act as liaisons. In staffing, managers play decisional, informational and interpersonal roles. They determine human resources requirements, select and train people and maintain personnel records. In directing, managers play interpersonal, informational and decisional roles. They motivate the people by providing various incentives and guide them through communication process. Controlling involves mainly informational and decisional roles. Managers obtain information of results, compare them with the standards and take corrective actions, which involves decision making.