chapter 1

effective managers

Among effective managers (defined in terms of quantity and quality of their performance and the satisfaction and commitment of employees), communication made the largest relative contribution and networking the least. Other studies in Australia, Israel, Italy, Japan, and the United States confirm the link between networking, social relationships, and success within an organization.16 The connection between communication and effective managers is also clear. Managers who explain their decisions and seek information from colleagues and employees—even if the information turns out to be negative—are the most effective.17

Interpersonal - Liaisons

Maintains a network of outside contacts who provide favors and information

Informational Role - Monitor

Receives a wide variety of information; serves as nerve center of internal and external information of the organization

Decisional Roles - Disturbance Handler

Responsible for corrective action when organization faces important, unexpected disturbances

Interpersonal - Leader

Responsible for the motivation and direction of employees

Decisional Roles - Entrepreneur

Searches organization and its environment for opportunities and initiates projects to bring about change

Planning

The planning function encompasses defining an organization's goals, establishing an overall strategy for achieving those goals, and developing a comprehensive set of plans to integrate and coordinate activities. Evidence indicates the need for planning increases the most as managers move from lower-level to midlevel management.

controlling

To ensure that the activities are going as they should, management must monitor the organization's performance and compare it with previously set goals. If there are any significant deviations, it is management's job to get the organization back on track. This monitoring, comparing, and potential correcting is the controlling function.

successful managers

among managers who were successful (defined in terms of speed of promotion within their organization), networking made the largest relative contribution to success, and human resources management activities made the least relative contribution.

work of managers can be categorized into four different activities:

planning, organizing, leading, and controlling.

Interpersonal Roles

All managers are required to perform duties that are ceremonial and symbolic in nature. For instance, when the president of a college hands out diplomas at commencement or a factory supervisor gives a group of high school students a tour of the plant, they are acting in a figurehead role. Another key interpersonal role all managers have is a leadership role. This role includes hiring, training, motivating, and disciplining employees. The third role within the interpersonal grouping is the liaison role, or contacting and fostering relationships with others who provide valuable information. The sales manager who obtains information from the quality-control manager in his own company has an internal liaison relationship. When that sales manager has contact with other sales executives through a marketing trade association, he has external liaison relationships.

Managers

First, the most notable characteristic of managers is that they get things done through other people. They make decisions, allocate resources, and direct the activities of others to attain goals. Managers are sometimes called administrators, especially in nonprofit organizations.

Management Roles

Henry Mintzberg, now a prominent management scholar, undertook a careful study of executives early in his career to determine what they did on their jobs. On the basis of his observations, Mintzberg concluded that managers perform 10 different, highly interrelated roles or sets of behaviors, thus serving a critical function in organizations.12 As shown in Exhibit 1-1, these 10 roles are primarily (1) interpersonal, (2) informational, or (3) decisional. Although much has changed in the world of work since Mintzberg developed this model, research indicates the roles have changed very little.13

Interpersonal - Figurehead

Symbolic head; required to perform a number of routine duties of a legal or social nature

Technical Skills

Technical skills encompass the ability to apply specialized knowledge or expertise. When you think of the skills of professionals such as civil engineers or oral surgeons, you typically focus on the technical skills they have learned through extensive formal education. Of course, professionals don't have a monopoly on technical skills, and not all technical skills have to be learned in schools or other formal training programs. All jobs require some specialized expertise, and many people develop their technical skills on the job.

average manager

The "average" manager spent 32 percent of his or her time in traditional management activities, 29 percent communicating, 20 percent in human resources management activities, and 19 percent networking. However, the time and effort that different individual managers spent on those activities varied a great deal. As shown in Exhibit 1-2,

Human Skills

The ability to understand, communicate with, motivate, and support other people, both individually and in groups, defines human skills. Many people may be technically proficient but poor listeners, unable to understand the needs of others, or weak at managing conflicts. Managers must have good human skills because they need to get things done through other people.

Luthans and his associates studied more than 450 managers, all engaged in four managerial activities:

Traditional management. Decision making, planning, and controlling. Communication. Exchanging routine information and processing paperwork. Human resources management. Motivating, disciplining, managing conflict, staffing, and training. Networking. Socializing, politicking, and interacting with outsiders.

Informational Role - Disseminator

Transmits information received from outsiders or from other employees to members of the organization

Decisional Roles - Resource Allocator

Makes or approves significant organizational decisions

Conceptual Skills

Managers must have the mental ability to analyze and diagnose complex situations. These tasks require conceptual skills. Decision making, for instance, requires managers to identify problems, develop alternative solutions to correct those problems, evaluate those alternative solutions, and select the best one. After they have selected a course of action, managers must be able to organize a plan of action and then execute it. The abilities to integrate new ideas with existing processes and to innovate on the job are also crucial conceptual skills for today's managers.

Decisional Roles

Mintzberg identified four roles that require making choices. In the entrepreneur role, managers initiate and oversee new projects that will improve their organization's performance. As disturbance handlers, managers take corrective action in response to unforeseen problems. As resource allocators, managers are responsible for allocating human, physical, and monetary resources. Finally, managers perform a negotiator role, in which they discuss issues and bargain with other units (internal or external) to gain advantages for their own unit.

Organizational behavior (OB)

Organizational behavior (OB) is a field of study that investigates the impact that individuals, groups, and structure have on behavior within organizations for the purpose of applying such knowledge toward improving an organization's effectiveness. It focuses on three determinants of behavior in organizations: individuals, groups, and structure. OB is concerned specifically with employment-related situations, it examines behavior in the context of job satisfaction, absenteeism, employment turnover, productivity, human performance, and management.

Decisional Roles - Negotiator

Responsible for representing the organization at major negotiations

organization

They do their work in an organization, which is a consciously coordinated social unit composed of two or more people, that functions on a relatively continuous basis to achieve a common goal or set of goals. By this definition, manufacturing and service firms are organizations, and so are schools; hospitals; churches; military units; nonprofits; police departments; and local, state, and federal government agencies.

Informational Role

To some degree, all managers collect information from outside organizations and institutions, typically by scanning the news media and talking with other people to learn of changes in the public's tastes and what competitors may be planning. Mintzberg called this the monitor role. Managers also act as a conduit to transmit information to organizational members. This is the disseminator role. In addition, managers perform a spokesperson role when they represent the organization to outsiders.

Informational Role - Spokesperson

Transmits information to outsiders on organization's plans, policies, actions, and results; serves as expert on organization's industry

Leading

When managers engage in designing their work unit's structure, they are organizing. The organizing function includes determining what tasks are to be done, who is to do them, how the tasks are to be grouped, who reports to whom, and where decisions are to be made.

Organizing

When managers engage in designing their work unit's structure, they are organizing. The organizing function includes determining what tasks are to be done, who is to do them, how the tasks are to be grouped, who reports to whom, and where decisions are to be made.