Management Role free essay sample

The ten roles explored in this theory have extensive explanations which are briefly developed here: * Figurehead: All social, inspiration, legal and ceremonial obligations. In this light, the manager is seen as a symbol of status and authority. * Leader: Duties are at the heart of the manager-subordinate relationship and include structuring and motivating subordinates, overseeing their progress, promoting and encouraging their development, and balancing effectiveness. * Liaison: Describes the information and communication obligations of a manager. One must network and engage in nformation exchange to gain access to knowledge bases. * Monitor: Duties include assessing internal operations, a departments success and the problems and opportunities which may arise. All the information gained in this capacity must be stored and maintained. * Disseminator: Highlights factual or value based external views into the organisation and to subordinates. This requires both filtering and delegation skills. * Spokesman: Serves in a PR capacity by informing and lobbying others to keep key stakeholders updated about the operations of the organisation. We will write a custom essay sample on Management Role or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Entrepreneur: Roles encourage managers to create improvement projects and work o delegate, empower and supervise teams in the development process. * Disturbance handler: A generalist role that takes charge when an organisation is unexpectedly upset or transformed and requires calming and support. * Resource Allocator: Describes the responsibility of allocating and overseeing financial, material and personnel resources. * Negotiator: Is a specific task which is integral for the spokesman, figurehead and resource allocator roles. As a secondary filtering, Mintzberg distinguishes these roles by their responsibilities towards information. Interpersonal roles, categorised as the fgurehead, leader and liason, provide nformation. Informational roles link all managerial work together by processing information. These roles include the monitor, the disseminator and the spokesperson. All the remaining roles are decisional, in that they use information and make decisions on how information is delivered to secondary parties. Generalist and specialist management The core of Mitzbergs Ten Managerial Roles is that managers need to be both organisational generalists and specialists. This is due to three reasons: * External frustrations including operational imperfections and environmental pressures. * Authority disputes which upset even basic routines. The expected fallibility of the individual and human, manager. Mintzbergs summary statement may be that the role of a manager is quite varied and contradictory in its demands, and that it is therefore not always the lack of managerial prowess, but the complexity of individual situations demanding a variety of roles, which troubles todays manager. The ten roles, therefore, can be applied to any managerial situation where an examination of the levels to which a manager uses each of the ten roles at his or her disposal is required Written by: Monica Kenney Business Organizations A manager in an organisation is not always a leader. Management and leadership are two different concepts, though often appear to overlap. Modern organisations tend to be complex and operate in a global business environment. Therefore, there is renewed focus on the importance of management and leadership and their distinctive roles in promoting and advancing the interests of the organisation. Hard competition and continuous pressures for change demand that managers and leaders work closely together for achieving business goals. On the practical level, a manager is called upon to evince the quality of leadership nd a leader the knack for managing difficult situations in their respective roles in any organisation. Pragmatically speaking, then, the distinction between a manager and leader is not problematic. A manager is often portrayed as a procedural administrator/supervisor†an individual in an organisation with recognized formal authority who plans, coordinates and implements the existing directions of the organisation (Koontz et al, 1986). A leader, on the other hand, is defined as someone who occupies a position of influence within a group that extends beyond supervisory responsibility and forma l authority (Vecchio et al. 994: 504) and is involved in devising new directions and leading followers to attain group, organisational and societal goals (Avery 1990: 453). This distinction between the supervisory manager and visionary leader has to be understood in terms of their respective tasks and functions. Dunsford, a management guru, believes that management is concerned with efficiency†with tasks such as coordinating resources and implementing policy, while leadership has to concern itself with effectiveness of making decisions, setting directions and principles, formulating issues and grappling with problems. Katz (1974: 90-102), however, has identified three critical managerial skills and the last two happen to be attributes of competent leadership. These are: technical skills (the ability to perform particular tasks or activities); interpersonal skills (the ability to work well with other people); and conceptual skills (the ability to see the big picture). Modern leadership theory supports an integrated approach to management and leadership. Early work on leadership identified the various styles of leadership based on personal traits and behaviour of an effective leader, such as drive, desire to lead, ecisiveness, honesty and integrity, self-confidence, intelligence, Job relevant knowledge (Kirkpatrick and Locke 1991 : 48-60). The behaviourist models focused on the relationship between a leaders actions and their impact on the attitudes and performance of employees. These studies compared various styles of leadership, such as authoritarian and democratic styles. They studied if an effective leader was more prone to efficient accomplishment of a task rather than being inclined to the welfare of employees and subordinates. The ideal style, as proposed by Stogdill in 1974, combined the best of both approaches. In later work we find considerations of leadership theory as part of a wider approach to modern management. The traditional distinctions between a manager and leader is disappearing. Modern enveloping financial crisis show. Accordingly, the role of a manager demands flexibility, dynamism, management skills as well as leadership quality.