Other Views Of Managerical Work
It was Henri Fayol who began to reflect systematically on his experiences and observations in an attempt to sort out and identify what managers did and what mangerial practicies seemed to work better than others. These better practiceshe called "principles," and they were guides to mangerial thought and action. mangerial activities were labeled "elements' by fayol, and these functions formt a general framework for describing what mangers did. the impetus for codifying these elements and principles into a theory was the desire to transmit knowledge more coherentlyto those who aspired to become magement practitioners. altough Fayol's ideas provided the conceptual basis for teaching mangement, other researchers used differen methods to study the nature of mangerial work.
Henry Mintzberg observed five chief executives, studied their mail, and reported that their activities were sporadic, shotr-term copings thatratern than deliberative, analytical, and logical as Fayol had suggested. rather than engaging in the traditional functions (Fayol's elements), Minzberg concluded that managers perfomed 10 roles that could be described under three general categories : (1) interpersonal, (2) informational, and (3) decisional. The interpersonal role arose from the manager's formal authority and occured when a manager dealt with others as a figurehead,leader,or liaison. The informational role involved the manager's receiving, storing,and sending information as a monitor, disseminator, or spokesrespon. The decisional role involved making decisions about organizational activities as an enterpreneur,disturbance handler, resource allocator, or negotiator. Altough the notion of managers performing certain roles had an intuitive appeal, other investigations into Mintzberg's conclusion have not always been supportive of this approach. His findings were based on only five chief executives-there is no reason to believe that this group represented typical managers; and the roles were based on observed behavior without asking the purpose of that activity.
Rosmary Stewert offered another view of the manger's job by examining: (1) demands- what had to be done in the job; (2) constraints-internal and external limits on what could be done; and (3) choices-areas in which different managers could do the job in different ways.
Using staffing as an example, the manager must find and select well qualified people to perform the work (demands); constraints and placed on mangers by company wage scales, the available supply of labor, general economic conditions, and laws the respect to employment practices; and a choice must be made about the person to select the given constraints. Stewart's research useful for understanding how managers allocated their time, and these findings added to current knowledge of managerial work.
John Kotter's study of general managers found that (1) successfull managers could be very different in terms of personal charectiristics and behaviors; (2) general managers thought of themself as generelists, yet had a very strong specialty that fityted the job demands; and (3) each had a detailed knowledge of business and a network of relationships with other people in that business. Kotter concluded that "management at the (general manager) level looks far more like an art than a science (altought) there are many regularities" Kotter used the term demands to describe these regularities in the work of the 15 general managers he observed in terms of setting goals,policies,and strategies; balancin the allocation of scarce resources; identifying problems and getting them under control; getting information and cooperation from others; motivating;controlling,appraising performence,handing conflict, and overall, "getting things done (implementation) through a large and diverse group of people" The activities that Kotter identified as demands and regularities bear a remarkable resemblance to the traditional managementfunctions of planning, coordinating, staffing , controllig, and so forth. Kotter identified the differences in responibilities and relationship that caused the job demands to vary, such as organizational size,age,performance level,culture,and product or market diversity; howver, altough these irregular forces ifluenced the demands, they did not eliminate them. Kottor concluded that managers developed agendas, sets loosely connected plans,events,and tasks necessary to accomplish organizational objectives by meeting demands as they were influenced by other factors.
