Lecture 1-4 Page 1 of 9

Management

the process of getting activities completed efficiently and effectively with and
through other people.
Traditionally, the term "management" refers to the activities (and often the group of
people) involved in the four general functions listed below. The four functions recur
throughout the organization and are highly integrated.

Planning

include identifying goals, objectives, methods, resources needed to carry out
methods, responsibilities and dates for completion of tasks.

Examples of planning are strategic planning, business planning, project
planning, staffing planning, advertising and promotions planning

Organizing

resources achieve the goals in an optimum fashion.

In other words, arranging work to accomplish organisational goals

Examples are organizing new departments, human resources, office and file
systems, re-organizing businesses

Leading

includes setting direction for the organization, groups and individuals and also
influence people to follow that direction.

Examples are establishing strategic direction (vision, values, mission and / or goals)
and championing methods of organizational performance management to pursue that
direction.

Controlling, (or coordinating)

the organization's systems, processes and structures to reach effectively and
efficiently reach goals and objectives. This includes ongoing collection of feedback,
and monitoring and adjustment of systems, processes and structures accordingly.

Examples include use of financial controls, policies and procedures, performance
management processes, measures to avoid risks

To most employees, the term "management" probably means the group of people
(executives and other managers) who are primarily responsible for making decisions
in the organization. In a nonprofit, the term "management" might refer to all or any
of the activities of the board, executive director and/or program directors.

• Managerial concerns
 Efficiency
 “Doing things right”
 i.e. getting the most output for the least inputs
 Effectiveness
 “Doing the right things”
 i.e. attaining organizational goals
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Figure 1: Efficiency and effectiveness in management

Table 1.1: Management Functions

Mintzberg’s Managerial Roles

Henry Mintzberg reduced to 10 roles the thousands of specific tasks that managers need
to perform as they plan, organize, lead, and control organizational resources. Mintzberg
grouped the 10 roles into three broad categories: interpersonal , informational,
and decisional. Managers often perform many of these roles from minute to minute
while engaged in the more general functions of planning organizing, leading, or
controlling.

As shown in Table 1.2 Henry Mintzberg’s study, managers performed ten different but
interrelated managerial roles.
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Table 1.2: Mintzberg’s Managerial Roles

Role Description Examples of
identifiable activities
Interpersonal
Figurehead Symbolic head; obliged to perform a number of Greeting visitors; signing legal
routine duties of a legal or social nature documents
Leader Responsible for the motivation and activation of Performing virtually all
subordinates; responsible for staffing, training and activities that involve
associated duties subordinates
Liaison Maintains self-developed network of outside Acknowledging mail; doing
contacts and informers who provide favours and external board work;
information performing other activities that
involve outsiders
Informational
Monitor Seeks and receives wide variety of special Reading periodicals and
information(much of it current) to develop reports;
thorough understanding of organization and Maintaining personal contacts
environment; emerges as nerve centre of internal
and external information about the organisation
Disseminator Transmits information received from outsiders or Holding informational
from subordinates to members of the organization; meetings; making phone calls to
some information is factual. Some involves relay information
interpretation and integration of diverse value
positions of organizational influences
Spokesperson Transmits information to outsiders on Holding board meetings; giving
organisation’s plans, policies, actions, results; information to the media
serves as expert on organisation’s industry
Decisional
Entrepreneur Searches organization and its environment for Organising strategy and review
opportunities and initiates ‘improvement projects’ sessions to develop new
to bring about changes; supervises design of programs
certain projects
Disturbance Responsible for corrective action when Organising strategy and review
handler organization faces important, unexpected sessions that involve
disturbances disturbance and crises
Resource allocator Responsible for the allocation of organizational Scheduling; requesting
resources of all kinds – in effect, the making or authorization; performing any
approval of all significant organizational decisionsactivity that involves budgeting
and the programming of
subordinates’ work
Negotiator Responsible for representing of the organization at Participating in union contract
major negotiations negotiations
Source: H. Mintzberg, The Nature of Managerial Work(New York: Harper & Row, 1973), pp. 93-94

Interpersonal roles are assumed by managers to provide direction and supervision for
both employees and the organization as a whole. These roles arise from the manager’s
formal authority, and include:

(i) the figurehead or ceremonial role: a large part of a chief executive’s time is spent
representing the company at dinners and
conferences; he can use the Internet to inform employees and other
interested parties;
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(ii) the leader role involves hiring, firing and training staff, motivating the employees
of the organization that is, to help the employees reach their full potential;
employees, and reconciling individual needs with the requirements of the
organization.

(iii) the liaison role, is what managers perform when making contacts outside the
vertical chain of command. As a liaison, managers link and coordinate the
activities of people and groups both inside and outside the organization.
Mintzberg says that the purpose of these contacts is to build up an
informal information system, but at the same time they are a means
of extending influence both within an organization and outside.

Informational roles are closely associated with the tasks necessary to obtain and
transmit information and so have obviously been dramatically impacted by IT. As a
leader, a manager has access to every member of staff, and is likely to have more external
contacts than any of them. A manager’s liaison contacts means that he or she is a channel
of information from inside the department to outside and vice versa. Mintzberg, in an
article published in the Harvard Review in 1975 states:
‘The manager does not leave meetings or hang up the telephone in order to get back to
work. In a large part communication is his work.” Mintzberg identifies three types of
informational role.

(i) The manager monitors the environment, and receives information from
subordinates or peers in other departments. Note that much of this information is
of an informal nature, derived from his or her network of contacts. It might be
gossip or speculation. Managers monitor activities of consultants and organize
and control them on a global level.

(ii) The manager disseminates information, which he or she has acquired both
formally through the vertical chain of command and informally through the
network of contacts, to subordinates in the department. Acting as a disseminator,
IT allows the manager to quickly and effectively transmit information to
employees to influence their work attitudes and behavior.

(iii) As a spokesman the manager provides information to interested parties, either

within or outside the organization. IT provides managers with much greater
ability to act as a spokesman and promote the organization so that people inside
and outside the organization respond positively to it.

Decisional roles. The manager’s formal authority and access to information means that
no one else is in a position to take decisions relating to the work of the department.
Decisional roles are closely associated with the methods mangers use to plan strategy and
utilize resources.

(i) A manager acts as a sort of entrepreneur by initiating projects, quite possibly of a

small scale, a number of which may be on the go at any one time, to improve the
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department or to help it react to a changed environment. IT helps a manager in

the role of entrepreneur by providing more and better information to use in
deciding which projects or programs to initiate and in investing resources to
increase organizational performance

(ii) A manager has to respond to pressures over which the department has no control.
A manager is therefore a disturbance handler, taking decisions in unusual
situations which are impossible to predict. As a disturbance handler, IT gives a
manager real-time information to manage the unexpected event of crisis that
threatens the organization and to implement solutions quickly.

(iii) A manager takes decisions relating to the allocation of scarce resources. As a

resource allocator, the manager determines the department’s direction, and
authorizes decisions taken by subordinates.

(iv) Negotiation both inside and outside the organization takes up a great deal of
management time, but is a vital component of managerial work. Managers also
act as a negotiator¸ reaching agreements with other managers or groups claiming
the first right to resources, or with the organization and outside groups such as
suppliers or customers

Interpersonal roles

Figurehe Leader Liaison

ad

Informational roles

Monitor Dissemiator Spokesperson

Decisional roles

Entrepreneur Handler Allocator Negotiator

Figure 2: Mintzberg’s management roles

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Managers

People who work with and through other people by coordinating and
integrating their work activities in order to accomplish organisational goals

First-line Managers are at the lowest level of management and manage the work
of non-managerial employees.

First-Line Managers are managers who are responsible for the daily supervision
of non-managerial employees, they are often called supervisors. Other titles are
foreman and Office Manager

Middle Managers are managers who supervise first-line managers and are
responsible for finding the best way to use resources to achieve organizational
goals. In other words, they manage the work of first-line managers

Titles given for these managers are: Plant Manager, Operations Manager,
Department Head

Top Managers are responsible for making organisation-wide decisions and

establishing plans and goals that affect the entire organisation.

Top Managers are managers who establish organizational goals, decides how
departments should interact, and monitors the performance of the middle
managers.

They are responsible for the performance of all departments. They have cross
department responsibility. They establish organizational goals.
They are the company’s most important managers to whom all other managers
report. A central concern of the CEO is the creation of a smoothly functioning
top-management team, a group composed of the CEO and the department heads
most responsible for helping achieve organizational goals.

Titles for these managers are: President, Vice President, Chief Executive Officer
(CEO)

Figure 3: Organisational levels

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Supervision, © Gemmy Allen, 1998

Management Skills
A manager's level in the organization determines the relative importance of possessing
technical, human, and conceptual skills. All levels of management need human skills in
order to interact and communicate with other people successfully.

Conceptual Skills are demonstrated in the ability to analyze and diagnose a situation and
to distinguish between cause and effect. Top managers require the best conceptual skills
because their primary responsibilities are planning and organizing. Formal education and
training are very important in helping mangers develop conceptual skills. Examples
include recognizing problem areas and implementing solutions, identifying of
opportunities for innovation and selecting critical information from masses of data.

Human Skills include the ability to understand, alter, lead, and control the behavior of
other individual and groups. The ability to communicate, to coordinate, and to motivate
people, and to mold individuals into a cohesive team distinguishes effective from non-
effective managers. Like conceptual skills, human skills can be learned through
education and training, as well as developed through experience. Examples include
coaching and mentoring skills, working in teams and networking within and outsde the
organization.
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Technical Skills are the job-specific knowledge and techniques required to perform and
organizational role. Supervisors need technical skills to manage their area of specialty

**As the pace of change accelerates and diverse technologies converge, new global
industries are being created (for example, telecommunications). Technological change
alters the fundamental structure of firms and calls for new organizational approaches and
management skills.
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Table 1.3: Management skills and functions matrix

References
1. http://ollie.dcccd.edu/ mgmt1374/ book_contents/1overview/management_skills

2. Robert Katz, "Skills of an effective administrator," Harvard Business Review,

September-October 1974, pp. 90-101.

3. Mintzberg, Henry 1973. The Nature of Managerial Work, Harper & Row,

4. Robbins, S., Bergman, R., Stagg, I. & Coulter, M. 2006. Management 4th edn, Prentice
Hall, Sydney