A. Introduction to Excellence in management and leadership
3. Management effectiveness
a. Management roles and traits
index of contents
The effective workplace manager -The roles and traits approach
Figure 1 Katz Model for Defining a Manager (Katz:1974)
Interpersonal Roles
Informational
Decisional
Reading 1
Activity 1
The effective workplace manager -The roles and traits approach
The study of the role of a manager has been inextricably entwined with the study of leadership as part of a leader's role (See Gardner, 1986; Grove, 1986; Zaleznik, 1977). The evolution of management beyond its place as a role performed by a leader that has instigated some of the more profound advances in the models of management. Let us now examine some of these historical developments. Blake and Mouton stated:
Flexibility, contingency, and situational management suggest there are no principles to give guidance to managing different situations. This seems to be at variance with all forms of experience, in whatever field of human endeavour... Just as the principles of aerodynamics and nutrition must be adhered to, if results are to be sound, so must the principles underlying effective managerial behaviour be adhered to. One cannot, and does not, in whatever walk of life, suddenly abandon principles because one is faced with a new situation - and, of course, every situation is new! (Blake & Mouton, 1981:2-3)
The Role Approach to specifying what constitutes effective management derives data from the various roles that managers assume when managing. Essentially, the Role Approach examines what the functions of management are. The Role Approach gained momentum in the early part of the 20th century when the French industrialist, Henri Fayol, theorised that managers perform five basic functions:
- Planning
- Organising
- Commanding
- Coordinating
- Controlling (Fayol, 1949:3)
Fayol's theory was based on his experiences in French industry, rather than on objective analysis. This subjective analysis was common among early theorists. In an analysis of bureaucracy, Max Weber argued that management therein involved the exercise of control on the basis of knowledge:
Bureaucratic administration means fundamentally the exercise of control on the basis of knowledge. This is the feature of it which makes it specifically rational. (Weber, 1947:340)
While many have taken issue with Weber about how rational the management of bureaucracy sometimes is, Weber's theory was derived at a time when a rational approach to management was emerging. It reached its pinnacle and is exemplified in the work of Frederick Taylor. Taylor referred to his theory as "Principles of Scientific Management". It involved scientific observation to replace what he perceived as a rule-of-thumb approach to the organisation of work. Under scientific management, Taylor argued that the role of the manager:
...is the scientific selection and then the progressive development of the workmen. It becomes the duty of those on the management side to deliberately study the character, the nature and the performance of each workman with a view to finding out the limitations on the one hand, but even more important, his possibilities for development on the other hand; and then, as deliberately and as systematically to train and help and teach this workman, giving him, wherever it is possible, those opportunities for advancement which will finally enable him to do the highest and most interesting and most profitable class of work for which his natural abilities fit him, and which are open o him in the particular company in which he is employed. [sic] The scientific selection of the workman and his development is not a single act; it goes on from year to year and is the subject of continual study on the part of management . (Taylor, 1947:41)
Although Taylor's theory applied to a relatively stable production environment, there is merit in his human relations training and development approach which still applies in today's work environment of fast and continuous change. Mary Follett (Parker, 1984) extolled scientific management because it was based on rational inquiry. In a 1925 paper titled "The Giving of Orders" (perhaps the title is an indication of the period in which it was written) Follett shifted the role of management from simply giving orders to finding the reason for an order to be given:
We have here, I think, one of the largest contributions of scientific management: it tends to depersonalise orders. ...one might call the essence of scientific management the attempt to find the law of the situation... Our [the manager's] job is not how to get people to obey orders, but how to devise methods by which we can best discover the order integral to a particular situation . (Follett, 1941:59)
Chester Barnard perceived the role of the manager as maintaining the organisation in operation via a system of co-operative effort involving three major functions:
- The maintenance of organisational communication (Barnard, 1938:217);
- The securing of essential services from individuals by both bringing of persons into cooperative relationship within the organisation and then eliciting the services against agreed outcomes (Barnard, 1938:225); and
- The formulation of purpose and objectives to orient effort (Barnard, 1938:228).
Despite the fact that Barnard wrote this over sixty years ago, his emphasis on communication, contract and objectives is still very much to the fore of modern management and leadership practices.
The role of management has shifted from a sole focus on planning, organising, supervising and controlling. Rather, the search is for a mix of skills that will transverse the technical, human and conceptual skill mixes necessary for the given management context.
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Figure 1 Katz Model for Defining a Manager (Katz:1974)
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With staff understanding vital for implementing change, the "warm and fuzzy" concepts of vision, values, culture and ethics become far more critical in orientating workplace actions. In times of certainty and stability, adherence to management authority can become almost ritualistic, but in times of rapid change, leadership requires staff commitment and adherence to shifting strategic goals. This has emphasised the role of management communication at not only the interpersonal level, but in the setting and communication of common visions, values, and ethics. Effectively, management communication also can be used to shape and mirror an organisation's culture.
Herbert Simon argued that management and decision-making are synonymous. That is, the manager's role is to make decisions:
In treating decision making as synonymous with managing, I shall be referring not merely to the final act of choice among alternatives, but rather to the whole process of decision. Decision making comprises three principal phases: finding occasions for making decisions; finding possible courses of action; and choosing among courses of action. These three activities account for quite different fractions of the time budgets of executives... The three fractions, added together, account for most of what executives do. (Simon, 1960:189)
In 1973, Henry Mintzberg intensively observed five US chief executives as they worked. This followed a number of similar studies by Mintzberg in the late 1960s. Mintzberg aimed to analyse what executive managers actually do, in order that he might develop a theory of effective management. Mintzberg's observations exploded the notion that managers made decisions after careful planning and reflective thinking. He found that managers had little time for reflective thinking because of the number of interruptions they encountered in their work. Rather, Mintzberg concluded that managers perform ten interrelated roles (or behaviours) which he grouped into three categories; interpersonal, informational and decisional. Mintzberg described managerial roles as follows:
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Interpersonal Roles
Role |
Description |
Identifiable Activities |
Figurehead |
The symbolic head who is required to perform a number of routine social or legal duties |
Ceremony, status requests and solicitations |
Leader |
Responsible for motivating and activating subordinates as well as for staffing, training and associated duties |
Virtually all managerial activities involving subordinates |
Liaison |
Maintains a self-developed network of outsiders and contacts who provide favours and information |
Acknowledgments of mail, external board work and other activities involving outsiders |
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Informational
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Decisional
Role |
Description |
Identifiable Activities |
Entrepreneur |
Searches internally and externally for opportunities, initiates improvement projects to bring about change and supervises the design of certain projects |
Strategy and review sessions involving initiation or design of improvement projects |
Disturbance Handler |
Responsible for corrective action when the organisation faces important, unexpected disturbances |
Strategy and review sessions involving disturbances and crises |
Resource Allocation |
Responsible for the allocation of resources thereby making or approving all significant decisions |
Scheduling, requesting authorisation, budget activities, and programming subordinates' work |
Negotiator |
Responsible for representing the organisation at major negotiations |
Negotiation |
(Mintzberg, 1973: 93)
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A number of studies have tested Mintzberg's theory and the evidence generally supports Mintzberg's roles. However, it has been found that the roles change depending on the hierarchical position of the manager, and especially the distinction as to whether they managed people to complete tasks, or set the direction for task completion. For example, the roles of disseminator, liaison, figure-head, negotiator and spokesperson are practised more at higher levels than at lower level management. This seemed to indicate the role of leader was practised more at higher levels than at lower levels. This, however, might be an indicative of higher-level management leadership capacity!
After studying 450 managers, Luthans and his colleagues (Luthans, Hodgetts & Rosencrantz, 1988) defined four managerial roles:
- Traditional Management: Decision making, planning and controlling
- Communication: Exchanging routine information and
processing paperwork
- Human Resource Management: Motivating, disciplining, managing
conflict, staffing and training
- Networking: Socialising, politicising and interacting
with outsiders.
Luthans then studied the percentage of time spent by each category of manager on the managerial roles. The results are somewhat surprising:
|
Average Managers |
Successful Managers |
Effective Managers |
ACTIVITY |
Percentage of Time |
Traditional Management |
32 |
13 |
19 |
Communication |
29 |
28 |
44 |
HR Management |
20 |
11 |
26 |
Networking |
19 |
48 |
11 |
(Adapted from Luthans, et al., 1988)
These data provide compelling evidence that different managers assume different roles to attain a standard of performance.
The Role Approach provides a valid way to categorise the functions of management and establish how leadership also has distinct roles, as part of a theory of management, or as a distinct search for what constitutes effective leader. Yukl (1989:95) compared the similarities and differences in leadership behaviours as reported in the leadership research. Mumford, Fleishman, Levin, Korotkin, and Hein (1988) summarised and integrated these behaviours into a taxonomic model. Regardless of the different research methodologies and the end profile (roles and behaviours), these studies revealed that leaders perform similar roles and functions.
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Reading 1
Boylan, P (2002) 'Lecture Notes and Background Papers', Introduction to the theoretical and philosophical basis of modern management , City University: London. Sourced October 2004, at http://www.staff.city.ac.uk/~ra332/theorymgt.html.
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Activity 1
What Roles do you think a frontline manger/ Supervisor completes in your company?
1. Think of a supervisor within your workplace. It may be your immediate boss or it could be you. Identify the three major roles (time and effort) you believe the supervisor performs. Allocate percentage (%) of time the supervisor would spend in an average week on these activities as part of their normal job:
Role |
% Time |
Classified |
1. |
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2. |
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3. |
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4. |
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5. |
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2. Classify these roles
Put a "T" next to those roles you would consider technical.
Put a "C" next to those roles that would reflect thinking or conceptual roles.
Put an "H" next to those roles that are related to interaction with people.
3. Now revisit the roles identified by Mintzberg. Establish if the roles you have identified above are Interpersonal, Informational or Decisional.
4. Now identify what sub-roles the supervisor would be completing (Ie. If it is Decisional is it as an Entrepreneur, negotiator, etc.)
5. Reflect on your use of both the Mintzberg and Katz approach. Has using both approaches been complimentary of do they conflict? Would the identification of roles vary over time or as different situations arise?
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The trait approach does however have weaknesses. It does not:
- Have a universally agreed set of traits;
- Provide a basis for weighting particular traits vis-avis another trait;
- It is often not placed in a context;
- It is less able to give predictive emphasis to the traits leaders may require in future situations; and
- It is less able to highlight why traits may vary in different cultural contexts.
These traits or qualities may also vary with the personality and intellectual 'power' of the leader, the complexity of the change processes within which the leader is operating and the ability of the team to be motivated to perform (Mant, 1997:100-106). Such variables really bridge the traits approach into the situational (contingency) model's core focus.
The trait approach does however have weaknesses. It does not:
- Have a universally agreed set of traits;
- Provide a basis for weighting particular traits vis-avis another trait;
- It is often not placed in a context;
- It is less able to give predictive emphasis to the traits leaders may require in future situations; and
- It is less able to highlight why traits may vary in different cultural contexts.
These traits or qualities may also vary with the personality and intellectual 'power' of the leader, the complexity of the change processes within which the leader is operating and the ability of the team to be motivated to perform (Mant, 1997:100-106). Such variables really bridge the traits approach into the situational (contingency) model's core focus.
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