Role of Manager (Managerial Function)

Role of Manager (Managerial Function)

In any organization, managers have significant contribution for the success and its economic enhancement. He/she is a person who fulfils the primordial managerial functions and act as a head of team in firm. Various management theorists like Griffin define manager as a person who is responsible for the realization of management process. Many theorists explained that management as a process, practise of planning, organizing and staffing, direct and controlling activities of an organisation in a systematic way in order to accomplish a common goal (Henry Fayol, 1916). Management can also been perceived as function and a social process and manager is the essence of reaching goals. Drucker (1993) stated that approach to management is function as well as the people who discharge it. It could be a social position or an authority. But other authors explained that management is not a different discipline instead it is the responsibility of a manager to successfully perform the job. Therefore, role of manager is seen as important in management function. Manger’s role in enterprises has been dramatically transformed. Earlier, supervisor used to be the main person who liaisons between the owner and employees of company. He thoroughly listens to employees and uses their ideas to improve the business system and focuses to resolve the major issues. J. Penc stated that the manager is employed in company to manage all his functions and make use of all or some part of organization’s resources to attain goals of the whole organization or its given part. Today, managers have more important function for the enhancement of organization. They perform various roles in business organization.

Figure: Different typologies of managerial function 

To manage employees in company, managers are divided in to many groups and it depends on the undertaken standard. The most important factor is the position of manager in the organization’s structure (Penc 2000). From this perspective, there are three categories of manager position in organization.

1. top-management that include managers occupying the highest posts in company’s central administration or in branch establishments, they are responsible for planning and strategic decisions.
2. middle-management that means managers of departments and services in company’s central and its branch establishments; they come to operating decisions, pass them on first line management and control implementation of this decision.
3. The first line management, supervisory management or junior management that include mainly supervisors of production’s divisions (that is foremen) responsible for implementation of made decisions and direct control of tasks realization’s process.

There are other ways to explain the role of managers also. Functional managers are responsible for one kind of activity in given business organization, for example production, marketing, selling or finance. Managers also supervise complicated economic unit, like enterprise, branch establishment or separate department and responsible for whole economic activity of this unit.

Minzberg (1973) categorized the roles of a manager into three, interpersonal, informational and decisional roles.

1. The interpersonal role of the managers is understood as a sign in the organisation and is obliged to do numerous duties. Person who holds the responsibility of managing organizational operations must defines the atmosphere in which the organization will work. For instance using any form of leadership style like participative, consultative or exploitive authoritative styles (McKenna 2000). A manager deals and maintains the important relationships that exists between the numerous individuals and groups within and outside the firm. They uses the powers of personality to transfer information, make strategic decisions, and incorporate individual needs and organizational goals, to bring individual and organizational needs into a common harmony. Therefore, possessing visible managerial power, that is legitimate, formal and goes with authority.
2. Informational roles of the manager is to observe who is regularly seeking information and gives access information that enables managers to understand what is happening within the organization and its environment by observing internal operations, external events, analyses new ideas and trends (Paolillo1987). The manager distributes external information into the organization and internal information to its managerial staff (Buchanan and Huczynski 2004). The manager needs to regulate different types of information such as facts or value been filtered into the organisation (Barrie1994). The task of manager is to transmit information out to the organization's environment and to take stand for organization.
3. The decisional roles of the manager is to act as an originator and designer of much of the controlled change of the organization. Minzberg(1973) stated that through the monitoring role, managers explore opportunities, identifies problems, and initiates actions to recover business situations. Managers can be involved to improve project designs by delegating and supervising the projects. As a formal authority, the manager must supervise the system by which organizational resources are allocated where they schedule of time, programmes work and authorises actions as well as a negotiator in activities (Mullins 2008).

Another theorist, Thompson argued and proved through his theory that there are many factors that will determine the managerial roles as stated byMintzbergin1973. He developed that the environment is a main factor to regulate Managerial roles. The environment is described in two categories which are complexity and dynamism. For instance, a manger cannot foresee future events because of environmental situations reoccurring all the time. Manager cannot predict future events when there are rapid changes and the predictability is low. Therefore, making complexity is the driving force for informational roles, while dynamism for decisional roles. Drucker (1933) recognized three major tasks which are equally important, but essentially different and that has to be done as well as there are five basic operations which managers must perform that include setting objectives, organising, motivates and communicates, measures and develop people. A manager must have the ability to motivate team members to accomplish the objectives of the organisation. The development and training will equip team members to perform their tasks, monitor, and complex products and services for the organisations.

The classical managerial role, the interpersonal roles is associated with high level of performance for an organisation (Warner 1997). Many investigators have confirmed that decisional roles have significant part in the growth of a company path and (Buchanan and Huczynski 2004). The accomplishment of an organisation depends on human activity and managers. Many theorists stressed that motivation is an important tool to which managers tend to often under-utilize in current workplace. The fundamental role of managers need to understand and motivate employees at workplace to work, both individually and as a team, to produce the best results for the organization in the most effective way (Daft 2008). Various researchers assumed that motivation affects externally, but it is confirmed through theories that each employee has his/her own set of motivating forces (Mullins 2008). Nadler and Lawler III proposed that managers must apply the basic ideas of expectancy theory to improve organisational performance by identifying and addressing these motivating forces of employee’s motivation (Porter and Lawler 1968). When the forces of motivation have been determined, the manager tends to know the type of reward that is expected of each employee. The employees feel that they are part of good organization and senior managers value their contributions to the company. These rewards are in two forms, intrinsic and extrinsic. Extrinsic are tangible rewards that are determined by organisational level and are outside the control of individual managers, while Intrinsic are psychological rewards such as a sense of challenge and achievement, receiving appreciation or positive recognition (Mullins 2008). To understand the motivation factor, the manager needs to know the four perspectives on employee motivation that include the traditional approach, the human relations approach, the human resource approach and the contemporary approach in order to achieve organisational objectives (Daft (2008). The current approach on employee motivation in which the manager must focus on as regards performance of the targeted objectives and projects. These are dominated by the three theories such as the content theories which underlines the basic human needs, the process theories that is concerned with the processes that influences the behaviour, and the reinforcement theories which focuses the employee learning of desired work behaviours (Leavitt, Pondy & BojeIt 1988). Performance is necessary to work effectively in organization, therefore failure to maintain a culture of employee motivation will not lead a company toward achieving its goals, but will instead foster weakness and lethargy among the employees. Mangers must have good understanding of motivation and related factors in order to influence work behaviour for team members.

Each manager’s role usually influences the internal or external context of functioning of the company. One of the most important manager’s roles is the leader’s role, which influences a lot the internal and indirectly also external context of functioning of the company. The lead is variously defined in literature of the subject.

To summarise, managers are the asset of organization and the managerial roles have widened, became more complicated, active and creative. Under their guidance, team is motivated to perform given task and enhance performance. Managers, who want to control enterprises in a proper way must fulfil more and more functions and play on many stages. They should be flexible, be able to adapt themselves to different situations and play many roles, change roles, adapt them and even create the roles. A manager has the capability to turn each employee's strengths into valuable performances by analysing and recognizing their knowledge and experience. Managers have responsibility to develop effective way to control external business environment that can affect monetary system and its operations. Another accountability of manager is to ensure that employers integrate diversity in their hiring process to include different age groups, gender and ethnic and racial backgrounds. They also have the responsibility of training all staff on what constitutes right and wrong behaviour in the place of work. A dominant manager can bring positive changes in an organization by directing people, gathering resources and creating budgets.