Managers, Management and What Managers Do

A. Who are managers?

B. What is management?

C. What do managers do?

WHO ARE MANAGERS?

A. The changing nature of organizations and work has blurred the clear lines of distinction between managers and nonmanagerial employees. Many workers’ jobs now include managerial activities. Definitions used in the past no longer work.

B. How do we define a manager? A manager is an organizational member who works with and through other people by coordinating their work activities in order to accomplish organizational goals. However, keep in mind that managers may have other work duties not related to integrating the work of others.

C. Managers can be classified by their level in the organization, particularly for traditionally structured organizations (those shaped like a pyramid). (See Exhibit 1.1)

1. First-line managers are the lowest level of management. They’re often called supervisors.

2. Middle managers include all levels of management between the first-line level and the top level of the organization.

3. Top managers include managers at or near the top of the organization who are responsible for making organization wide decisions and establishing the plans and goals that affect the entire organization.

WHAT IS MANAGEMENT?

A. Management refers to the process of coordinating and integrating work activities so that they’re completed efficiently and effectively with and through other people.

B. The management process is the set of ongoing decisions and work activities in which managers engage as they plan, organize, lead, and control.

1. The process refers to the ongoing functions or primary activities engaged in by managers.

2. Coordinating others’ work activities is what distinguishes a manager’s job from a non managerial one.

3. Efficiency is getting the most output from the least amount of inputs, the goal of which is to minimize resource costs. (See Exhibit 1.2.)

4. Effectiveness is completing activities so that organizational goals are attained; often described as “doing the right things.” (See Exhibit 1.2.)

WHAT DO MANAGERS DO?

No two managers’ jobs are alike. But management writers and researchers have developed some specific categorization schemes to describe what managers do. We’re going to look at five categorization schemes: functions and processes, roles, skills, managing systems, and situational analysis.

A. Management Functions and Processes. Henri Fayol, a French industrialist from the early part of the 1900s, proposed that managers perform five management functions: POCCC (plan, organize, command, coordinate, control).

1. These functions still provide the basis around which popular management textbooks are organized, but the functions have been condensed to four. (See Exhibit 1.3.)

a. Planning involves the process of defining goals, establishing strategies for achieving those goals, and developing plans to integrate and coordinate activities.

b. Organizing is the process of determining what tasks are to be done, who is to do them, how the tasks are to be grouped, who reports to whom, and where decisions are to be made.

c. Leading includes motivating subordinates, influencing individuals or teams as they work, selecting the most effective communication channel, or dealing in any way with employee behavior issues.

d. Controlling is monitoring activities to ensure