Professional Documents
Culture Documents
MANAGERIAL ROLES
Managers must wear many different hats in formulating and implementing task
activities related to their positions. In an attempt to understand the diversity of hats
managers must wear, Henry Mintzberg (1973) examined managerial activities on
a daily basis. His study enabled him to identify ten different but, coordinated sets of
behavior, or roles that managers assume. These ten roles can be separated into
three general groupings: interpersonal roles, informational roles, and decisional roles
Interpersonal Roles
Figurehead
Social, inspirational, legal and ceremonial duties must be carried out. The manager is
a symbol and must be on-hand for people/agencies that will only deal with him/her
because of status and authority.
• Defines the structures and environments within which sub-ordinates work and
are motivated.
• Oversees and questions activities to keep them alert.
• Selects, encourages, promotes and disciplines.
• Tries to balance subordinate and organizational needs for efficient operations.
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Liaison:
This is the manager as an information and communication centre. It is vital to build
up favors. Networking skills to shape maintain internal and external contacts for
information exchange are essential. These contacts give access to "databases"-
facts, requirements, probabilities.
As disseminator
- the manager brings external views into his/her organization and facilitates internal
information flows between subordinates (factual or value-based).
The preferences of significant people are received and assimilated. The manager
interprets/disseminates information to subordinates e.g. policies, rules, regulations.
Values are also disseminated via conversations laced with imperatives and
signs/icons about what is regarded as important or what 'we believe in'.
There is a dilemma of delegation. Only the manager has the data for many decisions
and often in the wrong form (verbal/memory vs. paper). Sharing is time-consuming
and difficult. He/she and staff may be already overloaded. Communication consumes
time. The adage 'if you want to get things done, (it is best to do it yourself' comes to
mind. Why might this be a driver of managerial behavior (reluctance or constraints
on the ability to delegate)?
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Decision Roles
As initiator/changer
he/she designs and initiates much of the controlled change in the organization. Gaps
are identified, improvement programs defined. The manager initiates a series of
related decisions/activities to achieve actual improvement. Improvement projects
may be involved at various levels. The manager can
As resource allocator
- the manager oversees allocation of all resources (£, staff, reputation). This
involves:
With an eye to the diary (scheduling) the manager implicitly sets organizational
priorities. Time and access involve opportunity costs. What fails to reach him/her,
fails to get support.
The managerial task is to ensure the basic work system is in place and to program
staff overloads - what to do, by whom, what processing structures will be used.
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To help evaluation processes, managers develop models and plans in their heads
(they construe the relationships and signifiers in the situation). These
models/constructions encompass rules, imperatives, criteria and preferences to
evaluate proposals against. Loose, flexible and implicit plans are up-dated with new
information.
The negotiator
- takes charge over important negotiating activities with other organizations. The
spokesman, figurehead and resource allocator roles demand this.
MANAGERIAL SKILLS
Managers need certain skills to perform the duties and activities associated with
being a manager. Research by Robert L. Katz found that managers needed three
essential skills. These are technical, human and conceptual skills. Technical skills
include knowledge of and proficiency in a certain specialized field, such as
engineering, computers, financial and managerial accounting, or manufacturing.
These are more important at lower levels of management since these managers are
dealing directly with employees doing the organization's work. Human skills involve
the ability to work well with other people both individually and in a group. Because
managers deal directly with people, this is crucial! Managers with good human skills
are able to get the best out of their people. They know how to communicate,
motivate, lead, and inspire enthusiasm and trust. These are equally important at all
levels of management. Finally conceptual skills are those managers must have to
think and conceptualize about abstract and complex situations. Using these skills
managers must be able to see the organization as a whole, understand the
relationship among various subunits, and visualize how the organization fits into its
broader environment. These are most important at top level management.
Communication Skills: Ability to transform ideas into words and actions, credibility
among colleagues, peers, and subordinates, listening and asking questions,
presentation skills and spoken format, presentation skills; written and graphic
formats
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Effectiveness Skills: Contributing to corporate mission/departmental objectives,
customer focus, multitasking; working at multiple tasks at parallel, negotiating skills,
A cohort is a set of individual items (usually persons) that have in common the fact
that they all experienced a given event during a given time interval. For example,
the "U.S. marriage cohort 1995–1999" consists of all persons who got married in the
United States in the period from 1995 to 1999. In demography birth cohorts are of
particular importance and frequently are referred to simply as cohorts (e.g., "the
1960 cohort" or "cohort 1960," indicating all persons born in 1960).
Robbins (2003) has proposed Contemporary Work Cohort, in which the unique
value of different cohorts is that the U.S. workforce has been segmented by the era
they entered the workforce. Individual’s values differ, but tend to reflect the societal
values of the period in which they grew up. The cohorts and the respective values
have been listed below:
A. VeteransWorkers who entered the workforce from the early 1940s through the
early 1960s.
They exhibited the following value orientations:
They were influenced by the Great Depression and World War II
1. Believed in hard work
2. Tended to be loyal to their employer
3. Terminal values: Comfortable life and family security
B. BoomersEmployees who entered the workforce during the 1960s through the
mid1980s belonged to this category. Their value orientations were:
1. Influenced heavily by John F. Kennedy, the civil rights and feminist movements,
the Beatles, the Vietnam War, and baby boom competition
2. Distrusted authority, but gave a high emphasis on achievement and material
success
3. Organizations that employed them were vehicles for their careers
4. Terminal values: sense of accomplishment and social recognition
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C. Xersbegan to enter the workforce from the mid1980s.
They cherished the following values:
Culture: Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning "to
cultivate") is a term that has different meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred
Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in
Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions.[2] However, the word "culture"
is most commonly used in three basic senses:
• excellence of taste in the fine arts and humanities, also known as high culture
• an integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends
upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning
• the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an
institution, organization or group.
The first accounts of emotion from a cultural perspective were ethnographic, and
described emotions as idiosyncratic. Researchers such as Margaret Mead, Gregory
Bateson and Jean Briggs described unique emotional phenomena and stressed
emotions as culturally determined.
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Universal Emotions:
The psychologist showed that despite some idiosyncratic differences, the basic
emotions are predominantly biological and thus are universal, expressed and
perceived in similar way across all cultures. Those emotions are anger, fear, sadness,
happiness and disgust.
Now there are 7 universal emotions to be found, anger, fear, sadness, disgust,
surprise, happiness, and contempt. There is evidence supporting both of these views
on emotions.
Theories that regard emotions as universal, on the other hand, tend to focus on
individual emotion elements such as facial expression.
Each culture has a unique set of emotions and emotional responses; The emotions
shown in a particular culture reflects the norms values, practices, and language of
that culture.
Self and emotions: The construal of the “self”, affect the personal emotional
experienced. The need to enhance the self and its independence in individualistic
cultures leads to prevalence of emotions that stress the uniqueness and separation
of the individual.
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Theory X
In this theory management assumes employees are inherently lazy and will avoid
work, if they can. Workers need to be closely supervised and a comprehensive
system of controls and a hierarchical structure is needed to supervise the workers
closely. It is also assumed that workers generally place security above all other
factors and will display little ambition.
Theory Y
In this theory management assumes employees may be ambitious, self-motivated,
and anxious to accept greater responsibility, and exercise self-control, self-direction,
autonomy and empowerment. It is believed that employees enjoy their mental and
physical work duties. It is also believed that, if given the chance employees have the
desire to be creative and forward thinking in the workplace. There is a chance for
greater productivity by giving employees the freedom to perform to the best of their
abilities without being bogged down by rules.
From the above, it is clear that Theory X assumes that lower order needs dominate
individuals. Theory Y assumes that higher order needs dominate individuals.
Rational persuasion is the ability to control another’s behavior, since, through the
individual’s efforts; the person accepts the desirability of an offered goal and a viable
way of achieving it. Rational persuasion involves both explaining the desirability of
expected outcomes and showing how specifications will achieve these outcomes.
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Referent power is the ability to control another’s behavior because the person
wants to identify with the power source. In this case, a subordinate obeys the boss
because he or she wants to behave, perceive, or believe as the boss does.
MANAGEMENT PROCESS AND ORGANIZATION BEHAVIOR-MB0022
This may occur, because the subordinate likes the boss personally. In a sense, the
subordinate attempts to avoid doing anything that would interfere with the pleasing
boss -subordinate relationship.
1. Environmental factors
Environmental uncertainly influences stress levels among employees in an
organization.
Changes in the business cycle crate economic uncertainties.
Political uncertainties can be stress inducing.
Technological uncertainty can cause stress because new innovations can
make an employee's skills and experience obsolete in a very short period of
time.
2. Organizational factors
Pressures to avoid errors or complete tasks in a limited time period, work
overload, a demanding and insensitive boss, and unpleasant co workers are a
few examples.
Task demands are factors related to a person's job. They include the design
of the individual's job (autonomy, task variety, degree of automation)
working conditions, and the physical work layout.
Role demands relate to pressures that are a function of the role an individual
plays in an organization.
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5. Organizational structure defines the level of differentiation in the organization, the
degree of rules and regulations, and where decisions are made. Excessive rules and
lack of participation in decisions might be potential sources of stress.
6. Individual factors:
a. These are factors in the employee's personal life. Primarily these factors are family
issues, personal economic problems, and inherent personality characteristics.
b. Broken families, wrecked marriages and other family issues may create stress at
workplace as well.
c. Economic problems created by individuals overextending their financial resources.
Spending more than earnings stretches financial positions, create debt situation
leading to stress among individuals.
d. A significant individual factor influencing stress is a person's basic dispositional
nature. Over-suspicious anger and hostility increases a person's stress and risk for
heart disease. There individuals with high level of mistrust for others also cause
stress for themselves.
e. Stressors are additive- stress builds up.
7. Individual differences: Five individual difference variables moderate the
relationship between potential stressors and experienced stress:
a. Perception
b. Job experience
c. Locus of control
d. Self-efficacy
e. Hostility
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Henri Fayol, a mining engineer and manager by profession, defined the nature and
working patterns of the 20th century organization in his book, General and Industrial
Management, published in 1916. In it, he laid down what he called 14 principles of
management. This theory is also called Administrative Theory. The principles of
the theory are:
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c. The ENTP type is a conceptualizer. He or she is innovative, individualistic,
versatile and attracted to entrepreneurial ideas. This person tends to be
resourceful in solving challenging problems but may neglect routine
assignments.
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• Many poor decisions can be traced to the decision maker overlooking a
problem or defining the wrong problem.
STEP 3: Weigh the previously identified criteria in order to give them the correct
priority in the decision.
STEP 4: Generate possible alternatives that could succeed in resolving the problem.
The above-mentioned model works with the following assumptions (March, 1994):
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among group members. In the absence of these factors groups not only become
conflict ridden, but also suffer from confusion, and function on a sub optimal level.
Each element is explained briefly below:
• Formal Leadership
Almost every work group must have a formal leader, which is typically identified
by a title. The leader can play an important part in the group’s success.
• Roles
All group members are actors, where each is playing a role. While some of these
roles may be compatible others create conflict. Different groups impose different
role requirements on individuals.
• Role perception
For playing one’s role effectively in a group, one’s view of how one is supposed to
act in a given situation must be clear leading to clear role perception. By
watching and imitating senior members of a group the new comers learn how to
take on their roles effectively and also learn how to play them well.
• Role expectations
Tuning oneself and behaving in a socially desirable manner is a part of fulfilling
role expectations in a given situation in the context of achieving group goals and
organizational goals.
• Role conflict
When a group member is faced with a challenge of playing multiple roles, role
conflict may occur due to inability of the individual to balance all the roles
effectively, thereby reducing role effectiveness, hampering the group and
organizational goal attainment process.
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• Compromise – It occurs when each party gives up something of value to the
other. As a result of no one getting its full desires, the antecedent conditions
for the future conflicts are established.
Reduced interdependence when work flow conflicts exist, managers can adjust the
level of interdependency among units or individuals (Walton and Dutton, 1969). To
reduce the conflict, contact between conflicting parties may be reduced. The
conflicting units can then be separated from one another, and each can be provided
separate access to resources. Buffering is another technique to build an inventory, or
buffer, between the two groups so that an output slowdown or excess is absorbed by
the inventory and does not directly pressure the target group.
Appeals to Common Goals - An appeal to common goals can focus on the mutual
interdependence of the conflicting parties to achieve the common goal of an
organization.
Hierarchical referral – Here conflicts are reported to the senior levels to reconcile and
solve.
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