BUSINESS MANAGEMENT

MANAGEMENT FUNCTIONS,
ROLES AND SKILLS
 Mintzberg's Managerial Roles
What do managers do?
• Interpersonal Roles – roles that involve
people (subordinates and people
outside the organization) and other
duties that are ceremonial and
symbolic in nature

1. Figurehead – symbolic head; obliged

to perform a number of routine
duties of a legal or social nature (e.g.
greeting visitors, signing legal
documents)
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 Mintzberg's Managerial Roles
What do managers do?

2. Leader – responsible for the motivation

of subordinates; responsible for
staffing, training, and associated duties
(e.g. performing activities involving
subordinates)

3. Liaison – maintains self-developed

network of outside contacts and
informers who provide favors and
information (e.g. acknowledging mail,
doing external board work, performing
activities involving outsiders)
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 Mintzberg's Managerial Roles
What do managers do?
• Informational Roles – roles that involve
collecting, receiving and disseminating
information

1. Monitor – seeks and receives wide

variety of internal and external
information to develop thorough
understanding of organization and
environment (e.g. reading periodicals
and reports, maintaining personal
contacts)
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Mintzberg's Managerial Roles
What do managers do?
2. Disseminator – transmits information
received from outsiders or from
subordinates to members of the
organization (e.g. holding
informational meetings, making phone
calls to relay information)

3. Spokesperson – transmits
information to outsiders on
organization's plans, policies, actions,
results, etc. (e.g. holding board
meetings, giving information to the 12
media)
 Mintzberg's Managerial Roles
What do managers do?
• Decisional Roles – roles that entail
making decisions or choices

1. Entrepreneur – searches
organization and its environment
for opportunities and initiates
improvement projects to bring
about changes (e.g. organizing
strategy and review sessions to
develop new programs)
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Mintzberg's Managerial Roles
What do managers do?
2. Disturbance Handler – responsible for
corrective action when organization faces
important, unexpected disturbances (e.g.
crisis management)

3. Resource allocator – responsible for the

allocation of organizational resources of all
kinds (e.g. budgeting, work scheduling)

4. Negotiator – responsible for representing

the organization at major negotiations (e.g.
Union contract negotiations)
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 Managerial Skills
What skills do managers need?
CONCEPTUAL SKILLS

• Ability to use information to solve business

problems
• Identification of opportunities for innovation
• Recognizing problem areas and
implementing solutions
• Selecting critical information from masses of
data
• Understanding of business uses of 18
 Managerial Skills
What skills do managers need?
COMMUNICATION SKILLS

• Ability to transform ideas into words and

actions
• Credibility among colleagues, peers and
subordinates
• Listening and asking questions
• Presentation skills; spoken format
• Presentation skills; written and/or graphic
formats 19
 Managerial Skills
What skills do managers need?
INTERPERSONAL SKILLS

• Coaching and mentoring skills

• Diversity skills: working with diverse people
and cultures
• Networking within the organization
• Networking outside the organization
• Working in teams; cooperation and
commitment
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 Managerial Skills
What skills do managers need?
EFFECTIVENESS SKILLS

• Contributing to corporate mission/ departmental

objectives
• Customer focus
• Multitasking: working at multiple tasks in parallel
• Negotiating skills
• Project management
• Reviewing operations and implementing improvements
• Setting and maintaining performance standards
internally and externally
• Setting priorities for attention and activity 21
 SEATWORK
Case Study: Starbucks
Corporation
• On an intermediate piece of paper, answer
the following questions:

1. What management skills do you think would be

most important for Howard Schultz to have?
Why?

2. What skills do you think would be most

important for a Starbucks store manager to
have? Why?

3. Give examples of how Howard Schultz might

perform the interpersonal roles, the 22
informational roles, and the decisional roles?
 REFERENCES:

• Robbins, Stephen P. and Coulter, Mary.

Introduction to Management (9th edition).
Prentice Hall. 2007
• Compact Oxford English Dictionary (3rd
edition revised). 2008

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