Study note on managerial role

Study note on managerial role

References with extracted contents

Mount, D.L. and A.L. Barlett. 1999. "The managerial role assessment survey: design and test of an instrument measuring Mintzberg's roles among hotel managers" Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research 23(2) May: 160-175.

"The roles that managers play in performing their jobs and the relationship of managerial roles to managerial effectiveness and performance are the foci of considerable research interest. Studies of managerial work have addressed three questions that have divided the work chronologically (Dann, 1990). Early research (pre-1973) was concerned with how and with whom managers spend their time ....  and also with  understanding what managers do in terms of Fayol’s (1949) classical management functions. Studies in the “middle” period (Mintzberg, 1973, 1975) were concerned with what managers do in terms of roles. Recent inquiries have tried to understand what influences managerial work in terms of constraints, demands, and choices (Stewart, 1982) or goals and tasks";

"..... Mintzberg’s second proposition is that managerial work can be described in a series of 10 roles in three categories: interpersonal roles as figurehead, leader, and liaison; informational roles as monitor, disseminator, and spokesperson; and decisional roles as entrepreneur, disturbance handler, negotiator, and resource allocator. Mintzberg contends that all managerial jobs are essentially alike in pace, variety, brevity, and fragmentation and claims that the 10 roles are applicable to all levels of management. He says differences in managers’ jobs are with respect to the relative importance of roles according to the functional areas and levels in the hierarchies";

"Mintzberg’s work has been criticized on several fronts (Martinko & Gardner, 1985; Snyder & Glueck, 1980; Snyder & Wheelen, 1981; Stewart, 1982). First, his sample is limited to five. Second, he assumes chief executive officers (CEOs) represent typical managers. Third, his work is questioned because his CEO sample does not allow testing of his assertions about function and level, and fourth, because simply describing “what managers do” is not necessarily linked or related to effectiveness";

"Despite its widespread dissemination and apparent acceptance, the actual evidence supporting Mintzberg’s roles is mixed. Among studies replicating Mintzberg’s small-sample, structured observation, Kurke and Aldrich (1983) studied four general managers (GMs) and title their article, “Mintzberg was Right!” Yet, although their results confirm the image of managers’ activities as varied, brief, and fragmented, they do not evaluate or even mention the roles. The structured observations of Snyder and Wheelen (1981) and Snyder and Glueck (1980) raised questions about the purpose and emphasis of the roles and did not support Mintzberg’s conceptualization";

Danny Moss, Rob Green, (2002) "Re‐examining the manager’s role in public relations: What management and public relations research teaches us", Journal of Communication Management, Vol. 6 Issue: 2, pp.118-132.

"The dominant theme within roles research to date, however, has undoubtedly been that of female gender discrimination. Here researchers have sought to explain differences in status and salary and in the pattern of work performed by male and female practitioners in terms of gender discrimination";

"The study of practitioner role enactment in organisations has been based around Broom and Smith’s original four-role typology (expert prescriber, communication facilitator, problem solving process facilitator and communication technician) and Dozier’s subsequent reconfiguration of the roles framework in terms of the manager technician dichotomy.17 While Dozier18 has argued that ‘the manager-technician typology provides a parsimonious way to operationalise roles and test relations with the antecedent and consequential constructs’, other roles researchers19–21 have questioned whether this dual typology may obscure some of the subtle, yet significant, differences in the range of tasks performed by practitioners";

"Acharya44 has argued that roles are linked to the degree of environmental uncertainty organisations face, with the technician’s roles tending to prevail in non-threatening and static environments, and managerial role enactment being more likely where organisations face more dynamic and threatening environments. Dozier and Broom45 posited a number of key antecedent factors that are likely to affect the ability of practitioners to enact manager roles, in particular. These included the gender of practitioners, length of professional experience, tenure with an employer, previous education and the size of the public relations function/ department";

D.J. Woodcock, C.Y. Chen, (2000) "The manufacturing manager’s role in NPD in Taiwanese electronics", International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Vol. 20 Issue: 4, pp.481-495.

"While product development affects many functions in the firm, our focus is solely on its impact on manufacturing. Additionally, the role of manufacturing in product development has gained increased recognition in recent years. Wheelwright and Clark (1992) argue that, to be effective in this environment, manufacturing management's structures and styles must change to support modern paradigms of manufacturing; thus ``. . .senior managers need to make personal changes in their attitudes and behaviour'' (for the improvements to be accomplished). In addition, ``in the absence of a strong connection between business strategy and development projects, projects become the place where important issues are resolved'' (Miltenberg, 1996). Without a strategic overview, senior managers risk following the ideas, products, and approaches of rivals";

Fania Valeria Michelucci, Alberto De Marco & Adriano Tanda (2016) Defining the Role of the Smart-City Manager: An Analysis of Responsibilities and Skills, Journal of Urban Technology, 23:3, 23-42.

"However, Noordegraaf (2000) has argued that public managers are competent in those situations in which they know how to apply the rules. On the contrary, in more ambiguous situations, such as the SC arena, characterized by uncertainty and unclear impact, they do not act according to the best option, but to the most appropriate. In these situations they have to interpret signals and events, institutionalize issues through labels and meetings, and establish political back up";

John Knibbs, Sandra Morgan, Roland Toone, (1985) "Dissonant Views of the Manager's Role:: Management Development Implications", Journal of European Industrial Training, Vol. 9 Issue: 3, pp.20-22.

"It is interesting to observe that Mintzberg allocated negotiating to the decisional group of roles. This particular delineation appears to be less approprate in this study where the focus suggested that it was an interpersonal role, in which the exercise of choice was not based on the individual's skills but on the interpersonal transaction";

"The decisional roles, such as resource allocator, has been seen particularly by Mintzberg as forming a crucial part of the manager's work, with resource allocation being at the heart of the organisation's strategic system";

Shenkar, O., S. Ronen, E. Shefy and I.H.S. Chow. 1998. "The Role Structure of Chinese Managers" Human Relations 51(1): 51-72.

"The work of Mintzberg and his predecessors has been challenged on a number of grounds. For instance, the construct validity of Mintzberg's model was questioned by Shapira and Dunbar (1980) and by McCall and Segrust (1980), whose empirical studies resulted in different numbers of configurations of managerial roles; and the diary method, substituted in later studies by a survey approach, was criticized for its low reliability (Campbell, Dunnette, Lawler & Weick, 1970)";

"Role structure: Interpersonal relations are not only endorsed by Chinese culture; they also represent a practical necessity for the provision of scarce goods and services (Locket, 1988; Wall, 1990)".

"Leadership:...... Group members are expected to show deference to the leader so as  to maintain the Confucian principles of harmony and hierarchy (Bond & Wang, 1983; Metzger, 1977; Shenkar & Ronen, 1987b)";

"Liaison. Since Chinese prefer to do business with individuals and/or firms they consider "known quantities" (Wilson & Pusey, 1982), they invest considerable time in building up guanxi, or connections, which serve as valuable sources of information in a society where business inventory levels were once considered a state secret";

"Monitor. The changing nature of the business environment during the reform period has rendered the collection and analysis of relevant information more critical (Nelson & Reeder, 1985; Ye, 1987). The manager was now expected to broaden the scope of environmental scanning, and monitor the environment for critical resources, new market, transportation venues, and other elements previously mandated in a fairly predictable and orderly manner";

"Spokesperson. In the "total" Chinese organization, managers have spokesperson responsibilities vis-á-vis their subordinates, in order to support harmony and explain the political line";

"Entrepreneur. Entrepreneurial activities in Chinese enterprises have been discouraged by the legacy of a quasi central-planning system, which left little room for individual initiative (Boisot & Child, 1988)";

"Allocator. As Etzioni (1961) writes, "the larger the number of persona l needs whose satisfaction the organization controls, the more power it has over the participants.: Within the "total" Chinese enterprise, allocation of resources to employees has been a major source of power and responsibility for managers";

Meyer, M. 2000. "Innovation Roles: From Souls of Fire to Devil's Advocates" The Journal of Business Communication 37(4) October: 328-347.

"Organizational innovation requires the fulfillment of specific key roles that guide a new idea through the innovation process. These roles are carried out by members of the organization, and are commonly referred to as idea generators, sponsors, and orchestrators (Galbraith, 1984"; , 1984).

"In smaller organizations or those that are implementing a variety of innovations, however, there may be more innovation roles than there are adopters. This shortage of organizational members to fill innovation roles may be exacerbated by a lack of slack resources (Nohria & Gulati, 1996)";

"Idea generators create the innovative ideas that could be of potential use to the organization (Galbraith, 1984). Idea generators initiate innovation by reformulating a particular problem through a creative perspective that they are willing to promote within the organization (Brimm, 1988). In organizations with informally generated innovations (Johnson, 1993), idea generators are usually low-level staff who are close enough to the problem to create an innovative solution";

"The sponsor, or idea champion (Galbraith, 1984; Howell & Higgins, 1990; Rogers, 1995), is usually a management-level person who recognizes the usefulness of the idea to the organization and lends authority and resources to the innovation throughout its development and implementation. The idea champion, or"soul-of-fire" (Stjernberg & Philips, 1993), of an innovation plays a significant role in gaining organizational acceptance of the innovation";

"The third role needed in the innovation process is that of the orchestrator (Galbraith, 1984), who is likely to be a central player in innovation related communication networks. Innovations are often controversial and may be perceived as impinging upon territorial rights and personal investments of others within the organization. Therefore, orchestrators are needed to maneuver the innovation through the organization’s political process";

"Although innovation roles are informal positions that may be assumed by individuals throughout the organization, people in certain functional positions may be more likely candidates for key innovation roles than may others. Indeed, despite prescriptions for considering innovation processes separately from standard organizational operating procedures (Galbraith, 1984), it generally has been argued that communication patterns and perceptions are dependent on hierarchical positions or roles in organizations";