Managerial Roles/Skills in Management

Managerial roles can be defined as the organized sets of behaviors identified with the position. These roles were developed by Henry Mintzberg in the late 1960s after a careful study of executives at work.
Three Types of roles:
1.Interpersonal Roles
2.Informational Roles
3.Decisional Roles

INTERPERSONAL ROLES:

Managers spend a considerable amount of time in interacting with other people both within their own organizations as well as outside. These people include peers, subordinates, superiors, suppliers, customers, government officials and community leaders. All these interactions require an understanding of interpersonal relations.

Types of Interpersonal Roles are :
Figurehead: Managers act as symbolic figureheads performing social or legal obligations. These duties include greeting visitors, signing legal documents, taking important customers to lunch, attending a subordinate’s wedding or speaking at functions in schools

Leader: The influence of the manager is most clearly seen in his role as a leader of the unit or organization. Since he is responsible for the activities of his subordinates, he must lead and coordinate their activities in meeting task-related goals and he must motivate them to perform better.

Liaison: In addition to their constant contact with their own subordinates, peers and superiors, the managers must maintain a network of outside contacts in order to assess the external environment of competition, social changes or changes in governmental rules, regulations and laws.

INFORMATIONAL ROLE

By virtue of his interpersonal contacts, a manager emerges as a source of information about a variety of issues concerning the organization. In this capacity of information processing, a manager executes the following three roles:

Monitor: The managers are constantly monitoring and scanning their environment, both internal and external, collecting and studying information regarding their organization and the outside environment affecting their organization.
Disseminator of Information: The managers must transmit their information regarding changes in policies or other matters to their subordinates, their peers and to other members of the organization.
Spokesperson: A manager has to be a spokesman for his unit and he represents his unit in either sending relevant information to people outside his unit or making some demands on behalf of his unit.
Decisional Roles

DECISIONAL ROLES:

On the basis of the environmental information received, a manager must make decisions and solve organizational problems. In that respect, a manager plays four important roles.

Entrepreneur: As entrepreneurs, managers are continuously involved in improving their units and facing the dynamic technological challenges. They are constantly on the lookout for new ideas for product improvement or products addition.

Disturbance Handler: The managers are constantly involved as arbitrators in solving differences among the subordinates or the employee’s conflicts with the central management. These conflicts may arise due to demands for higher pay or other benefits or these conflicts may involve outside forces such as vendors increasing their prices, a major customer going bankrupt or unwanted visits by governmental inspectors

Negotiator: The managers represent their units or organizations in negotiating deals and agreements within and outside of the organization. They negotiate contracts with the unions. Sale managers may negotiate prices with prime customers. Purchasing managers may negotiate prices with vendors..

Resource Allocator: The third decisional role of a manager is that of a resource allocator. The managers establish priorities among various projects or programs and make budgetary allocations to the different activities of the organization based upon these priorities. They assign personnel to jobs, they allocate their own time to different activities and they allocate funds for new equipment, advertising and pay raises.

Management Full Notes: