Henry Mintzberg's Managerial Roles

After comparing Ch.2, 3, and 4 of Mintzberg’s novel, Simply Managing with Lussier’s textbook, Management Fundamentals, as well as the material covered in class, and my own personal experiences a few connection have been brought to mind regarding each chapter. In the paragraphs below, I will explain the connections I found related to each chapter.

According to our text, Henry Mintzberg created three managerial roles. These roles include interpersonal, information, and decisions roles. The interpersonal role requires a figurehead, leader, and a liaison. Informational roles require monitor, disseminator, and a spokesperson. Or in other words, informational roles involve "collecting, receiving, and disseminating information" (Pg 11). Decision roles need an entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator, and negotiators. According to Mintzberg, decisional roles should involve thinking and doing.

An organization’s management roles can be quite different and diverse, depending on the industry, its culture and the ultimate goals of the organization. Managers on different levels of an organization play several roles and exercise multiple skills as they effectively and efficiently, integrate the work of people through planning, organizing, leading and controlling. Historically, there are three key management viewpoints: classical, behavioral and quantitative. To be an exceptional manager, it is essential to embrace a viewpoint

True False 43. Henry Mintzberg discovered that managers typically devote large blocks of time to planning. True False 44. Managers with high levels of skill mastery tend to have better subunit performance and employee morale than managers with lower levels of skill mastery. True False 45. At its core, management is about dealing effectively with people. True False 46. According to recent research, effective female and male managers have significantly different skill profiles. True False 47. The successful 21st century manager shares access to power and key information. True False 48. A successful 21st century manager views people as a potential problem. True False

Her early experiences in banking were almost always challenging and rewarding. She was enrolled in the bank’s management development program because of her education (a.B.A. in languages and some postgraduate training in business administration), her previous job experience, and her obvious intelligence and drive.

I interviewed my host-grandfather, who has a small size remolding and hardware company in the Kansas State. He is the chief executive officer of the company. The purpose of this paper is to understand the role of a manager in a company from a perspective of a person managing a firm. The idea of this interview is to understand how well their management role and decision match with theoretical management.

The world of business has undergone radical and dramatic changes in the last decade changes that present extraordinary challenges for the contemporary manager. A manager is an organizational member who is responsible for planning, organizing, leading, and controlling the activities of the organization so that the goals can be achieved. According to a widely referenced study by Henry Mintzberg, managers serve three primary roles: interpersonal, informational, and decision-making. Management is process of administrating and coordinating resources effectively and efficiently in an effort to achieve the goals of the organization.

Her early experiences in banking were almost always challenging and rewarding. She was enrolled in the bank’s management development program because of her education (a.B.A. in languages and some postgraduate training in business administration), her previous job experience, and her obvious intelligence and drive.

Over the past two decades, since Henry Mintzberg undertook a study about managerial roles, they have undergone dramatic transformation in an increasingly competitive global environment. In the article, “Managerial work roles in Asia: An empirical study of Mintzberg’s role formulation in four Asian countries,” the author Cecil AL Pearson and Samir R. Chatterjee, professors and senior research fellows in School of Management of Curtin Unversity, Australia, discusses how managers around the world are struggling to redefine their roles and responsibilities against a backdrop of Mintzberg study in the US context, which are still wisely taught in universities and training programs. The relevance of the Mintzberg formulation in the Asian context was the aim of this four country study. The work roles of a new generation of managers in the divergent non-Western contexts and in societies of varying stages of economic transition or orientation are bound to exhibit features other than the Mintzberg paradigm. The purpose of this study is to explore the relevance of Mintzberg’s ten managerial roles in a sample of four south-east Asian business communities from

Similarly, Mintzberg’s view also has some weaknesses. He defines management as what managers actually do and summarized 10 roles theory (Mintzberg, 1973). However, it is not certified what managers actually do is what managers should do. The aim of management studying is to find the best way to manage and organise organizations. In Mintzberg’s study (1973), his research object is five American chief-executive officers. These managers may have very successful career and good reputation, but it does not mean their behaviours of managing businesses are the best; maybe there are any other methods which can reach higher achievement. In addition, it is also not certified that what CEOs do is same as what managers do. There are three different levels of managers in organizations: top-level managers such as CEO, middle-level managers and first-level managers. They are all responsible for different areas, which means their roles should not be identical. Therefore, these make Mintzberg’s administrative theory not perfect.

Henry Mintzberg (1971) was the first to study and document how an actual person in a managerial position operates on a daily basis. He categorized three general roles every manager possesses Interpersonal skills, Informational roles and Decisional roles, each with sub-sections of there own. He shadowed five American CEO’s studying their day-to-day activities; he discovered that the role of a manager is highly people concentrated. This essay will discuss three of the sub categories that really focus on the interaction with people Liaison, Spokesperson and Negotiator. ‘Estimates vary with the level of management, but most managers spend between two-thirds and four-fifths of their time in face-to-face communication with others’ (Williams & McWilliams 2010, p.10)

Employees have the power to make or break an organization; therefore an organization’s biggest asset is its employees. In order to achieve success an organization must employee quality workers, be structured in such a way as to promote success, and then enable their employees to use their skills and creativity to do extraordinary things. Henry Mintzberg, a renowned author in the field of management, defined and published his views on organizational archetypes (Matheson, 2009). Organizational archetypes are shared and recurring patterns of behavior in organizations (Taborga, 2011). Mintzberg categories along with their innovation implications provide organizations with information that they can use in the development of their strategic models. This paper summarizes Henry Mintzberg’s work with archetypes and outlines the key features and implications involved in each archetype, explains why organizations need a template for explaining the structure of an organization, and demonstrates why we have too many managers and too few leaders.

The paper will explore different theories of Management, include Henri Fayol and Henry Mintzberg. This section of this paper provides an overview of functions, roles and skills required of a manager. What is Management? Management can define as the process of reaching organisational goals by working with and through people and other organisational resources. (Management Innovation, 2008).

By the time Henri Fayol had finished his theory, General Industrial Management, in 1916, which was based on his reminiscence as a successful turnaround of a major mining company from depths of failure; he set out to illustrate management as being a separate entity to other jobs within an organisation as he would say although “technical” and “commercial” “function” were “clearly defined”, “administrative” education was lacking. In his theory he introduced his five duties a manager had to follow to be called effective: plan, organise coordinate, command, and control and added to this fourteen principles he felt managers should use as reference to conduct the five duties. However Fayol was very much an idealist his theory was based on what a complete manager should be like and gave the view of managers taking control from behind a desk, yet critics, most influential being the academic Henry Mintzberg, who released his work in 1973, were more realists and saw a manager life as chaotic, involved and interactive, arguing what Fayol was portraying is not possible, and outdated.

In today’s competitive landscape, organizations must utilize every resource to its fullest in order to achieve profitability. Peter F. Drucker, who is known as “the founding father of the discipline of management”, informs us that employees are assets, which should be treated as a company’s most valuable resource. The key players involved in utilizing this valuable resource are the managers of a company. Managers have a vital role in a company and the effort they put forth into their tasks and responsibilities will directly affect the success of a company. In Drucker’s book Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (Revised Edition), he explains the role of a company’s management team and the secrets to becoming a great manager.