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What Do Managers Do? Critically Discuss the Following Statement: “the Work and Skills of Managers Are the Same Irrespective of Their Position Within the Organisation.”

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The study of management has explored fields far beyond the conceivable realms; however one facet of management has been forever present in the minds of academics and industry workers. The ever examined topic of skills and work among managers in all levels of an organisation has been discussed and researched for decades. Various schools of thought exist within this topic and this paper will look to explore in detail the breadth of such thoughts. Ultimately, managers must posses a range of skills and perform a wide variety of tasks to achieve organisational goals. Academics such as Katz [1], Mintzberg [4,11], Fayol [10] and Paolio [5] have all explored this field and their findings will be discussed in detail throughout the essay. Although …show more content…

The results of their investigation showed that the value placed on the skill, ‘analysis of the organisation’ in which top level managers ranked it the second most important skill required while middle and lower level management placed it as twelfth and eleventh place respectively [7]. However, other skills that were identified like; creating organisational climate, were ranked first for senior managers, third for middle managers and first for lower level management. Although the first skill’s results support Katz’s 1955 report, the second a many other noted skills do not fall into this category and support the 1996 report by Labbaf, Analoui and Cusworth which echoed Katz’s retrospective commentary. This demonstrates that skills thought by Katz in 1955 to relate to conceptual skills and therefore only top level management were contradicted by the results of the 1996 experiment. Essentially, although Katz’s initial report [1] states that management requires different skills for different levels within the organisation, reports preceding the 1955 Katz report, including Katz’s retrospective commentary pointed to the fact that managers must posses skills which relate to their position within the organisation but must also posses skills which apply to all fields and levels of the organisation.

The work of managers, like skills, are heavily studied and with people like French

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