What_Manager_Do_

Management is increasingly more important in today’s society. It is an essential work in an organization. Manager is the one who coordinates and oversees the work of others in order to achieve organizational goals. They need to ensure that jobs are done efficiency and effectiveness. There are three levels of manager in an organization as their job are basically the same. However, the degrees of the time they spend on specific activities are different depends on their levels of position, organization type, size and cultural. The work of managers can be divided in three main types which are functions, roles and skills. In order to know whether the jobs of different levels of managers are the same, the following are the brief discussion of what do managers do. And there is a reality example of managerial work. The three levels of manager are first line manager, middle manager and top manager. First line manager is the lowest level of manager as they mainly manage the work of non-managerial employee, like supervisors and line manager (Robbins, Bergman, Stagg & Coulter, 2009). The second level is middle managers, their work include all levels of managerial work between first line manager and top manager. Regional manager and department head are the examples of middle manager (Robbins et al., 2009). The top managers are those who responsible in making organization-wide decisions, establishing goals and planning, such as chief executive officer (Robbins et al., 2009). It seems that the emphasis of their works is different. However, they all come from certain features which discuss below. Having interview with a chief executive officer of numbers of restaurants in Hong Kong, he said that his plans are related to the firm’s profitability. He is a top manager in the organization. He needs to make important decision which can affect the whole restaurants. He always uses the brain work and less physical work as he need to thinks continuously what can improve the restaurants. He often goes to his restaurants to inspect his employees. He put the customer satisfaction in the major goal of the restaurant. He always goes to try the food of other restaurants to compare and improve their quality. He often seeks for new food or strategy to attract more customers. He said that he needs to look at the market trends to make decision and plan. It shows that top manager often needs to planning, organizing, making decision and conceptualizes. Firstly, the four basic functions of managerial work are very important in all levels of management. They are planning, organizing, leading and controlling which based on the Fayol’s five functions (Robbins et al., 2009). Those function that are essential in establishing and operating an effective organization. Firstly, planning can be defined as goals, manager need to establish strategies to achieve organizational goals (Dwan, 2003). The important of planning increases when the level of manager becomes higher. Secondly, managers are required to organize. Their job is to arranging and structuring work to achieve the set of goals (Robbins et al., 2009). They need to design what task to be done and arrange people to do them, so, they need to work through people to accomplish the goals (Carroll & Gillen, 1987). As the level of manager becomes higher, the need of organizing rises sharply (Robbins et al., 2009). Top level managers spend most of their time in organizing. Thirdly, managers need to lead their subordinates to work, like motivating them, dealing with employee behaviour, and influencing individuals or teams (Carroll & Gillen, 1987). The leading function is most important in first level and middle level managers as their proportion of spending time in leading is the highest one (Robbins et al., 2009). Finally, the controlling function is manager needs to monitor and evaluate performance after the set of goals are being met and work is being completed (Robbins et al., 2009). And compare the actual performance with previous set goals. That function is important in those levels of management. However, the Fayol function was argued by several writers, especially Mintzberg, who finally developed ten manager’s roles. These ten roles can be divided in three categories which are interpersonal roles, informational roles and decisional roles. For interpersonal roles, it involves figurehead, leader and liaison (Mintzberg, 1973). Figurehead is some ceremonial duties that every manager must perform (Robbins et al., 2009). Mintzberg (1973) stated that figurehead roles are important as it helps to smooth functioning of an organization and it cannot be ignored. Leader role is that motivates and encourage employee to achieve organization goals (Robbins et al., 2009). And liaison role is the manager contacts with external sources that provide information (Mintzberg, 1975). These roles are more important in sales managers as they need to spend more time with people. Secondly, informational roles include receiving, collecting and disseminating (Mintzberg, 1973). As monitor, manager need to seek continuously and bombarded with the information that helps to understand the organization and environment (Robbins et al., 2009). As disseminator, the manager passes some privileged information to subordinates (Robbins et al., 2009). And the spokesperson role, the manager presents the organization’s information to outsiders (Mintzberg, 1975). It’s most important in staff manager as they spend most time in the informational roles. Moreover, Mintzberg (1975) presented that the manager plays the major role in the unit’s decision-making system. There are four roles to describe the manager as a decision maker. As entrepreneur, manager acts as initiator and oversee new project to improve the organization (Robbins et al., 2009). As disturbance handler, manager will take corrective action when organization facing important disturbances (Mintzberg, 1973). As resource allocators, the manager is responsible for divide and coordinated work. As negotiator, manager represents the organization at major negotiation to gain advantages from others (Robbins et al., 2009). It is more important in production manager as they require paying more attention in the decisional roles. Therefore, all roles are important for the managerial work.