Unit 1

Who is a Manager?
• A Manager is the person responsible for planning and directing the work
of a group of individuals, monitoring their work, and taking corrective
action when necessary.
• Managers may direct workers directly or they may direct several
supervisors who direct the workers. They are the individuals charged
with examining the workflow, coordinating efforts, meeting goals and
providing leadership. Thus, a manager must be familiar with the work of
all the groups he/she supervises but need not be the best in any or all the
areas.
• It is more important for a manager to know how to manage the workers
than to know how to do their work well.
 Roles of a Manager

Henry Mintzberg
 Skills of an Effective Manager
Robert L. Katz has identified three basic types of skills - technical, human and conceptual -
which he says are needed by all managers.
• Technical skill: It is the ability to use the tools, procedures or techniques of a specialized
field. Technical skill is considered to be very crucial to the effectiveness of lower-level
managers because they are in direct contact with employees performing work activities
within the firm. For instance, the success of a drilling supervisor of an oil rig depends a great
deal on his technical knowledge of drilling. However, as one moves to higher levels of
management within the organization, the importance of technical skill diminishes because the
manager has less direct contact with day-to-day problems and activities. Thus, the president
of an oil company does not need to know much of the technical details of drilling for oil or
how to refine it.
• Human skill: It is the ability to work with, understand and motivate other people. This skill
is essential at every level of management within the organisation, but it is particularly
important at lower levels of management where the supervisor has frequent contact with
operating personnel.
• Conceptual skill: It is the mental ability to coordinate and integrate the organisation’s
interests and activities. It refers to the ability to see the ‘big picture’, to understand how a
change in any given part can affect the whole organisation. The relationship between
management levels and managerial skills
Design skill: Koontz and Weihrich added one more skill to the above list. Design skill is the ability to solve problems in ways
that will help the organisation. At higher levels, managers should be able to do more than see a problem, to design a workable
solution to a problem in the light of realities they face. If managers merely see a problem and become problem watchers, they
will fail.
Institution building skills: According to Prof. Pareek (1981), top level executives perform eight key roles while building
institutions of lasting value, as indicated below:
Identity creating role; Enabling role; Synergising role; Balancing role; Linkage building role; Futuristic role; Creating an
impact; Provide superordination
Functions of Management
• More popular and widely accepted is the classification given by Henry Fayol. According to him,
the managerial functions may be broadly classified into five categories: planning, organising,
directing, staffing and controlling. Managers perform these functions within the limits established
by the external environment and must consider the interests of such diverse groups as government,
employees, unions, customers, shareholders, competitors and the public.
• Planning: Planning is the process of making decisions about future. It is the process of determining enterprise
objectives and selecting future courses of actions necessary for their accomplishment. It is the process of
deciding in advance what is to be done, when and where it is to be done, how it is to be done and by whom.
Planning provides direction to enterprise activities. It helps managers cope with change. It enables managers to
measure progress toward the objectives so that corrective action can be taken if progress is not satisfactory.
Planning is a fundamental function of management, and all other functions of management are influenced by
the planning process.
• Organizing: Organizing is concerned with the arrangement of an organization's resources - people, materials,
technology and finance in order to achieve enterprise objectives. It involves decisions about the division of
work, allocation of authority and responsibility and the coordination of tasks. The function increases in
importance as a firm grows. A structure is created to cope with problems created by growth. Through this
formal structure, the various work activities are defined, classified, arranged and coordinated. Thus, organizing
refers to certain dynamic aspects: What tasks are to be done? Who is to do them? How the tasks are to be
grouped? Who is to report to whom? Where the decisions have to be made?
• Staffing: Staffing is the function of employing suitable persons for the enterprise. It may be defined as an
activity where people are recruited, selected, trained, developed, motivated and compensated for manning
various positions. It includes not only the movement of individuals into an organization, but also their
movement through (promotion, job rotation, transfer) and out (termination, retirement) of the organization.
• Directing: The function of guiding and supervising the activities of the subordinates is known
as directing. Acquiring physical and human assets and suitably placing them on jobs does not
suffice; what is more important is that people must be directed towards organisational goals.
This work involves four important elements:
(a) Leadership (b) Motivation (c) Communication (d) Supervision
• Controlling: The objective of controlling is to ensure that actions contribute to goal
accomplishment. It helps in keeping the organisational activities on the right path and aligned
with plans and goals. In controlling, performances are observed, measured and compared with
what had been planned. If the measured performance is found wanting, the manager must find
reasons and take corrective actions. If the performance is not found wanting, some planning
decisions must be made, altering the original plans. If the controlling function is to be
effective, it must be preceded by proper planning. Thus, controlling includes four things:
(a) Setting standards of performance,
(b) Measuring actual performance,
(c) Comparing actual performance against the standard and
(d) Taking corrective actions to ensure goal accomplishment.
 Styles of Management
• American Style of Management: American management style can be described as individualistic in approach,
in so far as managers are accountable for the decisions made within their areas of responsibility. Although
important decisions might be discussed in open forum, the ultimate responsibility for the consequences of the
decision lies with the boss and every other supporter will vanish when things go wrong. But tide to this
accountability are outstanding rewards that every individual in this world dreams of. Therefore, American
managers are more likely to disregard the opinions of subordinates than managers in other, more consensus or
compromise- oriented cultures. This can obviously lead to frustrations, which can sometimes seem to boil over
in meeting situations.
• Japanese Style of Management: Japanese management stresses more on the need for information flow from
the bottom of the company to the top. This results in senior management having a largely supervisory rather
than hands-on approach. As a result, it has been noted that policy is often originated at the middle levels of a
company before being passed upwards for ratification. The strength of this approach is obviously that those
tasked with the implementation of decisions have been actively involved in the shaping of policy. The higher a
Japanese manager rises within an organisation, the more important it is that he appears unassuming and not so
ambitious. The key task for a Japanese manager is to provide the environment in which the group can grow. In
order to achieve this, he must be always accessible and willing to share knowledge within the group.
Instructions from managers can seem extremely unclear to western counterparts and this often causes
confusion and frustration. This difficulty is caused, in no short measure, by problems around styles of
communication.
• Indian Style of Management: India is a very hierarchical society and this, obviously, has an impact on
management style. It is imperative that there is a boss and that the manager acts like a boss. The position
of manager demands a certain amount of role-playing from the boss and a certain amount of admiring
behaviour from his subordinates. Anglo-Saxon concepts of egalitarianism where the boss is the primus
inter pares are virtually incomprehensible in a society still dominated by the historical conventions of the
caste system. Therefore, the boss is expected to give explicit instructions which will be followed to the
letter - even if everybody knows full well that the instruction is incorrect. Unclear requests for action,
with the expectation that staff will show the necessary level of initiative are likely to end in inaction, as
staff will be left confused as to the wishes of the manager. Managing people in India requires a level of
micro-management which many western business people feel extremely uncomfortable with but, which
is likely to bring the best results.