The Reality of Management: Different Roles - Essay Example

?Management and Leadership Devlopment Before starting the pin point discussion about management it is essential to go through the basic meaning of management. According to Bertrand Russell management is “telling other people to do so” either in the form of an order or in the form of an advice. Management is a discipline of its own sort in nineteenth century capitalism and without this discipline nothing is possible. Management is an acknowledged ideology and it has obtained a prominent position in business community and has become a basic institution. In the beginning management was considered as a technical sort of activity in order to improve the performance and efficiency of the organization but recently the trends have changed now management is considered as a discrete activity or a process in order to achieve the organizational goals or objectives. Management is practiced in different ways i.e. their interpretation of demands and constraints related to them (Stewart 1985). The difference also depends upon cultural overlay or environment. Hales (1986) has observed the four different ways of management diversity and complexity. According to Heller (1985, 1995) management can’t be associated with one entity rather it is a bunch of different occupations and skills which are more context dependent. Mark Easterby-Smith (1986) presents management as that management looks easy but its not so rather it is complex, it requires to order and coordinate the work done by others and there is the need that managers also try to acquire the same order, involves complex sort of problems which can’t be solved with routine managerial processes, it requires managers must be well familiar about all the fragmented parts of the corporate office. The managerial activities are divided into planning/forecasting, organizing, motivating, controlling and developing. All these are at the level of abstraction but the real time problems of management are far more complex. Different ethnographic studies are performed by the researchers in order to know the process the managers adapt to work. Management is a sort of cluster of different roles. Mintzberg (1973) suggested that there are ten managerial roles described under key roles like interpersonal, information-handling and decisional. On roles Rosemary Stewart (1985) is of the view that the managerial jobs are mostly associated with subjective and objective factors like contextual demand and the associated constraints i.e. what a manager can do using certain choices. Managerial processes are the most important factors in organizational management. Wrapp’s analysis (1967) about senior management is very impressive i.e. the senior managers have an abstract view of the organization, they are proactive and take problems seriously, and they lay the objectives of the organization, conceptualize the problems and try their best in organizational development. But on the other hand Kotter (1982) is of the view that real managers don’t posses any thing in their personalities as presented by Wrapp. The real managers present a very horrible picture of the management. Managers show authoritative attitude, lack skills, waste time and they are not well organized, systematic and strategic. So it seems impossible that there would be any sort of order in their personalities. Kotter has shown some sort of consistencies in managerial activities. Managers have to perform the two major functions i.e. firstly formation of agenda which shows objectives and future plans and secondly they have to establish good relationships with the people either in the organization or outside it. Many other writers are of the view that management is not associated with systems or practices and procedures rather it is associated with patterns of social interaction. Watson (2001) also says that management is a highly disorganized and messy discipline in real life human experience. According to Wrapp (1967) managers look more jugglers than the controllers of managerial functionality. Some four decades earlier i.e. since 1970 the foundation of good administration was laid by different organizations. A race started to develop good or excellent managers in 1970s. Now since 1990s the management is trying to recognize and develop managers as leaders. So the question of interest is to find out the difference between management and leadership i.e. either they are different roles with different behaviors. Researchers are of the view that management and leadership lie in the same vicinity, they are same and used interchangeably (Brotherton, 1999). Managers in organizations are the leaders who exercise their formal authorities or administrative functions like organizing, planning, programming, controlling, coordinating and directing (Bnnis and Nanus, 1985; Kotter, 1982; Boyatzis, 1993) and they come in the domain of headship but leadership requires freedom in authority as quoted by Rollinson (2002). Leadership is largely associated with “thinking, visioning, inspiring, taking a loner-term view, energizing, building relationships, networking and giving a steer in times of uncertainty and change” (Book Chapter, pg 24). Since 1960 the leadership model was based upon a top-town hierarchy which was not a stronger model and managerial process was made of merely manipulation activities instead of formal authorities (Brotherton, 1999). Now the trends are changing and the organizations are in demand of innovative visionary and transformational leadership. In the past management has played a vital role in providing a suitable environment in order to exercise leadership. It is not necessary that a manager must be a good leader because sometimes in the organizations there are certain functions which don’t demand leadership capabilities. But the most essential part of a manager is to motivate the people, persuade them, he will be able to form effective teams, cultures and networks within an organization. According to Yukl (2002) managers perform two major leadership functions i.e. formal leadership as described above and informal leadership (networking, building repute). Both management and leadership are considered at par and are given equal value. According to Bass (1995) a ‘leader’ can be defined as function within a role while a ‘manager’ is treated as a role. So management is associated with activities instead of the leadership. Leadership is considered as a sub factor or a subpart of management and not as a separate entity. Leadership development is considered as a prominent issue in an organization. A survey is performed about leadership development which shows an immense interest of the organizations in this area (The Conference Board, 1999). Organizations are investing huge capital in leadership development in order to gain market leverage or competitive advantage (McCall, 1998; Vicere & Fulmer, 1998). So there is the need of working managerial models in order to run the managerial development processes. The management developers who develop the managerial models also require a clear understanding of the skills and capabilities of the current manpower who is working as managers. A controversy also exists about the meanings of capabilities and skills because what is stated about competencies it is rather more fascinated like “an empowering leadership style ability to motivate others; a strategic understanding” (Chapter2, pg 28) than found in real practice (Mangham, 1988). Mangham states that such a situation is very dangerous for both managers and management developers. Management is mainly associated with functional knowledge, technical competence or skill so for an efficient leadership the technical competence is also very important. The functional knowledge or technical competencies consist of product technology, marketing techniques, engineering, accountancy, and knowledge of legislation, management principles and theories (Pedler et al. 2001). About technical skill Garratt (1994) states that in order to improve the performance of the managers there is the need of strategic and political skills also. Along with technical skills it is very essential that the top management must have social and interpersonal skills. Most the writes describe the micro-processes of management at gross root level. Mangham (1991) is of the view that for an executive self-awareness is very essential during course of interaction with others. Executives must shape their mental abilities according to their role, goals, values, feelings, personal strengths and weaknesses (Chapter2, pg 30). Self awareness is necessary for self reflection. There are many self awareness areas (Whetton & Cameron, 2002) but the most important one are personal values, learning and thinking styles, orientation to change and interpersonal orientation. The development of interpersonal and social skills in mangers or leaders is very essential. During these an executive has to show its abilities to work with other people and take work from them and they have to do all that using expert judgment. The expert judgment helps them to sense and analyze the behavior of other people. They have to do different decisions after viewing that how different matters are going on and they have to manage a web of relationships with different roles. Another important managerial skill is “Management of Emotions”. The emotional caliber of executives or senior management must be high in order to face different issues like demands in bulk, high pressures, limited time, resources and budget. So managers must be emotionally able in order to handle all these issues. Emotional Intelligence or EQ is strongly associated with success. There are different dimensions of EQ like self knowledge, self control, self motivation, self resilience and lastly self and interpersonal awareness. About EQ Goleman (1996) is of the view that people with high EQ are not only sensitive to their own feelings but also to the feelings of other people. Sadler-Smith (2007) relates emotional sensitivity with transformational leadership. Thinking or cognitive abilities are also given due consideration during leadership development. Managerial executives must have the ability to think at wider scale for quick decisions and response to a particular problem or issue in order to solve it. In order to provide a solution of a particular problem manager involves themselves in improvising and fudging which is considered as good and this style is called as ‘disjointed incrementalism’ by Lindblom (1959). For decision making different thinking styles are adopted by the managers. McKenny and Keen (1976) describe the major thinking styles as systematic thinkers, intuitive thinkers and perceptive thinkers. Model building is one of the distinctive features of the managers and managers have to solve various issues based on old patterns after viewing the contextual sensitivity. But with the changing scenarios managers have to see various innovative patterns in order to cope with the newly evolved problems. So for model building it is essential that the managers have to see the things deeply instead of viewing them at abstract level. According to Karl Weick (1983) managers don’t think basically rather they think or do the things through acting with vague goals. In cognitive or thinking skills of a manager it is also required that the due value must be given to new ideas and creative approach. According to Adams (1998) and Weisberg (1986) that the creative managers have the abilities like observant of the processes, independent in thought, connection builders between things, idea awareness, knowledge at abstraction level, innovative in nature etc. There is also the need to develop political skills in managers and these skills are very essential for ultimate success because the different organizations are also the political platforms. There are certain issues of limited resources, budget and time so in order to cope with all these factors there is the need to show essential control over the matters. Along with political skills there are some other skills which are very essential for a successful manager and these include diagnostic skill, tactical skills and shaping skills. Managers in order to become master in their trade have to adopt the philosophy of wisdom. According to Isaiah Berlin (1979) the sense of wisdom initiates in executives because of the trend that the strategies ever fail and they are unable to control the complex situations and varying human behaviors. There is the need of an orientation in order to develop a human capital called as a leader development instead of development of leadership. The human capital development is associated with development of individual capabilities like self-awareness, self-motivation and self-regulation (McCauley, 2000) on the other hand leadership or social capital development is associated with the abilities like interpersonal skills and it requires enactment because without enactment leadership is not possible. The concept of leader development is based on the philosophy of leadership. So it would be a better approach to that the leader development must be linked with leadership development. 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