The Role of the Manager - Essay Example

The Role of The Manager Introduction Various scholars have defined management in various ways; there is no single definition of the process called management. Management is considered as a resource for production such as labour, land and capital by various economists. On the other hand, bureaucrats believe that it is an authoritative system operated to pursue organizational goals and objectives. For several years, sociologists refer to management as a class consisting of influential individuals. According to James L. Lundy, management refers to the job of organizing, planning, controlling and directing people and resources towards the attainment of organizational aims and objectives. F.W. Taylor believes that management is the task of identifying your aims and objectives and ensuring that those aims and objectives are attained in the most efficient manner (International Association of Fire Chiefs 63). This paper is focused towards the nature of management, role, responsibilities, and training & development of managers. The paper will even focus on managerial escalator and gap. Nature of Management Management is mostly defined as a procedure of helping organizations obtain their aims and objectives by making people work towards the attainment of those aims and objectives. In a broader view, it is the directing and planning of what goals need to be accomplished and how they will be accomplished along with the organizing and obtaining of resources that will be needed to obtain those objectives. For years it has been argued whether the nature of management is scientific or it is an art. The very fact that people who have assumed the responsibility of management have to learn theories and principles that need to be further applied and experiment makes management a scientific process. On the other hand, the fact that management is related to humans in every aspect makes management an art as well as science (Koontz 11). A manager has access to various scientific tools which help him in making day to day decisions, but managers have to heavily rely on their intuition in order to make the correct decision. Managerial Roles and Responsibilities Managers have four basic functions as discussed earlier and they have to perform various roles for the accomplishment of these functions. One of the roles played by managers is that of a figurehead. The top level management acts as a figurehead while representing their organizations in societal, legal and symbolic activities (Pride 178). Managers are even responsible for conducting various tasks such as hiring employees, training and developing employees, and performing appraisals. They even act as liaison while they represent their organizations in the external environment. They act as monitors when they obtain, analyze and interpret information for decision making. They even operate as a disseminator as they provide information to employees that are required by the employees so they can continue operating to achieve organizational objectives. Managers are even responsible for making decisions related to the development of the organization. They think of creative ways of producing goods and services and they decide about which aims and objectives are most important and which are least. They even act as disturbance handlers as they are responsible for managing conflict in the organization (Nurmi 92). They are the ones who decide what resources, in what quantity is to be provided to whom. One of the main concerns of managers is the negotiations they conduct with labour unions for the betterment of the organization. Managerial Escalator and Managerial Gap Specialist is an individual who works on one job, his education is even related only to that job and his skills and expertise are even directed towards that job. Managerial Escalator refers to how a specialist turns into a manager (Rees 4). During his period on the job, a specialist assumes various managerial tasks such as helping, supervising newcomer in an informal way. A specialist has to be promoted by an organization once he has served for quite a long period of time in one position. Whenever a specialist is promoted, he is awarded with a certain amount of managerial responsibilities. If a specialist is awarded the task of leading a team, he can learn and acquire various managerial skills. As a specialist continues to progress further in his career, he gains experience of various managerial skills and ultimately ends up being a manager. Specialists mostly assume management positions in areas where they have specialized but when they assume management positions they concentrate more on dealing and managing resources of the organization, instead of working directly in those areas. The difference between the amount of time specialists spend conducting managerial activities while they are working as specialist and they amount of time they actually spend in assumed managerial positions is known as managerial gap. According to a survey, specialists who turned into individuals performed better as managers than those who directly assumed managerial positions. Training and Development of Managers Managers need to be provided with adequate training for the development of managerial skills. Organizations for years have neglected the importance of training and developing managers. In UK management positions are mostly taken up by the heirs of the current managers of organizations and these managers do not have enough training in this field. Recently, the importance of training managers has increased. Various in house and external training courses have been developed. It is very important for managers to gain training and then apply learned skills to the positions they have assumed, the application is important to make training effective and to benefit the organization. If training or learned behaviour is not transferred to the job, then there is no benefit of providing training and the entire cost involved in training is wasted. The costs involved in training include the cost of time that managers and employees use for training while this time could be used for working on organizational aims and objectives. Plus the designing and operation of a training program has a very high monetary cost. Organization refrain from investing in training and development of employees and managers as they assume that it is a cost. They fail to recognize the return of this investment. Works Cited: Fire Officer : Principles and Practice (r2). Jones & Bartlett Learning, 2010. Print Koontz, Harold, Cyril O'Donnell, and Heinz Weihrich.Essentials of Management. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986. Print. Rees, W D, and Christine Porter. Skills of Management. London: Cengage Learning, 2008. Print Pride, William M, Robert J. Hughes, and Jack R. Kapoor.Business. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co, 1999. Print. Nurmi, Raimo, and John R. Darling. International Management Leadership: The Primary Competitive Advantage. New York: International Business Press, 1997. Print. Read More