Managerial Jobs Are the Same in Both Small and Large Organisations

"MANAGERIAL JOBS ARE THE SAME IN BOTH LARGE AND SMALL ORGANISATIONS"

ESSAY 1.

In this essay I will critically evaluate the statement;

"Managerial jobs are the same in both small and large organisations." For this purpose I will apply work from different theorists, journal articles and examples of management in history. I shall then apply Mintzberg's, Fayol's and Katz' proposed categorisation schemes of management to prove that the statement is correct. I will endeavour to demonstrate that managerial jobs are all the same in all organisational sizes. This contributes to the thesis that the "job" of a manager is universal regardless of organisational size.

Management has been used in different ways for thousands of years. It has shaped how we manage home life, studies, ourselves, work, others. In this case management is described by Robbins et al as being,

the process of coordinating work activities so that they are completed effectively and efficiently with and through people.

All organisations regardless of size use management as a way to achieve their goals. An organisation according to Robbins et al is,

a deliberate arrangement of people set out to accomplish some specific purpose.

Therefore organisational management seeks to accomplish a specific purpose by coordinating work activities that are completed efficiently and effectively.

A small organisation is an independently owned and operated, profit-seeking enterprise with fewer than 20 employees. A large organisation- an arrangement of over 21 people set to accomplish specific goals for a profit-seeking enterprise.

This is the best way for an organisation to be successful. Henri Fayol a French industrialist in the twentieth century, believed there was a specific way for a manager to behave in order to be productive. His believes that management rational-functional ie. where management is seen as a scientific process and capable of division into a series of principles or functions. He concluded that there were five functions that all managers use. Planning, organising, commanding, coordinating and controlling. They were used as a theoretical account to what we learn today. Four of the five are employed today to show the importance of his theory. Planning, leading, controlling and organising. Managers use the planning function as part of their daily activities. Planning is defining goals, establishing strategy and developing plans to coordinate work activities. Leading is an essential part of being a manager. It involves motivating subordinates, directing others, selecting the most effective communication channels and resolving conflicts. Another important contributor

of managing is controlling. It requires monitoring activities to ensure that they are being accomplished as planned and correcting any significant deviations. The last is that of organising, that is determining what tasks are to be done, who is to do them, how the tasks are to be grouped, who reports to whom and where decisions are to be made. These four functions show greatly that a managers job does involve fundamentals. It is easy to see that according to Fayol these processes are used regardless of organisational size, because all managers can relate to them. Contrasting to the journal article written by O'Bourke et al. They've noted that regardless of size;

"Overall, these studies present a managers job as being chaotic, unstructured and unpredictable. Managers work at an unrelenting pace, their work is categorised by brevity, fragamantation and variety and managerial work is largely an interpersonal process".

Another theorist who refers to management as partly being an interpersonal process in Henry Mintzberg. His theory suggests the idea of social-reality ie. where management is an art or process of using power and influence in working out how to get the best from people in given situations. Being a salient researcher, Mintzberg's studies discovered what managers actually do at work. Therefore instituting that there are ten management roles that explain what a managers jobs is no matter what the size of the organisation. Management roles are the specific categories of managerial behaviour. The ten roles were formed by studying what managers do in the work environment. These roles are defined into three groups. Interpersonal, informational and decisional roles.

Interpersonal roles are ones that involve people and other duties that are ceremonial and symbolic in nature.Ñ- These roles include: Figurehead, Leader and Liaison. A Figurehead performs legal or social natured duties, like welcoming clients/visitors & signing contracts. A Leader is responsible for the motivation of subordinates, staffing, training and associated duties eg. initial employee training, implementing incentives. A liaison maintains self-development network of outside contracts and informers who provide favours and information eg. external board work, negotiations. It was discovered by Mintzberg that they are used by