The Role of Managers in the 21st Century Is Increasingly Diverse and Challenging.
“The role of managers in the 21st century is increasingly diverse and challenging”.
Use specific examples from businesses to support your argument.
Organisations need managers to ensure the company is planning, controlling, leading and organising their resources properly. However, in the 21st century, facing uncertain economic times and ever-changing technology, the roles managers must undertake are becoming increasingly diverse and challenging. The key to understanding this is to first, grasp the concept of managerial roles and secondly, understand that customers and innovation are the driving forces that organisations must conquer in order to survive in the 21st century.
A managerial role is defined as “a set of specific tasks that a manager is expected to perform because of the position he or she holds in an organisation” (Jones & George 2006, p. 19). In 1973, through observation, Henry Mintzberg devised a list of three categories which amongst them contain ten roles that managers should fulfil in order to maintain a successful organisation. The three categories that Mintzberg outlined are decisional roles, informational roles and interpersonal roles.
In an organisation, managers are expected to undertake the decisional roles of entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator and negotiator. Therefore, it is the manager’s role to seek expansion opportunities and initiate change, deal with unforeseen circumstances and sufficiently allocate the organisations resources appropriately. In recent decades, the role of entrepreneur has been seen to be critical with improvements in technology. Steve Jobs, founder of Apple and creator of the iPhone, was well renowned for his entrepreneurial talents. Realising technological changes, Jobs was able to allocate the organisations resources effectively and foresee the needs and desires of customers by developing the iPhone, which is still the most renowned smart phone today.
Mintzberg identifies three
Use specific examples from businesses to support your argument.
Organisations need managers to ensure the company is planning, controlling, leading and organising their resources properly. However, in the 21st century, facing uncertain economic times and ever-changing technology, the roles managers must undertake are becoming increasingly diverse and challenging. The key to understanding this is to first, grasp the concept of managerial roles and secondly, understand that customers and innovation are the driving forces that organisations must conquer in order to survive in the 21st century.
A managerial role is defined as “a set of specific tasks that a manager is expected to perform because of the position he or she holds in an organisation” (Jones & George 2006, p. 19). In 1973, through observation, Henry Mintzberg devised a list of three categories which amongst them contain ten roles that managers should fulfil in order to maintain a successful organisation. The three categories that Mintzberg outlined are decisional roles, informational roles and interpersonal roles.
In an organisation, managers are expected to undertake the decisional roles of entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator and negotiator. Therefore, it is the manager’s role to seek expansion opportunities and initiate change, deal with unforeseen circumstances and sufficiently allocate the organisations resources appropriately. In recent decades, the role of entrepreneur has been seen to be critical with improvements in technology. Steve Jobs, founder of Apple and creator of the iPhone, was well renowned for his entrepreneurial talents. Realising technological changes, Jobs was able to allocate the organisations resources effectively and foresee the needs and desires of customers by developing the iPhone, which is still the most renowned smart phone today.
Mintzberg identifies three