The role of a modern industrial manager
Prashanth Balacumaresan (200679951)
Word Count: 1965
A manager is someone in charge of an organisation or subunit. Many would fit the bill of a manager besides a chief executive, including coaches, bishops, foremen even presidents and prime ministers. What is the role of a manager? If you did ask someone in a managerial position what they did they would probably tell you that they plan, organize, coordinate and control. Mangers are persistent individuals and they perform their activities in concise, diverse manners. Study shows that most activities performed by chief executives last less than 9 minutes and only a small fraction of the time do activities last an hour long. The work pace for most chief executives and foremen are relentless, spending their whole day receiving calls and mail with every break interrupted by a subordinate looking for some sort of guidance (Mintzberg 1990).
The role of an ideal manager should be a balance between the roles Mintzberg has described. This is because a manger is the commander in chief of an organisation and through this role he has contact to various interpersonal relationships. This gives his the opportunity to gain access to various sorts of information which would then enable him to put to good use by planning effective strategies, making decisions or implement in action (Waldron.M.W, Vasanthakumar.J & Arulraj.S 1997). Managerial roles accentuates reasoning and control, and it does not matter whichever direction the focus is on, the manager should always look at ways to achieve results that would make positive impact and make people continue contributing to his or her organisation.
In 1981 Arnaldo conducted a survey of hotel general managers by adapting Mintzberg approach to managerial behaviour. What he found out from this research was that a large majority of mangers viewed leadership as the most important role among the ten roles
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