Mintzberg's Interpersonal Roles
Assignment 1 (b): Short Essay
Managers fulfil many different roles every day, for instance when leading a team a manager may have to resolve conflicts, negotiate new contracts or representing the department at a board meeting. Put simply a manager is constantly switching roles as tasks, situations, and expectations change.
The Managerial Roles Approach which is one of the newer approaches to management analysis has been popularised by management expert and professor Henry Mintzberg. Mintzberg. He has given this approach a higher visibility although many researchers have studied the actual work of managers. More recently, studies have focused to determine whether managers really behave as they are said to by literature in field. Henry Mintzberg, recognized this and he followed five top managers for one week, analysing their behaviour and attempting to categorize the functions they performed. Ultimately he found that these managers did not perform all the traditional functions described in the literature. However, He argued that there are ten primary roles or behaviours that can be used to categorise a manager’s different functions. The 10 roles are then classified into three categories which are interpersonal roles which this assignment is mainly focused on, the rest are informational and decisional roles. Interpersonal roles are managerial roles that involve people and other duties that are ceremonial and symbolic in nature. The interpersonal category includes a figurehead, a leader and a liaison. A figurehead is where a manager has social, ceremonial and legal responsibilities. The manager is expected to be a source of inspiration and someone to look up to as a person with authority, and as a figurehead, this role includes greeting visitors; signing legal documents. A leader is where the manager provides leadership for the team, the department or perhaps the entire organisation; and it’s where the manager manages the performance and responsibilities
Managers fulfil many different roles every day, for instance when leading a team a manager may have to resolve conflicts, negotiate new contracts or representing the department at a board meeting. Put simply a manager is constantly switching roles as tasks, situations, and expectations change.
The Managerial Roles Approach which is one of the newer approaches to management analysis has been popularised by management expert and professor Henry Mintzberg. Mintzberg. He has given this approach a higher visibility although many researchers have studied the actual work of managers. More recently, studies have focused to determine whether managers really behave as they are said to by literature in field. Henry Mintzberg, recognized this and he followed five top managers for one week, analysing their behaviour and attempting to categorize the functions they performed. Ultimately he found that these managers did not perform all the traditional functions described in the literature. However, He argued that there are ten primary roles or behaviours that can be used to categorise a manager’s different functions. The 10 roles are then classified into three categories which are interpersonal roles which this assignment is mainly focused on, the rest are informational and decisional roles. Interpersonal roles are managerial roles that involve people and other duties that are ceremonial and symbolic in nature. The interpersonal category includes a figurehead, a leader and a liaison. A figurehead is where a manager has social, ceremonial and legal responsibilities. The manager is expected to be a source of inspiration and someone to look up to as a person with authority, and as a figurehead, this role includes greeting visitors; signing legal documents. A leader is where the manager provides leadership for the team, the department or perhaps the entire organisation; and it’s where the manager manages the performance and responsibilities