Chapter 12 - Management
Learning Objectives: To learn the different leadership styles and the functions/roles of management.
Being a manager is no easy job! There are two main theories regarding managers' functions and roles:
Fayol Functions of Management
Mintzberg Management Roles
According to Fayol, the 5 following functions of management are to facilitate the management process - they focus on the relationship employees vs. managers:
Planning objectives and tactics, organizing human and financial resources, commanding, directing, and motivating workers, coordinating and creating consistency between different parts of the organization, controlling and measuring performance against targets.
Mintzberg, on the other hand, observed many managers at work and concluded that the roles managers play at work can be summed up in the three following categories:
1. Interpersonal Roles: dealing with and motivating employees at all levels of the organization:
2. Informational Roles: acting as a source, receiver, and transmitter of information:
3. Decisional Roles: taking decisions and allocating resources to meet the organization's objectives:
Regardless of the theorist, it is clear that managers heavily contribute to business performance: by simply looking at some information it's easy to say whether or not managers have been successful in their jobs:
Is the business regularly meeting its objectives?
Has there been high levels of customer satisfaction?
Are workers motivated and turnover rate low?
Is the brand image strengthening itself?
Has there been high regards of social and environmental impacts of the business activity?
Is the communication within and with external stakeholders been successful?
Business In Action 12.1
Pairs Discussion
Managerial positions are many within an organization, they include:
Do understand, however, that different manager (regardless of position) might employ different leadership styles:
Autocratic Leadership
Democratic Leadership
Laissez-Faire Leadership
Let's understand each of them in more details as we go further...
Autocratic Leadership
Centralized decision-making (leader);
Decisions are communicated to workers;
Leader checks performance;
Focus on what to do rather on who will do;
It can generate low motivation
It is good for fast decision-making situations (e.g. hospitals);
Useful in situations which safety is on the line.
Democratic Leadership
The opposite of autocratic
Discussion is the basis for decision-making; It can improve the quality of the final decision (more inputs/opinions);
Two-way communication;
Increases workers’ motivation;
Useful when employees are skilled / experienced and interested in being involved.
Laissez-Faire Leadership:
Very little supervision or input from the leader;
“Let them do it” approach;
Useful for creative tasks (e.g. product development, creating a new ad);
Used for when workers have higher expertise than managers and better perform tasks on their own (e.g. research).
Paternalistic Leadership:
Listening, understanding, explaining, and consulting with workers before a decision is made;
Workers do not make decisions themselves;
Delegation of decision-making is unlike as a paternalistic leader decides what's best for the business and the workforce;
Focus on safety and security needs of workers (Maslow);
It's more autocratic than it appears;
Suitable for unskilled, untrained, and newly appointed workers;
It can lead to demotivation of experienced workers who would like to have decision-making responsibility.
Chapter 12 - Management
To-Do-List: Activity 12.2 & Activity 12.3
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