1.6: Summary

Key Terms

Decisional role

One of the three major roles that a manager assumes in the organization.

Executive Managers

Generally, a team of individuals is at the highest level of management in an organization.

First-line Managers

The level of management directly managing non-managerial employees.

Informational Role

One of the three major roles that a manager assumes in the organization.

Interpersonal Role

One of the three major roles that a manager assumes in the organization.

Middle Management

The managers in an organization at a level just below that of senior executives.

Summary of Learning Outcomes

1.2 What Do Managers Do?

1. What do managers do to help organizations achieve top performance?

Managers perform a variety of functions in organizations, but one of the most important functions they perform is communicating with direct reports to help their organizations achieve and exceed goals.

1.3 The Roles Managers Play

2. What do managers do to help organizations achieve top performance?

Managers perform a variety of roles in organizations, but one of the most important functions they perform is communicating with direct reports to help their organizations achieve and exceed goals. Managers perform three major roles within organizations: interpersonal roles, informational roles, and decisional roles. The extent of each of these roles depends on the manager’s position within the organizational hierarchy.

1.4 Major Characteristics of the Manager's Job

3. What are the characteristics that effective managers display?

Management is the process of planning, organizing, directing, and controlling the activities of employees in combination with other resources to accomplish organizational goals. Managerial responsibilities include long-range planning, controlling, environmental scanning, supervision, coordination, customer relations, community relations, internal consulting, and monitoring of products and services. These responsibilities differ by level in the organizational hierarchy and by department or function. The twenty-first-century manager will differ from most current managers in four ways. In essence, he will be a global strategist, a master of technology, a good politician, and a premier leader-motivator.

Chapter Review Questions

1. What characteristics and traits do you possess that are common to all successful managers?
2. Why should management be considered an occupation rather than a profession?
3. How do managers learn how to perform the job?
4. Explain the manager’s job according to Henry Mintzberg.
5. What responsibilities do managers have towards people within the organization? How do they express these responsibilities?
6. How do managers perform their job according to John Kotter?
7. How do managers make rational decisions?
8. How does the nature of management change according to one’s level and function in the organization?
9. Discuss the role of management in the larger societal context. What do you think the managers of the future will be like?
10. Identify what you think are the critical issues facing contemporary management. Explain.

Management Skills Application Exercises

1. During this and your other courses, there will likely be products of your and team-based assignments that can illustrate specific competencies, such as the ability to prepare a spreadsheet application, write programming code, or show your communication abilities that demonstrate your skills in a video. It is a good practice to catalog and save these artifacts in a portfolio that will be useful in demonstrating your skills in future job interviews.
2. Time management is an important skill that will impact your future as a manager. You can categorize the time that you spend as either required or discretionary. You can assess your time management skills by keeping track of your time using a schedule calendar and breaking down the time devoted to each activity over a week. After a week of logging the activity, note whether each activity was required or discretionary and whether the time was used productively or unproductively using a 10-point scale in which ten is very productive, and one is completely unproductive. Now, write up a plan for managing your time by coming up with a list of what to start doing and stop doing and what you can do to manage your discretionary time more productively.

Managerial Decision Exercises

1. You are a manager at a local convenience store that has been the victim of graffiti. Identify the roles you will undertake with both internal employees and others.
2. Here are three job titles. Rank which job would devote the most of its time to conceptual, human, and technical skills.
   • Vice president of finance at a Fortune 100 company
   • Coding for a video game producer
   • General manager at a local McDonald’s franchise

Critical Thinking Case

New Management Challenges for the New Age

Today’s news is littered with scandals, new allegations of sexual assault, and tragedy. Since 2017 and the #metoo Movement, stemming from the Harvey Weinstein scandal, more and more public figures have been put into the spotlight to defend themselves against allegations from women around the globe.

Not only publicly but privately in companies around the world, there have been firings and investigations into misconduct from co-workers, managers, and CEOs. It is a relevant topic that is getting long overdue publicity and encouraging more men and women to come forward to discuss openly rather than hide the events and injustices of the past. Other events showcase the tumultuous and on-edge society we are living in, such as the Charlottesville, VA attack that left one dead and 19 injured when a person drove a car through a crowd of protestors during a white nationalist gathering.

With events on a daily business, companies need to take a stand against racial hatred and harassment of any kind and have firm policies when such events occur. Take Netflix, for example, who, in July of 2018, fired its chief communications officer for saying the “N-word” in full form. This incident occurred during an internal meeting; the slur was not directed at anyone specific, but the communications officer claimed it was being made to emphasize the issue of offensive words in comedy programming. The “Netflix way,” a culture built around radical candor and transparency, was put to the test during this incident.

The offender, Jonathan Friedland, attempted to apologize for his misdeed, hoping it would fade away and his apology would be accepted. However, it didn’t work that way; instead, the anger was palpable between coworkers and eventually led to Friedland's firing after a few months of inaction.

Netflixers are given significant freedom and responsibility within their “Netflix way” culture. Blunt feedback is encouraged, and trust and discretion are the ultimate gatekeepers, as employees have access to sensitive information and are ultimately trusted for how they expense items and take vacation time.

Between the insanely fast-paced streaming services industry, it is hard to keep this culture at a premium, but it is imperative for the company's overall success. “As you scale a company to become bigger and bigger, how do you scale that kind of culture?” said Colin Estep, a former senior engineer who left voluntarily in 2016. “I don’t know that we ever had a good answer.”

To keep up, sometimes the company is seen as harsh in its tactics to keep the best of the best. “I think we’re transparent to a fault in our culture and that can come across as cutthroat,” said Walta Nemariam, an employee in talent acquisition at Netflix, in the video.

Netflix has stayed true to its cultural values despite the pressures and sometimes negative connotations associated with this “cutthroat” environment. The company's ability to remain agile while displaying no tolerance for societal injustices puts it at the forefront of new-age companies. It is a difficult pace to maintain, but it seems that, for now, its employees are keeping in stride and remaining true to who they are.

Questions:

1. How has the current cultural environment of our country shaped the way that companies are looking at their own corporate cultural standards?
2. What are the potential downfalls and positive influences of the “Netflix way”?
3. How does Netflix’s internal culture negatively or positively affect its ability to stay competitive and deliver cutting-edge content?

Sources:

Hertzler, L. (2018). Talking #MeToo, one year after bombshell Weinstein allegations. Penn Today. https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/talking-me-too-one-year-later.

Ramachandaran, S. & Flint, D. (2018). At Netflix, radical transparency and blunt firings unsettle the ranks. Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/at-netflix-radical-transparency-and-blunt-firings-unsettle-the-ranks-1540497174.

Stelter, B. (2017). The Weinstein effect: Harvey Weinstein scandal sparks movements in Hollywood and beyond. CNN Business. https://money.cnn.com/2017/10/20/media/weinstein-effect-harvey-weinstein/index.html.