The Manager’s Job • HBR C LASSIC
to find out what the manager’s job really is.
Back to a Basic Description of
Managerial Work
Earlier, I defined the manager as that person
in charge of an organization or subunit. Besides CEOs, this definition would include vice
presidents, bishops, foremen, hockey coaches,
and prime ministers. All these “managers” are
vested with formal authority over an organizational unit. From formal authority comes
status, which leads to various interpersonal relations, and from these comes access to information. Information, in turn, enables the
manager to make decisions and strategies for
the unit.
The manager’s job can be described in
terms of various “roles,” or organized sets of
behaviors identified with a position. My description, shown in “The Manager’s Roles,”
comprises ten roles. As we shall see, formal authority gives rise to the three interpersonal
roles, which in turn give rise to the three informational roles; these two sets of roles enable
the manager to play the four decisional roles.
Interpersonal Roles
Three of the manager’s roles arise directly
from formal authority and involve basic interpersonal relationships. First is the figurehead
role. As the head of an organizational unit,
every manager must perform some ceremonial duties. The president greets the touring
dignitaries. The foreman attends the wedding
of a lathe operator. The sales manager takes
an important customer to lunch.
The chief executives of my study spent 12%
of their contact time on ceremonial duties; 17%
of their incoming mail dealt with acknowledgments and requests related to their status. For
example, a letter to a company president requested free merchandise for a crippled
schoolchild; diplomas that needed to be signed
were put on the desk of the school superinten-
Research on Managerial Work
In seeking to describe managerial work, I
conducted my own research and also
scanned the literature to integrate the findings of studies from many diverse sources
with my own. These studies focused on two
different aspects of managerial work. Some
were concerned with the characteristics of
work—how long managers work, where, at
what pace, with what interruptions, with
whom they work, and through what media
they communicate. Other studies were concerned with the content of work—what activities the managers actually carry out, and
why. Thus, after a meeting, one researcher
might note that the manager spent 45 minutes with three government officials in their
Washington office, while another might
record that the manager presented the company’s stand on some proposed legislation
in order to change a regulation.
A few of the studies of managerial work
are widely known, but most have remained
buried as single journal articles or isolated
books. Among the more important ones I
cite are:
• Sune Carlson developed the diary method
to study the work characteristics of nine
Swedish managing directors. Each kept a
harvard business review • march–april 1990
detailed log of his activities. Carlson’s results are reported in his book Executive Behaviour. A number of British researchers,
notably Rosemary Stewart, have subsequently used Carlson’s method. In Managers and Their Jobs, she describes the
study of 160 top and middle managers of
British companies.
• Leonard Sayles’s book Managerial Behavior is another important reference. Using
a method he refers to as “anthropological,” Sayles studied the work content of
middle and lower level managers in a
large U.S. corporation. Sayles moved
freely in the company, collecting whatever information struck him as important.
• Perhaps the best-known source is Presidential Power, in which Richard Neustadt
analyzes the power and managerial behavior of Presidents Roosevelt, Truman,
and Eisenhower. Neustadt used secondary sources—documents and interviews
with other parties.
• Robert H. Guest, in Personnel, reports on
a study of the foreman’s working day.
Fifty-six U.S. foremen were observed and
each of their activities recorded during
one eight-hour shift.
• Richard C. Hodgson, Daniel J. Levinson,
and Abraham Zaleznik studied a team of
three top executives of a U.S. hospital.
From that study they wrote The Executive
Role Constellation. They addressed the way
in which work and socioemotional roles
were divided among the three managers.
• William F. Whyte, from his study of a
street gang during the Depression, wrote
Street Corner Society. His findings about
the gang’s workings and leadership,
which George C. Homans analyzed in The
Human Group, suggest interesting similarities of job contents between street
gang leaders and corporate managers.
My own study involved five American
CEOs of middle- to large-sized organizations—a consulting firm, a technology company, a hospital, a consumer goods company, and a school system. Using a method
called “structural observation,” during one
intensive week of observation for each executive, I recorded various aspects of every
piece of mail and every verbal contact. In
all, I analyzed 890 pieces of incoming and
outgoing mail and 368 verbal contacts.
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