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Introduction
Managers play pivotal roles in the success of organisations. To ensure that they have theoretical paradigms, which while applied help them to continue to realise success, a large scholarly body of knowledge has evolved seeking to study and or give insights to the most acceptable roles and functions of managers.
In a more interactive way, management refers to “human action, including design, to facilitate the production of useful outcomes from a system” (Gomez-Mejia, Balkin & Cardy 2008, p.20).
In the realisation of this goal, managers organise six M’s- men and women, machines, markets, money, methods, and materials such that the M’s operate in harmony in favour of organisational objectives, missions, goals, and aims (Marshall & Stewart 1981, p.177).
In this extent, the work of management encompasses utilisation of resources that are available at the disposal of an organisation to aid in the realisation of the objectives of the organisation. Many of the scholars in the field of management contend that the work of management involves tasks such as directing, controlling, organising, monitoring, and motivating among others.
Findings indicate that managers have central roles to play in fostering employees’ relations through harnessing their (employees) cultural diversities in an organisation, creating appropriate organisational behaviours that are consistent with an organisations’ missions, objectives and strategic goals, and initiating perspectives of social corporate responsibility in the effort to ensure that all organisations’ stakeholders are satisfied with the organisation.
In the execution of these tasks, managers must utilise their knowledge on fundamental functions that they serve within an organisation- controlling, directing, organising, and planning (Hales 1986, p.89). Ensuring that all these functions are integrated within the management body demands the possession of good communication skills.
This paper discusses and justifies social corporate responsibility and the nature of management role of communication in management as the most crucial findings in the studies of the management work.
Nature of Management Work
For any upcoming manager, research findings on the nature of the work of management are important. Investors risk their money in the anticipation of future gains. Due to operational dynamics, investors look for various ways of shifting around their money that is committed to investments in the effort to look for a myriad of ways that would yield optimal returns.
Research findings in the field of management reflect applicability of a similar analogy in the evaluation of the work of management.
Apart from the investment of energies of the managers in the running of an organisation, they have resources, which include people (employees), materials, and time (Mintzberg 1990, p.172) at their disposal, which they must establish appropriate combinations to yield optimal returns for the investors (shareholders in case of company).
Being one of the most important resources that are available to an organisation, managers must not only ensure that they have “the right employees at the right places and at the right time but also focus on improving the resource” (Coli & Klidas 1998, p.88).
Amid the many ways of accomplishing this requirement, motivation and empowerment are outstanding. Coli and Klidas (1998) studied empowerment as a component of management work. The authors argued that empowerment addresses most of the enduring problems in human resource by enhancing cooperation among various employees coupled with compliance (p.88).
In this extent, empowerment as an essential work of management helps managers to function as catalysts, facilitators, developers of people, and more importantly, coaches of people. However, it is vital to note that this list does not cover totally the roles of empowerment in management work.
In today’s work environments, people are required to think more about how certain tasks are to be completed as opposed to engaging more in physical activities (Gomez-Mejia, Balkin & Cardy 2008, p.25).
Consequently, it is crucial for managers to engage in asking various simulation interrogatives to unveil the solution of how people’s optimal mental work can be realised from them.
This way, the work of management appears more of being inclined to facilitation as opposed to decision-making as has been theorised by past literature on management work (Tengblad 2006, p.1439).
Acting as facilitators, managers have to establish various management approaches that suit the environmental condition of an organisation.
In this extent, when an organisation encounters periods of rapid technological changes, when it needs innovations and creativity to create new products while not negating services and periods of low motivations of employees among other challenging situations, managers have no choice rather than advocating for empowerment of employees.
This argument calls for incorporation of employees in decision-making process even if it means erosion of the authoritative power of a manager (Coli & Klidas 1998, p.90). Therefore, the work of management entails making bold decisions for the benefit of an organisation.
While empowerment through delegation is important as suggested by the findings of Coli and Klidas (1998) in their study on empowerment in 10 five-star hotels located in Amsterdam, more current findings indicate, “delegation is not enough in today’s knowledge-driven world to have work done through people” (Blalock 2005, p.237).
This finding is important since the modern managerial work environments have evolved to encompass more of problem solving, decision-making, and creative thinking tasks.
This argument perhaps complies precisely with the findings of various scholarly findings indicating that successful organisations in the globalisation age needs to cast off traditional approaches of management, which emphasise more on task-oriented mechanistic management that focuses more on controlling.
Effecting control is achieved through various mechanisms. Gronn (1983) identifies talk (communication) as one of such mechanisms. The author argues that, in school settings, “control is an aspect for administration for which talk is a key resource particularly for staff relations, which imply that talk is a key potential instrument of control for both principle and staff in schools” (Gronn 1983, p.1).
In this perspective, controlling is a means for making sure that tasks within an organisation are accomplished through specified processes and methods. Thus, it is a mechanism of making sure that tasks allocated to work groups and individuals are done in the manager’s way.
Hence, it hinders employees from creating and innovating new way of doing the same task in a manner that would save costs, which oppose the managers’ approach. Management approach, which emphasises control, hinders information sharing: a major driving force for organisational success for a knowledge-based organisation.
Stemming from the above arguments on the findings of the studies in the discipline of management work, it is evident that management work entangles multiple processes that never end, which cut across planning, organising, directing, and controlling.
In this line of argument, Mintzberg (1990) maintains that the work of a manager is difficult since it often calls managers to over work themselves. From the perspective of Mintzberg (1990), “brevity, fragmentation, and verbal communication characterise their work” (pp167-168).
Since this concern impedes incorporation of scientific research in aiding in the development of managerial tactics that would make managers more productive in their work, concerning Mintzberg (1990), studies in management work focuses on functions, which are easier to analyse.
This argument implies that the work of management extends from the key four pillars of management: directing, controlling, planning, and organising.
The degree of integration of the management functions with other organisational dynamics determines the productivity and effectiveness of the managers (Watson 2001, p.223). One of such dynamics in the degree to which managers permit employees to take part in decision-making processes in the effort to ensure that managers ensure that work is done through the human resource.
This strategy makes the nature of management work multidisciplinary to the extent that a manager has to deploy perspectives of economics, sociology, information technology, managerial science and art, and psychology among others to ensure that all organisational variables are balanced.
The findings on the nature of managerial work are important since management functions cannot be to be realised in the absence of the knowledge of anticipated outputs and if managers are not aware of their roles in an organisation and or how the roles changes with changes in organisation work environment and technology.
Management and Communication
Research findings indicate that managers spend most of their time communicating either verbally or through written communication (Gronn 1983). Managers facilitate things in an organisation through other people (organisational employees).
Consequently, it is important that managers are able to communicate effectively about the process of achieving the desired goals. Through directing as a fundamental role of management, managers utilise most of their time allocating jobs to various work groups and individuals in discharging other obligations that are akin to the success of an organisation.
Faced by such many tasks to accomplish within a finite amount of time, ineffective managers have the probabilities of blaming their failures on obligations (Mintzberg 1990, p.174). Consequently, it is important that managers are able to alter obligations to act as an advantage.
In this extent, speech is incredible since it gives managers an opportunity to lobby for appropriate cause. In this end, Mintzberg (1990) informs, “a meeting is a chance to reorganise a weak department- a visit to an important customer is a chance to extract trade information” (p.175) and hence impossible to achieve without possession of ardent communication skills.
Organisations are made of diverse people in terms of cultural affiliations. These differences may influence the success of an organisation in the sense that they may create different organisational cultures, which are not consistent with the goals, objectives, and missions of the organisation employing them.
This challenge calls for managers to look for a mechanism of creating an organisation culture that appreciates the cultural diversities of the people. Such a culture is organised around the common organisational objective. In this effort, top-down and bottom-up communication is imperative.
With regard to Blalock (2005), managers utilise about 75 to 80 percent of their total time in communication. In the context of the needs to organise people in an organisation around a common culture, this finding is imperative in the process of creation of a common culture.
Hence, a manager who realises that his or her work entails principally fostering effective communication would not feel overwhelmed by the task of creating a multicultural culture.
Research finding on the roles of communication in management evidences various reasons why managers ought to engage in good communication. Such reasons underpin the effectiveness of a manager in performing his or her managerial tasks.
One of the reasons is laid on the platforms of the expensiveness of failure to foster effective communication in organisations.
In this perspective, Blalock established that managers’ promotional rates were dependent on their ability to make things done in an organisation through people (2005, p.239), which is not only a disadvantage to the managers’ angle of view but also from the organisation’s perspective because ineffectiveness of managers influences the success of an organisation in terms of its profitability.
Communication plays a pivotal role in the modern work environments. The organisational environments continue to be complex due to increased competition that is characterised by excess of surplus in productions.
Consequently, only organisations that are able to harness their production resources would be able to reduce their costs of productions, which are important for an organisation to gain a competitive advantage in the market places. Employees are among the many organisational resources that a manager has sole responsibility to manage.
Management of an organisation’s employees is improbable without ardent vertical and horizontal communication. Research finding on the roles of communication as a constituent element of management work is also critical considering that modern organisations are focusing on strategic missions to be globalised.
Globalisation implies that an organisation increases its customer base. Global customers have different tastes and preferences. Where an organisation establishes presence in different nations across the globe, it is also likely that it will employ people from differing cultural, racial, and ethnic backgrounds.
All these factors reinforce the perspective that managers of globalising organisations are increasingly facing more roles in enhancing cultural interactivity of their employees.
With the findings that communication is an essential tool for harmonising employees’ pool differences, effective communication is certainly one of the elements that organisations will consider in hiring management staff.
Communication entangles the use of words to spell out the required course of action in an organisation. This line of view is also held by Gronn (1983). In school settings, management work is effected through exchange of words to the extent that “…administrative control is accomplished by talks” (Gronn 1983, p.1).
Hence, through a constant talk, school management teams are able to accomplish their administrative tasks, which may be interpreted in the context of the management work as encompassing organising, directing, planning, and controlling.
Hence, communication is an essential aspect of management in all settings involving organisation, planning, directing, and controlling human resource.
Management Social Corporate Responsibility
Social responsibly is a new aspect of components of work of management in an organisation. Managers have the tasks of ensuring that not all stakeholders of an organisation are caught up in the battle for conflicts of interests (Tengblad 2006, p.1438).
For them to do this job, managers need to harmonise all the stakes of the organisational stakeholders in a manner that is consistent with the goals of an organisation. Literature on management work associates such a requirement with the adoption of principles of social corporate management within organisations.
From the most fundamental perspective, social corporate responsibility (CSR) is the obligation for companies not only to act to serve their own interests but also the interests of the society. More interactively, CSR is defined as an “economic, legal, ethical, and discretionary expectation that the society has on organisations at a given point in time” (Carroll & Buchholtz 2003, p. 36).
A thorough examination of CSR is essentially provided through analysis of stakeholders. Stakeholders encompass all groups and specific individuals who either benefit, or even are harmed by decisions made by an organisation’s management arm.
Managers cannot make decisions that will not harm all the organisational stakeholders if they do not harmonise the differences among the stakeholders of the organisations they manage.
Social corporate responsibility is presented in the management work literature as an incredible tool for creating integration of interests of differing people who have special interests in an organisation.
As Carroll and Buchholtz (2003, p. 36), “the key principle of social corporate responsibility is pegged on the idea that organisations have philanthropic, ethical, and moral responsibilities to play in addition to providing returns to investors”.
Additionally, organisations gain immensely when they respect the environment in which they are established. Research findings in the studies on management work indicate that it is crucial for managers to focus on how they would hike the profitability of the organisations they lead.
They should also look for mechanisms of ensuring mitigation of risky situations that may prompt an organisation to hike its weakness and threats to its operations (Tengblad 2006, p.1444). One of the ways of doing this task is through adopting principles of corporate social responsibility.
In the discussion of social corporate responsibility, as an essential component of work of management, it is perhaps important to consider how the principles apply to some stakeholder in an organisation, for instance, customers and employees.
Employees constitute an organisation’s stakeholders who help in the process of conversion of raw materials into finished products and services through value addition. Thus, they are central to the CSR program.
More importantly, they are crucial to an organisation since they “invest their skills and time in their work and that their livelihood depends on the activities of the organisation” (Carroll, & Buchholtz 2003, p.67).
The main task of management is to adopt strategies for determining how employees’ interests are merged with the main goal of an organisation without creating conflict of interests. It is in this extent that management literature findings on the roles of corporate responsibility in an organisation are significant.
One of the reasons cited by management literature for existence of organisations is to create value to customers. Customers are the chief stakeholders that keep any organisation’s business in operation.
Apart from ensuring customers’ satisfaction with the products that the company offers to them, an organisation through management arm has other ethical and moral obligations towards them. In fact, customers are important since the degree to which the reputation of an organisation is maintained depends on their perceptions about the way an organisation in question treats them.
Treating customers with courtesy ensures better reputation of the name of the business and hence more sales meaning more returns on investment to the investors. Organisations management obligation is to ensure that organisations engage in business in a long-term basis (Garriga & Mele 2004, p.52.).
Customers are the main tools for ensuring realisation of this obligation. The issue is thus how to retain first time customers and make them faithful subsequent buyers of organisational products through adoption of CSR principles.
To resolve this issue, organisations endeavour to not only treat customers fairly but also offers products and services of high quality at fair prices. Based on these arguments, findings on the roles of management in enhancing CSR in an organisation are very important.
Conclusion
The role of management in an organisation is an area of study that has attracted the interest of many scholars within the last three decades. More efforts of the studies in management work have been dedicated on establishing the basic functions of a manager in an organisation coupled with delving on theoretical paradigms on how managers can be effective in executing their key functions.
As discussed in the paper, these functions are directing, controlling, organising, and planning. The paper argued that managers achieve these core functions by focusing on other aspects such as social corporate responsibility, adopting appropriate communication, and motivational techniques such as empowerment.
In fact, the paper discussed these three aspects as the most important findings in the management work-studies. In case of social corporate responsibility, the paper held the findings on its roles in an organisation as crucial since a manager cannot avoid conflicts of interest among organisational stakeholders without paying attention to mechanisms of harmonising all stakes of the stakeholders.
Communication is one of the most important aspects of managerial work, which help binding all organisational processes. Findings on the nature of management work were also considered in the paper as important since execution of the management work requires people to know what management embraces.
References
Blalock, M 2005, ‘Listen up, why good communication is good business’, Journal of Marketing Management, vol. 9 no. 3, pp. 233-243.
Carroll, B & Buchholtz, A 2003, Business and Society: Ethics and Stakeholder Management, Thomson South-Western, Australia.
Coli, H & Klidas, A 1998, ‘Empowerment in five-star hotels: choice, voice or rhetoric?’, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, vol. 10 no.3, pp. 88-95.
Garriga, E & Mele, D 2004, ‘Corporate Social Responsibility Theories: Mapping the Territory’, Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 5 no. 3, pp. 51-71.
Gomez-Mejia, L, Balkin, D, & Cardy, R 2008, Management: People, Performance, Change, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY.
Gronn, P 1983, ‘Talk as the work: the accomplishment of school administration’, Administrative Science Quarterly, vol. 28 no.1, pp. 1-21.
Hales, C 1986, ‘What do managers do? A critical review of the evidence’, Journal of Management Studies, vol. 23 no. 1, pp. 88-115.
Marshall, J & Stewart, R 1981, ‘Managers’ job perceptions. Part I: their overall frameworks and working strategies’, Journal of Management Studies, vol. 18 no. 2, pp. 177-90.
Mintzberg, H 1990, ‘The manager’s job: folklore and fact’, Harvard Business Review, vol. 3 no. 2, pp. 163-76.
Tengblad, S 2006, ‘Is there a ‘new managerial work’? A comparison with Henry Mintzberg’s classic study 30 years later’, Journal of Management Studies, vol. 43 no. 7, pp. 1437-1461.
Watson, T 2001, ‘The emergent manager and processes of management pre-learning’, Management Learning, vol. 32 no. 2, pp. 221-325.
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