BUSINESS MANAGEMENT

MANAGEMENT FUNCTIONS,
ROLES AND SKILLS
Mintzberg's Managerial Roles
What do managers do?

Interpersonal Roles – roles that
involve people (subordinates and
people outside the organization) and
other duties that are ceremonial and
symbolic in nature
1. Figurehead – symbolic head;
obliged to perform a number of
routine duties of a legal or social
nature (e.g. greeting visitors,
signing legal documents) 9
Mintzberg's Managerial Roles
What do managers do?
2. Leader – responsible for the
motivation of subordinates; responsible
for staffing, training, and associated
duties (e.g. performing activities
involving subordinates)
3. Liaison – maintains self-developed
network of outside contacts and
informers who provide favors and
information (e.g. acknowledging mail,
doing external board work, performing
activities involving outsiders)
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Mintzberg's Managerial Roles
What do managers do?

Informational Roles – roles that involve
collecting, receiving and disseminating
information
1. Monitor – seeks and receives wide
variety of internal and external
information to develop thorough
understanding of organization and
environment (e.g. reading periodicals
and reports, maintaining personal
contacts)
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Mintzberg's Managerial Roles
What do managers do?
2.Disseminator – transmits information
received from outsiders or from
subordinates to members of the
organization (e.g. holding informational
meetings, making phone calls to relay
information)
3. Spokesperson – transmits information
to outsiders on organization's plans,
policies, actions, results, etc. (e.g.
holding board meetings, giving
information to the media)
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Mintzberg's Managerial Roles
What do managers do?

Decisional Roles – roles that entail
making decisions or choices
1. Entrepreneur – searches
organization and its environment
for opportunities and initiates
improvement projects to bring
about changes (e.g. organizing
strategy and review sessions to
develop new programs)
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Mintzberg's Managerial Roles
What do managers do?
2. Disturbance Handler – responsible for
corrective action when organization faces
important, unexpected disturbances (e.g.
crisis management)
3. Resource allocator – responsible for the
allocation of organizational resources of all
kinds (e.g. budgeting, work scheduling)
4. Negotiator – responsible for representing
the organization at major negotiations (e.g.
Union contract negotiations)
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Managerial Skills
What skills do managers need?
CONCEPTUAL SKILLS

 Ability to use information to solve business

problems
 Identification of opportunities for innovation
 Recognizing problem areas and implementing
solutions
 Selecting critical information from masses of data
 Understanding of business uses of technology
 Understanding of organization's business model
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Managerial Skills
What skills do managers need?
COMMUNICATION SKILLS

 Ability to transform ideas into words and actions

 Credibility among colleagues, peers and
subordinates
 Listening and asking questions
 Presentation skills; spoken format
 Presentation skills; written and/or graphic formats

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Managerial Skills
What skills do managers need?
INTERPERSONAL SKILLS

 Coaching and mentoring skills

 Diversity skills: working with diverse people and
cultures
 Networking within the organization
 Networking outside the organization
 Working in teams; cooperation and commitment

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Managerial Skills
What skills do managers need?
EFFECTIVENESS SKILLS
 Contributing to corporate mission/ departmental
objectives
 Customer focus
 Multitasking: working at multiple tasks in parallel

Negotiating skills
 Project management
 Reviewing operations and implementing improvements
 Setting and maintaining performance standards internally
and externally
 Setting priorities for attention and activity
 Time management 21
SEATWORK
Case Study: Starbucks Corporation
 On an intermediate piece of paper, answer the
following questions:
1. What management skills do you think would be most
important for Howard Schultz to have? Why?
2. What skills do you think would be most important for
a Starbucks store manager to have? Why?
3. Give examples of how Howard Schultz might perform
the interpersonal roles, the informational roles, and the
decisional roles?

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REFERENCES:

 Robbins, Stephen P. and Coulter, Mary.

Introduction to Management (9th edition). Prentice
Hall. 2007
 Compact Oxford English Dictionary (3rd edition
revised). 2008

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