Journal of Management Studies 23:1 January 1986 ‘0022-2380 $3.50 WHAT DO MANAGERS DO? A CRITICAL REVIEW OF THE EVIDENCE Coun P. Hares Department of Management Studies for Tourism and Hotel Industries, University of Surrey INTRODUCTION In this article, I consider the extent to which the question ‘What do managers do® has been satisfactorily answered by published empirical studies of mana- gerial work and behaviour. Two aspects of this enterprise require justification: the pertinence of the question posed and the need for another review of the evidence. Certainly, the question ‘What do managers do?” has an air of naiveté, insolence, even redundancy about it. Yet it is a question which is begged by many management-related issues. Arguments that the quality of manage- ment is decisive in both organizational and national economic performance presuppose that the exclusively ‘managerial’ contribution to that performance is both tangible and identifiable. Claims for managerial authority invariably rest not upon de facto status and power, but upon an implicit job of managing’ for which authority is the necessary resource. The vast and growing industry of management education, training and development presumably rests upon a set of ideas about what managers do and, hence, what managers are being educated, trained and developed for. Finally, nowhere is the question of what managers do more insistently begged than in that substantial portion of the literature on management which is concerned with ‘effective’ management (or managerial effectiveness). Indeed ‘effective management’ has ceased to be a purely contingent pairing of adjective and noun and has become a self evident object whose causes and concomitants may be investigated unambiguously. In contrast, I contend that the term ‘effective management is a second-order normative statement which presupposes the existence of relatively reliable answers to first-order empirical questions. For me, ‘effectiveness’ denotes the extent to which what managers actually do matches what they are supposed to do. This is recognized in a number of definitions of ‘managerial effectiveness’ offered in the literature, despite their superficial differences." A central implication of this, however, is less frequently recognized: that the extent of this congruence can only be judged once the two sides of the ‘effectiveness equation’ are known Address for reprints: Dr. C. P. Hales, Department of Management Studies for Tourism and Hotel Industries, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey GU2 5XH. SserverWHAT DO MANAGERS DO? A CRITICAL REVIEW 89 empirically. It is necessary, therefore, to have reliable evidence on what managers do, in both senses of the term ‘do’. Some of the more celebrated writings on effective management are singularly reticent about specifying what effective managers are effective atl), It is also my contention that earlier reviews of published evidence on managerial work have not addressed the issue of what managers do in these terms. Mintzberg’s (1973) review of the existing evidence which precedes his own celebrated study is now over ten years old and there have been a number of significant and sophisticated studies published since that time. Stewart's (1983) more recent review focuses upon an aspect of managerial work — managerial behaviour - of which her own studies have made such a large contribution to our knowledge. I wish to go beyond that focus here principally because one of my central arguments is that ‘managerial work’ and ‘managers’ behaviour are not synonymous, even though many of the published studies imply that they are. Consequently, evidence on managers’ behaviour provides only a partial answer to the question: What do managers do? After reviewing what I take to be the key findings of the studies in terms of five principal topics, each of which, explicitly or implicitly, addresses a particular question about managerial work, I will discuss three general limita- tions of the existing evidence. First, I argue that the various studies tread a precarious course between illuminating variation and bewildering inconsistency and that, notwithstanding the richness of diversity, there are good arguments for the development and use of more consistent and comparable categories. Secondly, I suggest that the emphasis in the studies on managerial behaviour represents a limitation insofar as a context for locating and judging that behaviour is absent. Finally, I question the extent to which the studies identify work or even behaviour which is inclusively and exclusively ‘managerial’. I seek to show that each of these limitations is traceable to a more general unwillingness to consider the wider context of managers’ behaviour ~ in particular, ‘managerial tasks’, ‘managerial responsibilities’ and the ‘management function’ - and to develop concepts which permit this consideration. For the purposes of this review of what is known about what managers do I adopt particular and necessarily restrictive definitions of ‘knowledge’ and ‘managers’. As far as ‘knowledge’ is concerned, at risk of doing considerable violence to more sophisticated epistemological niceties, I distinguish among evidence'*l, theories and models. This review is chiefly concerned with published evidence, although it touches on models where these guide the collection or order the presentation of evidence. Reference to theories is confined to indicating the relative absence of links between theory and evidence As far as the term ‘managers’ is concerned, I follow the researchers concerned in adopting a nominalist definition as a starting point. That is, I follow Stewart (1976) in taking a manager to be ‘anyone above a certain level, roughly above foreman whether. . .in control of staff or not’, and for the same reason as Stewart, namely that I am interested, at least initially, in ‘the jobs that Copyright © 2001 All Rights Reserved90 COLIN P. HALES companies call managerial and which form part of the management hierarchy for selection, training and promotion’ (Stewart, 1976, p. 4). I therefore consider it of greater value to start by investigating what those deemed managers do rather than to debate a priori who managers ‘really’ ard*!, What I do hope to show, however, is that such an investigation does inevitably come up against the problem of not only who managers are, but what ‘management is: this issue is one from which the studies have shied away, in my view to their detriment. WHAT MANAGERS DO: THE EVIDENCE ‘The absence of both a common focus for the research and comparable categories to guide collection and presentation of evidence renders the studies to be reviewed here resistant to the search for generalities through processes of contrast and combination. To re-cast the available evidence into common terms would involve both unwarranted interpretation and considerable distortion, so this review will take the original categories of the research studies as its starting point. ‘The studies reviewed here essentially shed light on five major areas and provide answers to five implicit questions about managerial work: (1) The substantive elements of managerial work (What do managers do?) (2) The distribution of managers’ time between work elements (How do managers work?) (3) Interactions: with whom managers work (With whom do managers work?) (4) Informal elements of managerial work (What else do managers do?) (3) Themes which pervade managerial work (What qualities does managerial work have?). Whilst no individual study or writer is concerned with all of these topics, the topics and their implicit questions are recurring and identifiable features of the accumulated evidence. Hence, I have chosen to group and classify the available material in terms of evidencé®!. Whilst this is only one of a number of possible alternative orderings, it does attempt to lay an empirical foundation to the area of study upon which more elaborate theories and models may rest. Before considering these areas in more detail, it might be useful to list the research studies which form the major sources of evidence, as shown in table I. For present purposes, I will treat the evidence accumulated by the above studies as a single entity. It should be recognized, however, that this evidence is the product of some 30 years of studies, during which time there have been discernible shifts in focus, methods and models. Perhaps the most clearly discernible of these shifts has been away from the concern in the 1950s, 1960s SserverWHAT DO MANAGERS DO? A CRITICAL REVIEW a1 Table L. Principal sources of evidence on managerial work Author Date Method of data collection Features of sample Brewer and 1964 Self-record diaries over 6 senior managers Tomlinson 24% weeks from 6 firms in 6 U.K. industries Burns 1957 Self-record diaries over 76 top managers from 3-5 weeks 6 medium-sized Scottish factories Campbell ef a 1970 citing: (i) Kay 1959 ‘Critical incidents’ reported 74 managers reporting by qualified observers ‘on 691 incidents of foreman behaviour ii) Williams 1959 ‘Critical incidents! 742 executives, 3,500 incidents 1956 Essays to develop 245 office supervisors descriptive statements forming basis of administered questionnaire Carlson 1951 Reporting by trained 10 executives observers using checklist in Sweden and questionnaire, over 4 weeks Child and 1973 Selfadministered 787 managers from 78 Ellis questionnaire organizations in 6 U.K. industries Copeman, 1963, (®) Executive time survey ( 58 executives Luijk and sheet’ (chief execs, Hanika directors, depart- ment heads), UK. (ii) Observation (ii) 25 top executives, Holland (1,000 hours) Dalton 1959 10 years of participant 4 firms ~ small, observation, ‘covert’ inter- medium and large i viewing, study of files factory and depart- i ment stores in U.S. j Dubin and 1964 Self-record diaries (as 8 executives from 5 i Spray Burns 1957) over 2 weeks firms in U.S. " Fletcher 1973 Participant observation 75 middle managers ‘ of different ages and functions in i medium sized company in U.K. Gouldner 1955 Participant observation ‘Small gypsum factory in semi-rural community Hemphill 1959 ‘Executive position 93 executives in 5 description’ questionnaire major U.S. companies containing 575 items Copyright © 2001 All Rights Reserved92 COLIN P. HALES ‘Table I continued Author Date Method of data collection Features of sample Horne and 1965 Self-record ‘Managers! 66 middle managers Lupton activity records’, containing over range of firms activities with possible (varying by size and descriptors. One week technology) in U.K. Kelly 1964 “Activity sampling 2,800 observations of 4 section managers in 1 Scottish company Kotter 1982a Questionnaire; observation; 15 high-level general and appointment diary; managers over range 1982b interviews; printed of corporations information in US, Martin 1956 Questionnaire Managers (distributed by level) in large U.S. manufacturing company Mintzberg 1973 Intensive observation 5 chief executives in and (‘shadowing’), diaries and 5 U.S. companies 1975 analysis of managers’ records, plus review of other research Nichols and 1977 Field observations and Managers and Beynon informal interviewing foremen in large chemical plant in S. England Pheysey 1972 ‘Questionnaire (based on 96 managers on Hemphill, 1959) raining course in UK. Sayles 1964 Field observations 75 lower and riddle managers in division of large U.S. corporation Silverman 1976 ‘Tape-recorded informal Managers and and Jones interviews and management trainees observation in large U.K. public sector organization Stewart 1967a Self-record diaries over 160 managers and 4 weeks (distributed by 1967b fanction and level) in U.K. companies 1976 Self-record diaries over 3 Pilot interviews: 180 weeks; observation; managers in diverse informal and formal jobs. Main interviews: interviews 274 managers (mostly middle and senior). Interview study: 16 selected jobs Stewart et al, 1980 Interviews and observation 41 District Administrators in the NHS. 1982 Open-ended interviews 98 managers, by level and observation and function. 6 pairs of managers in 6 different jobs ervelWHAT DO MANAGERS DO? A CRITICAL REVIEW 93 and early 1970s with identifying the elements of managerial work towards an appreciation of its processes. There has, therefore, been a movement away from a static, analytic approach, the results of which were, essentially, snapshots of ‘the’ managerial job towards a more synthetic approach providing a moving picture of the fluidities of managerial work in its different guises. More or less concurrent with this shift of emphasis, related changes in aims, methods and models have occurred. Firstly, researchers have abandoned the search ~ implicit in some early studies ~ for the definitive characteristics of the managerial job and have been concerned rather to indicate the diversity and variation in managerial jobs or to provide analytical tools for handling that diversity. Secondly, there has been a shift away from the measurement of managerial Jobs across pre-formed categories toward the discovery of categories. Thirdly, there has been the increasing use of a variety of research instruments in any single study, rather than reliance upon one research method. Finally, the models of managerial work which have both guided the collection of and formed the framework for research data, have become more fluid in character, positing a contingent and processual relationship between the constituent variables, rather than a fixed and additive one. Elements of Managerial Work Six researchers offer, explicitly or implicitly, lists of elements (see table II) which together constitute the content of managerial ‘work’, even if different managerial jobs display these in different combination. These lists display a degree of discontinuity, even inconsistency. Hemphill’s ‘Position elements’ mix both ‘managerial’ and ‘specialist’ elements and the discon- tinuity between these and Pheysey’s list is notable given that Pheysey’s research (Pheysey, 1972) was based upon Hemphill’s original study (Hemphill, 1959). Certainly here are early grounds for suspecting that the content of managerial work is not common across levels of management or cultures. Mintzberg (1973) and Sayles (1964) show greater agreement of substance beneath superficial differences of terminology, although this agreement cuts through their different categories. For example, Sayles’ ‘Leadership’ category subsumes Mintzberg’s ‘Figurehead’, ‘Leader’ and ‘Spokesman’ roles and his emphasis upon ‘Participation in external work flows’ via different types of relationships expands upon Mintzberg’s ‘Liaison’ role, as well as indicating the external character of the ‘Entrepreneur’, Disseminator’, ‘Disturbance handler’ and ‘Negotiator’ roles. ‘The major difference between Sayles and Mintzberg is that the latter views managerial work as more self-contained, whereas the former is more concerned to locate managerial work within the context of organizational processes. The lists which I have attributed to Kotter (1982a) and Stewart (1967a, 1976, 1982 and Stewart ef al., 1980) are implicit rather than explicit in their work. It does not do unnecessary violence to Kotter’s work to suggest that his categories Copyright © 2001 All Rights ReservedCOLIN P. HALES 4 diyszapeoy OD Bayou, ¢ Superouyy cy Sumqas ov Sumpny cy surarqord yeuosiad ur ysax01U] g ‘ssaafoud sovwROPON' 4D so1wo0]fe soMOsy £D anouasdanug 1D yeuowPeg ueursoyods gq Jorenymnessig 2a xOHUOW IT uonemndar sqot :aTWUIpIO [euoBeuey -qns Surmaraay ¢ yyeuoneuuoyuy gq syoyreut sionpoxd sotrepunoq, sBunsour yo spodse gol Sumas + Surjarg gv Sunonpuog + wosrer] ¢v TeoruypaL, + Supe ys saqeuppio. Jonuos ssouisnq, pponeaouyy ¢ Super, 7V -qns Suyayg ¢ per] ZV Teasaauy ¢ 3HOMm Jo ‘worstazodns soueuaIUTE YN Z Burpring yoMaN % MOBAHOM TW Suraueyd premsog % peaqomBry ty OM & :sdrysuonep: ma smoy-yrom soyars (Burney) Tewsorx9 ut yes jeuonesodo sepuoSe Sumeg | v Sunoows afqnoxy sqeuosrodioryy-y “uot BuIpiAord | amoysqaq :soptanoe soj0 PuoBeceyy, siuauIa[p vorNsog, Teusieueyy, yguswiap uonIseg, antes sloshoyy sBaganayy sneyduayy Tre feserver is] OpyndlWHAT DO MANAGERS DO? A CRITICAL REVIEW 95 of Setting agendas, Network building, Utilizing networks and Implementing agendas ‘translate’, broadly, into the tasks of Planning’, ‘Making contacts’, ‘Influencing’ and ‘Decision making’. Stewart has always concentrated more upon the form of managerial work than upon content. However, her work does suggest that common, recurrent activities are Liaison, Maintenance of work processes, Innovation and Setting the boundaries of the job. Amid the diversity of evidence, some common findings recur. First, managers perform both specialist/technical and general/administrative work. Second, the latter is sufficiently ill-defined that part of managerial work is determining its own boundaries. Finally, within these fluid boundaries, the following strands are common, if not universal: (1) Acting as figurehead and leader of an organizational unit (2) Liaison: the formation and maintenance of contacts (3) Monitoring, filtering and disseminating information (4) Allocating resources (3) Handling disturbances and maintaining work flows (6) Negotiating (7) Innovating (8) Planning (9) Controlling and directing subordinates. Whilst exhibiting striking parallels with the supposedly outdated ‘classical principles of management, this evidence takes us further for two reasons. Firstly, it includes certain elements which could not, without stretching a point, be subsumed under any of the ‘classical’ principles. Secondly, the research studies do offer detailed indications of what these principles may involve. Sayles, Mintzberg, Stewart and Kotter all provide fresh insights and subtleties to the tasks of ‘planning’, ‘co-ordinating’ and ‘commanding. Stewart (1976) also sheds light on the chronological patterns and sources of managerial work by distinguishing the duration of work, time span, recurrence, unexpectedness and, finally, source of initiation. These give additional dimen- sions to the constituents of managerial work: what managers do has different durations, rhythms, degrees of uncertainty and origins. It is evident from table II that the different studies and, indeed, sometimes the same study, point to different ways of conceptualizing the constituent features of managerial work ~ in particular the difference between observable activities which constitute the performance of the job, and implied or reported tasks which represent expected or intended outcomes. Hemphill (1959), Pheysey (1972) and, to a lesser degree, Sayles (1964) suggest that activities and tasks are empirically intertwined or, at least, do not attempt to separate them. Mintzberg (1975) does distinguish between activities and managerial roles ~ which constitute ‘tasks’ as defined above, given that they are developed by asking why a manager undertook a particular activity. However, as Mintzberg describes Copyright © 2001 All Rights Reserved96 COLIN P, HALES them, the ‘Interpersonal’ and ‘Decisional’ roles seem more task-like in character and the activities which Mintzberg describes vary considerably in specificity and behavioural simplicity - for example, from the relatively straightforward ‘activity’ of ‘forwarding mail’ to the seemingly more complex ‘negotiation’. Kotter (1982a) is also careful to distinguish between the manager's self-defined tasks of network building and agenda setting and the manager's specific activities or behaviours. The differentia specifica of managerial jobs are ‘agendas’ ~ the manager’s mental representations of the tasks which form a unit of work, together with an indication of their priorities. Certainly there are broad affinities between what Mintzberg means by ‘Interpersonal’ and ‘Decisional’ roles and what Kotter means by ‘Networks’ and ‘Agenda setting’. There is, however, an important difference between them. Mintzberg’s roles represent behaviours which are combined and classified by intention whereas Kotter’s networks and agendas represent second order constructs whereby observed behaviour may be understood. Stewart's (1967a, 1976, 1982 and Stewart ef al., 1980) research has close links with Kotter’s, primarily because her object of enquiry has consistently been managerial jobs and the dimensions along which these vary. It is possible, for example, to use Stewart's Demands, Constraints and Choices framework (1982) to examine the provenance of managerial Agendas and to combine Stewart's findings on Contact Patterns (1976) with Kotter's on Networks. Stewart’s work is less easy to square with that of Hemphill or Mintzberg (Stewart, 1967a, p. 154). The Division of Managerial Time between Activities Diversity is also evident in studies of how managers allocate their time. The studies themselves differ in terms of what they see managerial time as being distributed among and they focus upon rather different constituents of managerial work from those discussed above. Often the focus is the formal pattern of managerial work, rather than its substantive content. Pheysey (1972), Stewart (1976) and Kotter (1982) are those who do attempt to examine the formal pattern of previously identified work elements. Pheysey (1972) found that ‘Trouble shooting’, ‘Forward planning’ and ‘Briefing sub- ordinates’ were the most frequently occurring. Stewart’s (1976) examination of the distribution of work across different time rhythms identifed four distinct Work Patterns: ‘System maintenance’, ‘System administration’, ‘Project’ and ‘Mixed’, Kotter’s (1982a) evidence on the allocation of time between behaviours and contacts echoes other studies!”], but his explanation of this pattern is somewhat different. A picture of managerial work as technical, tactical, reactive and frenetic recurs across studies of time budgeting. Carlson (1951), Copeman ef al, (1963), Horne and Lupton (1965) and Mintzberg (1973) all indicate that even senior managers spend little time on planning or abstract formulation, are subject to constant interruptions, hold short face-to-face meetings which flit from topic to topic and Topynant © SU0T All Rights Reserved saat reeWHAT DO MANAGERS DO? A CRITICAL REVIEW 97 respond to the initiatives of others far more than they initiate themselves. The conclusion drawn by these researchers is that the notion of the manager as strategist, planner and thinker is a myth (Mintzberg, 1975) and that even senior managers allow themselves to be diverted from their ‘real’ work by constant interruption and capricious interpersonal contact. Copeman ef al. conclude that ‘the office is no place to work. . .the only effective way for an executive to make sure he is not interrupted is to be out’. (1963, pp. 113-4) and Mintzberg (1973) sees reactive, concrete work as breeding superficiality and a preference for a ‘stimulus response milieu’ (1973, p. 5). An earlier cautionary note was struck by Brewer and Tomlinson (1964) who argued that the erratic, verbal, apparently non-decisional character of managerial work is consistent with the manager's need to deal with complexity through rapid accumulation and systematization of information and through the delegation of decisions. It was left to Kotter (1982a), however, to develop these ideas, arguing that, in the context of ‘agendas’ and ‘networks, a reactive, informal and piecemeal distribution of time and effort is both efficient and effective. Agendas require large quantities of information to be gathered quickly, whilst the development and activation of networks requires interaction with large numbers of people, often informally. Consequently, the absence of planning is more apparent than real: managers plan implicitly, ‘on their feet’, and reactive behaviour is, in fact, an opportunistic way of achieving much in a short time. Similarly, disjointed interactions are not a sign of impulsiveness but of sweeping a range of problems rapidly. Thus Kotter (1982a, p. 166) argues: Agendas allow the general managers to react in an opportunistic (and highly efficient) way to the flow of events around them, yet knowing that they are doing so within some broader and more rational framework. The networks allow terse (and very efficient) conversations to happen; without them, such short yet meaningful conversations would be impossible. ‘The foregoing studies tend to concentrate on the distribution of time between particular behaviours or activities. Others concentrate more on the distribu- tion of time between areas of responsibility. In the work of Brewer and Tomlinson (1964), Burns (1957), Horne and Lupton (1965) and Kelly (1964) there are both areas of broad agreement and detailed differences. Brewer and ‘Tomlinson (1964) found that Production’, ‘Sales’ and ‘Finance/Accounting’ took up the bulk of managers’ time, with little time spent on ‘Planning’. Burns (1957) showed that, of senior managers’ time, only 20 per cent was spent on ‘General management policy’. The impression that much managerial work concerns day- to-day problems, rather than strategic issues, is also conveyed both by Horne and Lupton’s (1965) study of middle managers, which found that most time was spent on day-to-day ‘organizing, ‘unifying’ and ‘regulating’ rather than Copyright © 2001 All Rights Reserved98 COLIN P. HALES long-term ‘formulation’, and by Kelly’s (1964) study which found that half a manager's time was spent in daily ‘programming’ activities. Managerial Interaction and Communication Echoes of the frenetic, ad hoc, practical, ‘fixing’ character of managerial work are to be found in studies which focus primarily upon managers’ interaction and communication with others. These studies share six common findings. Firstly, a great deal of managers’ time — between two-thirds and four-fifths ~ is spent imparting or receiving information, predominantly through face-to- face interaction (Burns, 1957; Home and Lupton, 1965; Kelly, 1964; Kotter, 1982a; Mintzberg, 1973; Stewart, 1976). Secondly, this proportion varies between jobs: Dubin and Spray (1964) distinguish ‘verbalists’ and ‘loners’, Stewart (1976) adds further refinements. Thirdly, managers spend a lot of their time interacting with other managers of the same status: communication is, predominantly, lateral (Burns, 1957; Dubin and Spray, 1964; Horne and Lupton, 1965; Kelly, 1964; Mintzberg, 1973; Stewart, 1976). Fourthly, a general predominance of lateral communication contrasts with considerable variation among managerial positions in amounts of vertical communication. (Dubin and Spray, 1964; Kelly, 1964). Fifthly, in many cases, managerial inter- actions involve the manager in responding to the requests of others, rather than initiating matters. (Mintzberg, 1973; Kotter, 1982a). Finally, much of the interaction in which managers are involved appears on the surface to be wide- ranging in topic, only tenuously connected to ‘business’ matters and informal in character. (Dalton, 1959; Kotter, 1982a). The evidence, therefore, supports Home and Lupton’s (1965, p.28) conclusion that managers: organize and regulate by face to face contact with equals and subordinates who, in the main, came to the manager’s office to report, to discuss, to get advice and to receive instructions. Other evidence shows how variations in the direction of managerial com- munication are superimposed upon these substantive features. Sayles (1964) suggests that ‘Participation in External Work Flows, necessitates a variety of relationships which differ, in their specific configuration, between jobs. Stewart (1976) is concerned with whom the manager interacts, distinguishing four basic types of ‘Contact pattern’ - ‘Hub’, ‘Peer dependent’, ‘Man management’ and ‘Solo’. Child and Ellis (1973) identify the ‘Interpersonal role dimensions’ of managerial jobs, or those aspects of the job which necessarily involve working with or through others: influencing, pressing for action and handling conflict. These dimensions are shown to vary by industry, organization and managerial job. Studies differ in terms of the importance accorded to communication. For some, managerial communication is treated as a separate and discrete ‘area’WHAT DO MANAGERS DO? A CRITICAL REVIEW 99 of work, or indeed, ‘managerial work’ tout court!*!. However, Stewart (1976), who relates the structure of interaction (‘contact patterns’) to different managerial Jobs, and Kotter (1982a) who relates the process of interaction (‘network building and using) to managerial tasks (‘agendas’), both attempt to link variations in the medium of interaction with variations in the substance of managerial work. In contrast, Mintzberg (1973) is more equivocal, asserting at one point that ‘contacts are [the manager's] work’ (1973, p. 44) yet elsewhere treating interpersonal relationships as activities which constitute three of his ten managerial ‘roles’. ‘Informal’ or ‘Unofficial’ Aspects of Managerial Work Researchers who employ more covert research methods such as participant observation and informal interviewing, often delight in giving particular emphasis to the ‘informal’ activities of managers. Dalton (1959) offers an extended description of the various types of informal activity which take up a manager's time, pointing to power struggles between cliques attempting to secure or defend resources, the informal ‘interpretation’, negotiation and ‘implementation’ of corporate policy at local level, the ‘conflict-in-co-operation’ between line and staff, the informal reward system and the informal influences upon career and promotions. The successful manager, according to Dalton (1959, p. 68), is one who can negotiate these informal systems: Persons able to deal with confusion came to the fore as leaders, with or without the official title. They became the nucleus of cliques that work as interlocking action centres and as bridges between official and unofficial purposes. A similar picture is painted by Fletcher (1973) who distinguishes between managerial ‘cliques’ and ‘cabals’ and Stewart (1983) summarizes this whole area as ‘political activity’. Stewart and her colleagues’ more recent work (1980) on managerial choice shows how managers informally negotiate widely different interpretations of the boundaries and dimensions of ostensibly identical jobs, with particular emphasis upon the development of ‘personal domain’. The identification of informal managerial practices is usually accompanied by a discussion of whether these are detrimental or conducive to ‘proper’ managerial work. According to Dalton (1959), informal practices are the lubricant of organizational operation and preservative of managerial sanity, and for Gouldner (1955), informal, ‘indulgent’ management ensures trouble-free, if in- efficient, work operation. Crozier (1964), on the other hand, is at pains to show how cliques and informal power struggles distort official organizational goals. Throughout these studies, and in Pym’s (1975) notion of ‘spurious work’, there is the implication that the practices identified deviate from an objective norm of ‘proper’ managerial work. This, in turn, assumes that the ‘formal’ Copyright © 2001 All Rights Reserved100 COLIN P. HALES aspects of managerial work are obvious and known. However, at the level of actual management practices (¢f. required practices), the distinction between ‘formal and ‘informal is difficult to sustain'”!, except in terms of managers’ own perceptions of what is and is not ‘really’ part of the job. These perceptions, like managerial work itself, are highly fluid. Thus, managerial work as practised is difficult to designate as ‘formal’ or ‘informal’, unless some comparison is made with others’ expectations. ‘The observed ‘informality’ of the style of managerial work, especially in style of communication, is a rather different matter, as informality here is synonymous with ‘relaxed’. Kotter (1982a) shows how interaction is often in the form of short, informal unplanned encounters revolving around non- work-related topics, but argues that this style enables the manager to achieve a great deal. Some Central Themes To some extent, as much is known about what managerial work is ‘like’ as about what it is, the relative scarcity of evidence on the nature of managerial work being partly offset by illuminating data on the character of that work. A number of key themes recur: Variation and contingency. Whilst earlier studies sought to pin down the defining characteristics of managerial work in extenso, there is now a general agreement among researchers that managerial work is contingent upon, inter alia: function, level, organization (type, structure and size) and environment. (Burns, 1957; Child and Ellis, 1973; Dubin and Spray, 1964; Horne and Lupton, 1965; Mintzberg, 1973, 1979; Pheysey, 1972; Stewart, 1967a, 1976; Stewart et al., 1980). This evidence is supplemented by cross-cultural analysis, reviewed by Nath (1968), Harbison and Myers (1959) and Weinshall (1972). It is important to recognize, however, that the variation indicated by the research evidence taken as a whole is of two different kinds. Firstly, there is the variation identified in the context of the particular model and set of analytic categories employed by a single researcher. This is variation in managerial jobs in terms of different configurations of elements, processes, contact patterns and time allocations. Thus, Mintzberg (1973) identifies eight managerial job types in terms of variable combinations of his ten managerial roles and Stewart (1976) identifies 12 job types in terms of variations in contact pattern. In each study, however, the claim is that the ‘elements’, ‘roles’, ‘processes’, ‘contact patterns’, ‘functions’ eéc, per se are common to all managerial jobs. Again, it is important to recognize that this claim is sometimes - as in the case of ‘roles’ or ‘elements’ - a claim about commonalities of behavioural content, sometimes — as with ‘contact patterns’ - a claim about common formal properties and at yet other times ~ as with ‘functions’ — a claim about common responsibilities. Sees TODITONTO SOUT All Rights ReservedWHAT DO MANAGERS DO? A CRITICAL REVIEW 101 These distinctions indicate the second kind of variation exhibited by the research evidence, i.e. variation in the bases of classification and typification between different research studies, Whether this variation reflects the inherent susceptibility of the phenomenon to alternative conceptualization or whether it reflects the diversity of interests/purposes and methods of different researchers is an issue I wish to take up in the following section. For now, it is worth noting that the different categories employed by different researchers are often held to be competing alternatives, rather than additional perspectives: key works in the literature devote space to a demonstration of the inapplicability of the categories or conceptual frameworks employed by previous investigators in the field (Mintzberg, 1973; Stewart, 1976). Choice and negotiation. Managerial jobs seem, in general, to be sufficiently loosely defined to be highly negotiable and susceptible to choice of both style and content. Stewart (1976; Stewart et al., 1980) provides the most convincing evidence of this by demonstrating significant variation in the performance of what are, nominally, the same jobs. In her most recent work, Stewart (1982) concentrates upon the choices which operate within the demands and constraints of managerial work. She suggests that some choices of content (which aspects of a job a manager chooses to emphasize, selection between aspects and choices about risk taking) and of methods (how work is done) are common to all managerial jobs. She also indicates choices which are distinctive of certain types of managerial jobs such as choice of ‘domain’ (what the manager's unit or the manager himself is doing) and the choice of sharing work, either vertically or laterally. Managers attempt to alter the content of their jobs, in particular by making them less reactive and dependent upon the demands of others, more towards becoming the source of activities and demands, and thereby to ‘move to a position in the structure in which the balance of initiatives favours them’ (Sayles, 1964, p. 115). Moreover, managers attempt to bring certain desirable fanctions/activities under their control and to off-load more time-consuming ones (Dalton, 1959). Thus, negotiation over job content is not only part of what managers actually do, but is also a motif running through other activities. Silverman and Jones (1976) take this theme a stage further by suggesting that managers actively define their own work and create its constituent activities: communication is not simply what managers spend a great deal of time doing but the medium through which managerial work is constituted. They suggest, therefore, that the typical work of a junior manager is the ‘organizational work? of drawing upon an evolving stock of knowledge about ‘normal’ procedures and routines in order to identify and negotiate the accomplishment of ‘problems’ and ‘tasks’. Thus, the work of managers is the management of their work — or as Gowler and Legge (1983) contend, the ‘meaning of management is the ‘management of meaning. Copyright © 2001 All Rights Reserved102 COLIN P. HALES Pressure and conflict. There is considerable evidence that whatever managers do, their activities do not form a neat, coherent, unproblematic set. Activities may be competing, even contradictory, and this itself produces the important managerial work of compromise and negotiation. Dalton (1959) describes how managers cope with the cross-pressures acting upon them and the ambiguity which pervades their relationship with the organization. Silverman and Jones (1976) identify the conversational strategies employed by middle managers in resolving the role conflict created by the policy stipulations of superordinates and the grievances of subordinates. Nichols and Beynon (1977) document the ideological tools employed by managers at ‘ChemCo’ to resolve contradictions between the management of the technical system and people. Fletcher's (1973) study points up the contradictions between being employed to rationalize organization and of planning oneself out of a job, the ideology of individual performance and the reality of cliques, of being a manager whilst also being a subordinate and of having to extract work from subordinates without always giving something in return. He concludes (1973, p. 136) that the circumstances of managerial work are ‘schizoid’ and that: Management is neither art nor science nor skill. At base there is nothing to do. A manager is hired for what he knows other firms do, what he can find to do, and what he can be told to do. For Pym (1975), the key contradiction is between ‘work’ and ‘employment’ and much managerial activity is spurious or non-work undertaken largely to absorb the time spent in employment. Evidence on conflict and ambiguity sounds a cautionary note for the inter- pretation of studies of the elements of managerial work. These studies, which seck to dissect managerial work, may, in the process, lose the ‘living whole’, in that managerial work is not the sequential execution of separate activities but is often an artful, simultaneous synthesis of inter-dependent activities or reconciliation of conflicting demands. There is both rapid commuting between activities (Carlson, 1951; Copeman ¢t al., 1963; Horne and Lupton, 1965; Mintzberg, 1973; Kotter, 1982a) with the manager seeking to ‘keep everything going’ and the simultaneous execution of discrete and, in principle, separable activities, with one activity providing the context, even the opportunity, for carrying out others (Kotter, 1982a). Reaction and non-reflection. Much of what managers do is, of necessity, an unreflec- tive response to circumstances. The manager is less a slow and methodical decision maker, more a ‘doer’ who has to react rapidly to problems as they arise, ‘think on his feet’, take decisions in situ and develop a preference for concrete activities. This shows in the pace of managerial work and the short time span of most activities as documented in Mintzberg (1973), Copeman et al., (1963) TOT TGS CSOWHAT DO MANAGERS DO? A CRITICAL REVIEW 103 and Kotter (1982). It is also reflected in the relatively high proportion of other- initiated contacts (Mintzberg, 1973; Kotter, 1982a). Managerial myths. A recurring conclusion of many studies is that management in practice is very different from how it is reputed to be (Burns, 1957; Mintzberg, 1973; Sayles, 1964; Stewart, 1983). Mintzberg (1975) uses his evidence to attack! four pieces of managerial ‘folklore’ and Stewart (1983) suggests how research evidence has changed the ‘traditional picture’. It is important to recognize that two distinct, if inter-related, sets of ideas about management form the target here: first, published theories of management (especially those glossed as the ‘classical school’) and second, the ‘practical theories’ or beliefs of managers themselves about what they and other managers do. Clearly, the former (or popular versions of it) can become part of the latter, so that: If you ask a manager what he does, he will most likely tell you that he plans, organizes, co-ordinates and controls. Then watch what he does. Don’t be surprised if you can’t relate what you see to those four words. (Mintzberg, 1975, p. 49) The extent to which the ‘hard facts’ of research refute the claims of management theorists is an issue I want to take up later. Here it may be noted that the status of managers’ own conceptions of what they do is a matter of some dispute, a dispute which reflects the methodological and epistemological orientations of different studies. Studies using a positivist approach to discover the elements of managerial work, incline to represent managers’ beliefs as, essentially ‘correct or ‘incorrect’ ~ as for example in the demonstration that managers estimates of how they spend their time are at variance with how they actually do so (Burns, 1957; Horne and Lupton, 1965; Marshall and Stewart 1981; Stewart, 1967a). Studies which are concerned to develop an understanding of management processes, however, incline to view managerial beliefs and ideology as inextric- able from managerial work (Silverman and Jones, 1976) or, indeed, as managerial work in toto (Fletcher, 1973; Gowler and Legge, 1983). RESEARCH ON MANAGERIAL WORK: SOME CRITICISMS AND CONCLUSIONS The review of the evidence in the previous section has taken, so far as is possible, a neutral and non-evaluative line. I have endeavoured to address the evidence with one simple question ~ what do we now know about what managers do? - in mind. I now want to turn to consider a number of ways in which the accumulated studies do not, for me, provide a full answer to the question posed. I will focus here upon three separate, but inter-related areas of difficulty: the problem of diversity, even inconsistency, in the research findings; the problem Copyright © 2001 All Rights Reserved104 COLIN P. HALES of interpreting managers’ behaviour and its relation to managerial tasks, responsibilities or functions, and the problem of the extent to which exclusively managerial work has been identified. All of these problems converge in a more general reluctance on the part of many of the studies to locate managerial work practices carefully within the broader context of the function of management in work organizations. If the evidence presented in the previous section is treated naively as a body of ‘facts’, the known features of managerial work may be summarized as follows: (1) It combines a specialist/professional element and a general, ‘managerial’ element. (2) The substantive elements involve, essentially, liaison, man- management and responsibility for a work process, beneath which are subsumed more detailed work elements. (3) The character of work elements varies by duration, time span, recur- rence, unexpectedness and source. (4) Much time is spent in day-to-day trouble shooting and ad hoc problems of organization and regulation. (8) Much managerial activity consists of asking or persuading others to do things, involving the manager in face-to-face verbal communication of limited duration. (6) Patterns of communication vary in terms of what the communication is about and with whom the communication is made. (7) Little time is spent on any one particular activity and, in particular, on the conscious, systematic formulation of plans. Planning and deci- sion making tend to take place in the course of other activity. (8) Managers spend a lot of time accounting for and explaining what they do, in informal relationships and in ‘politicking’. (9) Managerial activities are riven by contradictions, cross-pressures and conflicts, Much managerial work involves coping with and reconciling social and technical conflict. (10) There is considerable choice in terms of what is done and how: part of managerial work is setting the boundaries of and negotiating that work itself. This list is unremarkable and represents the common core findings on managerial work which are sufficiently general as to be relatively uninteresting. Beyond these core findings lies diversity which has two distinct origins. Firstly, it reflects diversity in the phenomenon itself - the wide variation in jobs designated as ‘managerial’ (Stewart, 1967a; 1976). Clearly, the choice of particu- lar managerial jobs as the object of study crucially influences the nature of the findings. Secondly, however, the diversity of evidence undoubtedly reflects the research process. The findings cannot be viewed as a set of unproblematic ‘facts, Topyngnt © D007 All Rights ReservedWHAT DO MANAGERS DO? A CRITICAL REVIEW 105 unscathed by the problems and purposes which determined their collection, the implicit models and methodologies which guided the research and the methods whereby the data were collected. I have already noted above how changes in focus, problems and approaches brought identifiable shifts in the character of the studies over a 30 year span. Before the adoption of multi-method studies, what was discovered about managerial work was critically influenced by how managers were studied: diary studies inevitably focused upon contacts and time allocation, structured questionnaires generated work elements, whilst participant observation studies made much of ‘informal’ behaviour. Anyone seeking to build a consistent body of knowledge from the different research studies by a process of contrast and comparison, finds the task difficult. Moving from one study to another invariably brings both a change in focus and in the categories employed to describe the phenomenon. The whole is a disconnected area of research with little sense of a sustained, systematic accretion of knowledge. Mintzberg asserts that findings on mana- gerial work ‘paint[s] an interesting picture, one as different from Fayol’s classical view as a cubist abstract is from a Renaissance painting’ (1975, p. 50). The analogy is unfortunately apt because the research picture does indeed appear as an assemblage of geometric shapes, shapes which do not always fit together. Is the demand for consistency across the different studies a reasonable one? There are two issues here. Firstly, to demand consistent findings is clearly unreasonable: no field of study, however well developed, is free from conflicts of evidence. But, secondly, it is perhaps less unreasonable to demand consistent categories and concepts. Stewart (1982) points to a relative neglect of conceptual development in the field, a neglect which has resulted in a confusion between managerial behaviour and managerial jobs. I have already argued that this confusion obstructs any attempt to pin down whether the observed variation in managerial work is variation between jobs across common dimensions and processes, or variations in the dimensions or processes themselves. More than this, however, other distinctions, subsumed under the general category of ‘managerial work’ are elided or ignored. These distinctions are, admittedly, far easier to make conceptually than they may prove to be empiri- cally. However, it may be worth setting out some of these as a preliminary to their possible utility in research terms. In the first place, there would seem to be a distinction between what managers, by observation or report, ‘do’ - their behaviour and activities - and what managers are charged, or seck, to ‘achieve’ - their tasks, responsibilities and functions. There is, therefore, a distinction between managerial ‘work’ as a set of actual behaviours and as a set of desired (either by managers or others) outcomes. The possible utility of this distinction lies both in its apparent recogni- tion by managers themselves (Fletcher, 1973; Nichols and Beynon, 1977) and in the extent to which it alerts the researcher to examine areas of discrepancy and interaction between managerial action and outcomes. By ‘discrepancy’, Copyright © 2001 All Rights Reserved106 COLIN P. HALES I mean instances of where managers’ behaviour is not, in practice or by design, instrumental to the execution of responsibilities. By ‘interaction’ I mean the relatively little documented process !!°! whereby outcomes or responsibilities are negotiated in the course of behaviour or, indeed, afterwards ~ what Weick (1977) calls the ‘enactment process’. Investigation of this discrepancy and interaction might be expected a priori to inform or explain problems which recur throughout the literature. The problem of ‘managerial effectiveness’ would be informed by further consideration of whether actual managerial behaviour is conducive to achieving certain desirable outcomes and how desirable outcomes are defined or negotiated and by whom. The diversity of managerial work would be, in part, explained by an examination of the interaction between behaviour and outcomes, if what managers ‘do’ is susceptible to continuous, even post hoc, negotiation. Thus, reluctance to grapple with the distinction between behaviour and outcomes has led to an unsatisfactory treatment of what researchers themselves have regarded as key problems. There has not simply been limited conceptual development per se, but limited development of concepts of particular relevance for problems which the studies choose to address. In fact, to suggest a dichotomy between ‘doing’ and ‘achieving’ here is misleading. It is probably more satisfactory to conceiye of a continuum ranging from simple ‘behaviour’ stripped of context and intention and, therefore, of meaning, through ‘activities’ or complexes of behaviour endowed with context ~ and/or intention - based meaning, to ‘tasks’, or the defined goals of activity and, finally, ‘functions’, the intended contribution of managerial tasks to the organization as a whole. Studies which look at the clements of managerial work or the allocation of managers’ time, both collectively and, in some cases, individually, span this continuum. Sometimes the studies - or study - document simple behaviour (‘eading, ‘writing’), sometimes activities (‘briefing subordinates on the week's sales figures’), sometimes tasks (‘disturbance handling’) and sometimes functions (preservation of assets’). Equally, many of the categories used are not readily indentifiable as behaviour, activity, task or functions. Further, potentially important distinctions begin to arise from the foregoing discussion. The first is that between actual, observable behaviour and activities and those behaviours and activities which are required or expected by others. ‘This distinction partly corresponds to that between (actually) ‘doing’ and ‘achiev- ing (what is expected), but only partly. It is an issue I will take up again below. Secondly, there is the horizontal division of managerial work into individual managers jobs, the work of managerial teams and finally, the work of an organiza- tion’s management as a whole. The studies reviewed largely focus, implicitly or explicitly, upon jobs, but without always indicating the relationship between these individual jobs and the work of teams or ‘management’ as a whole!'!!. Thave hardly begun to adumbrate, leave alone clarify, these distinct aspects of what might be meant by managerial ‘work’. For the moment, I merely wish Id! | reservedWHAT DO MANAGERS DO? A CRITICAL REVIEW 107 to argue the need for this line of conceptual development. As existing studies have largely eschewed such development, the result has been the use, both between and within studies, of shifting categories. This has created, in tandem with a richness of data, a serious difficulty: by precluding a basis for comparison, these diverse categories prelude the identification of conflicts of evidence. The demand for consistency is, therefore, not a naive search for agreement among the studies but a desire to identify in what sense they differ. There is also perhaps an unwarranted proclivity on the part of researchers to tolerate and treat as unproblematic these differences in the categories which they employ. The fact that managerial work has been analyzed in such a variety of terms indicates not only the diversity of interests, purposes and perspectives of the researchers but also the susceptibility of the phenomenon to such diverse analysis. Yet this susceptibility is rarely treated as a problem in its own right. Its possibility is accepted in the discussion of choices (Stewart, 1982) and of the linguistic processes whereby managerial work is rendered into orderly, understood categories (Silverman and Jones, 1976). But the question remains: why are these choices and constituting processes possible? An answer lies, I suggest, in an understanding of how the managerial function is constituted within the overall work process of an organization. Whilst a nominalist definition of ‘managers’ - i.e. those who are designated as such — is a reasonable starting point for an analysis of what they do, when research reveals such diversity in the composition of managerial work, it would seem prudent to re-examine who ‘managers’ are - unless one is content to ride the roundabout of saying that managers are people who do managerial work. Once this issue is posed, investigation must become concerned with the nature of the work process in organizations and the function of management in that process. Some researchers have raised such issues ~ Silverman and Jones (1976) ask what it is about organizations which make particular accounts of managerial work comprehensible and Mintzberg (1979) relates different types of managerial role to the function of managers in different organizational structures. But a full account of the nature of the management function and why and how that resolves into highly variable managerial work remains to be given. The absence of such an account is the source of the second major weakness of the accumulated research evidence: the ‘unsituated’ character of the managerial behaviour documented there. The problem may be approached by asking a naive question, the simplicity of which should not belittle its relevance to those interested in training or developing managers (including managers themselves): is the managerial practice identified good practice? Do the studies describe ‘good’ or ‘bad’ management? However pertinent the question] the studies themselves do not give much of an answer because they do not offer an empirically-based standard against which the described behaviour may be compared. The absence of such a standard does not always preclude an implicit, unexplicated, standard lurking in the wings. For example, any reference to ‘informal’ activities implies the existence of ‘formal’ activities and Copyright © 2001 All Rights Reserved108 COLIN P. HALES the claim that much managerial activity is ‘spurious’ (Pym, 1975) rests on an unstated conception of ‘real’ work. The standard against which actual managerial practice may be compared can either take the form of some absolute, objective, bench-mark - which, given the variation of managerial jobs, would be difficult to sustain - or take a more contingent form. One such contingent standard with which to compare actual managerial practice might be what others expect or require managers to do. Good or bad practice may then be conceived in terms of the extent to which managers’ performance matches others’ expectations. ‘The distinction between performance and expectations is a key dimension of the concept of ‘role’, an analytic tool which despite having much to contribute to. this area of study, has been surprisingly little exploited beyond its use as a multi-purpose label. Indeed, the concept of role embodies a number of ideas and conceptual distinctions which seem apposite to the analysis of managerial positions. Firstly, there is the distinction between ‘role demands’ or ‘the situa- tional pressures that confront [the individual] as the occupant of a given structural position’ (Levinson, 1966, p. 286) and ‘role definition’ or ‘the indivi- dual’s adaptation within the organization. . . [which] may have varying degrees of fit with the role requirements (Levinson, 1966, p. 289). Secondly, the concept admits of more careful analysis of the separate ‘demands’ and ‘definitions’ sides ofa role. Role demands may be classified by: (i) explicitness, clarity, coherence, specificity and degree of consensus (Levinson, 1966), (ii) source, by the identifi- cation of a ‘role set’ (Merton, 1957), (iii) the strength of expectations - ‘must’, ‘should’ and ‘can’ (Dahrendorf, 1968) and, finally, (iv) the focus of expectation, whether upon what the incumbent must do, ‘role behaviour’, or on what the incumbent must 8¢, ‘role attributes’ (Dahrendorf, 1968). Role definition divides into ‘role conception’ -the individual’s perception of his position and the role demands which attach to it - and ‘role performance’ - the individual’s actual behaviour, either as response to perceived expectations or as pursuit of individual projects (Levinson, 1966). The choice element in role performance may also be analyzed by recourse to concepts of role identification or ‘role distance’ (Goffman, 1961). Because ‘role’ refers to the point of contact between individual and organization, it may be employed to examine both the struc- tural expectational determinants of behaviour and the effect of individual projects and choices. As Salaman suggests, ‘it enables the conceptual jump to be made from individual activity to structural regularity’ (1980, p. 130). Moreover, although the concept has, in practice, been used either to examine the structured features of action or its negotiated, processual character, its strength lies in constantly suggesting the need to analyze both and in providing the analytic tools to do so. ‘There are two respects in which role analysis seems particularly suitable for the analysis of managerial positions and the work activity associated with them. Firstly, as Salaman (1980) points out, the concept of role is most appropriate for positions where there is both a degree of willing conformity ODOT O COUT All Rida ReservedWHAT DO MANAGERS DO? A CRITICAL REVIEW 109 with organizational expectations and some possibility of choice on the part of the incumbent. Although, strictly speaking, that conformity and choice has to be demonstrated by empirical investigation of manager's roles, there are a priori grounds for believing that such is the case. Secondly, the concept of role provides a framework wherein the evidence on managerial behaviour may be situated. The demands or expectations upon the manager do not simply provide the context but also represent a point of comparison for that behaviour. In particular, it is by reference to these expectations that actual managerial performance ~ whether at the level of behaviour, activities or accomplished tasks ~ may be shown to be instrumental or otherwise in their achievement. A strength of role analysis is its non-presumption of any necessary congruence between expectations and performance. However, research evidence to date almost exclusively focuses upon managerial role performance: only Kotter (1982a) and Stewart (1976; Stewart et al., 1980) set the behaviour of the managers studied in the context of substantive role demands. There is, therefore, a need for more research which secks to identify role prescriptions, expectations or demands — whether undertaken through an examination of formal job descriptions!"*! or through an investiga tion of the expectations held by all the members of a manager's role-set!"4], This, again, suggests the need to examine the ‘managerial function. The nature of that function within organizations and how it is divided among different managerial jobs is crucially important in defining managerial responsibilities and tasks. ‘The third and final weakness of existing studies is that it is uncertain whether they identify exclusively managerial behaviour. No study has sought to compare managers with non-managers and, thereby, identify the differentia specifica of their work. Moreover, because of the absence of consistent categories or models, post hoc comparisons between studies of individual occupations cannot be made. ‘The possibility thar the work described in studies of managers is not definitively ‘managerial is both generally unfortunate and specifically so in that the evidence cannot be used to address the issue, much rehearsed elsewhere!) of whether ‘management is an inextricable element of all kinds of work, and hence part of any occupation, or whether it is a distinct and separable activity, amenable to allocation to one particular category of worker. In short, the studies have not demonstrated that there is a bounded and separable set of activities which may be called ‘managerial work’ — and not merely activities which managers have been shown to do. Moreover, it is also somewhat surprising that the research studies have not investigated more fully one aspect of managerial work which a priori might be expected to follow from the conventional and working definition of a ‘manager’ as someone having responsibility for the operation of a discrete organizational unit and being vested with at Jeast formal authority over those working within that unit. A distinguishing characteristic of the occupational category of manager is the direction/control of and accountability/responsibility for a labour process, Copyright © 2001 All Rights Reserved110 COLIN P. HALES this combination of control and responsibility reflecting the fact that managers both have authority over others and are, in turn, subject to the authority of more senior managers. This has two important implications. First, it suggests a crucial distinction, within the generic term ‘managerial work’, between what managers themselves do and what managers have to ensure others do. Thus to the list of managerial behaviours, activities, tasks and functions, it is necessary to add managerial responsibilities. It is surprising that this distinction between ‘doing something oneself and ‘getting others to do something’ is not more care- fully developed in studies of managerial work, especially given the fact that managerial jobs are invariably defined in practice by the labour process or organizational unit of which the individual is manager. Few managers describe themselves merely as ‘a manager’, but qualify their occupation by reference to what it is they manage ~ hence they are ‘works manager’, ‘sales manager’, ‘technical services manager’, ‘food and beverage manager’ and so on. Secondly, because managers are rarely, if ever, merely managers but are defined by what they manage, it might be expected ex hypothesi, that whatever else they do, they may be perceived to be engaged in work which is identifiable as the control and direction of the work of others. This will not necessarily take the form of crude ‘man-management through the overt and observable giving of orders. If, as Blau and Schoenherr (1973) suggest, forms of control have become covert, indirect, even insidious, then it is necessary to search for some evidence of control and responsibility within apparently mundane managerial behaviours. Although some studies which refer to the work of managers in the course of wider concerns (Nichols and Beynon, 1977; Silverman and Jones, 1976) deal with these issues!"l, studies of managerial work per se rarely address the influence of non-observable ‘responsibilities’ and ‘functions’ beneath the appear- ances of managerial behaviour. Neither has this simply been the consequence of a reluctance to deal with any evidence save the strictly empirical: Kotter’s ‘agendas’, for example, are very much interpretational constructs. Rather, there has been a reluctance to treat managers’ observable behaviour as problematic and to ask - or keep asking - the question: why these behaviours and activities?!71 This relates to the question of the extent to which studies of managerial work. disprove ‘classical’ theories of management. It may be argued that the classical theories were not hypotheses about individual managers’ behaviour, but theories of general managerial functions and responsibilities in the work process!'®), A weakness of these theories was in assuming that it was possible to ‘read off specific behaviour from a knowledge of the managerial functions. However, the classical theories have been neither adequately proven nor refuted by research studies of managerial work because these studies have not asked ap- propriate questions of the data. In particular, they have not asked: what kind of managerial function is implied by such behaviours on the part of individual managers? PYTIG 10] feserver