The Purpose and Role of Management

This Blog looks at the:

• Purpose and role of organisations
• Purpose and role of management

Purpose and Role of Organisations

The very name organisation implies that they help organise aspects of society, but what role organisations play depends on what purposes you are interested in and also on what types of organisation you are talking about. Economists concerned with the management and allocation of scarce resources might describe corporate organisations as serving an allocation purpose (although the reasoning of Vance(1963) might suggest that in Western nations resources may not have been very scarce in recent decades). Another view is that the purpose of organisations is to produce products or services (Wood et al 2001). Lawyers and accountants might regard the role and purpose of corporate organisations as producing a profit (Section 181 of the Corporations Act). However, there are of course many non-profit organisations and the needs of these, both large and small, also need to be considered in terms of their support requirements.

Purpose and Role of Management

According to Haynes and Massie (1961) management involves "doing the job through people" (p. 12). This is one perspective on the role of the manager and its people focus is one which we will raise again later in this lesson and in subsequent lessons. Champoux (2006) distinguishes between managers and leaders. He argues that they play different roles in organisations. Managers sustain and control organisations; leaders try and change them. This view is common and Richard Branson is perhaps an example, he creates the business then leaves its management to others while going on to his next business creation project (thus Virgin Records, Virgin Airways and Virgin Mobile).

According to Champoux (2006) leaders are visionary risk takers who seek opposing views and do not use coercive methods, but may introduce conflict and chaos. On the other hand, managers follow an existing vision; they solve problems and bring order to the workplace. They take few risks and use both rewards and punishments to achieve predictable behaviour. Champoux argues that leaders are good change agents suited to fast changing external environments, while managers are suited to stable environments. Champoux takes a very modern view of organisations, of leadership and management. Traditionally, the management role has been thought about as a set of arbitrary functions such as: decision-making, organising, planning, directing, controlling, staffing, co-ordinating, communicating, motivating and evaluating (Haynes and Massie 1961). Information obviously plays a key role in all of these functions, whether it is information on how current directions are going, or where motivation may be needed. In theory, a variety of information systems could be used to collect information and to support all of these. In each case, from an information systems perspective we would be concerned with:

• What information can and should be collected?
• From whom and where?
• For what purpose?
• How should it be stored and accessed?
• What are the privacy and security issues associated with its collection, storage and use?
• How reliable is the information?

These are all questions which I am interested in addressing.

However my blogs are structured not around these issues, but rather around another, single, issue. That issue is: How is the information used? Any use of the information must involve some action (or inaction) which in turn requires a decision about what action should be taken. Actions are taken to achieve particular purposes, and different purposes require different information so we can see that thinking about management from a decision making perspective leads us back to our information systems list. Thinking about management as decision making also encompasses all functions of management and styles of management, whether that style be one of chaotic leadership or stable management.

Therefore, it is from the perspective of decision making that I approach this topic. However, in doing this it is important to consider the relationship between theory and practice. Particularly in complex systems, such as those involving people. Mintzberg (1989) who studied managers going about their daily work commented that when asked what they do, managers will probably tell you that they plan, organise, coordinate and control. However, he suggests that if you actually watch what they do "Don't be surprised if you can't relate what you see to those four words" (pg 9). Throughout these blogs I will be considering how ideas might in fact be implemented and whether they are generic abstractions, creations of pure thought to allow us to talk about issues, or relevant to actual real world scenarios. This is called dialectical thinking. Brookfield (2000, p 90) provides the following statement about thinking dialectically in relation to decision making:

"universal rules, general moral strictures and broad patterns of causal and prescriptive reasoning ('if this is the case then I should do that') is balanced against, and constantly intersects with, the contextual imperatives of a situation ... the recognition that specific situations make nonsense of general rules and theories".

Another take on the role of managers relates to the nature of the work itself. Parkinson's Law is the observation that "work expands to fill the time available" (Haynes and Massie 1961, pg 29). The Haynes and Massie (1961) reprint of Parkinson's article (pg 29) (which is also available here) describes a hypothetical situation in which a manager perceives that he is overburdened and appoints two new subordinates which ultimately result in him becoming even busier. The Economist (1955) (available here) also describes the real world situation in which the number of British Navy officials nearly doubled between 1914 and 1928 even though over this time the number of officers and men available for fighting decreased by around 30 percent and the number of commissioned vessels dropped by two thirds. This was said to have resulted in a "magnificent Navy on Land".

Minztberg (1989) notes that in his, and in others’, studies of management CEO's and managers interact with a wide range of people everyday including: subordinates, clients, business associates, suppliers, managers of similar organisations, government and trade organisation officials, fellow directors on outside boards, and so on. He explains that managers cultivate such networks to find information, building in effect the manager's own external, and effective, information system.

All the above articles together suggest that management is a role that involves a range of complexities and that it is one that is still not fully understood. In this unit in addition to the work of managers themselves, we will also be interested in the relationship of their role to the surrounding society and various stakeholders. In particular, we are interested in the ethical considerations of management and also issues related to changing social phenomena such as triple bottom line accounting.

References:

Brookfield, S. 2008 'Adult cognition as a dimension of lifelong learning'. In: Field J. and Leicester, M. (eds) 2008 Lifelong Learning: Education across the lifespan. Routledge.

Champoux, J.E. 2006. Organisational Behaviour: Integrating Individuals, Groups and Organisations. 3rd Edition. Thomson.

Haynes, W.W and Massie, J.L, 1961, Management: analysis, concepts and cases. Prentice-Hall.

Mintzberg, H. 1989 Mintzberg on Management: Inside Our Strange World of Organisations. The Free Press. N.Y.

Polanyi, K. 1944 The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time . Boston: Beacon Press by arrangement with Rinehart & Company, Inc.

Taylor, J. and Moosa, I. 2002. Macro economics 2. 2nd Edition. Wiley.

The Economist, (1955) Parkinson's Law, November 15. Reprint available online at: http://www.economist.com/business-finance/management/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14116121

Vance, P. (1963) The Waste Makers. Penguin.