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1.1.2 Roles and functions

Chester Barnard perceived the role of the manager as maintaining the organisation in operation via a system of co-operative effort involving three major functions:

Despite the fact that Barnard wrote this over sixty years ago, his emphasis on communication, contract and objectives is still very much to the fore of modern management and leadership practices.

The role of management has shifted from a sole focus on planning, organising, supervising and controlling. Rather, the search is for a mix of skills that will transverse the technical, human and conceptual skill mixes necessary for the given management context.

Figure 1 Katz Model for Defining a Manager

Figure 1 Katz Model for Defining a Manager
(Katz:1974)

With staff understanding vital for implementing change, the "warm and fuzzy" concepts of vision, values, culture and ethics become far more critical in orientating workplace actions. In times of certainty and stability, adherence to management authority can become almost ritualistic, but in times of rapid change, leadership requires staff commitment and adherence to shifting strategic goals. This has emphasised the role of management communication at not only the interpersonal level, but in the setting and communication of common visions, values, and ethics. Effectively, management communication also can be used to shape and mirror an organisation's culture.

Herbert Simon argued that management and decision-making are synonymous. That is, the manager's role is to make decisions:

In treating decision making as synonymous with managing, I shall be referring not merely to the final act of choice among alternatives, but rather to the whole process of decision. Decision making comprises three principal phases: finding occasions for making decisions; finding possible courses of action; and choosing among courses of action. These three activities account for quite different fractions of the time budgets of executives... The three fractions, added together, account for most of what executives do. (Simon, 1960:189)

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