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Managerial Behaviour & General Management

In order to assess and explain what factors play a sensitive role in a good manager's behaviour, several scholars have researched the subject including extensive studies involving groups of managers.

In the beginning, following the studies developed by Henri Fayol and Frederick Taylor, it was believed that the most important activities of a good manager could be simply divided into four groups: Organising, Co-ordination, Planning, and Controlling.

In the 70's, works by Henry Mintzberg, J.P. Kotter, and Fred Luthans, have found that good managers traits could be much more broad and complex than previous thought. In addition, as proposed by Luthans, they can be divided into effective managers or successful managers depending on their pattern of behaviour, very rarely the case of being both.

Mintzberg, by his turn, found that a manager actually performs a broad range of roles within the organisations classified into 3 groups: Interpersonal Roles, Informational Roles, and Decisional Roles.

Finally Kotter found that managers usually do not plan their days. Instead they flexibly react to a flow of events. Also, he highlighted the importance of the network in their goals achievement.

From his research with a diverse group of managers Fred Luthans classified their activities into groups using the LOS framework. Some important findings arisen from his research. Combining the 12 descriptive categories into 4 Real Manager's activities – Communication, Traditional Management, Networking and Human Resource Management, Luthans suggests a striking difference between Effective and Successful managers. The definition of Effectiveness is a measure of quantity and quality standard performance and the level of commitment and satisfaction of the manager's peers and subordinates while the measure of success is more related to an index calculated by dividing the manager's level in the organization by his tenure there. According to his study, Effective managers spend significant amount of time on Communication and Human Resource Management while Successful managers spend more time on Networking than in anything else.

In his classical article, "the Manager's job: Folklore and Fact", Henry Mintzberg points out the difference between Henri Fayol theoretical approach and what he calls the factual managers job. Separating the Folklore from Facts, Mintzberg suggests that managers are not systematic and long term planners but rather individuals with activities characterized much more by brevity, variety and discontinuity. In addition, he demystified the belief that managers do not have routine activities.

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In fact, he argues, managerial work involves dealing with a couple of regular duties, including ceremonies and negotiations. Finally he defends that managers do prefer verbal communication instead of comprehensive MIS systems with tons of data.

The John P Kotter research on 15 general managers clearly drives the attention to the fact that they usually have agendas much more detailed to the short term than to the medium long term.

In addition, he states that general managers typically do not plan their days in detail. Instead, they tend to flexibly react to the daily events as they occur. Finally, Kotter highlights the importance of the networking activities in the observed managers' agenda.

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