What do Managers Do

Journal of Management Studies 23; I January 19860022-2380 $3.50

WHAT DO MANAGERS DO?A CRITICAL REVIEW OF THE EVIDENCE

COLIN P. HALES

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 managersdo?' 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 theevidence.

Certainly, the question 'What do managers do?' has an air of naivete,insolence, even redundancy about it. Yet it is a question which Is beggedby many management-related issues. Arguments that the quality of manage-ment is decisive in both organizational and national economic performancepresuppose that the exclusively 'managerial' contribution to that performanceis both tangible and identifiable. Claims for managerial authority invariablyrest 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 industryof management education, training and development presumably rests upona set of ideas about what managers do and, hence, what managers are beingeducated, trained and developed/or, Finally, nowhere is the question of whatmanagers do more insistently begged than in that substantial portion of theliterature on management which is concerned with 'effective' management (ormanagerial effectiveness). Indeed 'effective management' has ceased to be apurely contingent pairing of adjective and noun and has become a self evidentobject whose causes and concomitants may be investigated unambiguously.In contrast, I contend that the term 'effective management' is a second-ordernormative statement which presupposes the existence of relatively reliable answersto flrst-order empirical questions. For me, 'effectiveness' denotes the extent towhich what managers actually do matches what they are supposed to do. Thisis recognized in a number of defmitions of 'managerial effectiveness' offeredin the literature, despite their superflcial differerccs.''' A central implicationof this, however, is less frequendy recognized: that the extent of this congruencecan only be judged once the two sides ofthe 'effectiveness equation' are known

Address for reprints: Dr. C. P. Hales, Dcpartmeni of Management Studies for Tourism and HotelIndustries, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey GU2 5XH.

WHAT DO MANAGERS DO? A CRITICAL REVIEW 89

empirically. It is necessary, therefore, to have reliable evidence on what managersdo, in both senses ofthe term 'do'. Some ofthe more celebrated writings oneffective management are singularly reticent about specifying vohat effectivemanagers are effective at'^'.

It is also my contention that earlier reviews of published evidence onmanagerial work have not addressed the issue of what managers do in theseterms. Mintzberg's (1973) review ofthe existing evidence which precedes hisown celebrated study is now over ten years old and there have been a numberof significant and sophisticated studies published since tbat 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 largecontribution to our knowledge. I wish to go beyond that focus here principallybecause one of my central arguments is that 'managerial work' and 'managers'behaviour' are not synonymous, even though many of the published studiesimply tbat they are. Consequently, evidence on managers' behaviour providesonly a partial answer to the question: What do managers do?

After reviewing what I take to be the key findings of the studies in termsof five principal topics, each of which, explicitly or implicitly, addresses aparticular question about managerial work, I will discuss three general limita-tions ofthe existing evidence. First, I argue that the various studies tread aprecarious course between illuminating variation and bewildering inconsistencyand that, notwithstanding tbe richness of diversity, there are good argumentsfor the development and use of more consistent and comparable categories.Secondly, I suggest that the emphasis in the studies on managerial behaviourrepresents a limitation insofar as a context for locating and judging thaibehaviour is absent. Finally, I question the extent to which the studies identifywork or even behaviour which is inclusively and exclusively 'managerial'. I seekto show that each of these limitations is traceable to a more general unwillingnessto consider the wider context of managers' behaviour - in particular, 'managerialtasks', 'managerial responsibilities' and the 'management function' - and todevelop concepts which permit this consideration.

For the purposes of this review of what is known about what managers do Iadopt particular and necessarily restrictive definitions of 'knowledge' and'managers'. As far as 'knowledge' is concerned, at risk of doing considerableviolence to more sophisticated epistemological niceties, I distinguish amongevidenc^^\ theories and models. This review is chiefly concerned witb publishedevidence, although it touches on models where these guide the collection ororder the presentation of evidence. Reference to theories is confmed to indicatingthe relative absence of links between theory and evidence.

As far as the term 'managers' is concerned, I follow the researchers concernedin adopting a nominalist definition as a starting point. That is, I followStewart (1976) in taking a manager to be 'anyone above a certain level, roughlyabove foreman whether. . .in control of staff or not', and for the same reasonas Stewart, namely that I am interested, at least initially, in 'the jobs that

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companies call managerial and which form part ofthe management hierarchyfor selection, training and promotion' (Stewart, 1976, p. 4). I therefore considerit of greater value to start by investigating what those deemed managers do ratherthan to debate a priori who managers 'really' are'*'. What I do hope to show,however, is thai such an investigation does inevitably come up against theproblem of not only who managers are, but what 'management' is: this issueis 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/ociw for the research and comparable categoriesto guide collection and presentation of evidence renders the studies to bereviewed here resistant to the search for generalities through processes of contrastand combination. To re-cast the available evidence into common terms wouldinvolve both unwarranted interpretation and considerable distortion, so thisreview will take the original categories ofthe research studies as its starting point.

The studies reviewed here essentially shed light on five major areas andprovide 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?)(5) 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 featuresofthe accumulated evidence. Hence, I have chosen to group and classify theavailable material in terms o{ evidenc^^^. Whilst this is only one of a numberof possible alternative orderings, it does attempt to lay an empirical foundationto the area of study upon which more elaborate theories and models mayrest. Before considering these areas in more detail, it might be useful tolist the research studies which form the major sources of evidence, as shownin table I.

For present purposes, I will treat the evidence accumulated by the abovestudies as a single entity. It should be recognized, however, that this evidenceis the product of some 30 years of studies, during which time there have beendiscernible shifts in focus, methods and models. Perhaps the most clearlydiscernible of these shifts has been away from the concern in the 1950s, 1960s


Table !. Principal sources of evidence on managerial work

Author Date Method oJ data collection Features oJ sample

Brewer andTomlinsoD

1964

Carison

Child andEUis

Copcman,Luijk andHanika

Dalton

Couldncr

-Hemphiil

Self-record diaries over2 ̂ - 4 Mi weeks

Burns

Campbell et al.citing:

(i) Kay

(ii) Williams

(iii) Roach

1957

1970

1959

1959

1956

Self-record diaries over3-5 weeks

•Critical incidents' reponedby qualified observers

'Critical incidents'

Essays lo developdescriptive statementsforming basis ofadministered questionnaire

1951 Reporting by trainedobservers using checklistand questionnaire, over4 weeks

1973 Self-administeredquestionnaire

1963 (i) 'Executive time surveysheet'

(ii) Observation

1959 10 years of participantobservation, 'covert' inter-viewing, study of files

Dubm andSpray

Fletcher

1964

1973

Self-record dianes (asBums 1957) over 2 weeks

Participant observation

1955 Participant observation

1959 'Executive positiondescription' questionnairecontaining 575 items

6 senior managersfrom 6 firms in 6U.K. industries

76 top managers &oin6 medium-sizedScottish factories

74 managers reportingon 691 incidents offoreman behaviour

742 executives,3,500 incidents

245 office supervisors

10 executivesin Sweden

787 managers from 78organizations in 6U.K. industries

(i) 58 executives(chief execs,directors, depart-ment heads),U.K.

(ii) 25 top executives,Holland(1,000 hours)

4 firms - small,medium and largefactory and depart-ment stores in U.S.

8 executives from 5firms in U S .

75 middle managersof different ages andfunctions in 1medium si2edcompany in U.K.

Small gypsum factory-in semi-ruralcommunity

93 executives in 5major U.S. companies

92

Table I continued

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A uthor DaU Method of data collection Feaiurei of sample

Home andLupton

Kelly

Kotter

Martin

Mintzberg

Nichols andBevnon

Pheysey

Saylcs

Silvermanand Jones

Stewart

1965

1964

1982aand

1982b

1956

Self-record 'Managersactivity records', containingactivities with possibledescriptors. One week'Activity sampling'

Questionnaire, observation;appointment diary;interviews; printedinformation

Questionnaire

Stewart el ai.

1973 Intensive observationand ('shadowing'), diaries and1975 analysis of managers'

records, plus review ofother research

1977 Field observations andinformal interviewing

1972 Questionnaire (based onHemphill, J959)

1964 Field observations

1976 Tape-recorded informalinterviews andobservation

1967a Self-record diaries overand 4 weeks

1967b

1976 Sflf-record diaries over 3weeks; observation;informal and formalinterviews

1980 Interviews and observation

1982 Open-ended interviewsand observation

66 middle managersover range of firms(varying by size andtechnology) in U.K.

2,800 observations of4 section managers inI Scottish company15 high-level generalmanagers over rangeof corporationsin U.S.

Managers (distributedby level) in large U.S.manufaciuring company5 chief executives in5 U.S. companies

Managers andforemen in largechemical plant inS. England

96 managers ontraining coursein U.K.75 lower and njiddlemanagers in divisionof large U.S.corporation

Managers andmanagement traineesin targe U.K. publicsector organization

160 managers(distributed byfunction and level) inU.K. companiesPilot interviews: 180managers in diversejobs. Main interviews:274 managers (mostlymiddle and senior).Interview study; 16selected jobs41 District

Administrators in theN.H.S.98 managers, by leveland function. 6 pairsof managers in 6different jobs


and early 1970s with identifying the elements of managerial work towards anappreciation of its/jro«wM. There has, therefore, been a movement away froma static, analytic approach, the results of which were, essentially, snapshotsof'the' managerial job towards a more synthetic approach providing a movingpicture of the fluidities of managerial work in its different guises. More or lessconcurrent with this shift of emphasis, related changes in aims, methods andmodels have occurred. Firstly, researchers have abandoned the search - implicitin some early studies - for the definitive characteristics of the managerial joband have been concerned rather to indicate the diversity and variation inmanagerial jobs or to provide analytical tools for handling that diversity.Secondly, there has been a shift away from the measurement of managerialjobs across pre-formed categories toward the discovery of categories. Thirdly,there has been the increasing use of a variety of research instruments in anysingle study, rather than reliance upon one research method. Finally, the modelsof managerial work which have both guided the collection of and formed theframework for research data, have become more fluid in character, positinga contingent and processual relationship between the constituent vsu-iables,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 differentmanagerial 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 (HemphiJl, 1959).Certainly here are early grounds for suspecting that the content of managerialwork is not common across levels of management or cultures.

Mintzberg (1973) and Sayles (1964) show greater agreement of substancebeneath superficial differences of terminology, although this agreement cutsthrough their different categories. For example, Sayles' 'Leadership' categorysubsumes Mintzberg's 'Figurehead', 'Leader' and 'Spokesman' roles and hisemphasis upon 'Participation in external work flows' via different types ofrelationships expands upon Mintzberg's 'Liaison' role, as well as indicating theexternal character of the 'Entrepreneur', 'Disseminator', 'Disturbance handler'and 'Negotiator' roles.

The major difference between Sayles and Mintzberg is that the latter viewsmanagerial work as more self-contained, whereas the former is more concernedto 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 et 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

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of Setting agendas, Network building, Utilizing networks and Implementingagendas 'translate', broadly, into the tasks of 'Planning', 'Making contacts','Influencing' and 'Decision making". Stewart has always concentrated more uponlhe form of managerial work than upon content. However, her work does suggestthat common, recurrent activities are Liaison, Maintenance of work processes,Innovation and Setting the boundaries of the job.

Amid the diversity of evidence, some common fmdings recur. First, managersperform both specialist/technical and general/administrative work. Second, thelatter is sufficiently ill-defmed that part of managerial work is determining itsown boundaries. Finally, within these fluid boundaries, the following strandsare 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(5) 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 'classicalprinciples of management', this evidence takes us further for two reasons. Firstly,it includes cenain elements which could not, without stretching a point, besubsumed under any ofthe 'classical' principles. Secondly, the research studiesdo offer detailed indications of what these principles may involve. Sayles,Mintzberg, Stewart and Kotter all provide fresh insights and subtleties to thetasks of 'planning*, 'co-ordinating' and 'commanding*.

Stewart (1976) also sheds light on the chronological patterns and sources ofmanagerial 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 differentdurations, rhythms, degrees of uncertainty and origins.

It is evident from table II that the different studies and, indeed, sometimesthe same study, point to different ways of conceptualizing the constituentfeatures of managerial work - in particular the difference between observableactivities which constitute the performance of the job, and implied or reportedtasks which represent expected or intended outcomes. Hemphill (1959), Pheysey(1972) and, to a lesser degree, Sayles (1964) suggest that activities and tasksare empirically intertwined or, at least, do not attempt to separate them.Mintzberg (1975) does distinguish between activities and managerial roles - whichconstitute 'tasks' as defined above, given that they are developed by asking whya manager undertook a particular activity. However, as Mintzberg describes

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them, the 'Interpersonal' and 'Decisional' roles seem more task-like in characterand the activities which Mintzberg describes vary considerably in specificityand 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-definedtasks of network building and agenda setting and the manager's specific activitiesor behaviours. The differentia spedfica of managerial jobs are 'agendas' - themanager's mental representations of the tasks which form a unit of work,together with an indication of their priorities. Certainly there are broad affinitiesbetween what Mintzberg means by 'Interpersonal' and 'Decisional' roles andwhat Kotter means by 'Networks' and 'Agenda setting'. There is, however, animportant difference between them. Mintzberg's roles represent behaviourswhich are combined and classified by intention whereas Kotter's networks andagendas represent second order constructs whereby observed behaviour maybe understood.

Stewart's (1967a, 1976, 1982 and Stewart et al., 1980) research has close linkswith Kotter's, primarily because her object of enquiry has consistently beenmanagerial7065 and the dimensions along which these vary. It is possible, forexample, to use Stewart's Demands, Constraints and Choices framework (1982)to examine the provenance of managerial Agendas and to combine Stewart'sfindings on Contact Patterns (1976) with Kotter's on Networks. Stewart's work isless easy to square with that of Hemphill or Mintzberg (Stewart, 1967a, p. 154).

Tke Division of Managerial Time between Activities

Diversity is eilso evident in studies of how managers allocate their time. Thestudies themselves differ in terms of what they see managerial time as beingdistributed among and they focus upon rather different constituents ofmanagerial work from those discussed above. Often the focus is the formalpattern of managerial work, rather than its substantive content.

Pheysey (1972), Stewart (1976) and Kotter (1982) are those who do attemptto examine the formal pattern of previously identified work elements. Pheysey(1972) found that 'Trouble shooting', 'Forward planning' and 'Briefmg sub-ordinates' were the most frequently occurring. Stewart's (1976) examinationof the distribution of work across different time rhythms identifed four distinctWork Patterns: 'System maintenance', 'System administration', 'Project' and'Mixed'. Kotter's (1982a) evidence on the allocation of time between behavioursand contacts echoes other studies'^', but his explanation of this pattern issomewhat different.

A picture of mzinagerial work as technical, tactical, reactive and frenetic recursacross studies of time budgeting. Carlson (1951), Copeman et al. (1963), Homeand Lupton (1965) and Mintzberg (1973) all indicate that even senior managersspend little time on planning or abstract formulation, are subject to constantinterruptions, hold short face-to-face meetings which flit from topic to topic and


respond to the initiatives of others far more than they initiate themselves. Theconclusion drawn by these researchers is that the notion of the manager asstrategist, planner and thinker is a myth (Mintzberg, 1975) and that even seniormanagers allow themselves to be diverted from their 'real' work by constantinterruption and capricious interpersonal contact. Copeman et al. conclude that'the office is no place to work. . . the only effective way for an executive to makesure 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) whoargued that the erratic, verbal, apparently non-decisional character ofmanageriaJ work is consistent with the manager's need to deal with complexitythrough rapid accumulation and systematization of information and throughthe 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 piecemealdistribution of time and effort is both efficient and en"ective. Agendas requirelarge quantities of information to be gathered quickly, whilst the developmentand activation of networks requires interaction with large numbers of people,often informally. Consequently, the absence of planning is more apparent thanreal: managers plan implicitly, 'on their feet', and reactive behaviour is, in fact,an opportunistic way of achieving much in a short time. Similarly, disjointedinteractions are not a sign of impulsiveness but of sweeping a range of problemsrapidly. Thus Kotter (1982a, p. 166) argues:

Agendas allow the general managers to react in an opportunistic (and highlyefficient) way to the flow of events around them, yet knowing that they aredoing so within some broader and more rational framework. The networksallow terse (and very efficient) conversations to happen; without them, suchshort yet meaningful conversations would be impossible.

The foregoing studies tend to concentrate on the distribution of time betweenparticular behaviours or activities. Others concentrate more on the distribu-tion of time between areas of responsibility. In the work of Brewer andTomlinson (1964), Burns (1957), Home and Lupton (1965) and Kelly (1964)there are both areas of broad agreement and detailed differences. Brewer andTomiinson (1964) found that 'Production', 'Sales' and 'Finance/Accounting' tookup 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 'Generalmanagement policy'. The impression that much managerial work concerns day-to-day problems, rather than strategic issues, is also conveyed both by Homeand Lupton's (1965) study of middle managers, which found that most timewas spent on day-to-day 'organizing', 'unifying' and 'regulating* rather than

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long-term 'formulation', and by Kelly's (1964) study which found that half amanager's time was spent in daily 'programming' activities.

Managerial Interaction and Communication

Echoes of the frenetic, ad hoc, practical, 'fixing' character of managerial workare to be found in studies which focus primarily upon managers' interactionand 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 (Bums, 1957; Home and Lupton, 1965; Kelly, 1964; Kotter,1982a; Mintzberg, 1973; Stewart, 1976). Secondly, this proportion variesbetween jobs: Dubin and Spray (1964) distinguish 'verbalists' and 'loners',Stewart (1976) adds further refinements. Thirdly, managers spend a lot of theirtime interacting with other managers ofthe same status: communication is,predominantly, lateral (Burns, 1957; Dubin and Spray, 1964; Home andLupton, 1965; KeUy, 1964; Mintzberg, 1973; Stewart, 1976). Fourthly, ageneral predominance of lateral communication contrasts with considerablevariation 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 thaninitiating matters. (Mintzberg, 1973; Kotter, 1982a). Finally, much oftheinteraction in which managers are involved appears on the surface to be wide-ranging in topic, only tenuously connected to 'business' matters and informalin character. (Dalton, 1959; Kotter, 1982a). The evidence, therefore, supportsHome 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 adviceand 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 ofrelationships which differ, in their specific configuration, between jobs. Stewart(1976) is concerned with whom the manager interacts, distinguishing fourbasic types of'Contact pattem' - '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 involveworking with or through others: influencing, pressing for action and handlingconflict. These dimensions are shown to vary by industry, organization andmanagerial job.

Studies differ in terms of the importance accorded to communication. Forsome, managerial communication is treated as a separate and discrete 'area'


of work, or indeed, 'managerial work' tout court^ K However, Stewart (1976),who relates the structure of interaction ('contact pattems') to different managerialjobs, andKotter(1982a) who relates the j6roc«i of interaction ('network buildingand using') to managerial tasks ('agendas'), both attempt to link variationsin the medium of interaction with variations in the substance of managerialwork. In contrast, Mintzberg (1973) is more equivocal, asserting at one pointthat 'contacts are [the manager's] work' (1973, p. 44) yet elsewhere treatinginterpersonal relationships as activities which constitute three of his tenmanagerial 'roles'.

'Informal' or IJnqfficial' Aspects of Managerial Work

Researchers who employ more covert research methods such as participantobservation and informal interviewing, often delight in giving particularemphasis to the 'informal' activities of managers. Dalton (1959) offers anextended description of the various types of informal activity which take upa manager's time, pointing to power struggles between cliques attempting tosecure 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 influencesupon 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 withoutthe official title. They became the nucleus of cliques that work as interlockingaction centres and as bridges between official and unofficial purposes.

A similar picture is painted by Fletcher (1973) who distinguishes betweenmanagerial 'cliques' and 'cabals' and Stewart (1983) summarizes this whole areaas 'political activity'.

Stewart and her colleagues' more recent work (1980) on managerial choiceshows how managers informally negotiate widely different interpretations ofthe boundaries and dimensions of ostensibly identical jobs, with particularemphasis upon the development of 'personal domain'.

The identification of informal managerial practices is usually accompanied bya discussion of whether these are detrimental or conducive to 'proper' managerizilwork. According to Dalton (1959), infomial practices are the lubricant oforganizational operation and preservative of managerial sanity, and forGouldner (1955), informal, 'indulgent' management ensures trouble-free, if in-efficient, work operation. Crozier (1964), on the other hand, is at pains to showhow 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 objectivenorm of 'proper' managerial work. This, in turn, assumes that the 'formal'

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aspects of managerial work are obvious and known. However, at the level ofactual management practices {cf. required practices), the distinction between'formal' and 'informal' is difficult to sustain'^', except in terms of managers' ownperceptions of what is and is not 'really' part of the job. These perceptions,like managerial work itself, are highly fluid. Thus, managerial work as practisedis difficult to designate as 'fomial' or 'informal', unless some comparison is madewith others' expectations.

The observed 'informality' of the style of managerial work, especially instyle of communication, is a rather different matter, as informality here issynonymous with 'relaxed'. Kotter (1982a) shows how interaction is often inthe form of short, informal unplanned encounters revolving around non-work-reiated topics, but argues that this style enables the manager to achievea great deal.

Some Central Themes

To some extent, as much is known about what managerial work is like' as aboutwhat it is, the relative scarcity of evidence on the nature of managerial workbeing partly offset by illuminating data on the character of that work. A numberof key themes recur:

Variation and contingency. Whilst earlier studies sought to pin down the definingcharacteristics of managerial work in extenso, there is now a general agreementaunong researchers that managerial work is contingent upon, inter alia: function,level, organization (type, structure and size) and environment. (Bums, 1957;Child and Ellis, 1973; Dubin and Spray, 1964; Home and Lupton, 1965;Mintzberg, 1973, 1979; Pheysey, 1972; Stewart, 1967a, 1976; Stewart el al.,1980). This evidence is supplemented by cross-cultural analysis, reviewed byNath (1968), Harbison and Myers (1959) and Weinshall (1972).

It is important to recognize, however, that the variation indicated by theresearch evidence taken as a whole is of two different kinds. Firstly, thereis the variation identified in the context of the particular model and setof analytic categories employed by a single researcher. This is variation inmanagerial jobs in terms of different configurations of elements, processes,contact patterns and time allocations. Thus, Mintzberg (1973) identifies eightmanagerial job types in terms of variable combinations of his ten managerialroles and Stewart (1976) identifies 12 job types in terms of variations incontact pattem. In each study, however, the claim is that the 'elements', 'roles','processes', 'contact patterns', 'functions' etc. per se are common to all managerialjobs. Again, it is important to recognize that this claim is sometimes - asin the case of'roles'or'elements'- a claim about commonalities of behaviouralcontent, sometimes - as with 'contact patterns' - a claim about commonformal properties and at yet other times - as with 'functions' - a claim aboutcommon responsibilities.

WHAT DO MANAGERS DO? A CRITICAL REVIEW lOl

These distinctions indicate the second kind of variation exhibited by theresearch evidence, i.e. variation in the bases of classification and typificationbetween different research studies. Whether this variation reflects the inherentsusceptibility of the phenomenon to alternative conceptualization or whetherit reflects the diversity of interests/purposes and methods of different researchersis an issue I wish to take up in the following section. For now, it is worth notingthat the different categories employed by different researchers are often heldto be competing alternatives, rather than additional perspectives: key worksin the literature devote space to a demonstration ofthe inapplicability ofthecategories or conceptual frameworks employed by previous investigators in thefield (Mintzberg, 1973; Stewart, 1976).

Choice and negotiation. Managerial jobs seem, in general, to be sufficiently looselydefined to be highly negotiable and susceptible to choice of both style andcontent. Stewart (1976; Stewart et al., 1980) provides the most convincingevidence of this by demonstrating significant variation in the performance ofwhat are, nominally, the same jobs.

In her most recent work, Stewart (1982) concentrates upon the choices whichoperate within the demands and constraints of managerial work. She suggeststhat some choices of content (which aspects of a job a manager chooses toemphasize, selection between aspects and choices about risk taking) and ofTTieihods (how work is done) are common to all managerial jobs. She also indicateschoices which are distinctive of certain types of managerial jobs such as choiceof'domain' (what the manager's unit or the manager himself is doing) and thechoice of sharing work, either vertically or laterally.

Managers attempt to alter the content of their jobs, in particular by makingthem less reactive and dependent upon the demands of others, more towardsbecoming the source of activities and demands, and thereby to 'move to aposition in the structure in which the balance of initiatives favours them'(Sayles, 1964, p. 115). Moreover, managers attempt to bring certain desirablefunctions/activities under their control and to off-load more time-consumingones (Dalton, 1959), Thus, negotiation over job content is not only partof what managers actually do, but is also a motif running through otheractivities.

Silverman and Jones (1976) take this theme a stage further by suggestingthat managers actively define their own work and create its constituent activities:communication is not simply what managers spend a great deal of time doingbut 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' proceduresand 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*.

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Pressure and conflict. There is considerable evidence that whatever managersdo, their activities do not form a neat, coherent, unproblematic set. Activitiesmay be competing, even contradictory, and this itself produces the importantmanagerial work of compromise and negotiation. DaOton (1959) describeshow managers cope with the cross-pressures acting upon them and theambiguity which pervades their relationship with the organization. Silvermanand Jones (1976) identify the conversational strategies employed by middlemanagers in resolving the role conflict created by the policy stipulationsof 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 systemand people.

Fletcher's (1973) study points up the contradictions between being employedto rationalize organization and of planning oneself out of a job, the ideologyof individual performance and the reality of cliques, of being a manager whilstalso being a subordinate and of having to extract work from subordinateswithout always giving something in return. He concludes (1973, p. 136) thatthe circumstances of managerial work are 'schizoid' and that:

Management is neither an nor science nor skill. At base there is nothing todo. A manager is hired for what he knows other firms do, what he can fmdto 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 toabsorb the time spent in employment.

Evidence on conflict and ambiguity sounds a cautionary note for the inter-pretation of studies ofthe elements of managerial work. These studies, whichseek to dissect managerial work, may, in the process, lose the living whole',in that managerial work is not the sequential execution of separate activitiesbut is often an artful, simultaneous synthesis of inter-dependent activities orreconciliation of conflicting demands. There is both rapid commuting betweenactivities (Carlson, 1951; Copeman et al., 1963; Horne and Lupton, 1965;Mintzberg, 1973; Kotter, 1982a) with the manager seeking to 'keep everythinggoing' and the simultaneous execution of discrete and, in principle, separableactivities, with one activity providing the context, even the opportunity, forcarrying 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 methodicaldecision 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 concreteactivities. This shows in the pace of managerial work and the short time spanof most activities as documented in Mintzberg (1973), Copeman et ai, (1963)


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 managementin practice is very different from how it is reputed to be (Bums, 1957; Mintzberg,1973; Sayles, 1964; Stewart, 1983). Mintzberg (1975) uses his evidence to attack*four pieces of managerial 'folklore' and Stewart (1983) suggests how researchevidence has changed the 'traditional picture'. It is important to recognize thattwo distinct, if inter-related, sets of ideas about management form the targethere: first, published theories of management (especially those glossed as the'classical school') and second, the 'practical theories' or beliefs of managersthemselves about what they and other managers do. Clearly, the former (orpopular 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 besurprised 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 managementtheorists is an issue I want to take up later. Here it may be noted that the statusof managers' own conceptions of what they do is a matter of some dispute,a dispute which reflects the methodological and epistemological orientationsof different studies. Studies using a positivist approach to discover the elementsof managerial work, incline to represent managers' beliefs as, essentially 'correct'or 'incorrect' - as for example in the demonstration that managers' estimatesof how they spend their time are at variance with how they actually do so (Bums,1957; Horne and Lupton, 1965; Marshall and Stewart 1981; Stewart, 1967a).Studies which are concerned to develop an understanding of managementprocesses, however, incline to view managerial beliefs and ideology as inextric-able from managerial work (Silverman and Jones, 1976) or, indeed, asmanagerial work in toto (Fletcher, 1973; Gowler and Legge, 1983).

RESEARCH ON MANAGERIAL WORK:SOME CRITICISMS AND CONCLUSIONS

The review ofthe evidence in the previous section has taken, so far as is possible,a neutral and non-evaluative line. I have endeavoured to address the evidencewith 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 theaccumulated 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: theproblem of diversity, even inconsistency, in the research findings; the problem

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of interpreting managers' behaviour and its relation to managerial tasks,responsibilities or functions, and the problem ofthe extent to which exclusivelymanagerial work has been identified. AU of these problems converge in a moregeneral reluctance on the part of many ofthe studies to locate managerial workpractices carefully within the broader context of tht function of management inwork organizations.

If the evidence presented in the previous section is treated naively as abody of 'facts', the known features of managerial work may be summarizedas 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 aresubsumed 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 problemsof organization and regulation.

(5) Much managerial activity consists of asking or persuading others todo things, involving the manager in face-to-face verbal communicationof limited duration.

(6) Patterns of communication vary in terms of what the communicationis 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 theydo, in informal relationships and in 'politicking*.

(9) Managerial activities are riven by contradictions, cross-pressures andconflicts. Much managerial work involves coping with and reconcilingsocial and technical conflict.

(10) There is considerable choice in terms of what is done and how: partof managerial work is setting the boundaries of and negotiating thatwork itself.

This list is unremarkable and represents the common core findings onmanagerial 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 jobsdesignated as 'managerial' (Stewart, 1967a; 1976). Clearly, the choice of particu-lar managerial jobs as the object of study crucially influences the nature ofthefindings. Secondly, however, the diversity of evidence undoubtedly reflects theresearch process. The findings cannot be viewed as a set of unproblematic 'facts',


unscathed by the problems and purposes which determined their collection,the implicit models and methodologies which guided the research and themethods whereby the data were collected. I have already noted above howchanges in focus, problems and approaches brought identifiable shifts in thecharacter ofthe studies over a 30 year span. Before the adoption of multi-methodstudies, what was discovered about managerial work was critically influencedby how managers were studied: diary studies inevitably focused upon contactsand time allocation, structured questionnaires generated work elements, whilstparticipant observation studies made much of 'informal' behaviour,

Anyone seeking to build a consistent body of knowledge from the differentresearch studies by a process of contrast and comparison, finds the taskdifficult. Moving from one study to another invariably brings both a changein focus and in the categories employed to describe the phenomenon. Thewhole 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'sclassical view as a cubist abstract is from a Renaissance painting' (1975,p. 50). The analogy is unfortunately apt because the research picture doesindeed appear as an assemblage of geometric shapes, shapes which do not alwaysfit together.

Is the demand for consistency across the different studies a reasonable one?There are two issues here. Firstly, to demand consistent/ini:/m^.i is clearlyunreasonable: no field of study, however well developed, is free from conflictsof evidence. But, secondly, it is perhaps less unreasonable to demand consistentcategories and concepts. Stewart (1982) points to a relative neglect of conceptualdevelopment in the field, a neglect which has resulted in a confusion betweenmanagerial behaviour and managerial jobs. I have already argued that thisconfusion obstructs any attempt to pin down whether the observed variationin managerial work is variation between jobs across common dimensions andprocesses, or variations in the dimensions or processes themselves.

More than this, however, other distinctions, subsumed under the generalcategory 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 preliminaryto their possible utility in research terms.

In the first place, there would seem to be a distinction between whatmanagers, by observation or report, 'do' - their behaviour and activities - andwhat managers are charged, or seek, to 'achieve' - their tasks, responsibilitiesand functions. There is, therefore, a distinction between managerial 'work' asa 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) andin the extent to which it alerts the researcher to examine areas of discrepancyand interaction between managerial action and outcomes. By 'discrepancy',

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I mean instances of where managers' behaviour is not, in practice or by design,instrumental to the execution of responsibilities. By 'interaction' I mean therelatively little documented process ' ' whereby outcomes or responsibilitiesare 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 priorito inform or explain problems which recur throughout the literature. Theproblem of'managerial effectiveness' would be informed by further considerationof whether actual managerial behaviour is conducive to achieving certaindesirable outcomes and how desirable outcomes are defined or negotiated andby whom. The diversity of managerial work would be, in part, explained byan examination ofthe interaction between behaviour and outcomes, if whatmanagers 'do' is susceptible to continuous, even post hoc, negotiation. Thus,reluctance to grapple with the distinction between behaviour and outcomes hasled to an unsatisfactory treatment of what researchers themselves have regardedas key problems. There has not simply been limited conceptual developmentper se, but limited development of concepts of particular relevance for problemswhich the studies choose to address.

In fact, to suggest a dichotomy between 'doing" and 'achieving' here ismisleading. It is probably more satisfactory to conceive of a continuum rangingfrom simple 'behaviour' stripped of context and intention and, therefore, ofmeaning, through 'activities' or complexes of behaviour endowed with context- and/or intention - based meaning, to 'tasks', or the defined goals of activityand, finally, 'functions', the intended contribution of managerial tasks to theorganization as a whole.

Studies which look at the elements of managerial work or the allocation ofmanagers' time, both collectively and, in some cases, individually, span thiscontinuum. Sometimes the studies - or study - document simple behaviour('reading*, 'writing"), sometimes activities ('briefing subordinates on the week'ssales figures'), sometimes tasks ('disturbance handling') and sometimes functions('preservation of assets'). Equally, many ofthe categories used are not readilyindentifiable as behaviour, activity, task or functions.

Further, potentially important distinctions begin to arise from the foregoingdiscussion. The first is that between actual, observable behaviour and activitiesand those behaviours and activities which are required or expected by others.This distinction pardy 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 individualmanage rs'^oij, the work of managerial tearru and finally, the work of an organiza-tion's management as a whole. The studies reviewed largely focus, implicitly orexplicitly, upon jobs, but without always indicating the relationship betweenthese individual jobs and the work of teams or 'management' as a whole'"'.

I have hardly begun to adumbrate, leave alone clarify, these distinct aspectsof what might be meant by managerial 'work'. For the moment, I merely wish


to argue the need for this line of conceptual development. As existing studieshave largely eschewed such development, the result has been the use, bothbetween and within studies, of shifting categories. This has created, in tandemwith a richness ofdata, a serious difficulty: by precluding a basis for comparison,these diverse categories prelude the identification of conflicts of evidence. Thedemand for consistency is, therefore, not a naive search for agreement amongthe studies but a desire to identify in what sense they differ.

There is also perhaps an unwarranted proclivity on the part of researchersto tolerate and treat as unproblematic these differences in the categories whichthey employ. The fact that managerial work has been analyzed in such a varietyof terms indicates not only the diversity of interests, purposes and perspectivesofthe 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 possibilityis accepted in the discussion of choices (Stewart, 1982) and of the linguisticprocesses whereby managerial work is rendered into orderly, understoodcategories (Silverman and Jones, 1976). But the question remains: why are thesechoices and constituting processes possible?

An answer lies, I suggest, in an understanding of how the managerial functionis constituted within the overall work process of an organization. Whilst anominalist definition of'managers' - i.«. those who are designated as such -is a reasonable starting point for an analysis of what they do, when researchreveals such diversity in the composition of managerial work, it would seemprudent to re-examine who 'managers' are - unless one is content to ride theroundabout of saying that managers are people who do managerial work. Oncethis issue is posed, investigation must become concerned with the nature ofthe work process in organizations and the function of management in thatprocess. Some researchers have "raised such issues - Silverman and Jones (1976)ask what it is about organizations which make particular accounts of managerijilwork comprehensible and Mintzberg (1979) relates different types of managerialrole to the function of managers in different organizational structures. But afull account of the nature of the management function and why and how thatresolves into highly variable managerial work remains to be given.

The absence of such an account is the source ofthe second major weaknessof the accumulated research evidence: the 'unsituated' character of themanagerial behaviour documented there. The problem may be approachedby asking a naive question, the simplicity of which should not belittle itsrelevance to those interested in training or developing managers (includingmanagers themselves): is the managerial practice identified good practice? Dothe studies describe 'good' or 'bad' management? However pertinent thequestion' ' the studies themselves do not give much of an answer because theydo not offer an empirically-based standard against which the described behaviourmay be compared, The absence of such a standard does not always precludean implicit, unexplicated, standard lurking in the wings. For example, anyreference to 'informal' activities implies the existence of'formal' activities and

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the claim that much managerial activity is 'spurious' (Pym, 1975) rests on anunstated conception of 'real' work.

The standard against which actual managerial practice may be comparedcan either take the form of some absolute, objective, bench-mark - which, giventhe variation of managerial jobs, would be difilcult to sustain - or take a morecontingent form. One such contingent standard with which to compare actualmanagerial practice might be what others expect or require managers to do. Goodor bad practice may then be conceived in terms ofthe extent to which managers'performance matches others' expectations.

The distinction between performance and expectations is a key dimension ofthe concept of'role', an analytic tool which despite having much to contribute tothis area of study, has been surprisingly little exploited beyond its use as amulti-purpose label. Indeed, the concept of role embodies a number of ideasand conceptual distinctions which seem apposite to the analysis of managerialpositions. Firstly, there is the distinction between 'role demands' or 'the situa-tional pressures that confront [the individual] as the occupant of a givenstructural position'(Levinson, 1966, p. 286) and'role definition'or'the indivi-dual's adaptation within the organization. . . [which] may have varying degreesof fit with the role requirements'(Levinson, 1966, p. 289). Secondly, the conceptadmits of more careful analysis ofthe separate 'demands' and 'definitions' sidesof a 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 whatthe incumbent must be, 'role attributes' (Dahrendorf, 1968). Role definitiondivides into 'role conception' -the individual's perception of his position andthe role demands which attach to it - and 'role performance' - the individual'sactual behaviour, either as response to perceived expectations or as pursuitof individual projects (Levinson, 1966). The choice element in role performancemay also be analyzed by recourse to concepts of role identification or 'roledistance' (Goffman, 1961). Because 'role' refers to the point of contact betweenindividual and organization, it may be employed to examine both the struc-tural expectational determinants of behaviour and the effect of individualprojects and choices. As Salaman suggests, 'it enables the conceptual jump tobe made from individual activity to structural regularity' (1980, p. 130).Moreover, although the concept has, in practice, been used either to examinethe structured features of action or its negotiated, processual character, itsstrength lies in constantly suggesting the need to analyze both and in providingthe analytic tools to do so.

There are two respects in which role analysis seems particularly suitablefor the analysis of managerial positions and the work activity associated withthem. Firstly, as Salaman (1980) points out, the concept of role is mostappropriate for positions where there is both a degree of willing conformity


with organizational expectations and some possibility of choice on the part oftheincumbent. Although, strictly speaking, that conformity and choice has to bedemonstrated by empirical investigation of manager's roles, there are a priorigrounds for believing that such is the case. Secondly, the concept of role providesa framework wherein the evidence on managerial behaviour may be situated.The demands or expectations upon the manager do not simply provide thecontext but also represent a point of comparison for that behaviour.

In particular, it is by reference to these expectations that actual managerialperformance - whether at the level of behaviour, activities or accomplishedtask.s - may be shown to be instrumental or otherwise in their achievement.A strength of role analysis is its non-presumption of any necessary congruencebetween expectations and performance.

However, research evidence to date almost exclusively focuses uponmanagerial role performance: only Kotter (1982a) and Stewart (1976; Stewartet al., 1980) set the behaviour ofthe managers studied in the context of substantiverole demands. There is, therefore, a need for more research which seeks toidentify role prescriptions, expectations or demands - whether undertakenthrough an examination of formal job descriptions''•*' or through an investiga-tion ofthe expectations held by all the members of a manager's role-set''*'.This, again, suggests the need to examine the 'managerial' function. The natureof that function within organizations and how it is divided among differentmanagerial jobs is crucially important in defining managerial responsibilitiesand tasks.

The third and final weakness of existing studies is that it is uncertain whetherthey identify exclusively managerial behaviour. No study has sought to comparemanagers with non-managers and, thereby, identify the differentia specifica oftheir work. Moreover, because ofthe absence of consistent categories or models,post hoc comparisons between studies of individual occupations cannot be made.The possibility that the work described in studies of managers is not definitively'managerial' is both generally unfortunate and specifically so in that the evidencecannot be used to address the issue, much rehearsed elsewhere''^' of whether'management' is an inextricable element of all kinds of work, and hence partof any occupation, or whether it is a distinct and separable activity, amenableto allocation to one particular category of worker. In short, the studies havenot demonstrated that there is a bounded and separable set of activities whichmay be called 'managerial work' - and not merely activities which managershave been shown to do.

Moreover, it is also somewhat surprising that the research studies have notinvestigated more fully one aspect of managerial work which a priori might beexpected to follow from the conventional and working definition of a 'manager'as someone having responsibility for the operation of a discrete organizationalunit and being vested with at least formal authority over those working withinthat unit. A distinguishing characteristic ofthe occupational category of manageris the direction/control of and accountability/responsibility for a labour process.

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this combination of control and responsibility reflecting the fact that managersboth have authority over others and are, in turn, subject to the authority ofmore senior managers. This has two important implications. First, it suggestsa crucial distinction, within the generic term 'managerial work', between whatmanagers themselves do and what managers have to ensure others do. Thus tothe list of managerial behaviours, activities, tasks and functions, it is necessaryto 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 thatmanagerial jobs are invariably defined in practice by the labour process ororganizational unit of which the individual is manager. Few managers describethemselves merely as 'a manager', but qualify their occupation by referenceto 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 aredefined by what they manage, it might be expected ex hypothesi, that whateverelse they do, they may be perceived to be engaged in work which is identifiableas the control and direction of the work of others. This will not necessarilytake the form of crude 'man-management' through the overt and observablegiving of orders. If, as Blau and Schoenherr (1973) suggest, forms of controlhave become covert, indirect, even insidious, then it is necessary to search forsome evidence of control and responsibility within apparently mundanemanagerial behaviours.

Although some studies which refer to the work of managers in the courseof wider concerns (Nichols and Beynon, 1977; Silverman and Jones, 1976)deal with these issues' ', studies of managerial work per se rarely address theinfluence of non-observable 'responsibilities' and 'functions' beneath the appear-ances of managerial behaviour. Neither has this simply been the consequenceof 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 problematicand to ask - or keep asking - the question: why thxse behaviours andactivities?'''''

This relates to the question ofthe extent to which studies of managerial workdisprove 'classical' theories of management. It may be argued that the classicaltheories were not hypotheses about individual managers' behaviour, but theoriesof general managerial functions and responsibilities in the work process' '. Aweakness of these theories was in assuming that it was possible to 'read offspecific behaviour from a knowledge ofthe managerial functions. However,the classical theories have been neither adequately proven nor refuted byresearch studies of managerial work because these studies have not asked ap-propriate questions ofthe data. In particular, they have not asked: what kindof managerial function is implied by such behaviours on the part of individualmanagers?


Analysis of the managerial function need not, of course, proceed ab ovo. Aconsiderable body of literature has developed, chiefly within sociology, whichexamines management within the wider context of labour processes and thesocial division of labour''^'. Clearly, these investigations have been promptedby very different purposes and problems: issues such as the class location ofmanagers, the separation of ownership and control and the character, proven-ance and direction of changes in the labour process have predominated.Consequently, the limitations of these studies for an understanding ofmanagerial work is almost a mirror-image of the limitation of the studies dis-cussed above; they fail to investigate the activities related to the managerialfunction and, therefore, imply that the specific behaviour of managers maybe deduced, unproblematically.

I have argued, therefore, that three areas of difiiculty which may be encounteredin the published research evidence on managerial work - the plethora ofcategories for describing the phenomenon, the difficulty of judging the appro-priateness ofthe behaviour identified and, finally, the problem of whether thework described is exclusively 'managerial' (and in what sense) - may all betraced to a reluctance to consider the managerial function which provides thecontext for the tasks, activities and behaviour of individual managers. Twopossible future lines of development have been suggested which may begin toremove some of these difficulties. Firstly, the concept of role might be moresystematically used as a framework of analysis, with greater emphasis uponthe inter-relation between expectations and performance. Secondly, there couldbe an attempt to reconcile and synthesize the accumulated evidence on'managerial work' with the extant literature on 'management and the divisionof labour*. Such developments would permit a more careful specification ofthe question 'what do managers do?' - by clarifying the difference between'managers', 'managerial teams' and 'management', by clarifying the relationshipbetween functions, tasks, activities and behaviour and, fmally, by clarifyingthe distinction between others' expectations and individual performance.

Moreover, these distinctions may suggest a more careful definition of theterm which formed a starting point for this review: 'managerial effectiveness'.This may be shown to have a number of distinct and separate meanings:

(1) Firstly, there is effectiveness in the sense ofthe degree of congruencebetween actual and expected practices and performance.

(2) Secondly, there is effectiveness in the sense ofthe degree of fit betweenbehaviour and activities on the one hand and tasks and functions onthe other. Effectiveness is also, therefore, activity which is tributaryto the performance of the wider managerial function.

(3) Thirdly, there is the effectiveness of the manager not only in his ownwork, but in ensuring the work of others.

(4) Fourthly, there is the effectiveness of the individual manager, themanagement team or the organization's 'management' as a whole.

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(5) Finally, there is the issue of who decides what constitutes the propermanagement function and managerial tasks, and on what criteria.

In short, these developments and the issues they raise would, in my view,permit a clarification of and synthesis between managers' behaviour and themanagement Junction in order to provide a more rounded picture o^ managerialwork and how it is divided into managerial jobs.

NOTES

[1] See, for example, the definitions of effectiveness in Boyatzis (1982), Brodit- andBennett (1979). Campbell rt a/. (1970), Drucker (1970), Lowe (1979), Morse andWagner (1978), Reddin (1970), and Shakman and Roberts (1977). In all of these,different terminology disguises essentially consistent recognition of effectivenessas the relationship between actual and required performance.

[2] See, especially. Drucker (1970) and Reddin (1970).(3] It is also possible to distinguish, fourthly, the research methods whereby evidence

is collected.[4] In taking this starting point, I differ from those who argue ihai in the face of

considerable evidence there is not one job of 'management', but many, it isfallacious to investigate 'managers' or 'management' in general terms (Fores andGlover. 1976). My objection to this position is threefold. Firstly, it may beemployed as a blunt instrument of intellectual nihilism, wielded to foreclosediscussion and investigation. Secondly, the position is not consistently held inthat denial of the category 'manager* in the context of investigation of managerialwork accompanies acceptance of the term in the context of managerial training,development and. indeed, remuneration. Finally, this position fails to recognizethe nature and purpose of generalization from empirical complexity, confusingthe scientific search for commonalities and generalities with the futile quest foridentities. My aim is to discover whether there is a genotype of managerial work- sufficient common characteristics to stamp that work as 'managerial' - underlyingspecific phenotypes.

[5] it would be possible and illuminating for other purposes to classify the studiesaccording to the methodological orientation {e.g. positivist or interpretive), researchmethods {e.g. diary studies, observation studies, questionnaire studies) ortheoretical perspective.

[6] There are. of course, many who have theorized the major elements of management.See, for example, Barnard (1938), Drucker (1974), Fayol (1949), Hill (1979),Morse and Wagner (1978). Shakman and Roberts (1977) and Zalcznik (1964).

[7] For example. Home and Lupton (1965), Mintzberg (1973) and Stewart (1976).[8] The central role of oral communication in management has led Gowler and Legge

(1983) to analyze management as an 'oral tradition' and to explore, through ananalysis of managers' remarks at training courses :md in letters to managementjournals, the use of rhetoric to establish a meaning of'management' steeped innotions of control, order, super-ordinacy and efficiency.

[9] It has for some time been recognized that the distinction between 'formal' and'informal' organization does not stand up to careful scrutiny. See, originally, theargument in Etzioni (I960).

[10] But see Silverman and Jones (1976).


[111 ^^ analysis of management teams and how they function (but not, it may be noted,what they do) is offered in Belbin (1981). Stewan (1982) also addresses the issueof what is an appropriate unit of managerial work.

[ 12| The question i.s pertinent, given claims about how much of organizational perfor-mance may be attributed to the 'quality' of management.

[13] See. for example, Wortman and Sperling (1975).[14] This approach underlies Machin's 'Expectations Approach' (Machin, 1981) jmd

has also been adopted by Hales and Nightingale in an analysis of the work ofunit managers in the hotel and catering industry.

[15] Sec, for example. Braverman (1974), Marglin (1976), Nichols and Beynon (1977)and Storey (1980).

[16] Nichols and Beynon note at one point that 'Short of an explosion or a technicalfault, which threatens production, "trouble" - real trouble - means people. Withoutworkers, sophisticated technology counts for nothing. These managers, therefore,take "the other side" seriously' (1977, p. 33).

[17] Mintzberg (1973) claims to have arrived at his len managerial roles by askingthe question 'why?' of specific observed behaviours. What he does not do is thenask 'why these roles?',

118j For example, Fayol v r̂rote; 'All undertakings require planning, organization, com-mand, co-ordination and control in order to function properly. - .' (1932), andagain: 'In every case, the organization has to carry out [the following] managerialduties.. .'(1949), my emphases in both cases. In both of these prefatory remarks,Fayol makes it clear that it is management (or administration) in general of whichhe writes, not the behaviour of individual managers.

[19] Fora recent overview of this work and some ofthe key issues which it addresses,see Salaman (1982).

REFERENCES

BARNARD, C . I. (1938), The Functions oJ the Executive. Cambridge, Mass: HarvardUniversity Press.

BELBIN, R . M . (1981). Management Teams: HOiy They Succeed or Fail. London: Heinemann.BENNETT, R . and BRODIE, M . (1979). 'A perspective on managerial effectiveness'. In

Brodie, M. and Bennett, R. (Eds.), Managerial Effectiveness. Slough: Thames ValleyRegional Management Centre.

BLAU, P. and SCHOENHERR. R. A. (1973). 'New forms of power*. In Salaman, G. andThompson, K, (Eds,), People and Organisations. London: Longman.

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