Practicing Management

CHAPTER 1

Management Roles and Activities

Introduction

In order to understand whether someone is being an effective manager it is necessary to have some idea of the expectations regarding the person’s roles and activities within the organization. A number of different approaches have been taken in creating models of managerial functions or activities. Fayol famously argued that there were five principle managerial functions—planning, organizing, commanding, coordinating, and controlling—and others have accepted these categories and added a handful of others such as staffing and rewarding. Mintzberg criticized Fayol’s “five functions” as being an inaccurate reflection of the complex and chaotic nature of the manager’s tasks and suggested an alternative ...