Figurehead role: They greet visitors, represent the company at community events, serve as

spokespeople, and function as emissaries for the organization.

Leadership role: Managers also take on a leadership role to get things done within
organizations. Managers behave as leaders to influence, motivate, and direct others within
organizations and to strategize, plan, organize, control, and develop.

In their liaison role managers connect with people outside their immediate units. These may
be the managers of other units within the organization or people outside the organization
,such as suppliers, buyers, and strategic partners. An important purpose of such liaisons is
to build a network of relationships.

Interpersonal Category

Interpersonal roles are roles that involve interacting with other people inside and outside the
organization. Management jobs are people-intensive: Research suggests that managers
spend somewhere between 66 and 80 percent of their time in the company of others

The managerial roles in this category involve providing information and

ideas.
1. Figurehead – As a manager, you have social, ceremonial and legal
responsibilities. You're expected to be a source of inspiration. People look
up to you as a person with authority, and as a figurehead. They greet visitors,
represent the company at community events, serve as spokespeople, and function as
emissaries for the organization.
2. Leader – This is where you provide leadership for your team, your
department or perhaps your entire organization; and it's where you
manage the performance and responsibilities of everyone in the group.
Managers behave as leaders to influence, motivate, and direct others within
organizations and to strategize, plan, organize, control, and develop. A central task
of leaders is to give their organizations a sense of direction and purpose.
3. Liaison – Managers must communicate with internal and external contacts.
You need to be able to network effectively on behalf of your organization. In
their liaison role managers connect with people outside their immediate units. These
may be the managers of other units within the organization or people outside the
organization, such as suppliers, buyers, and strategic partners. An important purpose of
 such liaisons is to build a network of relationships. Managers can use their networks to
help coordinate the work of their units with others, to gain access to valuable
information, and more generally to get things done and further their own agendas within
the organization.

Informational Category

INFORMATIONAL ROLES

Informational roles are concerned with collecting, processing, and disseminating

information. Managers collect information from various sources both inside and outside the
organization, process that information, and distribute it to others who need it.

The managerial roles in this category involve processing information.

4. Monitor – In this role, you regularly seek out information related to your
organization and industry, looking for relevant changes in the environment.
By monitoring the external competitive and internal organizational environment for
information, managers try to gain knowledge about how well the organization is
performing and whether any changes in strategy or operational processes are required.
You also monitor your team, in terms of both their productivity, and their
well-being.
5. Disseminator – This is where you communicate potentially useful
information to your colleagues and your team. One thing managers’ do with
this information is disseminate it to direct reports and others inside the organization.
In their dissemination role managers regularly inform staff about the company’s
direction and sometimes about specific technical issues. At the supervisory level, the
disseminator role often takes the form of one-to-one informal conversations with
specific employees about particular matters.

Spokesperson – Managers represent and speak for their organization. In this

role, you're responsible for transmitting information about your organization
and its goals to the people outside it. In their spokesperson role, managers deliver
specific information to individuals and groups located outside their department or
organization. Sales managers communicate with business partners regarding new sales
strategies. Division heads give presentations to their colleagues in other divisions about
strategies and resource requirements. CEOs meet with investors, government officials,
community leaders, and others to convey information about company developments of
interest to those stakeholders. These are more than figurehead activities: They
communicate valuable information to important constituencies, and in doing so they can
help to shape their perception of the organization and the way they interact with it.

Decisional Category

Management guru Peter Drucker once wrote that whatever managers do, they do through
making decisions. The information collected through monitoring is directed toward
discovering problems or opportunities, weighing options, making decisions, and ensuring
that those decisions are put into action. Whereas interpersonal roles deal with people and
informational roles deal with knowledge, decisional roles deal with action. They translate the
people and information into processes with the purpose of moving the organization toward
its strategic goals.

The managerial roles in this category involve using information.

7. Entrepreneur – As a manager, you create and control change within the
organization. This means solving problems, generating new ideas, and
implementing them. In their role as entrepreneurs, managers must make sure that
their organizations innovate and change when necessary, developing or adopting new
ideas and technologies and improving their own products and processes. They must
make decisions that are consistent with such entrepreneurial behavior. If they do not,
their organizations will be quickly outflanked by more nimble competitors.
8. Disturbance Handler – When an organization or team hits an
unexpected roadblock, it's the manager who must take charge. You also
need to help mediate disputes within it. Disturbance handling includes
addressing unanticipated problems as they arise and resolving them expeditiously.
In managerial work unanticipated problems arise often. Sales may grow more slowly
than anticipated; excess inventory may accumulate; production processes may
 break down; valuable employees might leave for jobs elsewhere; and so on.
Managers must decide what to do about these unanticipated problems—often
quickly.

9. Resource Allocator – You'll also need to determine where

organizational resources are best applied. This involves allocating
funding, as well as assigning staff and other organizational resources.
Organizations never have enough money, time, facilities, or people to satisfy all their
needs. Resources are scarce and can be used in many different ways. A crucial
decision responsibility of managers is to decide how best to allocate the scarce
resources under their control between competing claims in order to meet the
organization’s goals. As a resource allocator, a manager in charge of product
development, for example, may have to assign people, money, and equipment to
three different product development teams.
10. Negotiator – You may be needed to take part in, and direct, important
negotiations within your team, department, or organization. Negotiating is
continual for managers. They negotiate with suppliers for better delivery, lower
prices, and higher-quality inputs. They negotiate with customers over the pricing,
delivery, and design of products and services. They negotiate with peers in their own
organization over shared resources and cooperative efforts. They negotiate with
their superiors for access to scarce resources, including capital, personnel, and
facilities. They even negotiate with subordinates in their own work unit, trying to
allocate employees between tasks to meet the goals of both the organization and
individual employees. Managers who are successful when making negotiation
decisions can lower input costs, strike better deals with customers, gain access to
more high-quality resources within the organization, and better organize their own
subordinates. Skilled negotiators are more likely to successfully implement strategy
and raise the performance of their organizations
Interpersonal Roles
Managers spend a considerable amount of time in interacting with other people
both within their own organizations as well as outside. These people include
peers, subordinates, superiors, suppliers, customers, government officials and
community leaders. All these interactions require an understanding of
interpersonal relations. Studies show that interacting with people takes up nearly
80 per cent of a manager’s time. These interactions involve the following three
major interpersonal roles:

Figurehead: Managers act as symbolic figureheads performing social or legal

obligations. These duties include greeting visitors, signing legal documents,
taking important customers to lunch, attending a subordinate’s wedding or
speaking at functions in schools and churches. All these/ primarily, are duties of a
ceremonial nature but are important for the smooth functioning of the
organization

Leader: The influence of the manager is most clearly seen in his role as a leader
of the unit or organization. Since he is responsible for the activities of his
subordinates, he must lead and coordinate their activities in meeting task-related
goals and he must motivate them to perform better. He must be an exemplary
leader so that his subordinates follow his directions and guidelines with respect
and dedication.

Liaison: In addition to their constant contact with their own subordinates, peers
and superiors, the managers must maintain a network of outside contacts in
order to assess the external environment of competition, social changes or
changes in governmental rules, regulations and laws. In this role, the managers
build up their own external information system.
In addition, they develop networks of mutual obligations with other managers in
the organization. They also form alliances to win support for their proposals or
decisions. The liaison with external sources of information can be developed by
attending meetings and professional conferences, by personal phone calls,
trade journals and by informal personal contacts within outside agencies.

Informational Roles
By virtue of his interpersonal contacts, a manager emerges as a source of
information about a variety of issues concerning the organization. In this capacity
of information processing, a manager executes the following three roles:

Monitor: The managers are constantly monitoring and scanning their

environment, both internal and external, collecting and studying information
regarding their organization and the outside environment affecting their
organization. This can be done by reading reports and periodicals, by asking their
liaison contacts and through gossip, hearsay and speculation.

Disseminator of Information: The managers must transmit their information

regarding changes in policies or other matters to their subordinates, their peers
and to other members of the organization. This can be done through
memorandums, phone calls, individual meetings and group meetings.

Spokesperson: A manager has to be a spokesman for his unit and he represents

his unit in either sending relevant information to people outside his unit or
making some demands on behalf of his unit. This may be in the form of the
president of the company making a speech to a lobby on behalf of an
organizational cause or an engineer suggesting a product modification to a
supplier.
Decisional Roles
On the basis of the environmental information received, a manager must make
decisions and solve organizational problems. In that respect, a manager plays
four important roles.

Entrepreneur: As entrepreneurs, managers are continuously involved in

improving their units and facing the dynamic technological challenges. They are
constantly on the lookout for new ideas for product improvement or products
addition.

They initiate feasibility studies, arrange for capital for new products if necessary,
and ask for suggestions from the employees for ways to improve the
organization. This can be achieved through suggestion boxes, holding strategy
meetings with project managers and R & D personnel.

Conflict Handler: The managers are constantly involved as arbitrators in solving

differences among the subordinates or the employee’s conflicts with the central
management. These conflicts may arise due to demands for higher pay or other
benefits or these conflicts may involve outside forces such as vendors increasing
their prices, a major customer going bankrupt or unwanted visits by
governmental inspectors.

Managers must anticipate such problems and take preventive action if possible
or take corrective action once the problems have arisen. These problems may
also involve labor disputes, customer complaints, employee grievances, machine
breakdowns, cash flow shortages and interpersonal conflicts.
Resource Allocator: The third decisional role of a manager is that of a resource
allocator. The managers establish priorities among various projects or programs
and make budgetary allocations to the different activities of
the organization based upon these priorities. They assign personnel to jobs, they
allocate their own time to different activities and they allocate funds for new
equipment, advertising and pay raises.

Negotiator: The managers represent their units or organizations in negotiating

deals and agreements within and outside of the organization. They negotiate
contracts with the unions. Sale managers may negotiate prices with prime
customers. Purchasing managers may negotiate prices with vendors.