Managerial Roles (Mintzberg)

Managers undertake activities to achieve the objectives of
the organization. Mintzberg (1994) notes a number of
different and sometimes conflicting views of the manager's
role. He finds that it is a curiosity of the management
literature that its best-known writers all seem to emphasize
one particular part of the manager’s job to the exclusion of
the others. Together, perhaps, they cover all the parts, but
even that does not describe the whole job of managing.
Mintzberg's role typology is frequently used in studies of
managerial work [e.g., 57].
Describing the manager's work has been an ongoing
pursuit of researchers and practitioners. The manager's
work is characterized by brevity, variety, and
fragmentation of tasks, a preference for action (as opposed
to reflection), and a preference for verbal communication
over formal reports [51]. Managers in organizations are
continuously confronted by an array of ambiguous data
and vaguely felt stimuli which they must somehow order,
explicate and imbue with meaning before they decide on
how to respond [46]. Kotter (1999) identified two main
roles for executives: agenda setting and network building.
While agenda setting is concerned with figuring out what
to do despite uncertainty and an enormous amount of
potentially relevant information, network building is
concerned with getting things done through a large and
diverse group of people despite having little direct control
over most of them.
A number of models describing the manager's work
have been proposed including functional descriptions such
as planning, organizing, directing, controlling,
coordinating, and innovating. Similarly, frameworks based
on the methods used to accomplish these functions, for
example, Mintzberg's role typology, have been proposed.
According to Mintzberg (1990), the manager's job can be
described in terms of various roles:

1. Informational Roles. By virtue of interpersonal contacts, both with
subordinates and with a network of contacts, the manager emerges
as the nerve center of the organizational unit. The manager may not
know everything but typically knows more than subordinates do.
Processing information is a key part of the manager's job. As
monitor, the manager is perpetually scanning the environment for
information, interrogating liaison contacts and subordinates, and
receiving unsolicited information, much of it as a result of the
network of personal contacts. As a disseminator, the manager passes
some privileged information directly to subordinates, who would
otherwise have no access to it. As spokesperson, the manager sends
some information to people outside the unit.

2. Decisional Roles. Information is not an end in itself; it is the basic
input to decision making. The manager plays the major role in a
unit's decision-making system. As its formal authority, only the
manager can commit the unit to important new courses of action;
and as its nerve center, only the manager has full and current
information to make the set of decisions that determines the unit's
strategy. As entrepreneur, the manager seeks to improve the unit, to
adapt it to changing conditions in the environment. As disturbance
handler, the manager responds to pressures from situations. As
resource allocater, the manager is responsible for deciding who will
get what. As negotiator, the manager commits organizational
resources in real time.

3. Interpersonal Roles. As figurehead, every manager must perform
some ceremonial duties. As leader, managers are responsible for the
work of the people of their unit. As liaison, the manager makes
contacts outside the vertical chain of command.

reference:
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