MANAGERIAL WORK: ANALYSIS FROM OBSERVATION
ICANAQEUENT SCIENCE
Vol, U, No, 3, Oetend their time.* But in no part of this literature is the actud content of mana^rial work systematically and mesuDingfuUy described.* Ttus, the question posed at the start—^what do managers do?—remains essentially uiumsw^ed in the literature of management.
This is indeed an odd situation. We clfum to teach management in ashools of both business and public administration; we tmdertake major research programs in management; we find a growii^ s^ment of the management mnence community concemed with the problems of senior management. Most of these pe(^le—^the planners, information and control theorists, systems analysts, etc.—are attempting to analyze and change working habits that they themselv^ do not understand. Thus, at a confo^nce called at M.I.T. to assess the impact of the computer on the manager, and attended by a ntunber of America's foremost mimagement scientists, a participuit found it necessary to comment after lengthy discussion [20, p. 198]:
I'd like to return to an eaiiier point. It seons to me that until we get into the question of what the top manager does or what the functions are that d^ne the top muugement job, we're not gMi^ to get out of the kind of difficulty that keeps cropping up. What I'm really doing is leading up to my earlier question which no one really asewered. And that is:
Is it possible to urive at a specification of what constitutes the job of a top manager?
His qu^tion was not answered.
Research Study on Managerial Work
In late 1966,1 began research on this question, seeking to replace Fayol's words by a set that would more accurately d^eribe what manages do. In essence, I sou^t to develop by the process of induction a statement of managerial work that woidd have empirical validity. Uang a method caDed "structured observation", I observed for oneweek periods the duef executives of five medium to laxge oi^anissations (a consulting firm, a school system, a technology firm, a
Vol, U, No, 3, Oetend their time.* But in no part of this literature is the actud content of mana^rial work systematically and mesuDingfuUy described.* Ttus, the question posed at the start—^what do managers do?—remains essentially uiumsw^ed in the literature of management.
This is indeed an odd situation. We clfum to teach management in ashools of both business and public administration; we tmdertake major research programs in management; we find a growii^ s^ment of the management mnence community concemed with the problems of senior management. Most of these pe(^le—^the planners, information and control theorists, systems analysts, etc.—are attempting to analyze and change working habits that they themselv^ do not understand. Thus, at a confo^nce called at M.I.T. to assess the impact of the computer on the manager, and attended by a ntunber of America's foremost mimagement scientists, a participuit found it necessary to comment after lengthy discussion [20, p. 198]:
I'd like to return to an eaiiier point. It seons to me that until we get into the question of what the top manager does or what the functions are that d^ne the top muugement job, we're not gMi^ to get out of the kind of difficulty that keeps cropping up. What I'm really doing is leading up to my earlier question which no one really asewered. And that is:
Is it possible to urive at a specification of what constitutes the job of a top manager?
His qu^tion was not answered.
Research Study on Managerial Work
In late 1966,1 began research on this question, seeking to replace Fayol's words by a set that would more accurately d^eribe what manages do. In essence, I sou^t to develop by the process of induction a statement of managerial work that woidd have empirical validity. Uang a method caDed "structured observation", I observed for oneweek periods the duef executives of five medium to laxge oi^anissations (a consulting firm, a school system, a technology firm, a