What Is a Manager?

Walter Shipley is the chief executive officer (CEO) of Chase Manhattan Corp. Michael Walsh is an elementary school principal in Tempe. Arizona. Mary Jean Giroux is a retirement-products supervisor at Canada's London Life Insurance Co. Theresa Gonzalez works as a regional director with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. And Yong-Chang Chu is a construction foreman with Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa. Despite the fact that these people have jobs with different titles and work in organizations that do very different things, they all have one thing in common—they're managers. But as we saw with Richard Thibeault, merely calling someone a manager doesn't mean he or she does only managerial tasks or even a common set of tasks.

Until very recently, we were safe in defining managers as "individuals who oversee the activities of others." We could also confidently differentiate "managers" from "operatives"; the latter term describes people who work directly on a job or task and have no managerial responsibilities. This is no longer true. Today's manager may have no direct subordinates. He or she is likely to be viewed as the team coach, facilitator, or even as a coequal member of the team, with no more authority than anyone else on the team. Additionally, while an increasing number of managers are also performing nonmanagerial tasks, more and more so-called operative employees are assuming responsibities that traditionally were deemed as belonging to management. So definitions we've used in the past no longer apply.

Any definition today must reflect that many traditional workers'jobs now include managerial activities, especially on teams. For instance, team members are developing plans, making decisions, and monitoring their own performance. And on self-directed teams—a rapidly growing way to organize groups of workers—no one person oversees the group or is singularly accountable for the team's performance.

So how do we define manager'? A manager is a person who integrates the work of others. That might mean direct responsibility for a group of people. It might mean supervising a single person. It might be coordinating individuals in other departments or working with people from other organizations. And it includes facilitators or leaders who integrate work-team activities.

Why Do We Have Managers?

What would a company such as Eastman Kodak, with more than 100,000 employees, look like without any managers? Can you imagine what your local McDonald's might be like without managers?

One of the first words that probably comes to your mind is chaotic. If so. you would be right, because one of the things that managers do is give a group or organization direction. They typically provide formal leadership by clarifying for people what they are supposed to do. They also facilitate coordination. Managers act as a communication conduit by coordinating their unit's activities with the activities of other units in an organization. Still another thing that managers provide is accountability. Organizations reduce ambiguity over performance outcomes by appointing managers who become accountable for achievement of performance goals.

Managers add overhead or additional expense to the operation of any organization. So they must justify their existence by providing "value added," that is. by creating benefits that exceed their costs. Eastman Kodak, for example, will employ 5,000 or more managers and pay them in excess of half a billion dollars a year (including benefits) because without them Kodak could not accomplish its goals. Similarly, the