Mintzberg Essay

4.0 Mintzberg’s management roles Mintzberg characterizes management using three categories and ten roles and each one displays critical managerial skill sets useful for business leaders in a variety of contexts. The three are, interpersonal roles that include, figurehead, leader, liaison. Informational roles, which covers, mentor, disseminator, and spokesman. Lastly is decisional roles that include, entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator, and negotiator. It is very important to understand that no one manager can be all of these things to everyone at once. Good management requires assessing which roles are appropriate when and determining if new talents are required to complement a skill set.

4.1 Interpersonal roles This covers the relationship that a manager needs to have with its employees, colleagues, and bosses. The three roles that are in this category are figurehead, leader and liaison. Managers must act as figureheads due to their natural authority and symbolic position representing the company. As leaders, managers have to take into account the needs of the organisation and those of the individuals they manage and work with. Lastly is liaison, it deals with the ‘horizontal’ relationships which looks at work activity. It has been proved to be important for a manager. A manager normally maintains a network of relationships, both inside and out of the organisation. Dealing with people in a formal or informal way, up or down the hierarchy. It is