Who is a manager and what do they do? A manager manages, organises or plans activities at a particular firm, business, company or a governmental organisation, ensuring that appropriate resources of people, money and materials are available to do the work. It is a role that occurs within many different occupational areas.
What are the activities of the manager? There are two main areas:
The first area consists of activities directed “inside” a firm (or a business, a company, an organisation) and it is related especially to the management of certain organisational sections in the firm or the firm as a whole. Such a management job involves especially – the planning of individual tasks – their time – personnel required – material and technical and financial support and the planning of a general strategy for the subordinate unit – assigning tasks to subordinate staff – monitoring the execution of the task – flexible decision-making on further steps to be taken – solution of frequent problems arising in connection with these tasks and with the operations of the subordinate department as a whole, including both work-related problems and often also personal and interpersonal problems – checking to see the task has been carried out – incentive policies and employee remuneration – chairing meetings of the subordinate unit and taking part in meetings chaired by the manager’s own manager.
At higher levels in the organisation the term manager may be replaced by “executive” or, at the top by “chief executive” or “managing director”. She/he may manage both the firm as a whole or its particular unit, which may consist of additional smaller sections or even of only individual employees. A manager may be in charge of teams formed temporarily to support the solution to a certain project.
Sometimes, however, a manager may organise certain activities, without necessarily having any subordinate staff. These are primarily activities directed “outside” a firm, in particular negotiating the firm’s activities, establishing business contacts – organising operations relating to these activities and business deals.