Review on Management Theories

It is often said that good leaders empower themselves and others within the organization; thus, enabling the whole organization to achieve its objectives. Since time in memorial, management has been used as a tool to ensure coordination of activities and direction of individual efforts towards a similar goal. However, the above, though true to the current society, has slightly changed over the years and the role of managers has increased in both importance and complexity. This paper is aimed at showing that the managers who apply different management theories in their day to day activities have greater chances of success, as opposed to the ones who only utilize one.

Roles of Managers

Griffin (2000), defines a manager as a person who is, first of all, is responsible for the realization of the management process. The various roles that a manager is expected to perform can be defined as the organized sets of behaviors related to the position. Henry Mintzberg developed ten roles of a manager in the late 1960s after careful study of executives at work. The ten different roles defined by Mintzberg are further divided into three categories that are, interpersonal roles, informational, and decisional roles.

Interpersonal Roles

The most basic definitions of a manager are as defined by Follet (1941), who defined management as “getting things done through people.” In the day to day activities of a manager, he or she would be required to interact with various people ranging from peers, subordinates, customers, suppliers, and superiors. Each of these interactions requires interpersonal relations. Therefore, while interacting with the various individuals at the workplace, the manager is performing the interpersonal roles, which include being the figurehead, a leader and acts in liaison since they must maintain outside contacts in order to access the external environment of competition, social changes and governmental rules and regulations.

Informational Roles

In every organization, the manager is the one who is viewed and emerges as a source of information about almost everything and anything pertaining the organization. As such, a manager performs the informational roles and is expected to monitor and scan their environment both internally and externally, studying all the information gathered that concerns their organization, in addition to its relationship with the outside environment. The manager also disseminates information regarding changes in policies or any other issues within and outside their organization. In addition, the manager also plays the role of spokesperson for the organizations he is responsible for all relevant information related to their unit and also makes demands on behalf of the unit.

Decisional Roles

Due to the fact that managers ensure the smooth flow of activities and prevent confusion at the workplace,they have to constantly make a lot of crucial decisions that may have the adverse positive or negative effects on the various departments or the organization as a whole. Therefore, their decisional role is of great importance to any organization. The managers have to make decisions regarding the improvement of their units and services; thus, have a role as entrepreneurs. In addition to entrepreneurial roles, the managers also have to make decisions in all the conflicts they must handle. They have to act as arbiters in solving differences among the subordinates, employees, clients, or the central management. The manager also has to make decisions that pertain to resource allocation and negotiation as they represent the company when they negotiate deals within and outside the company.

Development of the Management Theories

The management theories grew in the twentieth century along with industrialization. This is majorly due to the fact that management concepts were required to guide the growth of industrial manufacturing. This is due to the major fact that the scholars who developed them observed the outstanding traits of the managers of their time. For instance, the scientific management theory developed in the years of the industrial revolution and it espoused careful specification and measurement of all organizational tasks. This is due to the fact that at the time most companies were mechanistic and had routinized activities as such the theory would work best for them.

When the industrial world had come to terms with the rather dehumanizing effects of industrialization, the human relations movements came up and theories that advocated for more attention to be given to individuals and their unique capabilities to ensure maximum efficiency and profitability from each individual. Therefore, the behavioral sciences played an important role in the development of these theories. As such it is important to note that, while applying the various theories in a specific situation, thorough consideration of the conditions and the environment in which a specific theory developed.

Comparison of the Theories of Management

The different theories of management describe how people can be more productive, efficient and organized to attain common goals. The three different contemporary theories, namely systems theory, contingency theory, and chaos theory, have various differences and similarities. For instance, all the theories elaborate on a system that all organizations are based on, and the success of the organization is highly dependent on the stability and efficiency of the individual parts of the systems. However, slight differences exist within the theories. For instance, as opposed to the systems theory which advocates for the strength of individual systems, the contingency theory also elaborates on the importance of individual leaders who have a great influence on the success or failure of individual departments or the company as a whole. The chaotic theory, on the other hand, elaborates on the increase of complexity of every organization. It adds that in time, the situation gets out of control and the organization in a bid to survive or maintain stability, it seeks out more structure. Thus to obtain stability once more and lose the essence of volatility, the organization has to fix internal issues within the various structures that make up the organization. Therefore, bringing out the similarity between the chaotic theory, systems and contingency theory, which all elaborate on the success of the organization depending on the stability or success of individual structures.

In conclusion, after evaluating all the contemporary management theories and evaluating their various applications,though I bear great preference to the systems theory, due to the mere fact that it seems more efficient than the rest, it is prudent to notice that it in the combination with the other two theories give a more efficient management theory that can be applied in various situations. It is therefore advisable to use all the three management theories, while regarding the individual merits and demerits and applying them in the various situations to ensure efficiency and that the organization can adapt to various changes in the society as it prevents rigidness.