IE Orientation
IE Orientation
IE Orientation
BSIE V-2
Interpersonal roles cover the relationships that a manager has to have with
others. The three roles within this category are figurehead, leader and liaison.
Managers have to act as figureheads because of their formal authority and symbolic
position, representing their organizations. As leader, managers have to bring together
the needs of an organization and those of the individuals under their command. The
third interpersonal role, that of liaison, deals with the horizontal relationships which
work-activity studies have shown to be important for a manager. A manager has to
maintain a network of relationships outside the organization.
Managers have to collect, disseminate and transmit information and have three
corresponding informational roles, namely monitor, disseminator and spokesperson.
A manager is an important figure in monitoring what goes on in the organization,
receiving information about both internal and external events and transmitting it to
others. This process of transmission is the dissemination role, passing on information
of both a factual and value kind. A manager often has to give information concerning
the organization to outsiders, taking on the role of spokesperson to both the general
public and those in positions of influence.
The most crucial part of managerial activity as that concerned with making
decisions. The four roles that placed in this category are based on different classes
of decision, namely, entrepreneurs, disturbance handler, resource allocator, and
negotiator. As entrepreneurs, managers make decisions about changing what is
happening in an organization. They may have to both initiate change and take an
active part in deciding exactly what is to be done. In principle, they are acting
voluntarily. This is very different from their role as a disturbance handler, where
managers have to make decisions which arise from events beyond their control and
unpredicted.