The Role of a Manager in Small Scale Business Organization

The Role of a Manager in Small Scale Business Organization

In this chapter, the researcher reviewed the works finding and recommendations of eminent authors and writers that have carried out research related to the issue being investigated, that is to say; the role of a manager in a small business organization; having carefully examined the expert operational system of Bilo Tex trading and construction company NIG. Ltd., Enugu. The researcher discovered some of the roles played by the manager in a small business organization such as interpersonal role, informational role. Before the details of the role, we shall firstly discuss business organization.

DEFINITION OF A MANAGER

According to Agbo (1982) a manager is a person who occupies management position and performs organization function s of management.

In this case position refers to the manager’s organizational superiority in the hierarchy of authority. That position is of leading that is to say a leader who controls, directs and motivate employees in any organization to put up his or her best for the betterment of the organization.

In the same view (Nweke 1952) in his book supports that a manager is that person that integrates all function of management such as planning, organization goal or objectives which the organization has been established upon.

THE ROLE OF A MANAGER IN A SMALL BUSINESS ORGANIZATION INTERPERSONAL ROLE

Mint berg infer that there is considerable similarity in the behaviors of manager’s staff level.

All manager, he argued have formal authority over their own organisational units and derives status from that authority. This status cause all manager ,to be involved in interpersonal relations with subordinates, peers and superiors who in turn  provide managers with the explain s that the manager to keep the organization running smoothly. Even the duties association with these roles are often a routing and the manager cannot ignore them. The first role there is that of figurehead as heads the unit, he sometimes act as a figure head by performing certain ceremonial duties e.g. accepting visitors, attending subordinate wedding, leader role. This included hiring, training, motivating and encouraging employees.

Finally, is the manager’s role of liaison by leading people other than subordinates or supervisors such contract mainly to build up personal sources of information?

INFORMATIONAL ROLE OF A MANAGER

SHIELD (1930:4:27) Like other authors has similar view as what the role of manager in a small business organization should be.

He is of the view however, that a manager ensures constantly, looks for information that can be to advantage, he also explained or reviewed that a manager in any small business organization uses informational role meet up right decisions, and others in the manager’s unit or organization depends on the information they received. And this informational role three:

Monitor Role, which means ensuring constantly, looking for information that is of information that is of great benefit to the organization as a whole that subordinates are questioned,  and unsolicited information is collected usually through manager’s system of personal contacts. It helps him to best informed.

DISSEMINATOR ROLE – Is the efficient distributor spreading of the information that would otherwise be accessible to them.

COMPANY REPRESENTATIVE –That managers transmit some of the information they have collected to individuals outside the unit or even outside the organization. Keeping supervisor in the organization satisfied by keeping them well informed is one important aspect of the role company representative and communicating outside the organization

THE DECISION ROLE

Esene (1990:10) stated some manager’s decisional role in support of mint berg that is the embodiment of entrepreneur which means when he receive a good idea, he launches a development project to make the idea reality. And an entrepreneur, the manager initiates changes voluntarily. In the role of disturbance handler, he responds to situation that are beyond his control such as strikes, bankrupt customer, breach of contracts, e,t,c. At resources allocation, the manager is responsible for deciding how and to whom the resources of the organization and the manager’s own time will be allocated the screening of all important decision made by others in the unit before putting it into effect.

Finally, negotiator, company’s managing director work out a deal with a supplier and office manager irons out a problem with a clerk. Managers spend a great part of their as negotiators because they have the information and authority that negotiators require.

THE ORIGIN OF SUBJECT

AREA

The study of the historical background of management is purely a deduction from  the period of antiquity i.e. before 1800 BC. There are a lot to learn from the period of antiquity. as life continued, management because more revolutionized and sophisticated. These could be seen from the proof below. .

THE GRADE OF CIVILIZATION

I EGYPT : the ancient Egyptian as far back as 1300BC recognized the importance of organization and success in the construction of palaces and pyramids resulted from prudent management.

II CHIAN: the parables of confusion china include the practical suggestion for proper public administration and admonition to choose honest, unselfish and capable public officers. A confusion is a Chinese photosphere and teacher of morals (479-551BC) who believes in the principal true royalty to friend, relative, rules and that one should treat other as one would wish to be treated.

III BABYLON: one of the seven wonders of the ancient world was the handing gardens of Babylon. Certainly. Some had planned and or led other to execute that plan before such historical record was created.

IV ROMAN EMPIRE: known as the greatest conquering nation in the world by then the complexity of the administrative  job brought a considerable development of management techniques.

Romans found goods management even more important in peacetime than in war. Good management however has contributed to the roman military success. Then also applied scalar principal of Henri Fayol in their delegation of authority.

.V.   GREECE: The ancient Greek philosopher like Plato and Aristotle stated some principals which are still relevant to modern management. Socrates had define management as a special skill separate and different from mains technical known-how which is still valid today. The  Athenian democracy with its courts, commonwealths councils and board generals were all found based on good management.

THE MILITARY

Large armies are not without problems. Those includes communications, manpower development, organization structure etc. Even mercenary armies had adequate morale and the complimentary relationships of individuals and group objectives, emphasized good leadership techniques. Among the modern principals of management is the staff principal

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

Thos church has over the years been the most effective formal organization in the history of western civilization. It has yielded examples in applied management like hierarchical large-scale organization scalar chain in authority, principals of authority and delegation, which are worthy of emulation.

BIBLICAL EXAMPLES

Management is of a biblical origin. The bible offers many examples of management principals. The book of exodus describes the leadership qualities of Moses. For instance in Exodus 18:13-18, we read of how jethro served as a management consultant to Moses, offering ideas similar in dimension to modern principles of leadership training, delegation of authority and responsibility. The parables of the hidden talents in Mathew 25:14-30 stresses that managers must produce good results and give good  account of them.

THE COMERALISTS

These were a group of intellectual philosophers and public administrators, who stayed in Germany and Australia in the 16th and 18th centuries.

They believed that the greatness any action depending on the quality material wealth, riches and systematic  administration. They also believed in the diversity of specialization, starting, training of subordinates and implications of equal importance.

Finally, it has to be emphasized that the study of management and organization is quite old. It could be traced from the above examples that several attempts were made to explain the theories and principles of organization that were expressed over past several thousand years.

In the 1800s, a set of concepts about organization now known as classical began to develop.

SCHOOL OF THOUGHT WITHIN THE SUBJECT AREA.

The scientific management period had many contributions. The father of this area was Fredrick window Taylor. His followers include Charles Babb age, Harry grant and the gilberts, and their individual contributions.

SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT

FREDRICK WINSLOW     TAYLOR  Is the father of scientific management: his followers were Charles Babb age, Henry grant and Lillian gilberts. Taylor lived from 1615_1856, his parents wanted him to study law but he had an eye problem so he latter become an appearance to a mechanist with enterprise hydraulic works in Philadelphia at the age of 18 and worked there for 3 years. While in the company, he discovered three things in that company:

Lack of harmony between management and workers.

Poor management.

Bad industrial condition.

Later, the Midvale Steel works as a mechanist in 1878: in the company he discovered that workers were practicing soldering (restriction of output). As a result, he blazed the management for not designing the work properly for the workers to be effective and emphasized that workers should do more work. He designed time and motion study or time study a production which is concerned for a fair day work, with this method, Taylor, tried to determine what a worker was able to achieve with his equipment and materials within a specific time. He further pounded a system of payment called differential piece rate. This is a system by which workers that produce more will be paid higher rate while those who produce lees will be panelized with lower rate.

TAYLOR’S OBJECTIVE

Taylor sought as an overriding objective, low labor cost and wages for workers .he suggested that  gains were possible because the possibility of coupling high  wages with low lab our   costs rest mainly upon the enormous differences between the amount  of   work a  first class man can do under favorable  circumstances and the work which is actual by the average man

HIS PRINCIPLES OF SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT

F.W Taylor published a book in 1901 called the principles  of scientific management. The principles in his book  are summarized as follow ;

I. working for maximum output rather than restricting output by avoiding soldering which  comes as a result of disharmony between management and labourer.

2. Replacing the random rule of thumb, personality factors [management by intuition] in decision –making  with scientific management [management by systems and standard ]

3.Obt  aiming harmony in group action rather than discord  since it maximizes prosperity for management and worker.

4. Achieving co-operation in human beings rather than chiastic individuals

5. Developing all workers to the fullest extent for the workers and the company’s productivity .In order to do this management should be able to collect data through observation and movement.

6. Standard condition should be maintained to ensure that task is more easily accomplished and to standard.

7. Each worker should be made to have a clearly defined daily task and objective.

8. High payment for successful completion of while those who fall short of    standards should be punished or made to sidle a loss.

DUTIES OF MANAGERS BY F .W TAYLOR ARE AS  FOLLOWS;

1.The   bringing together of the science to the work and  the scientifically selected and trained workers.

2.Scientifically select, train, educate and develop workers.

3. The  constant intimate co-operation between management and labourer.

4.Develop a science of management for each element  of man’s work through the application of principles like and motion study.

CONTRIBUTIONS OF SCIENCE MANAGEMENT

The contribution of science management could be group into four as follows

mechanical

organization

philosophical

and his book

For mechanical, the following mechanism of management were recommended by Taylor.

Time and motion study.

Instructions cards for workers.

Routine system standardization of tools.

Use of slide rule and other instruments in management.

Modern costing techniques.

B. Organizational ; For organizational,

A separate planning  department.

Planning of job to separate it  from its  execution

The job to a fore-man should be divided between to reflect specializations starting from the bottom of the organization to the top.

The right man should be selected for the job

The workers should  be paid  on the fixed date where a hard worker is rewarded and a lower one is panelized.

The job is to be done by subordinate or management should be clearly defined by management.

Philosophical; management should adopt a mental revolution in other words, management should  emphasized profit sharing or increase in the size of profit for long –term prosperity.

Taylor’s book ;The study of management is  broad.

CHARLES BABBAGE

Charles Babbage is a British mathematician who serve as professor of mathematics at Cambridge University from 1828 to 1839. He is an industrialist or a manager but his scientific work   both prior to and following his tenure as a professor involved continued interest in shops and factories both in Great Britain and in the entire Europe.

In 1922, Charles invented a mechanical calculator, which he called a ‘difference machine’ its basic principles were employed in accounting machine in 1833 which was a computer that would follow instructions automatically and had all the basic elements of the modern computer –a memory device, a punch card, input system, an arithmetic unit and external memory system [though stored punch cards]. In fact, he was referred to as the father of computer.

From the point of view of management, Babbage is not remembered for his famous book on ‘Economic of machinery and manufacturers published in 1832. In a mathematical management scientist. He was especially interested in the economics of division of labour and the development of scientific principles to govern a manager’s use of facilities material and labour to get the best possible result. He was impressed with the economics of division of labour not only for manual operation both mental activities as well.

He also did not over look the human element like taylor, three quarters of a century later baggage argued that there could be mutuality of interest between the worker and the owner of the new factories. He argued strongly for a kind of profit sharing system by which workers could share in profitability of factories as they contributed to productivity. He also argued that workers should receive a fixed pay depending on the nature of their work, plus a share in the profits, for any suggestions they might make to improve productivity. However it is true that Babbage’s greatest interest and contributions were not in the broad areas of management but in the areas of costing engineering and incentive based on a belief in specialization and allocation of rewards according to productivity.

HENRY L. GANTT

Henry L. Gantt was born in 1861, Grantt worker with Talylor for many years from 1988-1901.Then, Gantt became a consulting engineer making available his version of scientific management to client companies. In one of his contributions, he agrees with Taylor that standards should be set and measured; that the law performers should go, but disagreed that there should be a way of recognizing and regarding first class workers. Gantt gave us today’s bonus and incentive system (where a worker was given a bonus when he reached the standards) to back up his disagreement.

THE GILBRETHS

Frank and Lillian Gilbreths, husband and wife.This family but talled on providing a  scale, which  could accommodate the low performers i.e. a scale of payment relative to the number of units produced by each category of worker. the scale is called T-scale-spelling Gilbrett’s backwards (Therb(ig).

Henry Fayor

Henry Fayor was a man that Kountze his associate called the real father of management. He lived from 1841 to 1918.He started work at a French mining company called the Fourth Ambult Company as an apprentice in 1980 and rose to become its chief executive from 1888 till his death in 1918.During his tenure the company grew from bankruptcy to success. it’s a mining engineer ,Henri had become used to working with principles and techniques that embody scientific truths.

On becoming a manager ,brought something familiar for management and concluded that this was a single “administrative science” whose principles  could be used as a guide in all management situations no matter what type of organizations being managed.

In 1816 Fayor published a paper embodying his conclusion in his bulletin of a French Trade Association with the tittle “administration industrially Generally “simply (General Industry Administration). It was later published in a book form and it had considerably influenced not only on the theories of management today but also on the actions of executives in key positions.

CONTRIBUTIONS OF HENRY FAYOL

His contributions are in the following forms, grouping activities of an organization, qualities of management and the principle of management.

Grouping of industrial activities: Henry grouped industrial activities into six categories as follows:

Technical: Producing and manufacturing of goods and service.

Commercial: buying and selling of goods and raw materials, products, exchanging products and money. Financial: Acquiring capital and ensuring of its maximum utilization.

Security: protecting employees and properties from danger.

Accounting: Proper record keeping of inventories, activities, money, equipment, profit liabilities.

Managerial: undertaking the key functions of management such as planning, organizing, controlling, staffing etc.

 

QUALITIES NEEDED OF MANAGERS.

Fayol identified six essential qualities, which every manager should possess and they are:

Physical: good health, vigor etc. a manager should not have any physical deformity, should look lively with high spirit.

Mental: a manager should be competent, able to understand the implications of decisions and should learn from experiences.

Moral: a manager should be exemplary life, be morally upright, energetic and  firm in dealing with the public.

Educational: an academic qualification is a necessary ingredient to sound and prudent management.

Technical: A manager with technical knowledge of the business is more preferable through managerial principles are universal.

Experience: The pre- knowledge of the most for managerial position.

He also observed that technical ability is most important ability expected from a worker and the relative importance of managerial ability increases as one climbs chain

THE SCHOOL OF THOUGHT RELEVANT TO THE PROBLEM OF STUDY.

Henri Fayol his fourteen principles of management in his book titled ’The General  and industrial administration. He principles of management carefully rather  than rules of laws.   The fourteen principles  chosen were the  ones he mostly and frequently had to apply.  The principles are flexible; it is just  a question of  knowing how to use them. The principles follow:

1.       DIVISION OF LABOUR:

The should be a vital balance of work. No one selection should be over loaded. He believes that the more people specialize, the more efficiently they can perform their work.

2.       AUTHORITY AND RESPONSIBILITY:

Fayol said that managers should give orders so that they can get things done. While their formal authority gives them the right to command, managers will not always compel obedience unless they have personal authority such as intelligence. The man at the top must give out the authorities at performing certain functions but the end result whether good or bad should be a responsibility solely borne by the top man.

3.       DISCIPLINE:

As the name implies, there should be order in the organization. Thus members in an organization must respect the rules and regulations that governs the organization. Fayol stated that discipline will result from good leadership at all levels of the organization, fair agreement and judiciously enforced penalties for in fractions.

4.  UNIT OF COMMAND:

The principle states that there should be no situation where worker will report to more one boss. This means that each employee use receive his or her instruction about a particular operation.

Fayol believed that if  an employee report to more than one superior, conflicts in instruction and confusion of authority would result.

5.       UNIT OF DIRECTION:

This implies that there should be one basic corporate objective towards which every body works to achieve. One manager using one plan should direct those operations within the organization that have the same objective. For example, the personnel department in accompany should not have two directors each with a different policy.

6.    SUBORDINATE OF INDIVIDUAL INTEREST TO GENERAL.

INTEREST:  As the name suggests, it implies that in any understanding, the interest of employees should not take precedence over the interest of the organization as a whole. In modern management this principle is still applied recognizing that the common good of the business should first be identified and satisfied. One of the difficulties associated with this, common goals is whether the interest should be focused on maximum profits or high dividends or faire wages or some other criterion. The problem of management theories is how to match these goals. In fact, this is a task the manager has to put into practice.

7.       REMUNERATION OF PERSONNEL:

This implies that compensation for work done should be failure to both employees and employers. It should be based on performance. This principle still followed in modern management and managers to evolve equitable method of calculating wages and fringe benefits.

A variety of modes of payment such as time, job piece rates, bonuses, profit sharing and non-financial rewards can be used also.

8.       CENTRALIZATION:

This means decreasing the role of subordinates in decision-making Fayol believed that managers should retain, final responsibility to do their jobs properly. The problem is to find the best amount of centralization in each case.

9. EQUITY

This simple means fairness. Managers should be both friendly and their subordinates. This should be if managers should expect loyalty, devotion and sincerity from employees. Kindness and justice should base largely on predetermined conventions that prevail in all organizations.

10.  SCALAR CHAIN:

According to Fayol, there must be a clean line of authority from the top to the button in an organization. It could be observed that there is a scalar chain or hierarchy dictated by the principle of unity 0f command linking all the members of the organization from top to button. By so doing, individuals are allocated a position on the bases of specialization.

11.   ORDER

This emphasizes that materials and people should be in the right place and at the time. People in the particular should be in jobs suited for them.

12. STABILITY OF TENURE FOR PERSONNEL:

Unnecessary labour turnover according to Henri is both the cause and effect of bad management. This is why it has been stated that “time is required for an employees to get used to new work and succeed in doing it well. This principle is recognized in modern personnel management but is often violated in Nigeria. If employees do not last in organization, there tends to be instance of inability, maximum efficiency can also be rarely achieved.

13. INITIATIVE

This appeals that subordinates should be given the freedom to conceive and carry out their plans even when some mistakes result.

14. PRINCIPLE OF UNITY ESPIRIT DE CORPS:

This states that promoting teams will give the organization a sense of unity. Fayol state that this will be achieved through verbal communications instead of written formal communication.

DIFFERENT METHODS OF STUDYING THE PROBLEM

The problem can be studied either by dried interview of employees and employers or by collection of data, may be from previous authors.

STUDYING THE PROBLEM BY DIRECT INTERVIEW

An interview is a mechanism through which oral information is collected from an individual. It is a verbal interaction between the person seeking information (interwar) and the person supplying the information (interviewees). It is a face-to –face interaction where one person makes an oral statement for another to respond orally. This is a type of interaction that produces immediate action. The respondent’s immediate environment and emotional state influence his response to those questions.

Consequently, this entails giving the respondent a great deal of freedom in answering questions arising from some general points of discussion made by the interviewers. Thus, open-ended questions are more generally accepted than closed-ended questions and the interviewer has the delicate task of encouraging the respondent to take an active part in the interview, while at the same time keeping irrelevant discussion to a minimum.

STUDYING THE PROBLEM BY DATA COLLECTION

Specifically, there are two major sources of data collection, namely primary and secondary sources.

PRIMARY DATA

This entails collecting the data firstly by the user original sources; such data are usually obtained from the field through interviewers, questionnaires, surveys, planned experimental observations or recording of official transactions.

SECONDARY DATA

As the name suggests, these are data obtained second hand from purchased or recorded sources and used for a purpose different from that agency that initially collected and published the data. Secondary data can be collected quickly and inexpensively when compared to primary data.

We ought to point out here that before secondary data can be allied to a particular research problem they must be available, relevant and accurate.

NOTE: for many problems, no secondary data are available but for others, some secondary data are available.

Thus secondary data may be completely unavailable or available in an insufficient quantity to solve the problem at hand. In such situations, primary data will be required.

SOURCES OF SECONDARY DATA

There are two general sources of secondary data, namely, internal sources and external sources. Internal data are available within the firm while external sources provides data that developed outside the firm or business organization.

INTERNAL SOURCES OF SECONDARY DATA

The internal sources include the following;

Accounting records

Sales force records

Previous research studies

Special audits and reports

EXTERNAL SOURCES OF SECONDRY DATA

 —-This article is not complete———–This article is not complete————

This article was extracted from a Project Research Work Topic

THE ROLE OF A MANAGER IN SMALL SCALE BUSINESS ORGANIZATION (A CASE STUDY OF BLIO TEX TRADING AND CONSTRUCTION COMPANY NIGERIA. LIMIED, ENUGU)

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One Comment on “The Role of a Manager in Small Scale Business Organization”

  1. this is a very gud material

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