Organizations Need Leaders and Managers

Leaders are essential to organization achievement and success. Managers are essential to organization achievement and success. Both leaders and managers must work in concert to develop an effective system with which to administer an organization. Henry Mintzberg, a prominent management researcher, scholar, and author, describes management in terms of roles. 70 As you read through the descriptions of these managerial roles, consider the leader and manager comparison presented earlier in this chapter and determine whether a leader or a manager, or both, would perform the roles defined by Mintzberg.

In Mintzberg’s work, chief executive officers were observed. During this process, managerial work was categorized as encompassing 10 roles: three that involved mainly interpersonal contact (figurehead, leader, and liaison); three that involved information processing (monitor, disseminator, and spokesperson); and four that related to decision making (entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator, and negotiator). Managerial roles can be independent of situations that rely on traits and behavioral theories, although this line of research has proved more valid with the situational approach where managers move from role to role depending on the situation. The Mintzberg roles for managers are as follows:

· • Figurehead: Based on formal authority; symbolic duties of a legal and social nature.

· • Leader: Responsible for making the organization function as an integrated whole in pursuit of the mission/goals of the organization.

· • Liaison: Behavior intended to establish and maintain a web of relationships internal and external to the organization.

· • Monitor: Continually seeking information from a variety of sources (situational analysis, environmental “scanning”).

· • Disseminator: Special access to information not available to subordinates; passing on of information to subordinates and, in some degree, to peers and superiors.

· • Spokesperson: Obligation to transmit information and express value statements to people outside of the organization.

· • Entrepreneur: Initiator and designer of controlled change; exploiting change to improve the current situation or position for future risk.

· • Disturbance handler: Dealing with sudden crises that cannot be ignored (conflict, for example). Typically, the manager gives this role priority over others.

· • Resource allocator: Authority to allocate scarce resources (power).

· • Negotiator: Negotiations requiring substantial commitment of resources are facilitated by the manager having the authority to make commitments. 71

Leaders and managers have different perspectives on the health organization and their personal roles within that organization. Both need to be on the same page to meet the organization’s mission and vision. Again, an administrator or executive can be both a leader and a manager depending on the situation, job position, and immediate role required at the time. As long as the health industry remains dynamic, both leaders and managers are essential to the organization’s success and survival; coordination and consistency of their efforts are keys to determine how well the strategic leadership/management system performs over time.