Strengths And Weaknesses Of Research On Managerial Work And Teamwork

Management and Managerial Work

Question:

What do you think should be the most important characteristics of the ideal Manager ?

In this era of globalization, competition has increased among organization. It can be said that organizations requires leaders and managers in order to develop a sustainable model of business. There has been a shift from transactional marketing to relationship marketing. It is important that managers should be able to play an integral role of anchor. The role of manager is not only to manage the operations, the role of the manager is to encourage and motivate others in order to get things done. For a long time, people have been involved in doing the research work on managerial work. It can be said that managerial work is both quantitative and qualitative in nature. Therefore it is important that the research work on managerial work must focus on both quantitative and qualitative factors. It is also important that the researcher should be able to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the research on managerial work. It can be said that the research on managerial work could be useful people in society as people can learn a lot from managerial work.

It is often said that management is both an art and a science. The research on management and managerial work would help people to understand the intricacies involved in management decisions. It would help both organizations and individuals to make decision that could benefit them (Guthrie, 2010). The objective of this paper is to identify, discuss and explain the strengths and weaknesses of the research on managerial work and explain how research on teamwork should shape the future of research on managerial work. It is important to learn about the teamwork because teamwork is an integral part of any managerial work. The objective of managers is to ensure that there could be effective communication and collaboration among the team members.

One of the important roles of managers is to develop a platform wherein the people can learn the skills and competencies required to perform the daily work. It is also important that managers should understand the difference between skills and competencies and the same difference should be communicated to employees. Skills are more technical in nature. It is about the knowledge that can be attained from education or practical. Competency is about the execution of this knowledge.

For example, a car mechanic may have desired skills to repair the car but he may lack competency if he does not know the manners to behave with customers.

It can be said that skills are at the core of any offering and competency is the periphery. For human managers it is important to develop skills and competencies among individuals. HR managers should develop a platform wherein individuals can develop specific skills and competencies in order to perform their duties (Cai, 2012).

It is important that managers should realize the skills of their employees. The research on managerial work would to get a perspective on the way managers works. It is important that managers should continuously work to improve the performance of its team members. The managerial work is a generic term that could be highlighted to number of operations performed by a manager. It is important that people should realize that a manager has to wear a heat of multiple colors. The role of manager has changed in today’s time and it is expected that manager would be able to do both internal and external work. One of the organizational goals and objectives is to satisfy the need of customers. It can be said that customers are the most important external stakeholders for management and employees are the most important stakeholders for management. One of the managerial works is to maintain a balance between internal and external stakeholders. In fact, it can be said that one of the work of managers is to bridge the gap between customers’ expectations and management perception of customer’s expectations.

Importance of Research on Managerial Work

Another important work of managers is to work as guardian of employees. In an organizational setting, employees would perceive the organization from the eyes of their manager. Therefore one of the objectives of managers is to be a bridge between organizational policies and strategies and employees expectations. The research on managerial work would help to understand all the things that affect the relationship of managers and employees. The research on managerial work would be beneficial for management as well as employees. It is important that managers should participate in any such research (Corbridge, 2010). It is also important that managers should provide true inputs whenever required.

For example, managers should answer to all the questions of researchers. At the end of researcher it is also important that this information should be kept confidential and the person who is manager should be ask for permission if any such information has to be published.

One of the important managerial works is to develop a team of promising individuals that can help organization to reach its goal and objectives. The research work on managerial work should also include the research on teamwork. It can be said that the success of managers would be directly proportional to the way managers are able to handle their team. It is expected that manager would be able to develop a team that would help manager to accomplish the task. Therefore any research on managerial work should always be based on the research on teamwork. The research on teamwork should always act as an input to the research for managerial work.

The future of the research on managerial work depends on the underlying research that is being done on the teamwork. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the quality of services delivered by managers would depend on the way managers could handle the team. Managers should realize that the best learning is the learning from people (Boxall, 2005). Therefore managers should always focus on teamwork and they should focus to recruit the best people from the industry. For researchers it is important to realize the strength and weakness of performing the research work on managerial skills. The relative strength and weaknesses of the research on managerial work can be discussed as:

1. One of the important strength for doing the research on managerial work is for managers itself. Every organization would have lot of managers. With the output of the research on managerial work, managers would be able to learn about themselves. The research on managerial work would be a good input for managers to realize their strengths and weaknesses. The result from the managerial work would also help managers to get a feedback about their performance. It is very important for any individual or any manager to get an open feedback about the way he or she is performing in the organization.

2. The strength of doing the research on managerial work shall also be discussed with respect to organization and organizational leaders. It would be important for founding members of an organization to have information about the way their managers is perceived by the employees and external stakeholders. It could be possible that the senior management and founding members funds the research project. Any research project requires an investment to be made. The senior management should be willing to make this investment.

Roles of Managers

3. The strength of the research work on managerial work shall also be discussed with respect to employees. It can be said that the performance of employees also depends on the actions of managers. Therefore it is important that a health relation is maintained between managers and employees. The research work on managerial work should also drive employees. In fact, the research work on managerial work should also include collecting data and information from employees or team members. It is expected that all the employees and team members would provide correct responses with respect to the questions. The research on managerial work would also enlighten employees in number of ways.

4. The strength of the research work on managerial work could also be observed for society at large. With the research on managerial work, people can learn a lot of things about the people living in society. It is important that people should always keep and open mind in order to learn from managers and leaders. Managers should develop the strategies for people and managers also play a role of bridge between internal and external environment of the company. It is important that HR managers should have healthy relations with employee and customers. In fact, HR managers should enable employees to deal with customers. It would result in improve levels of employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction.

1. It is expected that people would have their normal life full of privacy. One of the important weaknesses of research on managerial work is that it could be seen as an attack on the privacy of individuals. It happens in several scenarios that managers have to put their privacy on line. The interviews with managers, which would be done for managerial research, would include both personal and professional questions. This is the weakness that personal questions also have to be answered with professional questions.

2. The output of the research work on managerial work would also make the life of manager a public life. One of the weaknesses of the research work is that the life of managers is made public. It is difficult for managers to have a balance between private and personal life. The managers can overcome this weakness only when they learn to differentiate between their personal and professional lives. This weakness can also be overcome by the way researcher would perform the research. It is important that researchers should have a professional attitude while performing the research.

3. One of the weaknesses is that the output of research work depends a lot on the quality of research work. Therefore it is important that only qualified researchers perform the research. Researcher should always have positive attitude. It can be called as weaknesses of research work on managerial work that it depends a lot on the attitude of research work. To overcome this, researcher should have a standardize way of performing research. It would ensure that the research work on managerial work can be least affected by the attitudes and personal judgments of the researcher.

Skills and Competencies

4. The weakness of research on managerial work would also be discussed with respect to ethical and legal dimension (Redman, 2010). For any research, there are number of ethical and legal concerns that have to be overcome. It is important that researcher should overcome all the ethical and legal concerns before he or she can start the research work. It is also important that researchers and managers should also discuss the research work. The ethical responsibilities also exist for managers. It is important that all the questions that should be asked by researchers should not cross the ethical lines.

5. The strength and weaknesses discussed above also highlights the advantages and disadvantages of managerial work and the research done on managerial work. It is also important to understand that any manager would eventually have a team and it is expected that the team members would also support in the research work on managerial work. It can be said that the research work on managerial work would explain the research work on teamwork. The reasons for the same can be discussed as:

6. Every manager has to handle a team. The way a team is performing can be judged from the way manager is leading. In fact the performance of managers can be closely linked to the performance of teamwork. Therefore any research on teamwork would eventually have an impact on research on managerial work and vice-versa.

7. In an organizational setting, managers come at top and employees come at entry level and mid level (Prykop, 2012). Typically, organizations would have a pyramid type of organization structure. It is important that the pyramid should be in control of manager, who is at the top of the pyramid. The entire pyramid can be thought of as a team. It is important for managers to handle their team. The relationship between managers and their team is strong. Therefore any research work on the managerial work has to start with the research work on teamwork.

8. It can be said that management or leadership and team have to work hand in hand. If managers are the policy makers then team members are the executors (Paauwe, 2012). It is important that managers should be able understand the expectations of its team members. The research work on managerial work or on teamwork cannot be completed unless the second factor is also considered. For example, any research work on managerial work should incorporate teamwork and vice-versa.

Conclusion

It can be said that most organizational leaders intuitively know this and want the best managers they can find. Unfortunately, identifying and selecting the best managers is not always an easy task. It can be observed that high performing technical employees are often selected for managerial positions because of their ability to do the technical work. But good technical employees are not necessarily good managers. Therefore it is important to have a research on managerial work. There could be number of drivers who can trigger this research. The project sponsor can ask for the research of managerial work or this request can also come in from top leaders of the company.

The above paper discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the research on managerial work. With the above discussion it can be said that is important to have the provision of research work on managerial skills and work. It is also important that the stakeholders of organization should realize that technical skills might not be required to emerge as a successful manager. It can also be said that there are very less chances that technical managers would emerge as successful leaders. Therefore it is important that organizations should have the provision of research on managerial work.

As discussed above the research done on managerial work could be useful for leaders in the organization, managers and employees. It is important that the research output of this research work should be shared with all the stakeholders so that they can make their own decision. The paper also discussed the weaknesses associated with this research work. However there are ways that these weaknesses can be overcome. It is expected that all the stakeholders would work together in order to ensure that weaknesses can be overcome and true benefits could be realized.  

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