CHAPTER 1
Managerial Roles—Similarities and Differences in Domestic and Global Work

The evolution of managerial models over the course of the twentieth century reveals that the manager’s reality has increased in complexity. During the first quarter of the century, Taylor (1911) and Fayol (1949) appropriately described the nature of work during the Industrial Revolution and portrayed the manager as one who plans, organizes, commands, coordinates, and controls. The next 25 years brought greater recognition to the social context of work and the introduction of human-relations models (Barnard, 1938; Mayo, 1933). These approaches stressed that managerial responsibility went beyond productivity and efficiency to include the need for attention to human relationships.

Managerial models shifted once again during the quarter century following World War II. In an attempt to explain a managerial environment characterized by increasingly unpredictable and unstable environments, writers such as Katz and Kahn (1978) and Lawrence and Lorsch (1967) developed an “open systems” approach to evaluate organizational dynamics. These frameworks were consistent with the growing movements toward contingency theories and lent credence to the importance of context in understanding managerial behavior (Quinn, 1990).

As the last quarter of the century drew to a close a new managerial reality emerged: the global manager. In addition to all that came before, temporal, geographical, and cultural complexity were added to the core of a manager’s work. These historical shifts have challenged scholars to reconsider their understanding of the nature of managerial work. Theoretical models have become inadequate, failing to address the heightened complexity of increasingly global business contexts. A conceptual framework has become necessary for designing appropriate selection or training systems for developing global managerial talent. The current challenge to understand these changes is captured in two questions:

1. What do global managers do?
2. Is it any different from what domestic managers do?

Background

In addressing the question “What do global managers do?” we place our conceptualization of global complexity within the established literature on managerial roles (see Figure 2, p. 10). We begin by considering the recent literature’s portrayal of managerial roles. We follow with a model based on the work of Mintzberg (1973, 1994), which we use to evaluate managerial behavioral roles. We then suggest why this framework is useful for studying work that is globally complex. Finally, we consider how the context of global complexity can affect the extent to which certain behavioral roles are perceived as being relatively more or less important for managerial effectiveness. It is our belief that while some roles may be perceived equally regardless of the level of global complexity, other roles will be seen as increasingly important as the demands of work shift from a domestic to a global context.

Figure 2
A Conceptual Model of Predictors of Managerial Effectiveness in a Global Context (Managerial Roles)

Considerable debate exists over the question of what domestic and global managers do. Some global theorists have argued that there is little difference. Others have suggested that noticeable differences exist both in scale (the global manager does more) and in quality (the global manager performs at a higher level). Recent writings have characterized global managers as “cultural synergizers” (Adler & Bartholomew, 1992), “true planetary citizens” (Roddick, 1991), “cross fertilizers” (Bartlett, Doz, & Hedlund, 1990), and “perpetual motion executives” (Malone, 1994). These colorful descriptions further suggest distinct roles and job content for global managers.

Other research suggests that global work is the same as other types of managerial work, but that its level of difficulty is substantially greater (see, for example, Adler & Bartholomew, 1992). In 1994 Bartlett and Ghoshal suggested that the nature of global work is so complex that there is no such thing as a universal global manager. They recommended that an organization create three groups of global specialists—business managers, country managers, and functional managers—to lead the organization toward achieving its global strategy. Alternatively, Kanter (1995) wrote about a few but increasing number of global cosmopolitans who develop “world class” competence over crucial globalization processes.

A model of managerial roles. In 1973 Mintzberg delved into an important but rarely investigated question: “What does a manager do?” He conducted an ethnographic study of managers in five organizations. His observations led him to a framework for management that differs radically from those of many past and present leadership theorists. It described managerial activities as being fast paced, brief, varied, and discontinuous. In this framework managers have little time for reflection, and their work gravitates toward action and simply getting things done.

Mintzberg (1973) further described work activities as contained within a set of ten behavioral roles. He organized his ten roles into three groups: informational roles (monitor, disseminator, spokesman) that require a manager to monitor, communicate, and manage information; interpersonal roles (figurehead, leader, liaison) that require a manager to act with and through others to get things done; and action roles (entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator, negotiator) that require a manager to negotiate and make decisions. These roles were not discrete or mutually exclusive but integrated parts of a whole. Mintzberg argued that effective managers often combine and perform several roles simultaneously.

In a follow-up investigation Mintzberg (1994) kept the three overarching groups (informational, interpersonal, and action), but collapsed the ten roles into six. Based on our analyses of the data in our study (and incorporating Mintzberg’s 1973 and 1994 work), we incorporated seven roles into our research:

Informational Roles

1. Monitor: scan environments, monitor units, probe and seek information, act as corporate nerve center of incoming information.
2. Spokesperson: communicate and disseminate information with multiple levels of the internal and extra-organizational system, advocate and represent the organization.

Interpersonal Roles

1. Leader: motivate, coach, build teams, maintain corporate climate and culture, and supervise the work of others.
2. Liaison: network, coordinate, link entities, and span organizational boundaries.

Action Roles

1. Decision maker: take action, troubleshoot, make decisions, and use power to get things done.
2. Innovator: try new approaches, seize opportunities, generate new ideas, and promote a vision.
3. Negotiator: make deals, translate strategy into action, negotiate contracts, manage conflict, and confront others.

Other leadership and management scholars have also defined managerial roles (House & Mitchell, 1974; Luthans & Lockwood, 1984; Morse & Wagner, 1978). Quinn (1990) specified eight interconnected roles that effective managers perform: director, producer, monitor, coordinator, facilitator, mentor, innovator, and broker. Yukl (1989) integrated several decades of managerial-role research into a taxonomy of managerial behavior. A role-based framework is consistent with Katz and Kahn’s open systems approach (1978), in which roles are determined by inputs from the environment as well as variations in style as determined by the individual. They defined behavioral roles as the “recurring actions of an individual, appropriately interrelated with the repetitive activities of others so as to yield a predictable outcome” (p. 125). We have defined a role as a set of behaviors that belong to an identifiable position, believing that roles identify a limited and connected set of behaviors. But does the construct of roles hold when managerial responsibility transcends temporal, geographical, and cultural distance?

The universality of managerial roles. While acknowledging that some researchers argue against a universal theory of management (Dorfman & Howell, 1988; Hofstede, 1980), we contend that the construct of roles has universal value. We agree that managerial work is vastly different in many parts of the world and that on a global scale there is no one best way of doing anything. Yet we also feel that role-based theories of managerial work are successful in describing managerial work in a diverse, pluralistic world.

Behavioral roles describe what a manager does. In our investigation of managerial roles we have focused on what managers do, rather than the why or how behind the activities that comprise the complete set of managerial roles. Although we believe that the latter issues are significantly affected by variations in cultural beliefs, values, and norms, we feel that the issue of what managers do more directly reflects the content of managerial work.

We recognize that, beyond societal culture, the organizational climate and culture affects managerial roles, as does variations in managerial style. We expect these differences to influence the extent to which certain role behaviors are more or less descriptive of managerial effectiveness. We also argue that in a globally complex environment managers are challenged to perform more roles and devise new roles not captured by our current role-behavior models.

Akin to Bass’s (1997) position concerning the possible universality of transformational leadership, we believe managerial roles demonstrate “not a constancy of means, variances, and correlations across all situations, but rather an explanatory construct good for all situations” (p. 130). We submit that to conceive management as a series of unfolding roles is good for all situations. With this understanding we now consider how the context of global complexity may impact the roles that a manager plays.

Similarities and differences in global and domestic work. Mintzberg (1994) argued that although all managers perform a series of roles, that does not suggest that all managers perform the same roles in the same manner. Specifically, he suggested that aspects of the work varied depending upon four sets of variables: environment (differences in milieu, the industry, and the organization), job (differences in job level, such as middle or top management, and function, such as marketing or sales), person (differences in personality and style characteristics of the manager), and situational (differences in temporal and contextual features—seasonal variations or temporary crises, for example).

Each of these four variables is expected to influence the degree and extent to which managers exhibit the various roles. Because of differences in job functions, line managers, for instance, are expected to spend more time in the action roles (negotiator, decision maker), whereas human resource specialists are expected to pay greater attention to the informational roles (monitor, disseminator). Likewise, a team manager will tend to emphasize relational roles (leader, liaison). These examples illustrate how the four variables impose greater or lesser attention to various aspects of the work. This framework has provided a rich backdrop from which organizational researchers have investigated differences in managerial roles.

Mintzberg’s job variables have dominated the attention of researchers and have been studied both in terms of hierarchical level (Lau & Pavett, 1980; Pavett & Lau, 1983; Sen & Das, 1990) and functional area (McCall & Segrist, 1980; Paolillo, 1987). Pavett and Lau (1983) found significant differences between top- and lower-level managers on eight of the ten Mintzberg roles and differences between middle- and lower-level managers on six of the ten roles. Other studies have considered the person variables in terms of gender differences (Smith & Schellenberger, 1991) as well as age, tenure, and educational level (Beggs & Doolittle, 1988).

Less research has been conducted regarding the situational and environmental variables, but there is one study of direct interest to the work documented in this report. Gibbs (1994) organized Mintzberg’s environmental variables in terms of two constructs: complexity (the number of elements in which managerial interaction is required) and dynamism (the rate of change between these elements). Combinations of these variables produced a 2 x 2 matrix (stable-simple, stable-complex, dynamic-simple, dynamic-complex) that allowed Gibbs to test for both direct and indirect effects. The overall pattern that emerged from the two organizations sampled suggested that (a) complexity increases the frequency of informational roles, (b) complexity and dynamism increase the frequency of action roles, and (c) dynamism increases the frequency of relational roles; however, this relationship is moderated by complexity such that relational roles are more frequent in complex environments as opposed to simple environments. Gibbs concluded that current “trends toward the computerization of the technical core, the globalization of many businesses, and the increase in education of the workforce implies that the environment and technology will increasingly be better predictors of managerial-role activity than previous hypotheses of functional area, level in hierarchy, or other internal structural dimensions” (p. 601).

We agree with Gibbs’s conclusion and feel confident that in today’s business environment, variations in situation and environment are as compelling in explaining managerial work as are differences in job and person. Global complexity, defined in terms of temporal, geographical, and cultural distance, clearly implies environmental and situational difference. Consistent with Mintzberg, we would expect that although the requisite behaviors are generally the same, the importance of these behaviors may shift according to variations in global complexity.

Hypotheses

Informational roles. Informational roles require managers to monitor information both inside and outside the organization, and then disseminate this information as a spokesperson for the organization. In such roles managers are not working directly with people or with actions but instead are using information as an indirect way to make things happen. Given the tremendous information flows of the global business environment, we expect global managers to attribute more importance to the roles of monitor and spokesperson.

The periphery of the global organization is marked by continual change in technology, competitors, customers, suppliers, and products. These movements push to create new business advantages and new growth markets. In this fast-paced and competitive environment, global managers are required to process, integrate, and communicate based on significant amounts of disparate information.

Bartlett, Doz, and Hedlund (1990) have stated that within interdependent and geographically dispersed global organizations, global managers serve as “cross-fertilizers” who create the glue that melds a shared vision, strategy, and norms. Global managers cannot just articulate the corporate vision, but must also encourage the flow of local, tacit information throughout the organization. Global managers have also been described as “cross-pollinators,” “global scanners,” and “cultural synergizers” (Adler & Bartholomew, 1992). Bartlett and Ghoshal (1994) identified one type of global manager, the functional manager, who scans across the organization to cross-pollinate ideas and champion innovation. The context of global complexity suggests increased attention to the roles of monitor and spokesperson as global managers seek to act as the organizational gatekeepers. As for the informational roles, we predict

Relational roles. Relational roles require managers to coach, motivate, and supervise the work of others, and to network, coordinate, and span organizational boundaries. “To manage through people, instead of by information, is to move one step closer to action, but still remain removed from it,” Mintzberg has stated. “That is because here the focus of managerial attention becomes affect instead of effect” (1994, p. 18). Several organizational researchers, such as Gregersen, Morrison, and Black (1998), have suggested that a global manager’s savvy concerning interpersonal or relational skills can spell the difference between success and failure in the global environment. We believe that although the role of leader will not differentiate between domestic and global work, the role of liaison will become increasingly important in global settings.

In focusing on the importance of role behaviors, we are considering the actual nature or content of the work rather than the level of skill required to effectively do the work. We agree that interpersonal competence is a hallmark of effective global leadership, and we have included several relational-based variables in our research—for example, the learning capability of cultural adaptability, the personality characteristic of agreeableness, the experiential variable of cosmopolitanism—that we believe will be important indicators of effectiveness when managers are working globally. However, we do not believe that behaviors descriptive of the leader role—such as coaching and mentoring, inspiring and delegating, and building teams and supervising others—become differentially more important when work responsibility moves from a domestic to a global context.

Malone (1994) used personal accounts to describe how global “perpetual motion executives” work and manage the work of others from long distance. He described typical norms such as handling 40–75 e-mail messages daily, having face-to-face contact with direct reports once every six weeks, and working in airplanes and from airports. These norms unquestionably put added stress on the traditional supervisor-direct report relationship. Maintaining strong working relationships is critical to both domestic and global managers, and it’s made more difficult for global managers who must find ways to maintain these relationships across distance, countries, and cultures.

In contrast, we see the relational role of liaison as more important in globally complex work. During the 1990s multinational firms gained access to more than a billion new customers in remote and emerging economies (Prahalad & Oosterveld, 1999). Strategy theorists have stressed the extent and speed with which global organizations must consummate relationships leading to mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, alliances, and licensing arrangements.

Kanter (1995) has said that world-class executives and organizations are defined by the presence of concepts (the best and latest knowledge and ideas), competence (the ability to perform according to best-in-world standards), and connections (a set of relationships providing access to global resources). To form connections, global managers forge relationships that span companies and countries to bring collaborative advantage to the organization. Ohmae (1990) wrote about the power of joint ventures and consortiums to develop insider status within North America, Western Europe, and Asia. Perlmutter and Heenan (1994) suggested that global cooperation between firms is best achieved through global strategic partnerships. These business imperatives suggest that the role of liaison will take on heightened importance for the work of the global manager. For the relational roles, we predict

Action roles. In the action roles—decision maker, innovator, and negotiator—managers are required to make decisions, resolve crises, seize opportunities, negotiate contracts, and manage conflict. As Mintzberg stated, “if managers manage passively by information and affectively through people, then they also manage instrumentally by their own direct involvement in action” (1994, p. 20). We believe that, counter to the previous sets of roles (managing information and managing relationships), the action roles will not differentiate in importance between managers in contexts of low and high global complexity.

In a study within several major global organizations, Yeung and Ready (1995) identified six qualities that organizations value in global managers: (1) to be a catalyst/manager of strategic change, (2) to be a catalyst/manager of cultural change, (3) to articulate a tangible vision, values, and strategies, (4) to exhibit a strong customer orientation, (5) to empower others to do their best, and (6) to get results. A close reading of these characteristics suggests a type of management responsibility that is noticeably removed from the day-to-day action of the organization. Rather than managing actively through direct involvement, the demands of global work may move to isolate the global manager, at least in part, from the daily operations of the organization.

As an organization’s strategies and systems globalize, its key organizational characteristic is to operate across national boundaries, simultaneously achieving global integration while retaining local differentiation. In a strategy of global integration, successful multinationals seek the advantages of local differentiation (Bartlett & Ghoshal, 1989). This requires strong and empowered local managers who understand local needs and interests. As suggested by Quelch and Bloom, overemphasizing global integration leads to management that lacks the “geographic knowledge, political know-how, flexibility, and cultural sensitivity to assess the evolving environment and take appropriate action” (1996, p. 32).

The strategy of global integration and local differentiation suggests that significant decision-making and negotiating responsibility should be held at the level of the local market. Ohmae (1990) has written that firms only achieve insider position when they entrust local managers who are familiar with and responsive to local conditions. Certainly, the work of the global manager requires significant attention to such behaviors as making decisions, negotiating contracts, generating new ideas, and managing conflict. Yet, from the standpoint of what managers do, we believe that the responsibility of the global manager does not require differentially more attention to the action roles of decision maker, innovator, and negotiator. For the action roles, we predict

Role skill and managerial effectiveness. In addition to focusing on what global managers do (role importance), we also want to better understand the skill that managers bring to those roles in settings of low and high global complexity and how those role skills relate to managerial effectiveness. As Figure 1 illustrates, we intend to examine both the independent and shared relationships between managerial role skill and the other variables in the model. Under this line of investigation, our question of interest is not “What do global managers do?” but rather “How is what global managers do related to perceptions of their effectiveness?”

Although Mintzberg’s (1973) model is descriptive (describing what managers do) rather than prescriptive (predicting determinants of managerial effectiveness), it is clear from his framework that effectiveness centers upon the ability to perform multiple roles. That is also our position. We are interested in determining whether a specific role, or group of roles, is critical for effectiveness in global managerial settings. We are also interested in determining whether these relationships are the same or different compared to managers working in a context of low global complexity. Based on the pattern of results presented below for role importance, we propose the following hypotheses:

Results and Discussion

Role importance. Both independent sample t-tests and nonparametric Mann–Whitney U analyses were conducted to test for mean differences reported by managers in contexts of low and high global complexity on the level of importance attributed to the seven managerial roles. The nonparametric tests were conducted out of concern that the response anchors for the role importance data are not interval level. However, because the findings from the nonparametric tests are parallel to the findings from the t-tests, only the t-test results will be discussed.

The results are presented in Table 1.1. Hypothesis 1.1 was partially supported; differences were found for the spokesperson role, but not for the monitor role. Hypothesis 1.2 was partially supported. The liaison role, as expected, was perceived as being significantly more important to job effectiveness by managers in high-global-complexity jobs. Counter to expectation, managers in low-global-complexity jobs attributed more importance to the role of leader. Finally, Hypothesis 1.3 was supported; no differences were found between the two groups of managers on the three action roles.

These findings indicate that what global managers do is largely the same as what domestic managers do, but with important differences in emphasis. Managers in high- and low-global-complexity jobs did not differentiate in the level of importance attributed to the roles of monitor, decision maker, innovator, and negotiator. Yet, the findings also highlight an interesting shift in the degree of emphasis attributed to several of the roles as work responsibilities move from low to high global complexity. Global managers emphasize less the more internal-oriented role of leader, and emphasize more the external-oriented roles of spokesperson and liaison. These findings suggest that as managerial responsibilities grow more global in scope, managers are increasingly called upon to disseminate information to a host of diverse constituents along the organizational periphery.

Table 1.1
Importance Ratings for High- and Low-Global-Complexity Jobs

Role effectiveness. Zero-order correlations were conducted between the seven role behaviors and the five effectiveness measures as rated by the boss for global and domestic managers. The hypotheses were based on the pattern of results found for ratings of role importance. The results for boss ratings are provided in Table 1.2.

Table 1.2
Role-Behavior Correlations with Effectiveness Ratings for Managers in Low and High Global Contexts

Hypothesis 1.4 was not supported; the monitor role was not related to any of the effectiveness measures for managers in either the low- or high-global-complexity condition. Hypothesis 1.5 was not supported; counter to expectation, the spokesperson role was a differentiator of effectiveness for managers in low-global-complexity conditions rather than managers in high-global-complexity conditions. Hypothesis 1.6 was supported. Hypothesis 1.7 was not supported; the liaison role was not related to any of the effectiveness measures for managers in the high-global-complexity condition. Hypothesis 1.8 was supported. Hypothesis 1.9 was partially supported; the innovator role was related to the knowledge and initiative measure but only for managers in settings of high global complexity. Finally, Hypothesis 1.10 was partially supported; the negotiator role was related to multiple effectiveness measures for managers in high-global-complexity conditions but not managers in low-global-complexity conditions.

These results indicate that what managers in low- and high-global-complexity conditions think is important in their jobs does not correspond with what differentiates effectiveness. In hindsight this finding is not surprising given past 360-degree feedback research that demonstrates that importance and effectiveness are two separate constructs. This is perhaps especially true in the present research because managers themselves indicated importance levels while the effectiveness ratings were provided by the managers’ bosses. For example, the spokesperson role differentiated effectiveness for managers in the low-global-complexity condition even though the spokesperson role was endorsed by managers in the high-global-complexity condition as being relatively more important to their jobs. Interestingly, and again counter to the findings for importance, it was the action roles that served as the strongest differentiators of effectiveness for global managers. For example, the innovator and negotiator roles were uniquely related to effectiveness for managers working in contexts of high global complexity. This illustrates that new information emerges when managerial roles are viewed through the eyes of the managers’ bosses.