The manager

1.1. Short history and definition

The management concept is as old as the civilization, but the sistematic study of it is
only just more than one hundred years old. This is mainly because the term of ”management”
is quite a new one, the person occupying this position being know throughout the years as an
”administrator” or even ”boss”. The history of management overlaps with the development of
different activity fields, mainly the economic field, the business field and the accounting one.
Management, as we know it today, has not spring into life fully formed. It has evolved and
changed and is continuouslly evolving and changing, even if these changes aren’t observable
for everybody. This is due to the fact that management has a past, a present and a future, all
three linked inectricably. The difficult part in trying to understand everything that is related to
management is given by the change of human’s mindset: the way of thinking and analyzing
different problems has changed so much over the years, that is quite thought to understand
the actions and ideas of the ones before us, so we tend to give it a falsely interpretation, by
comparing their actions and thoughts to our own ( Routledge, 2016: p. 4 ).
There is a general belief that management thought begins at the end of the nineteenth
century, the beginning of the twentieth centuries, the so-called ”rich period”, in which the
first theories and practices of management were first formulated. Of course it lasts way back
in time, but this is its ”real appearance”. The duties of a manager, his/her functions, the
principels of organisation, the management of people, the importance of strategic thinking,
leadership and many other problems were pondered by important names from history like
Plato, Confucius, Leo Tolstoy and others.
Taking into consideration that modern economy has changed a lot through the years,
shifting from manufacturing toward information and knowledge, the function of management
changed drastically. The work processes were no longer desigend to follow a clear, linear
fashion, but what needed to be accomplished started to flow in from every direction.
Managers couldn’t position themselves anymore along the route of the work, which resulted
in a tendency to separate themselves from the front line workers and started developing
associations with a professional management pool. As this happened, management started to
become a ”science” of its own, with its own tools and techniques for modeling, mapping and
measuring. So, in this new era of professionalism, the functions of a manager started to be
based on general abstractions, and the managers started to exercise their control over the
employees from a distance.
All organizations would like to have good and succesfull managers, as they are the
core of the company. Talking in general, if we take some time to think about it, everybody is
a manager in a different way, at least when talking about their own finances or their free time.
The truth is that there are more managers nowadays than they have ever been, and they come
in different forms.
So what exactly is a manager, from the point of view of academic definitions?
Frederick W. Smith had a quote that underlined the general meaning of a manager: ”A
manager is not a person who can do the work better than his men; he is a person who can get
his men to do the work better than he can.”, and while this “definition” is quite interesting, it
doesn’t really reflect the true meaning of the term “manager”.
Manager ( noun ):
1. A person responsible for controlling or administering an organization or group of
staff.
2. A person who controls the professional and business activities of a performer, sports
player, group of musicians, etc.
3. A person in charge of the activities, tactics, and training of a sports team.
4. A person regarded in terms of their skill in managing resources, especially those of a
household.
5. A program or system that controls or organizes a peripheral device or process.
In this paper, we will focus just on the definitions which underline the meaning of the
manager as a person conducting an organization. A “manager” is born the first time he is
appointed to be responsible for at least one other person’s performance and has the authority
to dispose of other’s time and efforts ( Pillai, 2011: p. 3 ). In most of the companies, the
manager usually has a number of subordinates, who are subject of the authority invested in
him and are at his disposal in the process of realization of his goals. This is not a necessary
characteristic for a manager though, as they are some positions, like project manager or
purchasing manager, who have no subordinates, but might be invested with the “power” to
co-opt or hire people.
Before reaching the position of manager, every individual was at a first an employee
of the organization that he/she is now “managing”, with an individual contribution,
depending primary on their personal experience, expertise and knowledge. When becoming a
manager, things change, because now the “ex-employee” is in charge of the organization or
one of its subunits, his/her responsibilities focusing on supervising others, rather than directly
performing technical tasks.

1.2. Management tools

To understand every concept presented in this paper work, we first need to define it.
We saw previously what a manager is, but the concept of management is wider. According to
the Business Dictionary, management is defined as ”the organization and coordination of the
activities of a business in order to achieve defined objectives. Management is often included
as a factor of production along with machines, materials, and money. [...]The basic task of
management includes both marketing and innovation.[…]Management consists of the
interlocking functions of creating corporate policy and organizing, planning, controlling,
and directing an organization's resources in order to achieve the objectives of that policy.”
As every activity has some tools to work with, so does management. In this case, the
tools are represented by the methods and systems that help the company cope with every
change that rises in the market, by offering them a competitive advantage and improving their
performances. Of course there are a few of them, but a study conducted by Bain & Company
in 2015 revealed which are the five most used ones:
1. Customer relationship management;
2. Benchmarking;
3. Employee engagement surveys;
4. Strategic planning;
5. Outsourcing.
I won’t get into details about them, because this is not what my thesis is about, but I
will highlight the most important characteristics of each one.
Customer relationship management (CRM) can be described as a continuously
updated process of identifying relative value of customers and designing customized
company interaction do delight them so that they do not just remain with the company
profitably but also be the company’s ambassador (Kumar Rai, 2012: p. 30 ). It is one of the
most important management tools that a company uses, because it makes each and every
customer feel like he/she has a one-to-one relationship with the company, since it understands
him, cares about his needs and concerns and tries its best to deliver the products and services
that you, as a customer, need the most. The customers’ value identification is a must and the
process has to aim at profitable relations with the customers.
Benchmarking, defined as simple as possible, is simply about making comparisons
with other organisations and then learning the lessons that those comparisons throw up
( Bramham, 1997: p. 9 ). It leads to the improvement of a company by identifying and
applying the best practices in operation and sales. The main goal of this management tools is
to keep searching for superior performances, not just outside the company, but within it as
well, with other operations that perform similar activities in the firm. This process requires
innovation and implementation, not imitation, and leads to gaining a strategic advantage on
the market.
The Employee Engagement Survey management tool has its definition in its name: is a
measurement of the attachment, commitment and loyalty an employee has towards the
organization. Engaged employees are described as being fully involved in their task,
absorbed, charged with energy, vigor and focused, so much so that they lose track of time at
work (Smith and Markwick, 2009: p. 17 ). This also benefits the relationship between the
employers and the employees, and it helps the employer acknowledge how passionate the
employees are about their work, if they believe in the mission of the organization and if they
feel that their talent and work are valued and well-utilized.
The objective of the strategic planning management tool is to manage the entire
project as a process, that is customer-focused, time and cost sensitive and risk adverse. It is a
comprehensive process that follows to determine what a business should become and which
are the best ways to achieve that goal, based on the business’s strengths. Referring strictly to
managers, this management tool trains them to develop a better understanding of the
information they receive and to make better decisions.
The last management tool is outsourcing, is the act of an organization’s recurring
internal activities and decision rights to outside providers, as set forth in a contract. As a
matter of practice, not only are the activities transferred, but the factors of production and
decision rights are often, too ( Greaver, 1999: p. 3 ). It is very important to take into
consideration different aspects when applying this management tool, such as the costs
implied by it, the risk taken ( so the company that decides to outsource doesn’t lose its
competitive advantage ) and being aware of the need to contract the relationship with the
outsourcing partner.
 1.3. The organizational climate

The organizational climate “is rooted in the organization’s value system, but tends to
present these social environments in relatively static terms, describing them in terms of a
fixed ( and broadly applicable ) set of dimensions“ ( Schneider and Barbera, 2014: p. 29 ),
being generally focused towards something. A well-known author on Human Resources,
Idalberto Chiavenato, gives out a brief definition of this concept, stating that organizational
climate is ““A set of measurable properties of the perceived work environment, directly or
indirectly, created by individuals who live and work in this environment and that influences
the motivation and behavior of these people.”. On the other hand, the Business Dictionary
defines the organizational climate as following: ”Properties of the business environment in a
workplace observed by staff that strongly influence their actions and job performance.” If we
think about it, organizational climate is rather a qualitative concept, being very difficult to
discuss its components in quantitative or measurable units.

We can affirm that this is a concept that influences especially the employees, their
relationship with the organization and it has a lot to do with the support that the employees
feel they receive from the organization, being a reflection of the degree of employee
motivation. Some authors tend to compare it with the personality of an individual, stating
that every organization has its own climate that distinguish it from other companies. The
climate of an organization is subject to frequent changes, usually shaped by the upper
management of the company.
This management tool has a lot of attributes. Organizational climates are either
centralized and hierarchical or decentralized. Centralized organizations give certain
individuals power over others. Decentralized organizational cultures have authority spread
out between different members (Chuck , 2017 ).
Another important feature of the organizational climate is that it can be formal, or
informal, the first one developing more standardized and precise rules about what actions the
workers have to carry out, while the second one is characterized by freedom when it comes in
the employee’s engagement in different activities. The organizational climate can work as a
constraint system, in both the positive and negative way, and also as an evaluation method for
self and for others, stimulating the individual’s arousal level.
The social interaction is the feature that influences how innovative and cooperative
the climate is, with some organizational climates being more teamwork oriented, while others
focus more on the independent activity of the workers. This feature is somehow linked to the
one referring to integration, since the last one represent the extent to where the subdivisions
of the organization work together ( Chuck, 2017 ). 
From all that we mentioned above, we can state that the organizational climate is a
very important concept to take into consideration when discussing the relationship between
managers and employees, because it affects the organization as a whole. The most common
management issue faced by organization in this present day is search for creative flexible
work environment that promotes job satisfaction and innovation. Organizational climate is
deemed to be important: it is perceived, as motivated employee will result in higher
productivity, greater passion for the business, and a deeper engagement with customers. A
positive climate encourages employees’ productivity and decrease turnover ( Luthans, 2004:
p.51 ). So, by improving the organizational climate could be a valuable strategy for improving
organizational commitment and for generating profit for the organization. This idea is best
described by the figure bellow:

ORGANIZATIONAL
PERFORMANCE PRODUCTIVITY PROFIT
CLIMATE

Figure 1: Impact of organizational climate on performance