Commonalities and Variations in Managerial Work: A Study of Middle Managers in Malaysia

Abstract

Studies of managerial work, by focusing on documenting variations and offering either correlational or idiographic accounts of those variations, have tended to neglect the extent of and reasons for commonalities in what managers do which extend across different jobs and organizational settings. The findings of a multi-method study of the role expectations and work activ ities of ten middle managers in four manufacturing organizations in Malay sia, undertaken to address this neglected topic, are reported and discussed. Middle managers' work is shown to comprise: first, a core of common activities relating to day-to-day administration of staff, general work processes and information, activities which flow from the uncertainties inherent in taking responsibility for the work of an organizational sub-unit or functional department and those who carry out that work; second, variations in content which emanate primarily from the technical/professional, rather than the managerial, component of middle managers' jobs; and, third, limited organ izational variations which are primarily in terms of the media and contacts through which managerial work is conducted. Human resource management policies, therefore, need to take account of these enduring common features of middle managers' work and the technical/professional basis of many of the variations.