Written by The traditional understanding of a manager’s job is always being defined in terms of management functions, which was introduced by French industrialist Henri Fayol in 1916.
Fayol identified five functions that a manager must perform, namely planning, commanding, coordinating, controlling, and organizing.
However, this description of a manager’s job was based on his observations and experiences in the French mining industry and was not derived from any thorough survey of managers.
In the late 1960s, Dr Henry Mintzberg conducted an empirical study to determine if Fayol’s description of a manager’s job was still valid in the 1960s.
Mintzberg studied five executives and discovered that the best way to define managers’ job is through the roles they play in the organization.
