SO-10 Why do people dislike managers so much (e.g., in healthcare and education)?

Allready my last blog! I allready know a lot more about the disliking of managers, but still I find it very difficult to come up with concrete facts and explanations, because it is so subjective. But my plan is to start totally at the begin, and explain everything really simple and understandable. I will start with an explanation of management and strategy and why strategy is so important. Than I will continue with an explanation why this proposition has something to do with strategy, and my first impression when I read this proposition. Then I will continue with the various reasons this dislike could be developed. I will clear these reasons up with my empirical research. At the end I will clarify things by repeating my most important findings and if the studying of management will has an impact on this issue!
Good luck all of you!!

In this blog I will write about an investigation that is made in the intermediair about different type of leaders/managers. It was called: the big leadership investigation.
This research is interesting for this quest, because it distinguishes four types of leaders/managers and it states which is preferred the most by people and which is preferred the less.
The four leaders they have distinguished are:
1) The masculine leader, who is especially dominant and powerfull. This leader is independent and has a strong personality.
2) The feminine leader, who is warm and sensitive for the feelings of others. Can easily talk people into a good mood and is understandable.
3) The undifferentiated leader, who scores low on both characteristics. This person has a strong personality nor sensitivity towards feeling of others.
4) The androgynous leader, who is both powerful/dominant and warm/sensitive.
The employees, who participated in the survey, define the undifferentiated leader as ‘the nerd’ and this type of leader receives the lowest grade. In this research most of the manager, 29% belongs to this type. That is quite a lot. Interesting is, that men in this group are significant more represented than women. The uninterested ‘just leave it’ types are more often a man. Although more men than women are represented as manager, women are unrepresented in the ‘nerds’ category and overrepresented in the androgynous leader category. This category is most appreciated by the employees. The fact that though this outcome most of the people prefer masculine managers, is partly an outcome of the higher management. They look with a stereotype view at the management: they have a strong preference for a masculine leader. That’s why the top supports the masculine leadership style and blocks, as a consequence, the access for women. This is in fight with the general opinion that people prefere a androgynous leader, which often is a women.
Stereotypes are therefore an important issue for this quest, in my opinion. The highest top supports a prototype for a leader and blocks thereby other leadership types. Stereotypes will be, as a consequence, an important issue in my essay!

This will be my last post on this blog. Now it is time to write the final paper and to learn for my exams. In my opinion the Confrontation Lecture was very interesting.

Most important to keep in mind when writing our paper is the Layman’s language and knowledge level. For this reason I would ask a friend to read the paper, before I will hand it in. We need to take the reader on a journey to the final (satisfying) answer of the Quest. We need to show to the reader that studying management make sense.

For now I would to end this blog with some Quotes about Managers:

I’m slowly becoming a convert to the principle that you can’t motivate people to do things, you can only demotivate them. The primary job of the manager is not to empower but to remove obstacles.”

One of the most important tasks of a manager is to eliminate his people’s excuses for failure.”

“There are three secrets to managing. The first secret is have patience. The second is be patient. And the third most important secret is patience.”
“A good manager doesn’t try to eliminate conflict; he tries to keep it from wasting the energies of his people. If you’re the boss and your people fight you openly when they think that you are wrong - that’s healthy.”

The key to being a good manager is keeping the people who hate me away from those who are still undecided.”

Good luck with your final paper!

I would like to present you my answer to Challenge 4. I struggled with some problems to convert my original movie (400 MB) to a smaller version to present the movie on the internet. For people with the same problem, you can download the program Xilisoft Video converter. With this program you can convert the movie easily to JPG or WMV file.

You can watch my movie at Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/Maartjefrederiks

For this challenge it was not possible to get also more information about my Quest, but for me it was still interesting to take a look at a highly dynamic (young) company and to see what they are doing on a regular day. It cost me lotst of time to learn editing and to make the movie… but I think we all had the same problem with this.

First, I’d like to start with a generel comment on one of my fellow students. Please look at this text, it’s from the course manual, about posting criteria:

Add a posting to your weblog at least twice a week (starting from week 2, Monday September 10th-Sunday September 16th, ending week 6, Monday October 8th-Sunday October 14th), which describes your progress (thoughts, findings, plans, ideas, doubts etc). More details on posting during the hearing lecture on Monday September 10th.

It seems that this is, indeed the final post … Well, in that case I’d like to conclude with some interesting findings that I came across in ‘gedrag in organisaties’. In this book, Alblas and Wijsman (2005: 200-202) discuss the differences between leadership styles. They present two different distinctions in defining the leadership style. The first distinction is the one that sees a leadership style that focusses on relationships versus a leadership style that focusses on tasks (Stogdill in Alblas & Wijsman 2005: 201). The focus on relationships points at the efforts the leader takes to have a good relation with its subordinates. Key elements of this relation are trust, communication and respect. The other style focusses on tasks. In this case, the leader determines what every subordinate should do and focusses on planning and instruction. The second distinction Alblas and Wijsman (2005: 201) make is the difference between a directive leadership style and a participative leadership style. The directive leadership style focusses on the direction that one should follow, the things that need to be done and by whom. The participative leadership style focusses on the participation of subordinates in determining what needs to be done (Tannenbaum & Schmidt in Alblas & Wijsman 2005: 201). In most cases, the focus on relationship is linked with participative leadership. In addition, the focus on tasks is most of the time linked with directive leadership (Alblas & Wijsman 2005: 202). Furthermore, Alblas and Wijsman (2005: 204) state that the combination of participative leadership and the focus on relationship leads to more employee satisfaction. This also points in the direction of leadership, which again leads to more employee satisfaction then management. They conclude by saying that the chosen leadership style should fit the actual organization (2005: 204).

In my paper, I also mention briefly the fact that a manager can let the subordinate do almost anything, because of the contract. This can be nice work, but also work that the subordinate doesn’t like at all. To illustrate this, have a look at the following picture:

To y’all: Good luck!

I suddenly see people writing posts with the title ‘last blog’. I was under the impression that we would continue for one week, but I guess I was wrong.

I would like to point you to an article by J. Sterling Livingston: the Myth of the Well Educated Manager. It really is a very nice background article about the effect of studying management on managers. The paper is just as the book of Mintzberg I told you about very clear about the value of the study. It has no value for a manager, experience and practice are much more important. “Academic ability does not assure that an individual will be able to learn what he needs to know to build a career in fields that involve leading, changing, developing, or working with people.” Livingston concludes.

Then I also read a non-academic book written by a former IBM executive (William A. Weimer, Masters and patrons, Renaissance Solutions for Today’s Productivity Problems). Two quotes: “Top performers are frequently rewarded for their performance by a promotion to a higher-paying position – jobs that eventually lead to management. But the transition from a technical or professional discipline to manager requires more than knowledge or expertise. It requires an expertise that frequently only comes with experience – an apprentice’s experience. A brilliant technical mind is no guarantee than an individual will be able to manage effectively, and, conversely, a great manager may be lost in a technical role.”
And a double quote about the master, helper, patron roles that where used over 500 years ago, and are still used in some branches like legal firms, and consultancy firms:
“While the master is the expert in the work needed to build the system or product, the patron is the expert in the “building system.

• The master is still the designer or architect of the central design or theme.
• The patron is still concerned with the environment that surrounds the master by dealing with the various outside organizations and agencies that have an interest in the project, by providing for a creative work environment and by managing business matters and the provision of funds and equipment for the master to be able to perform his or her role efficiently.
• The helper is still the apprentice who performs some of the less complex tasks in the process. Not very much has changed.”

This wil help you out if you are looking for answers about the value of studying management as a manager, and about the reason why managers exist in companies, an what their role is.

Good luck with your final essay!

After the Final Confrontation Lecture I gave the structure of my paper another hard thought. Until now I have had the image of a normal ‘academically’ structured paper broadly describing different aspects of management decisions that could affect employees.

But when I envision me talking to a laywoman, that asks me this question, I would in real life never answer the question like this.

I would probably first go into management itself, what is the reason that there are managers anyway? How does one become manager? What does a manager do? How does this relate to employees? Are there big differences in managers? Etc.

Then I would go into the question again, and relate to the answers of the first questions, or move deeper into the matter, if the layperson would like me to.

Writing my paper will not be a conversation of course, I cannot steer my answer to the verbal and non-verbal communication of the layperson. I can, however, envision this conversation over and over again, and steer my answer to this fictional layperson I converse with.

I actually found something nice about the reason managers where there anyway. There are managers to make sure that the professionals he ‘manages’ are able to perform their role efficiently. A manager should pave the road of the professionals, take out obstacles, make sure there are gas-stations, new tires, etc.

I think this is a very basic but important question to answer the layperson first. Why are there managers anyway?

Why
I already know something about the Hofstede model of culture and thought it could be helpful for answering my main question. So that is why I added it to my final blog. I also wanted to share this with you all because it could also be helpful for you!
I accomplished my empirical research. One thing that came forward was the dislike of the manager because of bad communication. So another thing I’ve searched for is the degree and sort of communication between manager and employee.
How?
First, I’ve searched by Google on the terms: Hofstede model.
Second, I’ve searched at ScholarGoogle to fill in the terms: manager, employee and communication.
Findings
Cultural influences
Hofstede model of culture
He describes five dimensions that offer a better insight in cultural differences.
1 uncertainty avoidance
2 Power distance
3 Individualism-collectivism
4 Masculinity-femininity
5 Lon-versus short-term patterns of thought

Different cultures react differently on situations of high risk and ambiguity. In some cultures there is a high uncertainty avoidance, they tend to prefer rules and authority figures.
The second one, power distance, concerns the amount distance of power and status are accepted in a culture. Netherlands low power distance, people feel less reserved to give comments to the manager. Third, individualism-collectivism, concerns the degree of community versus the individual. Fourth, masculinity-femininity, refers to the degree to which values are related to stereotypes of masculinity and femininity. Masculinity refers to dominance, ambition, competition and achievement, in contrary, femininity refers to emotional openness, concern for individual needs and feelings, employee participation. At last, fifth, long- versus short-term patterns of thought refers to the amount of planning. Western countries want to have immediate results whereas eastern countries want to achieve result in the long run.
Because of the different expectations that come forward out off the difference of culture, the differences in cultures could provide an explanation for the dislike of managers. If the expectations of employees are different from the actual perceived behavior of the manager it could give some irritations.

Strategic Employee Communications.
‘Today people want to make their own decisions. The want to share their ideas and their enthusiasm and not just be told what to do’ (Schaeffer 1993 in Argetini 1998).
Wall Street Journal 1995 showed that more than two third of the employees wanted more open communications with their managers. Sometimes it appears as if managers forget that employees are the most significant resource. If manager don not involve employees in the decision making process, employees might feel neglected and are less willing to accept changes (Argenti 1998). According to Argetini (1998) communication must be a two-way process rather than solely the manager communication to the employee. More interaction gives the manager more creditability with employee, on the condition that the manager communicates honestly. The best way to communication, Argetini stated, starts with informal discussion between manager and employee. Employees must feel themselves free to advices the manager, and ask questions. Manager could organize a meeting to make the management activities visible for the employees. Employees should always be informed before anyone else.

A striking point is that when you search in newspaper with the term ‘manager’ you get different kinds of managers. However the most ‘manager’ related article are about sports managers.

References
Argenti, P.A. (1998). Strategic Employee Communications, Human Resource Management, 37, 199-206.
Hofstede, G. (1980). Motivation, Leadership and Organization: Do American Theories apply abroad? Organization Dynamics, 2, 42-63.

This last blog is about the book: The no asshole role. I have read relevant chapters of it, and I came to the conclusion that this book is the best source I have found to answer my question.
The book is about assholes in organization and how they influence the work climate. The author cites lots of researches by people around the world about negative workplace behavior, such as abuse, aggressive behavior, very demanding etc. Conclusion was that much of this nastiness is directed by superior to their subordinates, in 50 % till 80 % this was the case. Further a lot of examples are given about terrible managers. Managers who kiss up and kick down. This was also mentioned a couple of times in my survey answer. People do not like managers who kiss up and kick down.
The author writes also about commitment. A research from Tepper shows that abusive supervisors dampen commitment to the organization. Employees are less committed to the organization they work for if you have a manager they dislike, sometimes employees even want to punish their managers for their behavior in indirect ways, such as stealing company properties.
If lots of people know that a company is lead by an asshole of a manager, this can even damage the reputation of the organization. People do not want to work for a terrible manager and if they are working for one the changes are high that they will leave the company.
This book gave me very good insight on my topic to understand why people dislike managers so much and where this general conclusion comes from.

Blog 9
Why?
I want link the dislike of manager more to strategy. Strategy is implemented by managers. I assume that managers perform differently. Therefore I want to know a little more about the leadership styles of managers.
How?
Search by scholar google and Jstor, filling in the words manager, strategy, leadershipstyle. And the use of the book ‘Service Management; an integrated approach’ that is in my own possession.
Findings
Leadership styles of managers.
If a manager practices a autocratic leadership style, he seeks for sole possession of power and control. Democratic leadership, on the other hand, is characterized by sharing authority and power between superiors and subordinates (Van Looy et al.1998). Leadership styles can also be described as active or passive. A passive leader is not involved in the daily work activities of his employees. In that case employees have a large amount of autonomy. On the contrary, active leaders is highly involved in the subordinates’ activities (Van Looy et al 1998). So off course, those employees that have to deal with a active leader have a small amount of autonomy.
There are other ways to described the differences between managers.
Transformational managers engage the emotional involvement of their employees to build higher levels of identification, commitment and trust in the manager or his mission (Jung & Avolio 2000). In contrast, transactional managers, see the relationship between the employee and the manager as a purely contract or exchange process. So transactional managers don’t care about emotional involvement of their employees. Their relationship is strictly business, like a market one demands and pay for the one that delivers a product or service.
At transactional management, some feeling of trust and value comparability were needed to motivate employees to take their task seriously (Jung & Avolio 2000 p. 959).
Podsakoff et.al. (1990 in Jung & Avolio 2000 p. 960) stated a negative relationship between a transformational leadership style and intellectual stimulation and followers’ trust and satisfaction with the manager. Intellectual stimulation could be considered as too demanding.

References
Jung, D.I. & B.J. Avolio (2000). Opening the Black Box: an experimental investigation of mediating effects of trust and value congruence on transformational and transactional leadership, Journal of Organizational Behavior, 21, 949-964.
Looy, van, B., Dierdonck, van R. & P. Gemmel (1998) Service Management An Integrated Approach, Prentice Hall.

Gupta, A.K. (1984). Contingency Linkages between Strategy and General Manager Characteristics: A conceptual examination. Academy of Management Review, 9, 399-412.
Irrelevant
Planning
In my next blog I’m going to discuss The Hofstede Model and an article about communication.