Managerial work roles in Asia 22,8 An empirical study of Mintzbergs - - PDF document

Managerial work roles in Asia

An empirical study of Mintzberg’s role formulation in four Asian countries

Cecil A.L. Pearson

Murdoch University, Murdoch, Perth, Australia, and

Samir R. Chatterjee

Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Australia

Keywords Management roles, Economic conditions, National cultures, Asian studies Abstract In an increasingly competitive global environment, impacted by a myriad of social, economic and technological forces, managerial roles have, over the past two decades, undergone dramatic transformation. Indeed, managers around the world are struggling to redefine their roles and responsibilities against a backdrop of the classic ten roles of managers espoused by Mintzberg in the 1970s, which were based on research in the US context. Yet these traditional roles are still widely taught in universities and training programs, and particularly all over Asia with the spread

• f Western business education literature. The relevance of the Mintzberg formulation in the Asian

context was the aim of this four country study. The study reports the importance and degree of use

• f the ten Mintzberg managerial roles in the contemporary Asian context. The findings suggest

although the roles overlap considerably, they are acted out in a very different manner. Implications for the findings in an international market arena are discussed.

Introduction The importance of managerial roles continues to attract a great deal of interest. Since the earliest written evidence (provided by the Chinese about 3500 BC), and later Sun Tzu’s Art of War (Griffith, 1963), reputed to be the oldest military treatise of Chinese classical works, military strategists, business executives and scholars have been obsessed with accounts of the roles and skills of the managers of those times (George, 1972; Seagrave, 1995). Later, how the ancient Romans decentralized communications across a vast empire provoked further examination of managerial behaviors (Wren, 1979). Although the early historical documents provided little specific insight into how these managerial roles were undertaken, greater clarification was to follow by contributions from the sixteenth century Italian philosopher Machiavelli, and the notable management pioneers of the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century (Adam Smith, Karl Marx). Nearly a century later, broader principles and theories were conceptualized by the classical theorists and the human relationists for developing understanding of the metamorphosis of managerial

• roles. One of the most influential studies of managerial roles in this more recent

The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at http://www .emeraldinsight .com/researchregister http:// www.emeraldinsigh t.com/0262-171 1.htm

The authors would like to thank JMD Co-Editor, Professor Andrew Kakabadse and an anonymous reviewer for their constructive comments and guidance.

JMD 22,8 694

Received July 2002 Revised December 2002 Accepted December 2002

Journal of Management Development

• Vol. 22 No. 8, 2003
• pp. 694-707

q MCB UP Limited 0262-1711 DOI 10.1108/02621710310487864

era was undertaken by Mintzberg (1973). He used a descriptive diary method in

• bserving senior managers at work and highlighted ten roles as the key to

understanding the nature of managerial work. He defined major dimensions of managerial work in three categories: (1) interpersonal roles (figurehead, leader, liaison); (2) informational roles (monitor, disseminator, spokesperson); and (3) decisional roles (entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator, negotiator). Despite the wide acceptance of Mintzberg’s work, in the Western context, the relevance of these roles in Asia can be observed through alternative

• manifestations. The Mintzberg roles in Asia are often embedded in the

contextual variables through many proxy behavior (Shenkar et al., 1998). Therefore, it is surprising that this acceptance of the Mintzberg role schema in the wider literature is still evident in spite of its well known methodological weaknesses (Campbell et al., 1970). Many scholars have doubted the contextual relevance as well as validity of the Mintzberg work in alternative cultural settings (Shapira and Dunbar, 1980). Given the contemporary global context of international management, generalizability of Mintzberg’s work encourages greater research focus. Although Mintzberg noted national cultural forces may have implications for managerial role, very limited work has been evident in this area. This paper suggests that managerial work role constructs are not packagable as a “technology-transfer” item from one type of social system to the other. The work roles of a new generation of managers in the divergent non-Western contexts and in societies of varying stages of economic transition

• r orientation are bound to exhibit features other than the Mintzberg paradigm.

This study chose four countries in Asia in terms of this idea of economic distance measures. Japan was chosen for its well known cultural and economic counterpoint to the Western concept, Thailand was chosen in view of its role as the epicentre of the economic crisis, while Malaysia and Brunei were included to illustrate two different economic models of Islamic societies. Background Henry Mintzberg provided a new perspective about the roles of managers of the 1970s. From previous eras, a viewpoint had been promoted that managerial roles were embedded in a rigid functional approach of planning jobs and

• rganizing staff, while leading and controlling personnel. Using a methodology
• f diary analysis, Mintzberg demonstrated that the five chief executive

managers of his study were seldom in this popular image of reflective, systematic planners who occupied a great deal of time in uninterrupted settings examining reports and documents. In contrast, Mintzberg found his managers worked at an unrelenting pace, they were required to address a diversity of

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issues of widely differing durations, and they strongly preferred to employ verbal communications by telephone, or in face-to-face interactions rather than reading written memos or reports. Indeed, Mintzberg (1973, p. 182) wrote:

The manager is not a planner in a reflective sense, and no amount of admonition in the literature will make him so. His milieu is stimulus-response.

This evidence revealed substantial differences with the less complex range of managerial roles that had been borne out of the pioneering approaches to classical management. Using an unstructured observation and interview procedure, over a two week period, Mintzberg concluded the work methods or activities of his study managers could be categorized into three sets of behaviors or roles. He conceptualized these clusters of roles as: (1) interpersonal; (2) informational; and (3) decisional. The interpersonal role, which evolves from position authority and is involved with duties that are ceremonial and symbolic in nature, is also a feature of developing and maintaining work relationships with colleagues and

• subordinates. Consequently, these themes give rise to the three subordinate

sub-roles of figurehead, leader and liaison. In addition, Mintzberg observed managers receive information and act as a conduit to transmit this knowledge both within the organization as well as to outside bodies. These activities were classified as informational roles, which relate to sub-roles of monitor (seeking and perusing information), disseminator (transmitting information internally), and spokesperson (transmitting information externally). The third cluster of roles, decisional roles, involve managers in making significant decisions that affect the organization. Mintzberg presented this set of roles from the sub-roles

• f entrepreneurs (initiator of change and innovation), disturbance handler

(corrector of unforseen problems), resource allocator (distributor of resources), and negotiator (represents organization in bargaining and discussion). The categorizing of these managerial roles provided insights into the nature of required skills, the different ways in how they are interpreted by managers in spite of their roles being largely predetermined by the nature of the position (Gordon, 1993; Yukl, 1981). Despite recent radical changes in organization activities, relatively little attention has been given to re-examination of traditional management roles. There is substantial evidence (Edwards et al., 1999; Hornsby et al., 1994; Kickul and Gundry, 2001) that rapid escalation in the development and availability of technology is reshaping organizational processes and practices. In the contemporary business arena, work settings are more complex, employees hold newer expectations, and collectively, these phenomena are leading to a

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profound recasting of managerial roles (Van der Velde et al., 1999). Yet, most management texts revisit the ten managerial roles as observed by Mintzberg, and this information is presented in leading business schools. Moreover, the argument has been advanced that the spread of industrialization from developed to less developed countries, which is associated with the availability

• f education to support new technologies as well as exposure to Western

management theory will lead to a homogenous effect on managerial roles. Some endorsement for the administration of a universality of managerial work is reflected in acceptable strategies, and even promoted by eminent bodies such as the UN, World Bank and the IMF. Arguably, their support for the transference of a set of universal managerial roles to developing nations, including Asian countries, is underpinned by the reported validity and generalizability of Western models that have been conceptualised in Western contexts. Purpose of the study The purpose of this study is to explore the relevance of Mintzberg’s ten managerial roles in a sample of four south-east Asian business communities from Brunei, Malaysia, Japan and Thailand. Attention to the application of generic management practices, albeit in a more general sense, has been examined in a variety of international management studies. For instance, there is a long lineage of literature that has examined the convergence of cross-societal values in industrial communities that are a part of the global market place (England and Lee, 1974; Negandhi, 1975; Prahlad and Doz, 1987; Ralston et al., 1993). This pursuit of endeavouring to understand how personal work values, cultural nuances, technological advances, economic ideology as well as the availability of Western business education is likely to manifest convergent or divergent business practices is being driven by significant pragmatic interest in facilitating effective cross national business encounters (Elenkov, 1997; Harpaz and Fu, 1997; Ralston et al., 1999; Westwood and Posner, 1997). The theoretical foundation for assumptions that managers are likely to exhibit similar roles at each organizational level is embedded in the “currently burgeoning literature on management” (Bartlett and Ghoshal, 2000,

• p. 762).

Despite extensive debate about the universality of the nature of managerial work, surprisingly, there are few reported international studies of managerial

• roles. Indeed, the celebrated work undertaken by Mintzberg, in terms of work

patterns of managers in different kinds of organizations, has led to assumptions with few exceptions (Bower, 1970; Kanter, 1982), of generic management roles (Drucker, 1955; Kotler, 1982). Understandably, eminent funding bodies, such as the UN, World Bank and the IMF, have given support and assistance to developing nations, conditional on adoption of universalistic Western management models (Lubatkin et al., 1997). Yet, such assumptions

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might be challenged on the findings from those studies (Lubatkin et al., 1997; Montgomery, 1986; Shenkar et al., 1998) which have specifically assessed managerial roles in non-Western work contexts. To some extent the results of these studies add to Mintzberg’s proposition that the socio-cultural milieu (political, economic, culture, corporate variables) can influence managerial role. Consequently, a fuller understanding of the institutional context in which a manager operates may be helpful in appreciating the extent of similarity of managerial role in cross-cultural interactions. Method Respondents and site Data were obtained from 609 indigenous managers who were working in the four study countries. There were 115 managers from Brunei, 195 managers from Japan, 143 managers from Malaysia, and 156 managers from Thailand. Each manager completed a questionnaire that was administered by the authors, but more often by managers who were involved in post graduate educational programs conducted by the authors. In the latter case, managers, who were participants of these programs, administered the questionnaire to work colleagues. The personal involvement of the authors may have been a factor in obtaining response rates of over 90 percent. A procedure of employing personal contact to overcome well-documented obstacles to comparative international management research is gaining recognition (Bond et al., 2001; Punnett and Shenkar, 1996; Teagarden et al., 1995). The respondents were employed in a wide cross section of the business

• sector. For instance, there were government and private instrumentalities,

which ranged in size from large bureaucracies to small family firms. Within a spectrum of manufacturing and service enterprises, managers were engaged in the health care industry, education facilities, financial institutions, marketing companies, retail stores, the entertainment arena, science and technology consortiums as well as mining and engineering organizations. The profile of these corporate bodies varied between countries, and consequently, it was considered less than meaningful to evaluate the managerial responses across these organizational properties. Procedure Subjects were invited to respond to a questionnaire in a version of the language commonly used in their daily work life. An English version was administered to the Bruneian and Malaysian managers. The Japanese managers were provided with a questionnaire of Japanese characters, and the Thailand managers responded to a questionnaire that was presented in the Thai

• language. Both the Japanese and Thailand formats were translated and back

translated from the English version by separate groups of bilingual assistants in both countries. Endeavours were made to ensure the instrument was

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appropriate in different cultural settings by conducting pilot studies and modifying the questionnaire items to ensure equivalence and responsiveness to local conditions. For instance, it was found that some English words did not have a readily available correspondence in Thai nomenclature. Also, some refinements were required with the Japanese questionnaire to adjust for cultural uniqueness and language richness of this extant society. Questionnaire administration was conducted within a framework of collaborative relationships. The Brunei questionnaire was administered after meetings were held between the principal questionnaire administrator and senior managers. These business practitioners held relatively important positions in the Seria business community, which is a developing industrial and administrative centre for Brunei Shell. Collaboration and co-determination has often been reported by researchers of Japanese management and this phenomena, often referred to as the Ringisho system, underpinned the questionnaire administration procedure. In practice a Japanese colleague (of the authors) was able to penetrate into the work network of several companies by initially requesting of company chief executive officers the opportunity to administer a questionnaire in their firm. Subsequent discussions between managerial levels with the administrator led to agreement for the survey to be conducted under particular conditions. These conditions included the reason for the research being conducted in the company, participant anonymity to be sustained, yet the administrator was required to return to the company after data evaluation to present global results to focus groups within the firm. These arrangements are necessary for meaningful research in Japanese organizations which are seldom exposed to complex questionnaires of the type employed in this study. Indeed, it is unproductive to mail out questionnaires as this strategy does not allow for building trust relationships or to allay possible suspicions. Hence the need for several meetings between the researcher and the respondents. Ancient informal work relationships, referred to as the guanxi (pronounced gwan-see), underpinned the procedure for administering the questionnaire to the Malaysian and Thailand managers. The guanxi, a reciprocal obligation to respond to requests for assistance, is comprised of guan, which literally means relationship or connection (and means to do someone a favour), while xi means to tie up and extend the relationship. In practice, the principal questionnaire administrator approached senior business managers to continue the exchange

• f favours in terms of having these managers promote the execution of the
• survey. In this exchange the administrator was perceived to be the weaker

member of reciprocal process, and hence, can expect to receive more assistance than can be reciprocated. The strength of the relationship with respondent managers depended on their personal identification with the subsequent managers who administered the questionnaire in the numerous organizations. There is some evidence (Chen, 1995; Shaw and Meier, 1991) to suggest that the

Managerial work roles in Asia 699

guanxi is essential for gaining approval to conduct any business in ethnic Chinese communities. Measurement Demographic information and perceptions of the universality of managerial work in industrial society was measured. Gender and age of respondents, and their highest level of formal education as well as their managerial level was sought, and a summary of these data are shown as Table I. The activities of managerial work, as proposed by Mintzberg were scored as responses on a seven-point Likert scale of 66 items. One scale of 33 items assessed the importance of the activity (1 ¼ extremely unimportant to 7 ¼ extremely important), and a paired scale of 33 items was used to examine the frequency of use of the activity (1 ¼ very rarely to 7 ¼ very often). This instrument was an elaboration of a scale most recently reported by Lubatkin et al. (1997), Montgomery (1985, 1986), and Vengroff (1990). These cross-cultural studies (which incorporated translated questionnaires) were designed to capture the extent of convergence of Mintzberg’s managerial roles in industrial society. The underpinning for the questionnaire items are likely to be found in most quality, undergraduate management texts. For instance, Bartol and Martin (1991, p. 13), Daft (1997, p. 22) as well as Gordon (1993, p. 333) tabulate the ten Mintzberg roles and succinctly delineate each one of them. The provided examples of these specific roles are expectedly, very similar in each table.

Respondents Brunei Malaysia Japan Thailand n 115 143 195 156 Gender Men 73.9 67.1 94.4 28.2 Women 26.1 32.9 5.6 71.8 Managerial level Executive 19.1 37.0 26.2 14.7 Middle 39.2 35.7 34.8 26.3 Supervisory 41.7 27.3 39.0 59.0 Age (years) 20-29 11.3 21.0 7.7 44.2 30-39 25.2 45.5 32.3 27.6 40-49 51.3 25.8 27.7 22.4 Above 49 12.2 7.7 32.3 5.8 Education level Senior high school 49.6 30.1 30.3 6.4 Trade or vocational 19.0 14.7 6.7 12.2 University 31.4 55.2 63.0 81.4 Table I. Demographics percentages

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In our study, two sets of Likert type items were used to rate the importance and frequency of the interpersonal, informational and decisional roles. To assess the interpersonal roles a total of ten items were employed to obtain responses to the importance of the figurehead (three items), leader (four items), and liaison (three items) sub roles, and these were paired with a further ten items for respondents to rate the frequency the activity was encountered in the job. A further nine paired items were used to score the informational role to determine the universality of importance and frequency in managerial work. Three items measured the monitor sub role, and both the disseminator and spokesperson sub roles were scored with three separate items each. Last, there were 14 paired items (a total of 28 items) to examine the importance and frequency of employment of the decisional role. The sub-roles of entrepreneur and resource allocator were each assessed with four item scales, while the disturbance handler and negotiator sub roles each were evaluated with separate three item paired scales. Results Table I shows a profile of the study managers. Although a gender imbalance was expected, given the literature has reported sex role distinction in the Asian workplace (which discourages women and favours men, strategically), the extent of male dominance in the Japanese sample, compared to the level of female participation in the Thailand sample was surprising. Despite the higher quotient of executive managers in the Malaysian sample, and a higher propensity for supervisors in the Thailand sample, given the respondents were

• btained by convenience, the proportions of the three assessed managerial

levels were somewhat similar. The greatest demographic variation occurred across age. Clearly, the Japanese sample was the oldest, while the Thailand sample was the youngest. A dominant feature of Table I is the importance of

• education. Overall, the data of Table I reflect the emerging “new” role of women

in Asian organizations. Table II presents the mean scores for the perceived importance and the frequency of employment of the ten Mintzberg managerial roles across the four study countries. Also shown are the results of ANOVA and Scheffe ´ means contrasts for the extent of importance and frequency of employment of each managerial role across countries. In addition is given the contrasts for importance versus frequency of use of each managerial role as experienced by the managers within a country. The results of Table II reveal three key features. First, for all managerial roles, except for negotiator, the managers of different countries perceived the assessed managerial roles to have substantially different levels of importance. Second, these managers also reported the frequency of employment of these ten Mintzberg roles diverged substantially between countries. These country differences were expected, given the various business contexts in terms of

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Brunei Japan Malaysia Thailand ANOVA Managerial role 115 195 143 156 F P , Means contrasts Scheffe ´a Importance Figurehead 5.08 4.35 5.15 4.94 28.11 *** J,BMT*** Leadership 5.56 5.64 5.85 5.40 8.59 *** B , M* . T*** , J* Liaison 5.30 5.00 5.51 5.35 10.74 *** B . J* , M***, T* Monitor 5.38 5.63 5.74 5.36 6.20 *** B , M* . T** Disseminator 5.44 5.26 5.61 5.22 6.74 *** M . J**, T*** Spokesperson 5.16 4.91 5.28 4.95 5.00 ** M . T*, J** Entrepreneur 5.30 5.61 5.74 5.26 11.47 *** M . BT***; J . B*, T** Disturbance handler 5.58 5.84 5.81 5.48 6.48 *** T , M*, J** Resource allocator 5.54 5.09 5.74 5.54 16.00 *** J , MBT*** Negotiator 5.25 5.19 5.32 5.08 1.50 ns ns Frequency Figurehead 4.74 3.75 4.90 4.49 34.18 *** J , BMT*** Leadership 5.35 5.00 5.61 4.83 20.30 *** B . J*, T***; M . JT*** Liaison 5.03 4.25 5.30 4.63 35.87 *** M . JT***; J , B***, T* Monitor 5.19 4.89 5.30 4.49 15.48 *** T , MB***; T , J* , M* Disseminator 5.29 4.82 5.38 4.63 19.63 *** BM . JT*** Spokesperson 4.68 3.91 4.85 4.26 20.83 *** B . J**, T*; M . JT*** Entrepreneur 5.01 4.66 5.42 4.36 27.93 *** M . B* . J*, T***; M . JT*** Disturbance handler 5.04 4.74 5.32 4.42 16.44 *** M . JT***; B . T*** Resource allocator 4.36 4.36 5.30 4.22 38.36 *** BM . JT*** Negotiator 4.45 4.17 4.56 4.09 3.90 ** M . T* Contrasts for importance versus frequency Figurehead ** *** *** *** Leadership * *** *** *** Liaison ** *** ** *** Monitor ns *** *** *** Disseminator ns *** *** *** Spokesperson *** *** *** *** Entrepreneur ** *** *** *** Disturbance handler *** *** *** *** Resource allocator * *** *** *** Negotiator *** *** *** *** Notes: a B ¼ Brunei, J ¼ Japan, M ¼ Malaysia, T ¼ Thailand; * p , 0:05; ** p , 0:01 and *** p , 0:001; ns ¼ non-significantly different Table II. Mintzberg’s managerial roles

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culture, government interventionist policies, and the personal value systems of the individual managers. Finally, it is shown in Table II that there were significant differences between the rated importance and usage of the assessed managerial roles in each country sample. The only exceptions were for the roles

• f monitor and disseminator in the Brunei sample. These results of paired tests

demonstrated a discernable gap between the relativeness of importance and

• use. This finding suggests behaviors other than the nominated ten Mintzberg

roles were employed by the study managers Table III shows the extent of universality of the importance and frequency of a set of ten managerial roles across gender. Although the sample sizes are somewhat dissimilar the results of t-tests show there was both convergence and divergence in the perceived importance and usage of the Mintzberg managerial roles. These overall findings demonstrate that female and male managers experienced managerial work to be generally homogenous in terms

• f both the importance and frequency of use of certain encountered roles in

their jobs. Yet, in addition, the results provide consistent evidence there were competing levels of importance, and frequency of employment of the managerial roles across gender. These data express possible cultural and gender influences on managerial roles across the four Asian study nations.

Males (n ¼ 409) Females (n ¼ 200) t-values p-values Importance Figurehead 4.72 (0.98) 5.05 (0.91) 23.977 0.000 Leadership 5.65 (0.75) 5.54 (0.82) 1.593 0.112 Liaison 5.19 (0.83) 5.41 (0.91) 22.934 0.004 Monitor 5.54 (0.86) 5.55 (1.01) 20.155 0.877 Disseminator 5.35 (0.87) 5.40 (0.87) 20.751 0.453 Spokesperson 5.02 (0.98) 5.12 (0.99) 21.243 0.214 Entrepreneur 5.50 (0.86) 5.48 (0.88) 0.269 0.788 Disturbance handler 5.71 (0.87) 5.65 (0.90) 0.828 0.408 Resource allocator 5.37 (0.92) 5.59 (0.98) 22.657 0.008 Negotiator 5.19 (0.97) 5.23 (1.11) 20.362 0.717 Frequency Figurehead 4.27 (1.24) 4.65 (1.18) 23.574 0.000 Leadership 5.22 (1.00) 5.05 (0.99) 2.055 0.040 Liaison 4.65 (1.06) 4.93 (1.07) 23.021 0.003 Monitor 4.96 (1.08) 4.89 (1.27) 0.747 0.456 Disseminator 5.06 (1.00) 4.84 (1.10) 2.573 0.001 Spokesperson 4.31 (1.24) 4.48 (1.20) 21.630 0.104 Entrepreneur 4.88 (1.09) 4.72 (1.19) 1.637 0.102 Disturbance handler 4.93 (1.21) 4.69 (1.18) 2.340 0.020 Resource allocator 4.78 (1.18) 4.61 (1.41) 1.493 0.136 Negotiator 4.30 (1.37) 4.27 (1.44) 0.269 0.788 Table III. Comparison of managerial roles across gender in Brunei, Malaysia, Japan and Thailand

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Discussion Understanding the trends and transitions in managerial work in Asia is of considerable importance. The cornerstone of the contemporary management literature presents a traditional perspective that management is a universal set

• f functions and roles played out through personal characteristics, styles and
• competencies. However, the dynamics of global links, changing national

economic and cultural contexts, and a dramatic reforming of the strategic

• rientations at the micro-level, organizations provide urgent imperatives for the

universalistic ideas of managerial work roles to be tested at the ground level. The empirical study presented in this paper suggests that the commonly accepted universalistic ideas of managerial roles need to be enriched with contextual nuances. To a considerable extent, managerial roles are embedded in the contextual specificities of practices and traditions and the interpretation

• f the universal principles are necessarily very local.

The study data present a number of interesting features in terms of managerial work. This is despite the difficulty of obtaining data in a cultural context where such structured questionnaire-based research is unfamiliar. The lack of convention in empirical research is further demonstrated in the very low number of female managers in the Japanese sample. There were few women respondents despite evidence of 50 percent of married Japanese women as well as a significant number of unmarried women are employed in paid work in Japanese organizations. Clearly, this is an interesting transitional issue worthy

• f attention of Japanese managers. A further salient aspect of Table I is the

emergence of educated young Asian women managers who are likely to have a unique managerial approach, difficult to be seen through Mintzberg’s glasses. For example, in a recent study of Mintzberg work roles in Australia and the USA, Konrad et al. (1997) found that, although women and men managers reported similar rank order preferences for the Mintzberg ten managerial roles, there were important differences in their ratings. This led the researchers to conclude that, despite women and men facing similar work activities, at the same managerial level, the experienced differences in work role preferences demonstrate ideological gender role preferences. The results of our study in four Asian nations show women and men managers expressed gender role pressures in contemporary work settings. A further dominant observation shown in Table II is that there were substantial differences across the four Asian countries in terms of the perceived importance and use of the traditional

• roles. In spite of the widespread recognition of the importance of a role by

managers, the frequency of the usage of the role may be substantially low. This gap between the perceived importance of a role and the low frequency usage confirms the study managers employed different activities to achieve consequences of employing the traditional Mintzberg roles. The contextual characteristics or work role in these four Asian countries are more succinctly seen in Tables II and III. A lack of universality of managerial

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roles, not only across countries and within a country, but also at the gender level, promotes interest in understanding the work context of the study

• managers. Indeed, gender variation signals both convergence and divergence

in the perceived importance of a role vis-a `-vis the frequency of roles. This is because, even if all managers do engage in exactly the same roles with similar time budget, it is certain that the underlying motivations, the method of implementation and the interpretive dimensions will be different. For instance, the work settings of the Mintzberg study may be delineated as low context in which managers are expected to be extraordinary people, and hence, exhibit distinctive high profile, pronounced work behaviors. In contrast, Asian work settings are considered to be high context and are paradigmatically different. Accordingly, the codified signals of role are highly sensitive and managers are unlikely to have a high profile. Indeed, managers in Asian workplaces prefer to ensure workplace harmony, and this ensures managers do not stand out from the work group. Hence, although the ten Mintzberg managerial roles are important they are not enacted in ways that pronounce the roles. Moreover, aggregating the data by gender revealed further levels of variation for the importance and frequency of usage of work roles. Collectively, the study findings reveal the challenge for institutionalizing human resource management practices and policies in a global arena. The empirical evidence suggests a requirement for etic (common) and emic (specific) dimensions in terms of culture and gender values, attitudes and preferences. Conclusion The findings of this study endorse earlier contentions that socio-cultural variables have critical implications for managerial roles. Mintzberg conducted his research in what was essentially a mono-cultural environment. Paradoxically, his formulations are now considered to be more of a universal culture-free doctrine. The evidence presented in the paper strongly posits arguments against such culture-free formulation of managerial roles. In spite of global convergence of many micro-level managerial practices in the recent decades, the divergence in the way managers play out their roles are undoubtedly of considerable relevance. Much of the managerial work is through communication and coordination. The dissemination of information, motivation of people, and the constant engagement in the negotiation process by managers in designing and building future plans in essence is deeply cultural. For example, the reliance of communication by managers in conveying their messages is essentially a culturally anchored process. The idea of considering managerial roles as separate “things” or “competencies” with no necessary connections is an assertion that is being increasingly contested. The evidence from the four Asian countries strengthens this viewpoint.

Managerial work roles in Asia 705

The evidence of this study shows there were significant variations in the managerial roles and sub roles as traditionally identified by Mintzberg. Clearly, there is still more to be gained by investigating other managerial contexts and the mainstream management literature in terms of the descriptive view of managerial work roles beyond the Western work contexts. The scope for enhancing our knowledge lies with more field-based research in non-Western contexts like Asian, African and Latin American work organizations.

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