Managing managerial careers

Bozionelos, N. and Baruch, Y. (2015) Managing managerial careers. In, Wilkinson, Adrian, Townsend, Keith and Suder, Gabriele (eds.) Handbook of Research on Managing Managers. (Research Handbooks in Business and Management series) Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 62-84. (doi:10.4337/9781783474295.00012).

Abstract

Although a universal definition is by no means simple to arrive at, a career can be seen as a sequence of work-related experiences that unfold through time (eg Arthur et al., 1989). Every working person has a career. And careers have to be managed. Yet managing the careers of managers is more complex and sophisticated than management of careers for rankand-file employees.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a manager is ‘a person responsible for controlling or administering an organisation or group of staff’. What distinguishes someone with managerial responsibilities from other employees, therefore, is that this person (1) is in charge of multiple resources (including money, materials, technology, space and people), and (2) has to make decisions about how to combine, process, utilise and develop these resources in order to achieve certain outcomes that add value to the business, the firm or the function. Although someone may claim that virtually all individuals who perform work are charged with such responsibilities, a fundamental difference between a manager and someone without managerial tasks is that the manager bears responsibility for the output (including behaviours) of those he/she is in charge of. The manager is accountable for the actions and output of others, while nonmanagerial employees normally are not. In this respect, therefore, managers share characteristics with leaders, though being a good manager does not always require exceptional leadership capabilities (eg see Bono and Judge, 2004). It is because of the complexity inherent in managerial work that managerial careers require careful long-and short-term planning, while the burden should be shared between the employer and the manager. Although not every manager is a leader, every leader is a manager, at least within the organisational context. Leaders are self-motivated, and normally aim to be at the helm, including leading their own careers. This is where the employer needs to balance the two: employer and individual needs and wants (Herriot and Pemberton, 1996). A properly designed career management system can harmonise the two sets of needs as well as ensure that the burden in career leadership is shared (Baruch, 2006). As seen, the importance of managers lies in the very nature of their work: they are responsible for output that requires the synergistic effort of others along with combination and optimisation in the use of resources.

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Contributors

Author: Y. Baruch

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