LEVELS OF MANAGERS
A manager is responsible for combining and coordinating the
people, the technology, the job task and other resources to effectively achieve
the objectives of an organisation. You may be a manager in charge of
constructing a plant or managing a bank or supervising a group of life
insurance agents or training a football team. In most of the situations, you
have others who are your subordinates reporting to you. The subordinates
themselves may be managers having subordinates below to report to them.
Therefore, we talk of levels of managers in an organisation.
The First Level Managers: These managers are in direct contact with the employees,
who usually produce the goods or service outputs of an organisation. They are
referred to as supervisors or foremen
in some organisations. You may be associated with the employees who directly
produce goods or render service outputs. Hence, your may belong to the first
level managers. In some government offices, the superintendent of the office
supervising the work of typists, despatch clerks, etc. belongs to this
category. In the industry, it is the foreman, who is in direct contact with the
rank-and-file workers, producing goods or services.
The Middle Level Managers: These managers are those with a number of responsibilities
and linking or connecting activities. They direct the activities of the first
level managers. For example, a district educational officer or a block development
officer belongs to the middle level with the principals of schools and gram
servers reporting to the district educational officer and block development officer
respectively.
The Top Level Managers: The top level managers are a small group of policy makers
responsible for the overall strategic management of the organisations. It is the responsibility of the
top managers to develop the objectives and strategies of the organisation. It
is the top management that must sense the demands of the political, social and
competitive environments on the organisation. A President or a Chief Executive
or a District Magistrate are examples of top managerial level.
THE MANAGERIAL SKILLS AT VARIOUS LEVELS
These skills refer to the personal ability put to use by the
manager in specific position that he or she holds in the organisational
hierarchy.
