Managerial Roles in a Social System

According to Ichak Adizes (in his book "How to solve the Management Crisis", Los Angeles, MDOR Institute Inc., 1980) four managerial roles must be performed if an organisation is to be run effectively. These four roles are Producing, Implementing, Innovating and Integrating. Each of these managerial roles is clearly related to one of the four social subsystem of an organisation. 

1. A manager in the role of "producing" is expected to achieve results equal to or better than the-competition. The principal qualification for an achiever is the possession of a functional knowledge of his field, whether marketing, production, material, finance or any other discipline. The role of producing emphasizes, activities in the "economic/technological*'  subsystem. 
2. Being individually productive and having technical skills do not necessarily enable a manager to produce results in working with a group of people. Managers should be more than individual producers and more than only having technical skills. They should be able to administer the people with whom they work and to see that these people also produce results. In this "implementing" role managers Schedule, Coordinate, Control and Discipline. If managers are implementer, they see to it that the system works as it has been designed to work. "Implementing" emphasizes the "administrative/structural" subsystem. 
3. While "producing" and "implementing" are important in changing environment, managers must use their judgement and have the discretion to change goals and to change the system by which they are implemented. In this role, managers must be organisational entrepreneurs and innovators since, unlike administrators who are given plans to carry out and decisions to implement, entrepreneurs have to generate their own plan of action. They have to be self-starters. The "innovating" role stresses the "information/decision-making" subsystem. 
4. "Integrating" is the process by which individual strategies are merged into a group strategy, individual risks because group risks; individual goals are harmonised into group goals, ultimately individual entrepreneurship emerges as group entrepreneurship when a group can operate on its own with a clear direction in mind and can choose its own direction over time without depending on any one individual for a successful operation. Then it can be known that integrating role has been performed adequately. It requires an individual who is sensitive to people's needs. Such an individual unifies the whole organisation behind goals and strategies. "Integrating" emphasises the "human/social" subsystem. 

Ichak Adizes contends that whenever one of the four managerial roles is not performed in an organisation, a certain style of mismanagement can be observed. And yet, Adizes argues that few managers perfectly all four of these roles and thus, exhibit no mismanagement style since they are at once excellent technicians, administrators, entrepreneurs and integrators. Thus, to discuss the "Role of the Manager" as is done in management literature, is theoretical mistake. No one manager can manage alone. It takes several to perform the process adequately, several people to perform roles which seem to be in conflict but really are complementary. There should be individual who possess the entrepreneurial and integrating qualities which can guide an organisation to new directions. There should be administrators who can translate these new actions into operative systems which should produce results. And there should be performers who can put the system into action and can set an example for efficient dynamic operation. Otherwise, an entrepreneur will become a "crisis maker", the administrator, a "bureaucrat",  and the producer, a "loner",