Managerial Roles

From the evidence record to the people who do the work

Take out your Week 1 evidence record. Look at the entries you labeled unknown. Many of them are questions about people: who made the promise, who performed the work, who received the money and who would answer if something went wrong. Public sources rarely answer these questions. Inside a company, someone has to.

In the practice scenario from Week 1, requests keep arriving at Judy's company. They point toward the three directions you met there: Option A · Expansion (expand cheerleading and sports-entertainment talent management), Option B · Boutique (a small cross-border talent and advisory service for a few clients) and Option C · Content-centered return (return to content, advertising, food service and personal brand).

A team wants performers, an organizer wants help with a festival, and brands want videos. At first Judy answers every message herself, because she knows the partners and decides quickly. Within a few weeks, the work no longer fits into her day. Performers wait for answers, and one partner receives two different arrival times.

So the company hires Mina, a bilingual coordinator. She stays with the company for the rest of the course. Her job sounds simple: keep the schedule and answer routine questions. But nobody has said which questions are routine, which changes she may approve or whom she should ask when she is unsure. Everyone keeps writing to Judy, and Judy keeps answering.

This week's question is: what changes when the person who creates attention becomes responsible for other people's time, money and safety? The short answer is that the work changes before anyone's title does. This chapter shows how to make that change visible and fair.

Where this week fits

Week 1 produced an evidence record: what the case shows, what we infer and what is still unknown. This week asks who in the company would be responsible for each piece of work, and who may decide what. The result is a role and decision map, which you will use in Week 3 to name who decides and who reviews in a decision memo.

What managerial work looks like

In Week 1 you met three roles one person can hold: creator, manager and entrepreneur. This week focuses on the manager role. Many people picture a manager as someone with an office, a title and a team. In small companies, managerial work starts long before any of those exist. It appears whenever someone coordinates work that other people depend on, shares out scarce time or money, or answers for a promise.

Mintzberg (1973) observed chief executives at work and found that managerial work is broken into many short tasks and is done mostly through communication. He grouped its recurring demands into three families of roles. The table shows each family in Judy's company.

The work in the right-hand column is managerial because other people's actions depend on it. A person can do all three families of work without being equally good at each. Judy may be strong at the interpersonal work but short of time for the informational work. That gap is one reason she hired Mina.

Role conflict and role ambiguity

As the work grows, two different problems can appear. Role conflict happens when the expectations attached to a role cannot all be met at the same time. Role ambiguity happens when the expectations, authority or priorities of a role are unclear. Rizzo, House and Lirtzman (1970) separated these two problems, and the separation tells a manager what to fix.

A conflict example. Judy tells Mina: "Protect the performers' rest, accept every good opportunity, keep costs low and never disappoint a partner." Even with perfect information, Mina cannot achieve all four at once. More effort will not solve this. Someone with authority has to set priorities, a limit or a line that cannot be crossed.

An ambiguity example. Judy tells Mina: "You coordinate the events." Does that include booking travel, approving extra hours, changing which performer appears or answering a complaint from a client? If nobody knows, the problem is ambiguity. A written list of what Mina may decide will help more than encouragement.

Ambiguity is especially hard on the person in the middle. "Please take ownership" sounds supportive. But if Mina is responsible for a result without the authority to change what causes it, she carries the blame without the tools. When a role feels difficult, ask three questions. Which expectations are in tension, which expectation is unclear, and who has the authority to change it?

When the founder stays the switchboard

In a founder-led company, the founder often sits at the center of information, relationships and identity. That position has real value, because Judy knows why a partnership matters and how the audience will react, but it also creates a trap. People start asking the founder to be creative director, scheduler and final approver for everything. Each request seems small, so she says yes, and she becomes a switchboard: the one point that every message must pass through. Over time, no one person can give all of these tasks proper attention.

The usual way out is to change the founder's role. Van Lancker and colleagues (2023) followed the founders of one start-up and found that their roles changed through repeated negotiation and practice, more than through new titles. Judy could keep creative direction and her relationships with partners while handing daily scheduling to Mina. She could also design a process that handles ordinary complaints and brings only unusual ones to her. These changes protect what she cares about and make the work possible for others to carry.

Practice scenario: Mina and the late-night message

Mina builds a shared schedule for the festival appearance that the event organizer asked for in Week 1. Performers and the organizer's staff still message Judy directly, because Judy has always answered first. One night Judy moves a performer's arrival time in a group chat and does not tell Mina. The next morning the organizer's staff see two times, one in Mina's schedule and one in Judy's message, and they book the shuttle for Judy's time. The performer follows Mina's schedule, waits at the station for an hour, and the organizer complains to Mina.

Mina's effort does not explain this failure. Three rules were missing.

• A decision rule. Which schedule changes may Mina approve, and which need Judy? An arrival time is routine, so it should have gone through Mina.
• A communication rule. Which schedule is the current one, and who sends the message that counts? One shared schedule, kept by Mina, would have prevented two versions.
• A learning rule. How will the company review the incident? Asking "what allowed two times to exist?" teaches more than asking "who made the mistake?"

Good management design makes four things easy after an important change. First, anyone can find who made it; here, who moved the arrival time. Second, that person can explain why. Third, someone is named to check changes of this kind, and fourth, there is one quick way to tell everyone the correct time. In the scenario none of these was possible until the performer was already waiting, and the rest of this chapter builds tools that make them possible in advance.

The scenario also shows a quieter point. Because Mina is bilingual, much of the company's information passes through her. That makes her valuable, and it also gives her influence over what each side hears. Week 4 returns to language as part of management.

Decision rights, accountability and delegation

Three ideas explain what went wrong. They are easy to mix up, so each is defined here with Mina's work.

• Task responsibility is the duty to do a piece of work. Example: Mina is responsible for preparing the event-day schedule.
• A decision right is the authority to decide a stated kind of question, within a stated limit. Example: Mina may move a rehearsal time within the agreed event day. The fee and the choice of performer stay with Judy.
• Accountability is the duty to explain a decision, make sure it is reviewed and corrected when needed, and answer for the result within a stated area. Example: Judy is accountable to the organizer for the appearance as a whole, even when Mina makes the routine schedule decisions.

These three can sit with different people. For example, Mina may be given the task of finding out what the home team would pay: she asks, collects the numbers and reports them to Judy. Only Judy has the right to sign an agreement at that price. So a person can do the work of finding out without having the authority to commit the company.

When a result goes wrong, a fair review separates what a role controlled, what it could only influence and what was outside its reach. A late train is outside Mina's control, while telling the performer about it quickly is inside it.

Delegation gives another person a defined piece of work or a defined decision. It comes with limits, resources, a route for asking for help and a date to review how it went. A common misunderstanding is that delegation passes on the blame. The person who delegates still answers for having set up the arrangement well.

Research shows that managers delegate more in some conditions than in others. Yukl and Fu (1999) found that managers reported delegating more to people they saw as competent and who shared their goals. Van Triest and Williams (2024) found that managers gave more autonomy when employees held specific knowledge about the work and when the work produced many exceptions. Both points fit Mina: she knows the partners' languages, and event-day work is full of small exceptions.

The delegation ladder

Delegation works best as a ladder with several steps. Each step gives the team member more authority, and the manager keeps a smaller but clear part of the work.

The steps describe authority over a task, not a person's worth. The same person can be on a high step in one area and a low step in another. Mina might own the translation workflow and still have no right to approve a payment. For each step, write the kind of decision and its money limit. Also write the review date and what Mina should bring to Judy.

A simple exception rule tells Mina when to act alone. She decides when the change can be undone and stays within budget. She asks Judy first when the change affects safety, another person's consent or a public promise.

Finally, delegation needs a short written brief. The brief says what result is needed, what Mina may decide and what she must bring to Judy. It also lists her resources and the date the arrangement will be reviewed. A one-page brief protects both people better than a motivating speech.

Written roles can feel cold in a small, friendly company. Judy might say, "We are like a family; we look after each other." The intention is caring. But when a schedule changes, the family picture does not say who pays the extra taxi fare, who tells the organizer or who updates the record. Clear rules give everyone protection that does not depend on one relationship staying warm.

The role and decision map

The role and decision map is this week's artifact. It is one table that lists the company's recurring decisions. For each decision, it names who prepares it, who decides and within what limit, who must be asked or told, and who reviews and can reverse it. Its purpose is to stop several people from each assuming that someone else approved a commitment.

The four management questions from Week 1 show what the map must cover, because each question creates work that needs an owner. Someone must identify the Target and check the evidence about it. Someone must make and approve the Value promise, and someone must run the Capability each time. Someone must send invoices and approve costs for the Revenue Model. If every line on the map says "Judy", the map describes one person's habits, not a company.

Worked example: a role and decision map for Judy's company

The map below is for the practice scenario.

Read the map row by row. The first row gives Mina a real decision right, which would have prevented the late-night message problem. The photo row puts the performer's consent before Judy's approval, because the image belongs to the performer. The last two rows keep commitments that are hard to undo with Judy, and add a reviewer from outside the daily work. Week 3 uses the last row to write a decision memo.

Each option would change the map in a different way. Option A adds rows for more performers, more games and more travel, so Mina's decision rights would need to grow quickly. Option B keeps the map short but puts more weight on the rows about advice and agreements with a few clients. Option C removes most rows about performers and brings many decisions back to Judy, which makes her workload the main risk.

Running a public observation through the map

Now connect the map to the case. Take one entry from your evidence record: Taipei East's page describes a cheerleading collaboration, Tokki Cutie, involving OM Entertainment, which it presents as led by Judy. That is evidence of a past collaboration. Your record also lists the unknowns next to it: who promised, who performed and who received money.

The map turns those unknowns into a design question for the practice scenario. If another team asked for a similar collaboration next season, who would handle each part? Following the map, Mina would prepare the request, Judy would decide, the performers and translator would be asked first, and an outside adviser would read the terms. So the public page stays in the evidence column of your record, and the map is your proposal for how the next collaboration could be organized.

One more question sits behind every row: what kind of working relationship does each person have with the company? Whether a performer or translator counts as an employee or a contractor depends on facts about how the work is done and paid, and on the law where it happens. The International Labour Organization recommends that countries look at those facts rather than at the label the parties use (ILO, 2006). A manager should know that this is a question for a qualified adviser.

The promises nobody wrote down

A working relationship contains written terms, such as pay, hours and tasks. It also contains unwritten beliefs about what each side owes the other. Rousseau (1989) called these beliefs a psychological contract: a person's belief about the promises that exist between them and an organization. Because it lives in one person's mind, two people can read the same written agreement and hold different psychological contracts.

When a person feels that the other side broke one of these believed promises, researchers call it a perceived breach. A review of many studies by Zhao and colleagues (2007) found that perceived breach was linked with lower trust, lower job satisfaction and weaker commitment to the organization. The feeling matters even when nobody meant to break a promise.

A related idea is perceived organizational support: a person's general sense that the organization values their contribution and cares about their well-being. Kurtessis and colleagues (2017) combined hundreds of studies and found that fair treatment, recognition and care were among the things linked with feeling supported. A policy on paper is a starting point. To know whether people feel supported, the manager has to ask them and listen to the answer.

Practice scenario: the opportunity that was promised

When a young performer starts working with Judy's company, Judy tells her the company will bring her "more international opportunities". Six months later, the company has received several requests from teams in Taiwan. The performer has been left out of most of them, because the travel budget that pays for her flights from Korea is small. Judy believes she promised that the performer would be considered. The performer understood regular paid work in Taiwan.

The first temptation is to ask who misunderstood. A manager learns more by asking what words were used, what happened afterward and what can still be done. Judy's company could publish how opportunities are shared out, explain the budget limit, offer a training assignment and set a date to review the arrangement together. It cannot undo every disappointment. It can stop a broad promise from becoming a hidden rule that nobody can check.

The lesson for the map is practical: when a promise matters, write its scope down. Will the person be considered for paid work? Does it depend on the budget, and when will it be reviewed? A precise sentence sounds less inspiring than a broad promise, but both sides can check it later.

AI tools in the role and decision map

Mina might use AI tools to sort incoming requests, draft replies or translate a message. Software can shape work in ways people cannot easily see. Kellogg, Valentine and Christin (2020) describe how algorithms at work can direct, evaluate and discipline workers.

Two terms keep people in charge. Human oversight means a person watches how a tool works over time and has the authority to fix problems. Human review means a person examines one particular decision the tool supported and can change or reverse it. This course adds one plain rule: for any important AI-assisted decision, name the person who can explain it and reverse it. On the map, that person belongs in the "reviews and can reverse" column, and Week 3 looks at human judgment with AI in more detail.

Class practice: your first role and decision map

This practice is done without AI tools. Your teacher will tell you which worksheet to use and how to submit it. Bring your Week 1 evidence record.

1. Choose three entries from your evidence record. Pick one entry labeled evidence and one labeled inference or unknown. For the third, take the question you wrote in the "What would change it" column. Copy each one with its label. Giving an entry an owner does not change its label: an inference stays an inference.
2. Turn each entry into a decision for Judy's company. For example, the unknown "who received payment" becomes "who approves and sends invoices". Write one map row for each: who prepares, who decides and within what limit, who is asked or told, and who reviews and can reverse it.
3. Place one row on the delegation ladder. Which step would you give Mina for this decision now? What would she need, such as information, a money limit or training, to move up one step?
4. Check each other's work. Swap with a classmate. Your classmate looks for one decision with no owner and one owner with no authority. If your maps differ, explain the difference by information, authority or the way the work is arranged.

Your map does not need to be neat. A strong map lets a new team member see who may decide what, and where to go when something is unclear. Keep it for Week 3.

Key points and what you bring to Week 3

• Managerial work begins before any title. It appears whenever someone coordinates work that other people depend on.
• Role conflict means expectations cannot all be met at once; it needs priorities. Role ambiguity means expectations or authority are unclear; it needs clearer rules.
• Task responsibility, decision rights and accountability are different. A person can prepare a decision without the authority to commit the company.
• Delegation gives a defined decision with limits, resources, support and a review date. The delegation ladder lets authority grow step by step.
• Unwritten promises shape how people feel about their work. When a promise matters, write its scope down.

For Week 3. Bring your role and decision map. In Week 3 you will compare the three options and write a decision memo. The memo must name who decides and who reviews, and those names come from your map.