Does It Matter What Managers Do?

Abstract

After half a century of research, we now have a fair idea of what managers do. This differs both from the “heroic self‐image” idealisation and from the sanitised “management science” idealisation. Despite IT and all the talk of empowerment, management as a profession in its own right is, if anything, becoming more, not less, widespread. What managers do therefore matters simply because so many people are doing “management” as their main role. But does what managers do matter in terms of its effects on the people being managed, and, if so, how? The answer is obviously yes, but the central message of this article is how little we know through systematic research about this – particularly given how much preaching there is on how to do it well.