A manager’s responsibilities are complex, ranging from maximizing financial return to managing employee performance.
Tracy Hale
A manager’s responsibilities are complex, ranging from maximizing financial return to managing employee performance. The textbook Business and Society describes this complexity, whereby a manager closely monitors financial performance but incorporates other elements as vital to this success, such as incorporating new products and retaining quality employees (Lawrence & Weber, 2020). A manager may be a top executive of a firm, overseeing large scale profitability and owners’ expectations, or he may function more like a supervisor, overseeing a small group of employees with their schedules and conflicts. Lawrence and Weber note, “As a practical matter, managers direct their energies toward all stakeholders, not just owners” (p. 7).
Though managers operate differently than stakeholders such as employees or the nearby neighborhood, by the very definition of stakeholders as “a person or group that has an investment, share or interest in something” (Dictionary.com, 2022), this paper argues that managers are indeed stakeholders. Such as every stakeholder has a different role and interest in the business, managers are focused primarily on other stakeholders, serving the shareholders with financial return and stakeholders with a quality experience to continue those returns. Martin and Philips describe this management as investing “more time, money, and attention to stakeholders than is necessary for the immediate transaction” (Martin & Phillips, 2022, p. 519). Managers certainly do this to continue success of the business through customer loyalty and satisfaction, profitable returns, and public support. Though her focus is on stakeholder satisfaction, a manager is invested in and dependent on the business’s success in order to continue her profession. As a stakeholder, she desires business success to reflect well on her management and ensure job security.
Martin and Philips often use the terms firm and to describe said relationship. They point out there is “a relationship between visionary leadership and employee effort leading, in turn, to enhanced firm performance” (Martin & Phillips, 2022, p. 522). Though they place the firm and leadership separate from stakeholders, this statement reflects the crucial results required to ensure business success, and as thus, success of the stakeholder as manager.
Poell delineates stakeholders into a company structure. He notes that employees and managers are key stakeholders in human resource development in addition to HRD professionals, but that “each of them has their own role to play in function of their position and the aims they wish to pursue (which tend to differ)” (Poell, 2022, p. 272). This outlook exemplifies how stakeholders are not just external components of a business but also internal positions as to the vested interest. So as managers have vested interest in human resource development, thus making them stakeholders, implying they are stakeholders of the business at large. Lawrence and Weber give space to the stakeholder debate, stating that managers are agents of the company and must act on behalf of it toward stakeholders (Lawrence & Weber, 2020). However, they are also employees since they get compensation. The debate arises as to where they act as agent and where they promote their own goals (Lawrence & Weber, 2020).
This author proposes that are able to primarily act as agent but receive the rewards of success, which ultimately meet their goals. The tenets of Christianity profess a focus on serving others. Philippians 2:3-4 says, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others” (New International Version, 1995). These verses inform one acting as manager and would allow the manager to fulfill the role of agent, trusting the concern as stakeholder to the Lord. Not all managers will have an altruistic focus, but they will likely have learned the skills to navigate company goals and stakeholder desires.
References
Lawrence, A., & Weber, J. (2020). Business and Society: Stakeholders, Ethics, Public Policy.
McGraw-Hill Education.
Martin, K., & Phillips, R. (2022). Stakeholder Friction: JBE. Journal of Business Ethics, 177(3),
519-531. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-020-04652-9Links to an external site.
New International Version. (1995). Zondervan Publishing House.
Poell, R. F. (2022). Will Human Resource Development Become Too Important To Be Left to
Human Resource Development Professionals? Employees and Managers as Strategic Human Resource Development Stakeholders. Human Resource Development Review, 21(3), 267-274. https://doi.org/10.1177/15344843221083192Links to an external site.
Stakeholders. 2022. In Dictionary.com. Retrieved October 26, 2022, from
https://dictionary.com/stakeholders.
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