Despite a proliferation of management gurus, management consultants, and management schools, it remains murky to many of us what managers actually do and why we need them in the first place. Unless someone has actually performed managerial work, it is hard to understand exactly what managers do on an hourbyhour, daytoday basis. In this course, we explore the role of managers.

A role is a set of expectations for a manager’s behavior. These roles are divided into three conceptual categories informational (managing by information), interpersonal (managing through people), and decisional (managing through action).