Contrast the actions of manager's according to the omnipotent and symbolic views.

Contrast the actions of manager's according to the omnipotent and symbolic views?

Omnipotent or Symbolic?

in February 2010, when Ford Motor Company surpassed General Motors in sales for the first time in at least 50 years, GM announced an overhaul in its top managers' ranks. GM's North American president said that "he could see clear as day that the nix and the structure of people weren't right and that these changes were necessary for GM to move faster and win." Such a move shuffling managers is not all that uncommon in the corporate world, 

But why?

How much difference does a manager make in how an organization performs? The dominant view in management theory and society in general is that managers are directly

esponstolic tor an organization's success or failure. We call this perspective the omnipotent view of management. In contrast, others have argued that much of an organization's success or failure is due to external forces outside managers' control. This perspective is called the symbolic view of management. Let's look at each perspective to try and clarity Just how much credit or blame managers should get for their organization's performance

The Omnipotent View

we stressed how important managers were to organizations. Differences

in an organization's performance are assumed to be due to decisions and actious of he managers. Good managers anticipate change, exploit opportunities, Correct pour/sech Give process in relations between

performance, and lead their organizations. When profits are up, managers take the credit

and are rewarded with bonuses, stock options, and the like. When profits are down, top managers are Oren Hired in the belief that "new blood" will bring improved results. For instance, the CEO of Cot Corporation was fired because some of its largest customers were threatening to leave and the company's share prices had declined sharply In this view, someone has to be held accountable when organizations perform poorly regardless of the reasons, and that "'someone" is the manager. Of course, when things go well, managers also get the credit-even if they had little to do with achieving the positive outcomes. This view of managers as omnipotent is consistent with the stereotypical picture of the take-charge business executive who overcomes any obstacle in seeing that the organization achieves its goals. And this view isn't limited to business organizations It also explains turnover among college and professional sports coaches, who are considered the "managers" of their teams. Coaches who lose more games than they win are usually fired and replaced by now coaches who are expected to correct the poor performance.

The Symbolic View

In the 1990s, Cisco Systems was the picture of success. Growing rapidly, it was widely praised by analysts for its "brilliant strategy, masterful management of acquisitions and superb customer focus." As Cisco's performance declined during the early part of the twenty-first century, analysts said that its strategy was flawed, its acquisition approach was

haphazard and its customer service was poor. Was declining performance due to the managers' decisions and actions, or was it due to external circumstances beyond their control?

The symbolic view would suggest the latter. The symbolic view says that a manager's ability to afflict performance outcomes is influenced and constrained by extremal factors. According to this view, it's unreasonable to expect managers to significantly affect an organization's performance. Instead, performance is influenced by factors over which managers have little control such as the economy,

customers, governmental policies, competitors' actions, industry conditions, and decisions made by previous managers.

This view is labeled "symbolic"

because it's based on the belief that managers symbolize control and influence How do they do that? By developing plans, making decisions, and engaging in other managerial activities to make sense out of random, confusing, and ambitious situations. However, the actual part that managers play in organizational success or failure is limited according to this view. In reality, managers are neither all-powerful nor helpless. But their decisions and actions are constrained. As you can sec in Exhibit external constraints come from the organization's environment and internal constraints come from the organizations culture.