Levels of Management

Management includes all the levels of an organization or a company. Management is classified by managers at different levels, i.e. – top level, middle level and lower level managers. Here, manager is a new term and we have also used this term even before in this material, so it is now right time to study the term manager.

A manager is someone who works with and through other people by coordinating their work activities in order to achieve organizational goals. It is not that managers work for their personal achievement, but they help other people and achieve the goals of organization.

Now, let us talk about different levels of management, which is performed by managers in the organization:

Top Level Managers

Titles like managing director, president, vice president, general managers of the company fall in this category of top level of management. Top level managers are responsible to bring change, by showing a long term vision and mission for the companies. They are responsible to develop a sense of commitment among the employees of the organization.

Top level managers have to develop a positive organizational culture through values, beliefs, tradition, language and action. This managers have to do continuous study of their business environment, i.e. – customer demand, competitor’s plan, economic, social and political changes etc.

On the basis of regular watch on internal and external environment of the business, they design policies and strategies of corporate level in the company and they also lead, motivate and coordinate activities of the middle level managers.

Middle Level Managers

Titles like plant manager, project leader, regional manager, divisional manager and functional department head – like, production manager, marketing manager, finance manager, human resource manager and research and development manager come in this middle level management category.

Middle level managers plans and execute the goals, objectives and strategies of their departments consistent with top management’s goal’s and planning.

To achieve departmental goals, they are also responsible for allocation of resources. They should also monitor and manage the performance of the department and managers who report to them.

Middle level managers implement changes and strategies generated by top managers andin addition to this, middle level managers lead, motivate and coordinate with lower level managers.

First line managers

This level is known as lower level managers or first level or junior level managers or shift managers or This people are also called “supervisors”. First job of first line manager is to manage the performance of entry level employees. They are responsible to teach and train entry level employees about how to do their jobs.

Pyramid of Level of Management

All these three levels of management can also be shown in pictorial form. In traditionally structured organization, levels of management is shown in a pyramid form, which is shown in figure 1.3. On the top of pyramid – top management level comes, which is always minimum in number.

After top level, on second position in hierarchy, middle level management is there and at the bottom, first line managers come in the hierarchy. Normally number of employees at first line level are maximum and below that non-managerial employees are shown, who are workers or floor people in any organization.