Managerial Work in an Emerging Economy? Semi-Routinization, Discontinuity, and Variety in China

Abstract

Henry Mintzberg's seminal work on managerial work around five decades ago has drawn much attention to how managers allocate time in modern enterprises. Yet it remains mostly underexplored whether managerial work is changing in modern enterprises in emerging economies. In this study, we conduct an extension of Mintzberg's research on managerial work in emerging economies. Using a large sample of 652 managers from 463 Chinese firms, we find that managerial work is characterized by semi-routinization, discontinuity, and variety, and such characteristics differ across managerial ranks and organizations with varying degrees of formalization. Specifically, we find that lower-level managers, like executive managers, present more diversity in their work than middle-level managers. Organizational formalization discourages managers' exposure to non-work interruptions, but surprisingly, it encourages managers to take on more work-related interruptions. We discuss implications for management research and practices.

Keywords: managerial work, emerging economy, semi-routinization, discontinuity, variety