Horizontal Dimension: Responsibility Areas

In addition to their vertical differences, managerial jobs differ on a horizontal dimension that relates to the nature of the area of respon­sibility involved.

The three major types of horizontal differentiation among mana­gerial jobs on the basis of responsibility area are functional, general, and project managers.

Functional managers are managers who have responsibility for a specific, specialized area (often called a functional area) of the or­ganization and supervise mainly individuals with expertise and train­ing in that specialized area. Common specialized, or functional, areas include finance, manufacturing or operations, marketing, human re­sources management, accounting, quality assurance, and engineering.

General managers are managers who have responsibility for a whole organization or a substantial sub-unit that includes most of the common specialized areas within it. In other words, a general manager presides over a number of specialties or functional areas (hence the term "general"). General managers have a variety of titles, such as "division manager" and "president", depending on the circumstances. A small company usually will have only one general manager, who is the head of the entire organization. Depending on how it is organized, a large company may have several general managers (in addition to the chief executive).

Project managers are managers who have responsibility for co­ordinating efforts involving individuals in several different organizational units who are all working on a particular project. Because the individuals report not only to managers in their specific work units but also to project managers, project managers usually must have ex­tremely strong interpersonal skills to keep things moving smoothly.

Project managers are frequently used in aerospace and other high-technology firms to coordinate projects, such as airplane or com­puter project development. They also are used in some consumer-oriented companies to launch or stay on top of market development for specific products such as cookies or margarine.

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