Managerial Roles and Responsibilities at University of Alberta

This essay examines the managerial position held by Marilyn Hawirko at the University of Alberta's School of Management. It details her responsibilities, including strategic planning, leadership, and ensuring the school's competitiveness. The essay highlights the challenges of the role, such as managing stakeholders, adapting to external environments, and fostering a positive organizational culture. Hawirko's position encompasses elements of senior, middle, and front-line management, with a primary focus on middle management functions. The essay explores her interpersonal, informational, and decisional roles, as well as the technical, human, and conceptual skills required for effective performance. It emphasizes the importance of her skills in navigating a complex environment, managing resource scarcity, and motivating staff. The essay concludes by underscoring the significance of her managerial contributions to the university's success and the retention of staff and students.

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7/31/2019

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Marilyn Hawirko’s job as manager of the school of the management at university of
Alberta is not easy. The position has huge responsibilities which need the incumbent to have
great abilities. To appreciate in what way the position of manager is not easy to hold, the best
place to begin may be with the University of Alberta itself.
The University of Alberta has huge responsibilities that in wide part, reflects the different
group of stakeholders this university serves (University of Alberta, 2019). It should operate
within the law and while they are not responsible for increasing the profits as a private institution
it is expected to work within the budget set by the University of Alberta. Its discretionary and
ethical responsibilities possess the big challenge for the University of Alberta. The university is
not expected to do no immoral. Their mandate usually needs them to make positive contributions
to society. The employees of the university are the primary stakeholders and government of
Canada is the secondary stakeholders that has a wide interest in the managing the education of all
the people living in Canada and the people of Alberta who work for the university. With that a
range of masters to help, it observed guaranteed that the objections will be high by few to almost
anything the university might do. Marilyn Hawirko carries various managerial roles and
responsibilities. Her first responsibility is to make things working in the school of management.
She plans for the future of school of management by preparing and making strategies to
implement the plans and anticipate the requirements of staffs in the school (Horlacher, Et al,
2016). The manager as a leader plays various critical role. The first role she played is the
planning through which she determines the course of action that helps the university to achieve
the objectives. These plans help her in controlling the school of management’s activities more
effectively. They assist her in evaluating what must be happening on a daily, monthly, annual
basis. By measuring deviations, she takes corrective course of actions to ensure that activities are
under the control. The next role she played is the leadership. The employees as well as students
of university need guidance and motivation in order to work more efficiently and effectively for
the attainment of goals. Managers knowing the attitudes, interests and motivation of people and
also knowing the environment then guiding the employees towards the achievement of goals
remaining within the ambit of given state (Billaiya, Et al, 2017).
Marilyn Hawirko is also responsible for ensuring that the school of management is able
to compete with other institutions. She should stay abreast of the external environment of the

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university. While economic trends are significant in this respects, the more pressing challenges
involved in political, socio-cultural and technological trends. The dependence of university of
Alberta on itself, its online methods of delivery and its requirement to hold stable enrolment is
growing. The more definite environment components such as regulatory changes and advocacy
groups are specifically a concern but it is employee, students of university and competitors
which are most possibly to get attention of Marilyn Hawirko. The success of the school of
management is largely dependent on the keeping its students and staffs satisfied and high quality
members to serve them. Furthermore, it should ensure that the competitors of university are not
offering services or arranging programs which lead staffs or students to change the university
(Gao, Et al, 2017).
To accomplish the above, Marilyn Hawirko should organize the projects, people and the
processes by which the school of management attains its goals. Possibly the most essential thing
she does is developing the culture of school of management by providing the leadership to other
staffs or students of the school of management (Samson, Et al, 2018). On some events, she
delivers encouragement words which motivate the staff to do hard work and her managerial
advice helps the staff members to be more effective. By doing so she tries to establish the culture
in that staff assists each other out rather than leaving the members to fend for themselves.
However some people have different view on culture that they thought same culture is weak
since several members work from their home (Botha, Et al, 2016).
Marilyn Hawirko’s roles and responsibilities consist some which are associated with
senior manager, middle manager and front-line manager as well as the leaders of team.
Nevertheless, her position as manager is probably well described as the middle management.
Irrespective of it she played interpersonal roles as she acts as figurehead at the when university
requires to be externally represented; informational roles as she acts the spokesperson at the time
when requirement of the university require to be made well known within the university; and she
also played decisional role as she acts as a handler of disturbance when staff members of school
of management disagree (Mencl, Et al, 2016). For doing all these roles and responsibilities
effectively she needs some technical skills for performing specific tasks that includes knowledge
of programming languages, mechanical equipment or tools; human skills to interact with people
related to work effectively which helps her to make use of human potential in the university and

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motivate staff for better results and also the conceptual skills to visualize the whole university
and work with ideas and the relationship between the abstract concepts and above all these she
should want the school of management to succeed through higher motivation (Au & Leung,
2016).
She is the person who performs her roles and responsibilities effectively when there is
need for the skills to perform the specific tasks. She is found to be someone who is up for the
challenges in the school of management and try to figure out the solution for those challenges
instead of quitting and avoiding the task and facts attached to the challenges. She is affected by
the complexity as she performs in highly complex environment because there are several
variables which can affect the university. The manager has to deal with number of elements in
the university’s environment and its connections; resource scarcity and uncertainty as the
university lacks factual or competent information which is concerning the external operating
environment for the university. Generally it is not known in the university and in the field of
school of management that relevant to operation of the university (Fischer, Et al, 2018).
The managerial roles that Marilyn Hawirko played contributes towards the success of the
university and many staffs and students retain for longer period as they do not decide to leave
due to the managing efforts of her for the school of management. As it is essential that every
institution requires managers for managing the work or group of work and responsible for
planning and maintaining the work systems, policies, procedures that enables and encourage the
higher performance of their staff and other resources within their university. So her roles and
responsibilities inspire the others to become such kind of manager for effective and efficient
working of an organization.

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References
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University of Alberta. (2019). About us. Retrieved from: https://www.ualberta.ca/