ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the way in which managers in ‘middle management’ spend their time, and might do so in firms chosen for differences in size and production technology so that possible related differences in activity might be revealed. The selection of a population of managers and firms was dictated to some extent by limits of time and opportunity. The main method for obtaining data was to have managers record their own activities on a specially designed form, the ‘Managers Activity Record’. Management, according to most who have written about it, comprises five main activities; forecasting, planning, organizing, commanding, and controlling. The analysis shows that most of our sixty six managers spend about three quarters of their time on activities of organizing, regulating, controlling. There are exceptions to this and there are slight differences from level to level. There is a suggestion then that size and technology have an effect on the nature of the organizing tasks of the middle manager.
