ABSTRACT
The most common dictionary definition of the word ‘role’ is the activities which an individual is expected to perform. In this meaning ‘role’ is synonymous with ‘job’ or ‘function’. The word has, however, gathered other meanings in the literature of management and organization. For example, we hear or read the expressions ‘supervisory role’, ‘subordinate role’, ‘staff role’, etc. In this sense, role has a meaning which is almost synonymous with ‘relationship’ (or even, in the case of the first two at least, ‘rank’). Then again, we hear of people playing an ‘aggressive or dominant role’. Here the emphasis is on the way an individual acts out his role, the particular interpretation that he puts on what he is expected to do and how he is expected to do it. This last meaning is better served by the word ‘conduct’.
