AN INVESTIGATION OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ORGANIZATIONAL-STRUCTURE, MANAGERIAL ROLE EXPECTATIONS AND MANAGERS WORK ACTIVITIES

Having demonstrated the absence in the literature of an adequate conce ptual treatment or empirical examination of the substantive relationsh ip between managerial work, managers' role expectations and forms of o rganizational structure, the paper reports the findings of a multimeth od comparative case study of this relationship in four organizations f rom the hotel and retail sectors in Zimbabwe. Focusing on the differen ces between centralized organizations where unit operations are tightl y regulated and decentralized organizations where unit operating auton omy is coupled with performance controls, the findings indicate that o rganizational structure impinges primarily upon the formal management division of labour, more weakly upon the role expectations surrounding unit managers and in only limited ways upon their work activities, wi th the effect of organizational differences co-existing with and refra cted by common work characteristics and inter-industry differences. Al though decentralization gave rise to unit manager jobs with more forma l autonomy, broader responsibilities, greater pressure to attend to un it performance rather than monitoring work processes, and an obligatio n to operate in more complex networks, managers were no more free of c onstraints than were those in more centralized organizations and opera ted in similar ways, with an emphasis on day-to-day administration and routine staffing matters.