Exploring Managers′ Jobs Available to Purchase

How a manager′s functional area and hierarchical level affect the roles required by managers in their jobs is examined. The 131 managers in the sample completed a matrix of 20 tasks and 28 qualities required in their jobs. A disjoint clustering technique was used to analyse the data – this is a type of oblique component analysis related to group factor analysis. Subgroups of managers were delineated, seven on the basis of their functional areas, and one group of senior managers/executives. The results indicate that the differences between theories of management work can be attributed to methodological artefacts. However, the argument that management is a set of behavioural skills which is transferable from one functional area to another is questioned, as the results of this study indicate that job‐related contingency variables affect strongly the contents of managerial work.