IGNOU : M.COM : MCO 1 : UNIT 1 : Q - 2. What are various responsibilities of various levels of management in an organisation?

Levels of Management 

In order to coordinate various activities in an organisation, various levels of management are created. In general there are three levels of management: 

• Top management; 
• Middle-level management
• Supervisory or Junior level management. 

Top level management consists of Board of Directors, Chairperson, Managing Director, and General Managers of functional areas like production, marketing, finance, and human resource management. Top level management gets involved in all activities like planning, organising, directing, and controlling, however it focuses more on planning and organising than the other levels of management. The prime concerns of top management include : enhancing shareholder values, providing vision and mission to organisation, upholding overall objectives of the organisation, taking policy decisions, review of budget and keeping organisation financially sound, maintaining progress, profit, and sustainability of the organisation, communicating goals of organisation to all the members, protecting integrity, and guiding the organisation through sound leadership. There are more requirements of conceptual skills than human skills or technical skills at the level of top management. 

Middle-level management acts with guidance of top management to accomplish the objectives of the organisation. The prime concern of the middle management is to carry out organising function in more detail, in order to keep top management free for doing planning level activities. Some of the functions of middle management include: creating coordination and cooperation among various departments of the organisation, to design and operate upon a system in the organisation which would keep various resources in smooth flow as well as which would ensure motivation and morale of people working in the organisation, to develop staff at various levels through training and developmental activities, and to creatively control and guide the personnel at junior level in order to achieve bottom line results. There are more requirements of human skills than conceptual or technical skills at the level of middle management. 

At supervisory or junior level management, there is more requirement of technical skills than conceptual skills or human skills. However in the modern era when role of service sector is increasing in the economy, the importance of human skills is increasing at the level of middle management also. People at junior level management are directly connected to the people who work at operational level. Hence junior level management is more concerned with direction and control of activities than planning and organising functions. 

All three levels of management : top, middle, and junior play crucial roles in achieving the organisational goal. The three levels differ only in terms of emphasis on certain activities. Top management is more concerned with planning and overall organising, middle management is more concerned with detailed out organising, and junior level is more concerned with directing and controlling. However now we are witnessing appropriate empowerment at the level of middle level and junior level management, thus the roles of these two levels are enhancing in the modern organisations.