THE ROLE OF MICRO BUSINESS MANAGERS : A Replication of Mintzberg's study

Background: During decades people have tried to define and explain the role of a manager. Mintzberg (1973) was one of them that made studies about the manager role. He defined ten managerial roles that still are in use today. In later years more people have been interested in the work of Mintzberg. 2003 Tengblad did a replication of his work on large and medium size businesses, and 2004 Florén conducted a similar study on small size businesses. Therefore, it can be of interest to do a replication of Mintzberg’s work on micro size businesses as well. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to describe how the managers of micro businesses work, by doing a replication of Mintzberg’s “The nature of managerial work”. We also intend to compare our result with earlier studies by Mintzberg (1973), Tengblad (2003) and Florén (2004), to distinguish the similarities and differences in what roles top executives undertake during their working days. Method: For this thesis we use a qualitative method, and to complete the purpose of this research we collect information from four different observations of micro business managers, to be able to define the role they perform. The empirical findings that we found during the observations are analyzed together in the frame of reference which represents the basis for our conclusions. Conclusion: The conclusion we can draw from this survey is that the role micro business manager perform are very similar to a pattern of a ‘spider in a net’, because the micro business manager is a person that is involved in everything that goes on in a micro business. The manager knows everything; s/he is more or less the company