106 5: Th eories of Public Management
compatible so that they will know what others expect of them and perceive a gen-
eral agreement in the role expectations of others. Regrettably, this rarely happens,
and superintendents are caught, or perceive themselves caught, in competing role
expectations, described in role theory as cognitive dissonance.
Role theorists have consistently demonstrated that role occupants, such as
school superintendents, tend to misperceive the role expectations of others. Or-
dinarily, this misperception exaggerates the strength, duration, and specifi city of
the positions of others and results in excessive managerial caution and organiza-
tional inertia.
Of course, real observable role confl ict does occur. When the school superin-
tendents experience genuine unresolvable role confl ict regarding hiring, promo-
tion, salaries, and budget matters, they tend to have low job satisfaction and will
probably change jobs. One key to success is the ability of some school superinten-
dents not to exaggerate the expectations of others and to fi nd compromises that
reduce confl ict.
Higher levels of management tend to be associated with multiple roles, and
sometimes role overload. Managers, however, tend to fi nd greater job satisfaction
as roles increase. Th e more roles a manager takes on, the greater the tendency to
seek generalized, overall solutions, programmed solutions, one-size-fi ts-all an-
swers. Th e greater the number of roles, the greater the tendency to use authority
and sanctions and to search for one generalizable effi ciency—oft en a short-term
effi ciency at that.
Henry Mintzberg (1992) used the concept of roles to identify the three pri-
mary managerial roles, a set of categories now widely used in management the-
ory for business but equally applicable to management in public administration.
Managers in their interpersonal roles can act as fi gureheads performing primarily
symbolic duties, as leaders building relationships with subordinates, or as liaisons
emphasizing contacts at the edges of the organization. In their informational roles,
managers act as monitors seeking useful information, as disseminators transmit-
ting information internally, or as spokespersons transmitting information outside
the organization. In their managerial roles, managers are as entrepreneurs initiat-
ing and encouraging innovation, as disturbance handlers, as resource allocators,
or as negotiators. Based on personal characteristics and the needs of organiza-
tions at particular points of time, managers take on combinations of these role
characteristics.
Th ere are now three excellent public administration descriptions of several of
these role combinations: Mark H. Moore’s Creating Public Value: Strategic Man-
agement in Government (1995); John M. Bryson and Barbara Crosby’s Leadership
for the Common Good: Tackling Public Problems in a Shared-Power World (1992);
and Barry Bozeman and Jeff rey D. Straussman’s Public Management Strategies:
Guidelines for Managerial Eff ectiveness (1991). Each develops for the public sector
several of the same theories Mintzberg developed for business.