Although a supervisor of the Genius Bar in an Apple Store may not do exactly the same things that Apple’s CEO Tim Cook does, it doesn’t mean that their jobs are inherently different. The differences are of degree and emphasis but not of activity.

As managers move up in an organization, they do more planning and less direct overseeing of others. (See Exhibit 1–6.) All managers, regardless of level, make decisions. They plan, organize, lead, and control, but the amount of time they spend on each activity is not necessarily constant. In addition, “what” they plan, organize, lead, and control changes with the manager’s level. For example, as we’ll demonstrate in Chapter 8, top managers are concerned with designing the overall organization’s structure, whereas lower-level managers focus on designing the jobs of individuals and work groups.

Does a manager who works for the U.S. Postal Service, the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, or the Convoy of Hope do the same things that a manager at Amazon or Symantec does? That is, is the manager’s job the same in both profit and not-for-profit organizations? The answer, for the most part, is yes. All managers make decisions, set goals, create workable organization structures, hire and motivate employees, secure legitimacy for their organization’s existence, and develop internal political support in order to implement programs. Of course, the most important difference between the two is how performance is measured. Profit—the “bottom line”—is an unambiguous measure of a business organization’s effectiveness. Not-for-profit organizations don’t have such a universal measure, which makes performance measurement more difficult. But don’t think this means that managers in those organizations can ignore finances. Even not-for-profit organizations need to make money to continue operating. However, in not-for-profit organizations, “making a profit” for the “owners” is not the primary focus.

Would you expect the job of a manager in a local FedEx store that employs 12 people to be different from that of a manager who runs the FedEx World HUB in Memphis with over 12,000 employees? This question is best answered by looking at the jobs of managers in small businesses and comparing them with our previous discussion of managerial roles. First, however, let’s define a small business.

No commonly agreed-upon definition of a small business is available because different criteria are used to define small. For example, an organization can be classified as a small business using such criteria as number of employees, annual sales, or total assets. For our purposes, we’ll describe a small business as an independent business having fewer than 500 employees that doesn’t necessarily engage in any new or innovative practices and has relatively little impact on its industry.10 So, is the job of managing a small business different from that of managing a large one? Yes, some differences appear to exist. As Exhibit 1–7 shows, the small business manager’s most important role is that of spokesperson. He or she spends a great deal of time performing outwardly directed actions such as meeting with customers, arranging financing with bankers, searching for new opportunities, and stimulating change. In contrast, the most important concerns of a manager in a large organization are directed internally—deciding which organizational units get what available resources and how much of them. Accordingly, the entrepreneurial role—looking for business opportunities and planning activities for performance improvement—appears to be least important to managers in large firms, especially among first-level and middle managers.

Compared with a manager in a large organization, a small business manager is more likely to be a generalist. His or her job will combine the activities of a large corporation’s chief executive with many of the day-to-day activities undertaken by a first-line supervisor. Moreover, the structure and formality that characterize a manager’s job in a large organization tend to give way to informality in small firms. Planning is less likely to be a carefully orchestrated ritual. The organization’s design will be less complex and structured, and control in the small business will rely more on direct observation than on sophisticated, computerized monitoring systems. Again, as with organizational level, we see differences in degree and emphasis but not in the activities that managers do. Managers in both small and large organizations perform essentially the same activities, but how they go about those activities and the proportion of time they spend on each are different. (You can find more information on managing small, entrepreneurial organizations in Chapter 7.)

The last generic issue concerns whether management concepts are transferable across national borders. If managerial concepts were completely generic, they would also apply universally in any country in the world, regardless of economic, social, political, or cultural differences. Studies that have compared managerial practices among countries have not generally supported the universality of management concepts. In Chapter 3, we’ll examine some specific differences between countries and describe their effect on managing. At this point, it’s important for you to understand that most of the concepts discussed in the rest of the book primarily apply to the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and other English-speaking countries. Managers likely will have to modify these concepts if they want to apply them in India, China, Chile, or other countries whose economic, political, social, or cultural environments differ from that of the so-called free-market democracies.