Managers are vital to the effective functioning of any organization. They occupy the middle position in an organization (Chapman 2001) and coordinate and supervise the work of other employees to ensure that all work is done efficiently and effectively. Additionally, managers have other tasks to perform, tasks that are not related to the work assigned to other employees. There are three key roles of managers; Interpersonal roles, information roles and decision-making roles. Interpersonal roles refer to leadership activities, informational roles involve monitoring activities, and decision-making roles include entrepreneurial activities and negotiation activities. This division of managerial roles was proposed by Henry Mintzberg (Robbins, Bergman, Stagg, and Coulter 2009). The manager I interviewed for the purpose of this essay is Shamal de Sylva (who from here on we will call Mr. S. ), CEO of TeaLink pvt ltd (which will be called Company T). He has been working in the tea industry for over thirty years and is now the senior manager at Company T. Company T is a medium sized tea export company based in Sri Lanka. They export their products to companies all over the world, some of which are Starbucks in the United States of America, Sara Lee in Europe, Cambiaso Hnos in Chile and Wollenhaupt in Germany. As a tea trading company, they focus on these packers and supply them with their raw material, which is tea. The buyer carries out the final packaging at destination. Because it is not a company involved in branding, Company T is not a competitor to larger companies. The purpose of this essay is to analyze and evaluate whether or not Fayol's four functions are relevant to the wo...... middle of paper......deal came to light. However, it was clear that the work undertaken by Mr. S. is not affected by technological conditions. Word Count: 1580 References • Griffin, G. 1998. Back to the Future: Lessons from the Past for a New Management Era. Management - Theory and Practice, p. 3.• Robbins, Bergman, Stagg and Coulter. 2009. Management 5. 5th ed. Pearsons Education Australia.• Tengblad, S. 2006. Is there a 'new management job'? A comparison with Henry Mintzberg's classic study 30 years later*. Journal of Management Studies, pag. 1440.• Chapman, J. A. 2001. The work of managers in new organizational contexts. Journal of Management Development, 20 (1), pp. 55-68. • Hales, C. 1999. Why do managers do what they do? Reconciling evidence and theory in accounts of managerial work. British Journal of Management, 10 (4), pp. 335--350.