THE USE OF DIARIES TO STUDY MANAGERS' JOBS.

This paper describes the experiments that I have made with different types of diaries and summarizes my conclusions from these experiments about diaries as a means of studying managers' jobs. My aim was to study some of the similarities in, and differences between, managers' jobs. In order to do this a method had to be devised that would fulfil the five conditions that: 1. it could be used to study at least a hundred managers. This seemed a minimum number for the study of differences between different types of managers' jobs; 2. it would be applicable to managers in different kinds of jobs; 3. it would cover a sufficient period of time to show up variations in the job. Unless this was done one would not know whether the period studied was representative, nor could one detect one of the possible differences between jobs, that of the amount of variation in the job; 4. it would produce comparable results; 5. it would be sufficiently simple for the managers to be willing to keep it for the required time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]