Office managers are assigned the very general task of doing whatever is necessary to keep a company, university, government agency, or other organization

Some tasks associated with office management are secretarial in nature: maintaining records, transcription, word processing, file retention and storage, answering telephones, organizing correspondence.

Others are activities you would associate with an administrative assistant working for a single executive - activities that office managers do on a larger overall scale. For example, an administrative assistant would order a ream of letterhead stationery and envelopes for the boss from the supply clerk or fulfillment department. An office manager, on the other hand, would be instrumental in getting the stationery to the supply room in the first place, comparing printers' prices and samples, selecting the printer that offered the best quality and value, approving the paper selection and mock-up of the letterhead, estimating how much stationery the company uses and how much space the company can allocate for stationery storage in the supply room, and ordering a three-month supply. When the order comes back with a typographical error in the letterhead, the office manager handles the snafu and dispatches some clerical workers to generate some stopgap stationery in a hurry on the company's color photocopy machine.