Being Responsive To Change

Management of the utmost importance to the effective operation of any business in both the public or private sectors. The quality of management is a very important factor. Continual professional development of managers is therefore necessary for sustaining business success.

The open model of managerial behaviour and development constructed by Mullins and Aldrich uses basic theories for its structure and situational demands for its adaption. It involves both theoretical and practical past knowledge and experience combined. It is a general theory that conceptualises the individual manager of any business negotiating the gamut of management variables where other specific models had little relevance. They follow Drucker in distinguishing management efficiency, that is the inputs and doing things right from managerial effectiveness or the outputs and doing the right things and Mintzberg on the three way measurement of effectiveness into formal, informal and self-assessment. It needs effective feedback of which there are two basic kinds: intrinsic and augmented. Feedback is usually associated with measurement but is still part of management development.

Management development should be part of a continuous process within a management development policy which reviews individual performance and career progression. On the job learning and off the job training provide a balance of theory and practice in management development courses. Action learning is an increasingly popular approach developed by Revans and is a combination of 'know how' and 'know that' based on 'programmed knowledge' and 'questioning insight' (L=P+Q). The emphasis is on learning by doing and is learner driven. It is designed to help with management problems. Senge suggests personal mastery, shared vision, team learning, mental models and systems thinking are a good foundation for workplace learning.

Self assessment will help determine suitability for higher positions and in becoming 'one's own person'. Even so, if opportunities for development and potential fulfilment have been reserved for the elites in management, the framework for the workforce in the UK was very limited and restricted like nowhere else in the industrialised West. Bratton and Gold tell us that Taylorist-Fordist approaches to control, deskilling and job design, in order to reduce costs, are still prevelant. The machine metaphor has been said to provide a view of reality. Attitudes, feelings and personal development have little importance. There is also the implication that learning and training may become subservient to cause and effect accounting procedures. A failure to educate and train a workforce results in poor economic performance and an inability to compete in world markets. The training and education programmes provided against this background have not been without their critics but continue to be a part of the training infrastructure.

Transformational leadership is the kind of leadership most associated with human resource development strategy, culture and employee commitment. The four components are charisma, inspiration, individualised consideration and intellectual stimulation. It is also a key variable in management development. Mintzberg provides an alternative to the top-down view by reconciling the emergent learning of employees creating knowledge from information flows and contact with the process, customers and suppliers with the deliberate control of management. Management can use the tension between emergent and deliberate strategy formulation to craft strategy. Emergent learning and deliberate planning need to be integrated in the thinking of managers.

Management development can be seen as renewal. Managers with tired and stressed minds and methods will not be able to compete effectively. Weak and failing businesses need fresh inputs of new and refreshing ideas from managers, employees and leading writers' articles, new skills and innovative techniques across many departments to continually transform themselves and keep a competitive edge and respond to change.