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 Leadership and Management

Leadership and Management 1

Alan S. Gutterman
_______________

§1 Introduction

For the human resources of an organization to achieve their highest level of efficiency,
productivity and fulfillment there must be effective leaders and managers who are able to
communication with, and motivate, their subordinates. The search for ideal leadership
and management styles and attributes has been ongoing and attracted the interest of
legions of researchers and consultants. However, while there appears to be a clear
consensus that leadership and management are important topics within the field of
organizational studies it also presents significant challenges to researchers since
anecdotal evidence demonstrates that the concept of “leadership” has a very different
meaning depending upon the cultural context and there is certainly no universally
accepted program that prospective leaders, including not only executives but also mid-
level and front-line managers, can follow to achieve mastery in their roles.1 Leadership
issues, and the necessary traits required for successful leadership, also vary depending
upon the organizational context (e.g., special issues may arise when attempting to lead
teams or project groups).

§2 Leadership styles and practices

Leadership styles and practices are extremely important inputs into the performance and
satisfaction of any organization’s human resources. Muczyk and Holt defined
“leadership”, in a general sense, as: “. . . the process whereby one individual influences
other group members toward the attainment of defined group or organizational goals. In
other words, the leadership role describes the relationship between the manager and his or
her subordinates that results in the satisfactory execution of subordinates’ assignments
and, thereby, the attainment of the important goals for which the leader is responsible and
is instrumental in setting. At the very minimum, leadership requires providing direction
and impetus for subordinates to act in the desired direction.”2 Leadership has been

1
Dickson et al. noted that leadership roles around the world are universally associated with power and
status and that it is therefore important to understand how power and status are distributed in a society in
order to obtain a clear picture of leadership roles in that society. Dickson, Hartog and Mitchelson,
“Research on Leadership in a Cross-Cultural Context: Making Progress, and Raising New Questions”, The
Leadership Q., 14 (2003), 729, 737. For further discussion of cross-cultural studies focusing on leadership
styles and behaviors, see “Leadership: A Library of Resources for Sustainable Entrepreneurs” prepared and
distributed by the Sustainable Entrepreneurship Project (www.seproject.org).
2
J. Muczyk and D. Holt, “Toward a Cultural Contingency Model of Leadership”, Journal of Leadership &
Organizational Studies, 14(4) (May 2008), 277-286, 280 (citing also J. Muczyk and T. Adler, “An attempt
at a consentience regarding formal leadership”, Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, 9(2)
(2002), 2-17; and G. Yuki, Leadership in Organisations (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1998)).
Dickson et al. succinctly described leadership as involving “disproportionate influence”. Dickson, Hartog
and Mitchelson, Research on Leadership in a Cross-Cultural Context: Making Progress, and Raising New
Questions, 14 The Leadership Q. 729, 737 (2003). Another informative definition of leadership is “… the
 Leadership and Management

consistently identified as playing a critical role in the success or failure of business

organizations and some surveys have pegged up to 45% of an organization’s performance 2
on the quality and effectiveness of its leadership team.3 Apart from organizational
performance, researchers have consistently found a strong correlation between leadership
styles and behaviors and the job satisfaction and performance of subordinates.4

Obviously there are a number of alternative theories regarding the driving forces behind
leadership and the strategies that leaders should adopt in order to be effective and a non-
exhaustive list of examples would include trait theories, which are based on the belief
that leadership is based on individual attributes or traits; situational and contingency
theories, promoted by Fiedler (Fiedler Contingency Model), Vroom (Vroom-Yetton
Decision Model), House (Path-Goal Theory) and Hersey and Blanchard (Situational
Leadership Model); and transactional and transformational theories, explained by Burns
and Bass among others.5

While “leadership” is typically associated with the roles and activities of senior
managers, there is a growing consensus that a useful and realistic model of organizational
leadership has to explicitly incorporate organizational context and recognize that
leadership activities of some type occur at each level in the organizational hierarchy.6
For example, Zaccaro and Klimoski have referred to the “patterns of organizational
leadership” that Katz and Kahn associated with three different levels in the organizational
hierarchy. First of all, operations at the lower levels of the organizational hierarchy
generally flow almost automatically through the administrative use of existing
organizational structures and any problems that may arise are usually resolved using

ability of an individual to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute toward the effectiveness and
success of the organizations of which they are members.” R. House, P. Hanges, M. Javidan, P. Dorfman
and V. Gupta (Eds). Culture, Leadership, and Organizations: The GLOBE Study of 62 Societies (2004), 15.
For further discussion of definitions of leadership, see “Leadership: A Library of Resources for Sustainable
Entrepreneurs” prepared and distributed by the Sustainable Entrepreneurship Project (www.seproject.org).
3
B. Bass, Bass & Stogdill's Handbook of Leadership: Theory, Research, and Managerial Applications (3rd
ed.). (New York: Free Press, 1990); D. Day and R. Lord, “Executive Leadership and Organizational
Performance: Suggestions for a New Theory and Methodology”, Journal of Management, 14(3) (1988),
453-464.
4
C. Schriesheim and L. Neider, “Path-Goal Theory: The Long and Winding Road”, Leadership Quarterly,
7 (1996), 317-321; J. Howell and D. Costley, Understanding Behaviors for Effective Leadership (Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001).
5
Sources for further information include F. Fiedler, A theory of leadership effectiveness (1967); V. Vroom
and P. Yetton, Leadership and Decision-Making (1973); House, A Path-Goal Theory of Leader
Effectiveness, 16(3) Admin. Sci. Q. 321–339, (1971); P. Hersey, K. Blanchard and D. Johnson,
Management of Organizational Behavior: Leading Human Resources (9th ed. 2008); J. Hemphill, Ohio
State University Bureau of Educational Research, Situational Factors in Leadership (1949); J. Burns,
Leadership (1978); B. Bass, Bass & Stogdill's handbook of leadership: Theory, research, and managerial
applications (3rd ed. 1990); C. Argyris, Increasing Leadership Effectiveness (1976); W. Bennis, On
Becoming a Leader (1989); R. Stogdill, Handbook of leadership: A Survey of the Literature (1974); P.
Montana and B. Charnov, Management: Leadership and Theory (4th ed. 2008). See also “Compliance and
Risk Management: A Library of Resources for Sustainable Entrepreneurs” prepared and distributed by the
Sustainable Entrepreneurship Project (www.seproject.org).
6
S. Zaccaro and R. Klimoski, “The Nature of Organizational Leadership: An Introduction” in S. Zaccaro
and R. Klimoski (Eds.), The Nature of Organizational Leadership (Understanding the Performance
Imperatives Confronting Today’s Leaders) (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2001), 1-41, 12.
 Leadership and Management

existing organizational mechanisms and procedures. In other words, since organizational

activity at these levels is so institutionalized there are few situations that present 3
opportunities for leadership action. Second, leaders at the middle levels of the
organizational hierarchy do become involved in the embellishment and operationalization
of formal structural elements; however, the success of leaders at these levels depends
primarily on their ability to work effectively with both superiors and subordinates and
their human relations skills. Finally, senior leaders at the top of the organizational
hierarchy are most concerned with overall policy formulations (i.e., organizational
strategies) and designing the organizational structure that is most appropriate for the
effective and successful pursuit of such policies.7

While “leaders” can be distinguished from “managers”, leaders nonetheless are

responsible for a number of the same functions typically categorized as “managerial”
such as setting goals and designing strategic plans to achieve those goals, communicating
directives to other members of the organization, overseeing execution of the
organizational strategy and setting guidelines for motivating organizational members and
assessing their performance. As implied by the discussion of the “three levels of
leadership” above, leadership functions and activities vary depending on where the leader
is located within the organizational hierarchy. All leaders, regardless of their position,
are engaged in the following core roles and activities provided by the four-factor theory
of leadership proposed by Bowers and Seashore8:

• Support, in the form of leader behaviors that enhance a subordinate’s feelings of

personal worth and importance;
• Interaction facilitation, in the form of leader behaviors that encourage organizational
members to develop close and mutually satisfying relationships;
• Goal emphasis, in the form of leader behaviors that motivate organizational members
to achieve excellent performance and fulfill the goals set for the organization; and
• Work facilitation, in the leader behaviors that support achievement of the
organizational performance goals, including activities such as coordinating, planning
and scheduling and providing subordinates with the requisite tools, materials and
technical knowledge necessary for them to do their jobs.

In addition, each of the three levels of leadership has its own specific set of leader
functions and activities. For example, transformational leaders at the top of the
organizational hierarchy, whose core job is to create a vision of what the organization
should be, can expect to engage in several key activities including communicating,

7
Id. (citing D. Katz and R. Kahn, The social psychology of organizations (2nd Ed) (New York: Wiley,
1978)). Other researchers that have suggested models that incorporate differences across levels of
organizational leadership include T. Jacobs and E. Jaques, “Leadership in complex systems” in J. Zeidner
(Ed.), Human productivity enhancement (New York: Praeger, 1987); M. Mumford, S. Zaccaro, F. Harding,
E. Fleishman and R. Reiter-Palmon, Cognitive and temperament predictors of executive ability: Principles
for developing leadership capacity (Alexandria, VA: U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and
Social Sciences, 1993); and V. Bentz, Explorations of scope and scale: The critical determinant of high-
level effectiveness (Greensboro, NC: Center for Creative Leadership, 1987).
8
J. Muczyk and T. Adler, “An attempt at a consentience regarding formal leadership”, Journal of
Leadership and Organizational Studies, 9(2) (2002), 2-17.
 Leadership and Management

structuring, selecting and training, motivating, managing information, team building and
promoting change and innovation.9 4

One of the most interesting, and voluminously researched, topics in leadership studies is
“leadership style”. In general, leadership style focuses on how leaders interact with their
followers and has been more specifically defined as “the manner and approach of
providing direction, motivating people and achieving objectives”.10 While there a
number of different models of leadership style, three fundamental dimensions are often
represented: the leader’s approach to influencing the behavior of his or her followers; the
manner in which decisions regarding the direction of the group are made, with a specific
emphasis on the level of participation offered to followers; and the balance struck
between goal attainment and maintaining harmony within the group (sometimes referred
to as group “maintenance”).11 For example, two alternative approaches to influencing the
behavior of follows are the transactional leadership, which views the leader-follower
relationship as a process of exchange, and transformational leadership, which relies on
the leader’s ability to communicate a clear and acceptable vision and related goals that
engender intense emotion among followers that motivates them to buy into and pursue
the leader’s vision. Contrasting styles for decision-making are found in models, such as
the one developed by Likert, that distinguish between autocratic and participative leaders.
Finally, the balance between goals and maintenance is emphasized in those models, such
as Blake and Mouton’s Managerial Grid, that analyze the degree to which leaders exhibit
task and/or relationship orientations in their interactions with followers.

Likert analyzed leadership style from the perspective of the degree of employee
participation in management activities typically carried out at the top of the
organizational hierarchy (i.e., executives).12 For Likert, leadership styles could be
identified and categorized by reference to six key executive roles or activities—goal
setting, decision making, communication, leadership, motivation and control—and he
developed a questionnaire to determine the degree of employee participation in the
workplace with respect to each of these elements. Likert developed a continuum of four
management systems for organizations that ranged from “exploitive autocratic”, which he
referred to as “System 1”, to “participative”, which he referred to as “System 4”.
Characteristics of the leadership styles associated with each of these systems could be
described as follows13:

• System 1 (Exploitative Autocratic): The system utilizes an autocratic, top-down

approach to leadership. Employee evaluation is based on punishment and
occasionally on rewards. Downward communication is predominant and there is little

9
S. Kirkpatrick and E. Locke, “Leadership: do traits matter?”, Academy of Management Executive, 5(2)
(1991), 48-60, 56-58.
10
C. Fertman and J. van Liden, “Character education: An essential ingredient for youth leadership
development”, NASSP Bulletin, 83:609 (October 1999), 9-15.
11
R. Scholl, “What is Leadership Style?”, http://www.uri.edu/research/lrc/scholl/webnotes/Leadership.htm
[accessed December 31, 2011]
12
R. Likert, The Human Organization: Its Management and Value (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967).
13
Based on a description appearing in M. Jimenez, M. Fasci and J. Valdez, “A comparison of management
style for Mexican firms in Mexico and the United States”, International Journal of Business, 14(13) (2009).
 Leadership and Management

interaction or teamwork. Both control and decision-making reside at the top levels of
the organization. 5
• System 2 (Benevolent Authoritative): This system is similar to System 1 but senior
management tends to be more paternalistic. Employees are given more freedom than
in System 1; however, the boundaries for interaction, communication and decision-
making are limited as set forth in directives from the top of the organization.
• System 3 (Consultative): Employees have more interaction, communication and
decision making than System 2. Although employees are consulted about problems
and decisions, top management makes the final decisions.
• System 4 (Participative): This system makes extensive use of employee participation,
involvement and groups. The groups are highly involved in setting goals, making
decisions, improving methods and appraising results. Communications occur both
laterally and vertically. The linking-pin concept is used.

Likert collected data from numerous countries to compare management systems around
the world by placing them on his continuum and he found that, in general, the systems
used in highly industrialized nations tended to be closer to the System 4 end of the
continuum while styles of less industrialized countries clustered near the System 1 end.14

Blake and Moulton developed a framework for categorizing and describing leadership
styles that focused on two behavioral dimensions—concern for people (“people
orientation”) and concern for production (“production orientation” or “task
orientation”).15 In contrast to many of the other management theories, Blake and Mouton
did not opine as to whether it was better for a leader to be production-oriented or people-
oriented (or a combination of the two) and their main interest was in establishing a model
that described various leadership styles so that leaders could see where they fit and take
steps to develop skills need to adapt their styles to the wide range of circumstances that
can arise during the course of managing the activities of an organizational unit. Blake
and Moulton devised the Managerial Grid, sometimes referred to as the Leadership Grid,
with the dimensions referred to above as the two axes and each axis ranging from low on
one end to high on the other. A leader's “concern for people” was measured by how much
the leader considered the needs and interests of team members, as well as their personal
development, when making decisions about how to accomplish tasks needed for the
organization to achieve its objectives. A leader's “concern of production” was measured
by the weight that the leader gave to concrete objectives, organizational efficiency and
achieving high productivity when making decisions about how to accomplish
organizational tasks. Using these dimensions Blake and Moulton several different
leadership styles ranging from Team Leadership (High Concern for People/High Concern
for Production) to Produce or Perish Leadership (Low Concern for People/High Concern
for Production). While Blake and Mouton wanted to create a model for use in analyzing
organizational leadership styles they did note that Team Leadership was, in many
instances, the preferred managerial style and recommended that leaders look for ways to
adapt their approach toward something that was quite similar to McGregor's Theory Y

14
R. Likert and J. Likert, New Ways of Managing Conflicts (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976).
15
See R. Blake and J. Mouton, The Managerial Grid: The Key to Leadership Excellence (1964) and R.
Blake and J. Mouton, The Managerial Grid III: The Key to Leadership Excellence (1985).
 Leadership and Management

and other participatory management styles.

6
While controversy has often existed, and still remains, within the field of leadership
studies, it is generally agreed that a good deal of progress has been made and that a
number of interesting paths for future research and understanding have been uncovered.
In 2004 Antonakis et al. identified several areas that they believed warranted further
research, including “context”, ethics, and leadership traits.16 Several years later Day and
Antonakis updated the original list to add diversity issues relating to leadership as an
important area for greater research emphasis.17 Another promising trend is the efforts of
many scholars to integrate various conceptualizations of leadership to consolidate
existing knowledge and generate new theories and models with greater explanatory value.

§3 Management styles and practices

In order to be successful, organizations not only need great leaders they also need skilled
and effective managers. Like leadership, management has been intensely studies and
over the last few decades hundreds of journals and periodicals devoted to management
studies have been launched and management has gone “mainstream” as books by authors
such as Drucker and Peters have rocketed to the top of “best seller” lists. The rise of
management education, both at universities and through commercial private sector
initiatives, has been fertile ground for textbooks.18 Given that “management” has been so
widely studied and practiced for literally thousands of years, it is not surprising to find a
wide array of possible definitions of the term. Weihrich and Koontz, for example, began
with a basic definition of management as “the process of designing and maintaining an
environment in which individuals, working together in groups, accomplish efficiently
selected aims”.19 They then went on to expand this basic definition with the following
observations:

• Managers carry out certain universally recognized basic managerial functions,

including planning, organizing, staffing, leading and controlling
• Management applies to any kind of organization.
• Management principles apply to managers at all levels of the organization, not just
executives and senior managers positioned at the top of the organizational hierarchy.

16
J. Antonakis, A. Cianciolo and R. Sternberg, “Leadership: Past, Present and Future” in J. Antonakis, A.
Cianciolo and R. Sternberg (Eds.), The nature of leadership (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications,
2004), 3-15, 10-11.
17
D. Day and J. Antonakis, “Leadership: Past, Present and Future” in D. Day and J. Antonakis (Eds.), The
Nature of Leadership (Second Edition) (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2012), 3-25, 10-11.
18
There are a number of outstanding and comprehensive textbooks that cover a wide range of subjects
pertaining to “management”, including G. Jones and J. George, Essentials of Contemporary Management
(3d Ed) (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2009); J. Scott, The Concise Handbook of
Management: A Practitioner’s Approach (London: Routledge, 2005); J. Schermerhorn, Management (11 th
Ed) (New York: Wiley, 2011); R. Griffin, Management (10th Ed) (Boston, MA: South-Western College
Publishing, 2010); and S. Robbins, M. Coulter and D. DeCenzo, Fundamentals of Management (7 th Ed)
(Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2010).
19
H. Weihrich and Koontz, Management: A Global Perspective, 10th Edition (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1993) (as summarized in H. Weihrich, “Management: Science, Theory, and Practice”,
http://moosehead.cis.umassd.edu/cis365/reading/Management.pdf [accessed November 2, 2011])
 Leadership and Management

• The goal of all managers is the same: to create a “surplus”.

7
• Managers are concerned with improving productivity, which implies both
effectiveness and efficiency.20

Elements mentioned by Weihrich and Koontz in the explanations and observations above
have figured prominently in other definitions of management. For example, Jones et al.
referred to management as “the process of using an organization’s resources to achieve
specific goals through the functions of planning, organizing, leading and controlling”.21

Weihrich has discussed the interesting question of whether management is best seen as a
“science” or as “art” and has suggested that “[m]anaging, like so many other
disciplines—medicine, music composition, engineering, accountancy, or even baseball—
is in large measure an art but founded on a wealth of science.”22 He went on to caution
that “[e]xecutives who attempt to manage without . . . management science must trust to
luck, intuition, or to past experience” and that managers seeking to avoid the tedious and
dangerous path of learning through “trial and error” must be able to access the knowledge
that has been accumulated regarding the practice of management. 23 Weihrich wrote that
application of scientific methods to management, including determination of facts
through observation followed by identification of causal relationships that can have value
in predicting what might happen in similar circumstances, allows us to classify
significant and pertinent management knowledge and derive certain principles that can be
used as guidelines for managerial decisions and instructions. For example, a manager in
a growing organization will eventually be confronted with the need to begin delegating
authority and Weihrich suggests that the manager can turn to various principles of
management that are relevant such as “the principle of delegating by results expected, the
principle of equality of authority and responsibility, and the principle of unity of
command”. Principles are merely predictive; they do not guarantee a particular result.
However, they do provide a tested starting point for the manager. Also important in the
management field are “techniques”, which Weihrich defined as “ways of doing things,
methods for accomplishing a given result”.24 Like principles, techniques are originally
based in theory and are tested to validate their effectiveness. Examples of management
techniques listed by Weihrich include budgeting, cost accounting, networking planning
and control techniques, managing-by-objectives and total quality management.

20
Id.
21
G. Jones, J. George and C. Hill, Contemporary Management (2 nd Ed) (New York: Irwin/McGraw-Hill,
2000). The importance of the managerial functions was also emphasized by Weihrich in his explanation of
the “systems approach to organizational management” based on an “input-output” model in which “inputs”
from an organization’s external environment (i.e., people, capital and technology) were transformed into
“outputs” demanded by various organizational stakeholders in a transformation process based on and
guided by managerial functions such as planning, organizing, staffing, leading and controlling. See H.
Weihrich, “Management: Science, Theory, and Practice”,
http://moosehead.cis.umassd.edu/cis365/reading/Management.pdf [accessed November 2, 2011]
22
H. Weihrich, “Management: Science, Theory, and Practice”,
http://moosehead.cis.umassd.edu/cis365/reading/Management.pdf [accessed November 2, 2011]
23
Id.
24
Id.
 Leadership and Management

As time has passed, management has come to be recognized as one of the core factors of
production along with machines, materials, money, technology and people. It is well- 8
known that productivity has become a leading indicator of organizational performance
and Drucker has argued that “[t]he greatest opportunity for increasing productivity is
surely to be found in knowledge, work itself, and especially in management”.25 Bloom et
al. coordinated a survey and analysis of more than 4,000 medium-sized manufacturing
operations in Europe, the US and Asia and their findings released in 2007 confirmed that
“firms across the globe that apply accepted management practices well perform
significantly better than those that do not”.26 The US led the way with respect to the
quality of management among firms included in the survey; however, companies from
other countries were gaining ground quickly and, in fact, at that time over 15% of the
Indian and Chinese firms included in the survey were characterized as “better managed”
than the average US firm. Research results of this type place even more pressure on
firms to take steps to improve their management practices in order to remain competitive
with peers operating from countries throughout the world. In fact, the researchers also
found that more intense competition was associated with better management practices.27

A good deal of the management literature created since the 1950s has relied on what has
become known as the “functional approach” to management, which defines and analyzes
the activities of managers and the managerial process by reference to functions such as
planning and organizing as opposed to the traditional substantive functions such as
manufacturing, sales and finance.28 Henri Fayol pioneered the notion of “functions of
management” in his 1916 book “Administration Industrielle et Generale” in which he
identified and described five functions of managers—planning, organizing, commanding,
coordinating and controlling—that he believed were universal and required of all
managers as they went about performing their day-to-day activities regardless of whether
they were operating in the business environment or overseeing the activities of
governmental, military, religious or philanthropic organizations.29

25
P. Drucker, Management, Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 69.
26
N. Bloom, S. Dorgan, J. Dowdy and J. Van Reenen, “Management Practice & Productivity: Why they
matter”, http://www.stanford.edu/~nbloom/ManagementReport.pdf [accessed November 29, 2011]
Management practices included activities relating to shop floor operations, performance management and
talent management. Performance metrics included labor productivity, sales growth and return on capital
employed.
27
Interestingly, firms that had elected “going global” as a strategy tended to be better managed, as
evidenced by the finding that multinationals scored higher than domestic firms on management practices
and performance in all eleven of the countries represented in the survey (United States, India, Italy,
Germany, Portugal, Sweden, United Kingdom, Poland, France, Greece and China).
28
T. Barnett, Encyclopedia of Management: Management Functions,
http://www.enotes.com/management-encyclopedia/management-functions [accessed July 27, 2011]
29
Id. Fayol also prescribed 14 general principals of management and organization that were intended to
provide managers with further guidance on how they might effectively execute their five primary
management functions. At the time, Fayol was the managing director of a large coal mining firm in France
and most of his ideas were based in large part on his own experiences as a manager as opposed to classical
empirical research.
 Leadership and Management

Fayol’s work was not widely known outside of France until 1949 when his book was first
published in English.30 Nonetheless, his ideas had already begun to appear in the 9
emerging area of management studies. For example, in 1937 Gulick and Urwick coined
the acronym “POSDCORB” to refer to their own collection of seven management
activities that included the five suggested by Fayol as well as two additional items:
reporting and budgeting. These activities have been described as follows31:

• Planning (P): working out the things that need to be done and the methods for doing
them to accomplish the purpose set for the enterprise
• Organising (O): establishment of the formal structure of authority through which
work sub-divisions are arranged, defined and coordinated for the defined objective
• Staffing (S): the whole personnel function of bringing in and training the staff and
maintaining favorable conditions of work
• Directing (D): continuous task of making decisions and embodying them in specific
and general orders and instructions, and serving as the leader of the enterprise
• Coordinating (CO): The all-important duty of inter-relating the various parts of the
work
• Reporting (R): keeping the executive informed as to what is going on, which thus
includes keeping himself and his subordinates informed through records, research and
inspection
• Budgeting (B): all that goes with budgeting in the form of fiscal planning, accounting
and control

Other management theorists working and writing during the 1950s and 1960s also
embraced what became known as the “process school of management” based on the
notion that management should be viewed as process that included an identifiable set of
several interdependent functions. Like Fayol, they believed that these managerial
functions were universal and thus would be relevant and applicable to all managers
regardless of the type of organization in which they worked or their level within a
particular organizational structure.32 For example, Koontz et al. identified the following
five activities as “major management functions” 33:

• Planning: Predetermining a course of action for accomplishing organizational

objectives
• Organizing: Arranging the relationships among work units for accomplishment of
objectives and the granting of responsibility and authority to obtain those objectives
• Staffing: Selecting and training people for positions in the organization

30
H. Fayol, General and Industrial Administration (London: Sir Issac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., 1949).
31
Description derived from Unit 8 Classical Approach: Luther Gulick and Lyndall Urwick,
http://www.egyankosh.ac.in/bitstream/123456789/25509/1/Unit-8.pdf [accessed July 27, 2011] The model
proposed by Gulick and Urwick first appeared in L. Gulick and L. Urwick (Eds), Papers on the Science of
Administration (New York: Institute of Public Administration, 1937).
32
See, e.g., H. Koontz and C. O’Donnell, Principles of Management: An Analysis of Managerial Functions
(New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1955).
33
H. Koontz, C. O’Donnell and H. Weihrich, Management (7 th Ed.) (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970).
 Leadership and Management

• Directing: Creating an atmosphere that will assist and motivate people to achieve
desired end results (sometimes referred to as “leading”) 10
• Controlling: Establishing, measuring, and evaluating performance of activities toward
planned objectives

The process school of management, and the accompanying functions described above,
remained the dominant analytical framework into the early 1970s when critics began to
argue that Fayol’s “five functions” were too “normative and functional” and failed to
adequately capture the complexity of a manager’s daily activities and the significant
amount of time that managers must devote to nurturing informal relationships with
subordinates and other parties outside of the organization in order to motivate the
workforce, communicate their goals and ideas and collect information about the
organization’s external environment that can be used for planning.34 Perhaps the
strongest opposition came from Mintzberg, who argued that the process school of
management and its emphasis on tightly defined functional categories did not accurately
reflect the complex and chaotic nature of the manager’s tasks. Mintzberg suggested an
alternative descriptive model of the ten core “roles”, or organized sets of behaviors,
identified with a managerial position, which he divided up into three groups:
interpersonal roles (i.e., figure-head, leader and liaison offer), informational roles (i.e.,
monitors, disseminators, spokespeople) and decisional roles (i.e., entrepreneurs,
disturbance handlers, resource allocators and negotiators), and also generated a fair
amount of debate regarding the validity of the process school of management.35 Several
empirical studies were conducted to determine whether Fayol or Mintzberg had the most
“accurate” model for managerial activities and the conclusion seemed to be that both
approaches were useful and valid ways to describe and analyze the work of managers.36

Robert L. Katz was among the first to focus on the important problem of attempting to
identify the skills that a person required in order to be an effective and successful
manager. In a legendary article published in 1955, Katz introduced his model of
“management skills” that was based on three categories: technical skills, human skills
and conceptual skills.37 Katz’s model has been widely accepted in the management
literature, particularly in textbooks; however, there have been some attempts to expand
the number of categories. For example, a fourth category, referred to as “design skills”,

34
Five Functions of Management, Henri Fayol, http://www.provenmodels.com/3 [accessed July 27, 2011]
35
H. Mintzberg, “The Manager’s Job: Folklore and Fact”, Harvard Business Review, 53(4) (1975), July –
August 1975, 49-61. Information regarding Mintzberg’s own studies of managerial work was collected in
H. Mintzberg, The Nature of Managerial Work (New York: Harper & Row, 1973). He also noted that he
had conducted an extensive review of other research on managerial work including studies of both the
characteristics and content of that work. Among the topics that were reviewed were how long managers
work and where, at what pace did managers work and what types of interruptions occurred in their
activities, through what media did managers communicate and what activities did managers actually carry
out and why.
36
See, e.g., S. Carroll and D. Gillen, "Are the Classical Management Functions Useful in Describing
Managerial Work?", Academy of Management Review, 12(1) (1980), 38-51; and D. Lamond, “A Matter of
Style: Reconciling Henri and Henry", Management Decision, 42(2) (2004), 330-356.
37
See R. Katz, “Skills of an Effective Administrator”, Harvard Business Review, January-February 1955,
33-42 and R. Katz, “Retrospective Commentary”, Harvard Business Review, September-October, 1974,
101-102.
 Leadership and Management

was suggested by Weihrich and Koontz.38 In addition, commentators such as Pavett and
Lau have lobbied for the inclusion of “political skills”, which would include the ability of 11
a manager to gain power and influence within the organization.39

As part of their efforts to create a model curriculum for “teaching management skills”,
Cameron and Whetten took on the task of identifying exactly what those skills might
be.40 They argued that “skills” are different from characteristics and activities often
associated with management, such as personality traits and motivations and two other
issues already discussed above: functions and roles. They believed that skills “include
cognitive knowledge of how to perform and action, but they involve more than just
knowledge itself”.41 They finally settled on the following definition of “management
skills”: “[a] management skill involves a sequential pattern of behaviors performed in
order to achieve a designed outcome”.42 Using such a definition eliminated personal
traits (e.g., honesty and loyalty), since they are not defined by a specific, sequential set of
behaviors, and also eliminated functions and roles because they involve a variety of
patterns of behaviors.

Cameron and Whetten went on propose a list of the skills that are performed by
“effective” managers, a process that began with their own study of managers at various
levels of a number of public and private organizations and then was supplemented with a
comparison of their results with the findings of other scholars who had proposed their
own collection of characteristics of effective managers.43 The result was the following
list of both personal and interpersonal skills that was limited to characteristics that had
“trainable behavioral components”44:

• Self-awareness (personality, values, needs and cognitive style)

• Managing personal stress (time management, personal goals and activity balance)

38
H. Weihrich and Koontz, Management: A Global Perspective, 10 th Edition (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1993). Design skills are similar to the “diagnostic skills” suggested by Griffin in R. Griffin, Fundamentals
of Management, 6th Edition (Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning, 2008) The discussion of the
various management skills in the following sections is adapted from H. Weihrich, “Management: Science,
Theory, and Practice”, http://moosehead.cis.umassd.edu/cis365/reading/Management.pdf [accessed
November 2, 2011]
39
C. Pavett and A. Lau, “Managerial work: The influence of hierarchical level and functional specialty”,
Academy of Management Journal, 26(1) (1983).
40
K Cameron and D. Whetten, “A Model for Teaching Management Skills”, Organizational Behavior
Teaching Journal, 8(2) (1983), 21-27.
41
Id. at 22.
42
Id.
43
The results of their own research were summarized in detail in D. Whetten and K. Cameron, Developing
Management Skills (Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1984). Other scholars whose works
were considered included R. Boyatsis, The Competent Manager (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1982);
E. Ghiselli, “Managerial Talent”, American Psychologist, 18 (1963), 631-642; J. Livingston, “Myth of the
Well Educated Manager”, Harvard Business Review, 49 (1971), 79-89; J. Miner, “The Real Crunch in
Managerial Manpower”, Harvard Business Review, 51 (1973), 146-158; and H. Mintzberg, “The
Manager’s Job: Folklore and Fact”, Harvard Business Review, 53 (1975), 49-71.
44
K Cameron and D. Whetten, “A Model for Teaching Management Skills”, Organizational Behavior
Teaching Journal, 8(2) (1983), 21-27, 22.
 Leadership and Management

• Creating problem solving (divergent thinking, conceptual blocks and redefining

problems) 12
• Establishing supportive communication (listening, empathy and counseling)
• Improving employee performance and motivating others (needs/expectations, rewards
and timing)
• Effective delegation and joint decision making (assigning tasks, evaluating
performance autonomous versus joint decision making)
• Gaining power and influence (sources of power, converting power to influence and
beneficial use (not abuse) of power)
• Managing conflict (sources of conflict assertiveness and sensitivity and handling
criticism)
• Improving group decision making (chairing meetings, avoiding pitfalls of bad
meetings and making effective presentations)

As with other topics that have been intensely reviewed in the management literature,
there is a wide array of definitions of the term “management style”. A fairly simple
approach is to view management style as the way that an organization is managed.45
Schleh referred to management style as “The adhesive that binds diverse operations and
functions together. It is the philosophy or set of principles by which you capitalise on the
abilities of your people. It is not a procedure on ‘how to do,’ but is the management
framework for doing. A management style is a way of life operating throughout the
enterprise. It permits an executive to rely on the initiative of his people.”46 One of the
most well-known, and influential, US theories regarding management style is
McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y. McGregor posited various principals that he
believed managers should follow in order to increase their effectiveness in motivating
employees to act in ways that would benefit the firm.47 He began by arguing that there
were two theories, which he dubbed X and Y, which describe various assumptions about
individuals and their reasons for engaging in work activities. The key assumptions for
Theory X are that the average person: dislikes work and attempts to avoid it; has no
ambition or desire for responsibility and prefers to follow rather than lead; is self-
centered and has no interest in the goals and objectives of the firm as a whole; is resistant
to change; and is gullible and lacks intelligence. The bottom line is that Theory X
implicitly assumes that employees only work for money and security and that
motivational policies of firms, if they can really be called that, should be confined to
providing cash compensation and basic benefits. Theory Y, on the other hand, is based on
the belief that employees have the higher level needs identified in Maslow's hierarchy
(i.e., esteem and self-actualization) and calls for the following very different assumptions
about workers and workplace: work can be as natural as play and rest; employees will be
self-directed to fulfill the workplace objectives if they are personally committed to them
and the requisite level of commitment can be achieved by providing rewards that address
higher needs such as self-fulfillment; if employees are personally committed and properly

45
T. Quang and N. Vuong, “Management Styles and Organisational Effectiveness in Vietnam”, Research
and Practice in Human Resource Management, 10(2) (2002), 36-55.
46
E. Schleh, “A Matter of Management Style”, Management Review, August 1977, 9-13, 10.
47
The ideas underlying Theory X and Y first appeared in D. McGregor, The Human Side of Enterprise
(1960).
 Leadership and Management

rewarded they will act in a responsible fashion; and it is justifiable to expect that most
employees can handle responsibility since they are inherently creative and ingenuous. 13
Firms and managers that believe in Theory Y will implement strategies for tapping into
the aforementioned motivational possibilities of their employees including
decentralization and delegation, job enlargement, participative management and
performance appraisals against objectives that are established jointly by the firm and its
employees.

Others have approached descriptions of management style by attempting to identify

various functions of the manager. For example, Quang and Vuong noted that
Khandwalla defined management style as “the distinctive way in which an organisation
makes decisions and discharges various functions, including goal setting, formulation and
implementation of strategy, all basic management activities, corporate image building
and dealing with key stakeholders”.48 Quang and Vuong also pointed out that there is no
single management style that applies in all instances and that an organization’s “operating
conditions” will influence the style that is selected.49 They provided a useful short
summary of the some of the ideas regarding “formal” management styles that have been
developed and described by scholars over the past few decades50:

• The often cited distinction between “organic” and “mechanistic” management styles
was first introduced by Burns and Stalker.51
• As discussed above, Mintzberg suggested a model of “managerial roles”, including
interpersonal roles, informational roles and decisional roles.
• Japanese management style attracted the attention of a number of scholars and has
been said to feature an emphasis on “paternalism, lifetime employment, seniority,
lifelong learning, collective decision making, hard work, cooperation ethics,
continuous adaptation and improvement”.52
• Khandwalla studied companies in the US, Canada and India and concluded that there
were five fundamental dimensions that served as the foundation of the styles selected
and used by managers: risk taking, technocracy, flexibility, participation, and
authoritarianism.53
• Peters and Waterman responded to the interest in Japanese management styles by
identifying the contrasting element of American management style, which they said

48
T. Quang and N. Vuong, “Management Styles and Organisational Effectiveness in Vietnam”, Research
and Practice in Human Resource Management, 10(2) (2002), 36-55 (citing P. Khandwalla, Management
Styles (New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Co. Ltd., 1995)).
49
T. Quang and N. Vuong, “Management Styles and Organisational Effectiveness in Vietnam”, Research
and Practice in Human Resource Management, 10(2) (2002), 36-55.
50
Id.
51
T. Burns and G. Stalker, The Management of Innovation (London: Tavistock, 1961).
52
T. Pascale and A. Athos, The Arts of Japanese Management (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981); and
A. Wilkins and W. Ouchi, “Efficient Culture: Exploring the Relationship between Culture and
Organizational Performance”, Administrative Science Quarterly, 28 (1983), 465-481.
53
P. Khandwalla, Management Styles (New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Co. Ltd., 1995); and P.
Khandwalla, “Effectiveness Management Styles: An Indian Study”, Journal of Euro-Asian Management,
1(1) (1995), 39-64.
 Leadership and Management

included more emphasis on core values, highly flexible structures, business unit
autonomy, interactivity and innovation.54 14

Management styles are widely studied because research indicates that they are significant
factor in determining overall organizational effectiveness. It is obvious that the elements
of management style have a direct influence on how individual employees and work
groups perform their operational activities, including the actual sequence of tasks, the
goals they are pursuing and how they feel about their roles within the organization.
Management style also determines the level of cooperation within the organization and
how people within the organization interrelate with one another and with customers,
suppliers and other stakeholders outside of the organization.55 Measuring “organizational
effectiveness” is not always an easy proposition; however, in their study of Vietnamese
management styles Quang and Vuong suggested that indicators of effectiveness might
include employee satisfaction, profitability, growth rate, competitiveness, financial
strength, public image and goodwill and technological leadership.56

The 21st century began with celebration of a “New Economy” in which many of the
traditional tools upon which management studies had been based with no longer be valid
and managers would be challenged to cope with a variety of issues arising out of rapid
and sweeping changes in society and the economy. While it may not be wise or
necessary to throw out all of the “old”, it is certainly important to pay attention to the
several important factors identified and discussed by manager scholars and researchers
such as Lewis et al.: continuous advances in information technology; the rise of the
Internet; increasing globalization; increasing gender, ethnic and generational diversity in
the workplace and the marketplace; growing recognition of the importance of intellectual
capital including, but not limited to, intellectual property; and more focused attention on
ethical behavior by firms and their managers.57 Each of these factors has had, and will
continue to have, a significant influence on the core managerial activities, notably each of
the elements of organizational design. In addition, of course, management must remain
focused on creating value for customers in an efficient manner and on developing and
implementing strategies to attract all of the necessary inputs such as capital, technology
and human resources.

Diversity in the Workplace: Generational Differences

Giang provided a summary of the results of a study conducted by the global consulting firm EY (formerly
Ernst & Young) that collected and analyzed data from more 1,200 professionals—managers and non-
managers--from different generations and industries in an effort to understand how they perceived the
strengths and weaknesses of workers from each of three generational groups: Millennials, Generation X

54
T. Peters and R. Waterman, Jr., In Search of Excellence (New York: Harper & Row, 1982).
55
T. Quang and N. Vuong, “Management Styles and Organisational Effectiveness in Vietnam”, Research
and Practice in Human Resource Management, 10(2) (2002), 36-55 (citing M. Davidmann, Style of
Management and Leadership (2nd Ed) (1995). http://www.solbaram.org/ articles/clm2.html, accessed 9
September 2002).
56
T. Quang and N. Vuong, “Management Styles and Organisational Effectiveness in Vietnam”, Research
and Practice in Human Resource Management, 10(2) (2002), 36-55.
57
P. Lewis, S. Goodman, P. Fandt and J. Michlitsch, Management: Challenges for Tomorrow’s Leaders
(5th Edition) (Mason, OH: Thomson South-Western, 2007), 12-16.
 Leadership and Management

and Baby Boomers. According to Giang, the respondents perceived Millennials as being “tech-savvy”, but
not very good at collaboration and teamwork. Generation X workers were praised for their entrepreneurial 15
thinking; however, they ranked low on “executive presence”. Finally, the consensus about Baby Boomers
was that they were loyal to their companies and were “team players” but they often had difficulty adapting
to change. Specific findings reported by Giang on the strengths and weaknesses of the three generations
and the things that they were likely to find most important as “motivators” were as follows:

• Millennials were perceived to the most “tech-savvy” and adroit at using social media tools to leverage
opportunities. Millennials also were the most enthusiastic about their jobs; however, the group scored
lower than the other two groups on being a "team player", "hardworking" and being "a productive part
of my organization". Knowing when and how to get a promotion was more important to Millennials
than to members of the other two groups.
• Members of Generation X were recognized as the “most effective managers” compared to managers
from the other generations and also scored highest with respect to being a "revenue
generator", possessing traits of "adaptability", "problem-solving" and "collaboration". The group fared
poorly on measures of “executive presence” and “being cost effective”. Members of Generation X
could be distinguished from the other two groups by the greater importance they placed on “workplace
flexibility”.
• As mentioned above, Baby Boomers outdid their colleagues from other generations in areas such as
“being a productive part of the organization”, being "hardworking", and being a "team player". Baby
Boomers also enjoyed mentoring others; however, the group ranked the lowest on being adaptable and
collaborative. Not surprisingly given the specific challenges associated with their age, Baby Boomers
were more likely than their younger colleagues to focus on the health care and retirement benefits
offered by their organizations.

Sources: V. Giang, “Here Are the Strengths and Weaknesses of Millennials, Gen X, and Boomers”,
Business Insider (September 9, 2013), http://www.businessinsider.com/how-millennials-gen-x-and-
boomers-shape-the-workplace-2013-9.

§4 Training and development for organizational leaders and managers

The various roles and activities of organizational leaders have been introduced above and
while there have been theories that maintained simply that “leaders are born and not
made” the general consensus is that effective leadership can be nurtured through
appropriate training activities that are typically coordinated by the human resources
function. Training areas for organizational executives are determined by their unique
role in setting the direction for the organization, motivating organizational managers and
employees and tracking organizational performance against the goals established by the
executive team. Accordingly, it should be expected that executives will need training in
areas such as long-term planning, strategy, and forecasting; corporate goals and the
global business environment; policy formulation; strategic leadership, both in and out of
the company; and succession planning, including the development of middle
management.58 In addition, where feasible, leaders need training and support in the
development of specific traits and behaviors that have been shown to be directly and
positively related with effective leadership, such as self-confidence, openness to the input
and opinions of subordinates regarding better ways to carry out workplace activities and,
time management and delegation. Human relations is also an important area for an
effective leader, since executives must communicate continuously with departments and
individuals within the organization and with external stakeholders that have an interest in

58
See 14 Employment Coordinator: Personnel Manual § 16:73.
 Leadership and Management

the activities and performance of the organization. Accordingly, leadership training

should include instruction on how to motivate employees and build their trust and on 16
creating and using systems for disseminating information about the company throughout
the organizational hierarchy. Finally, executives should have an understanding of
leadership styles and how and when to employ a particular style given that evidence
indicates that the most effective leaders are those who can adapt their styles and
behaviors to suit the specific situation or problem confronting the organization. The
timing of executive training should be coordinated with certain periods during the
executive’s career when it is likely that the instruction will be most effective, such as
when the individual is making a formal career transition from manager to executive,
when the individual is reach a “mid-point” in his or her career and searching for a new
direction and purpose within the organization, when the individual is grappling with
significant dissatisfaction with respect to his or her current duties and responsibilities
and, finally, when the organization is coping with a crisis and has an urgent need for new
leaders to help the members of the organization cope with corporate transition, financial
difficulties and/or restructuring.59 In each of these instances the training can be expected
to have a great impact since the purpose and importance of the training is readily
apparent to the prospective leader and those involved in providing the training.

While leadership training program are necessary limited to a relatively small group
within the typical organization, management training should be available to a larger
number of persons at all levels within the organizational hierarchy. There has been a
great deal of criticism of the efficacy of management training provided in the academic
context—business and management schools—and many have bemoaned what they
believe has been the failure of those school to teach “how to manage”. 60 Accordingly,
the human resources function clearly has a role to play in guiding and instructing new
managers as they assume their positions and in supporting the efforts of seasoned
managers to keep their skills current and improve those skills so that they can assume
greater responsibility and perhaps transition toward leadership roles within the
organization.

In order to create a meaningful curriculum for management training programs it is first

necessary to identify the skills that are required of managers. There have been a number
of suggestions in this regard. For example, research conducted by Luthans et al.
suggested that effective managers had significantly different and better skill levels with
respect to building power and influence, communication with insiders and outsiders, goal

59
See 14 Employment Coordinator: Personnel Manual § 16:75.
60
D. Latif, “Model for Teaching the Management Skills Component of Managerial Effectiveness to
Pharmacy Students”, American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 66 (Winter 2002), 377-380, 378
(citing D. Whetten and K. Cameron, “Management skill training: A needed addition to the management
curriculum”, Organizational Behavior Teaching Journal, 8(2) (1983), 10-15; H. Mintzberg, “The
Manager’s Job: Folklore and Fact”, Harvard Business Review, 53 (1975), 49-71; J. Pfeffer, Power in
Organizations (Marshfield, MA: Pitman Publishing, 1981), 22-78; and J. Porras and B. Anderson,
“Improving managerial effectiveness through modeling-based training”, Organizational Dynamics, 9
(1981), 60-77).
 Leadership and Management

setting, managing conflict and decision making.61 In addition, interpersonal skills,

written communication, enthusiasm, technical competence, and the ability to listen and 17
give counsel emerged as critical skills in another study of administrators.62 Camp et al.
took a different approach and identified the following major reasons why managers
failed: ineffective communication skills, poor interpersonal skills, failure to clarify
expectations, poor delegation, inability to develop teamwork, inability to motivate others
and a lack of trust.63 Latif reviewed what he characterized as a “representative sample of
studies that relied on a heterogeneous mix of respondents from a multitude of diverse
industries” to compile a list of the “most frequently cited managerial skills” that included
verbal communication (including listening); managing time and stress; managing
individual decisions; recognizing, defining and solving problems; motivating and
influencing others; delegating; setting goals and articulating a vision; self-awareness;
team building; and managing conflict.64 Finally, one idea for the curriculum for training
new managers lists topics such as company culture and organizational development; the
external business environment; interdepartmental communication and links; financial
matters, including salary program administration; legal issues, including fair employment
regulations and, if applicable, labor contracts; hiring, discipline, termination, and
recordkeeping policies; interpersonal, employee relations, and communication skills;
management-by-objectives and leadership skills; performance and productivity
management, coaching, and team building; and succession planning and development of
supervisors.65

Having identified the skills needed for effective management, the next step is to identify
the best way to “train” those skills. Latif and others have suggested that effective “skills”
training must include practical application (i.e., the opportunity to “practice”, receive
feedback and apply the feedback in more practice opportunities); however, practice alone
is not sufficient and students must also invest time and effort in gathering and
understanding necessary “conceptual” knowledge.66 Latif argued that the “most
effective” approach to teaching and developing management skills is based on Social
Learning Theory and calls for a teaching model that includes conceptual knowledge,
observation of how others execute the particular skills and, finally, guided direct

61
F. Luthans, S. Rosenkrantz and H. Hennessey, "What do successful managers really do? An observation
study of managerial activities", Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 21 (1985), 255-270.
62
D. Curtis, J. Winsor and D. Stephens, "National preferences in business and communication education",
Communication Education, 38(1) (1989), 6-15.
63
R. Camp, M. Vielhaber and J. Simonetti, Strategic Interviewing: How to Hire Good People (San
Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2001), 5-76.
64
D. Latif, “Model for Teaching the Management Skills Component of Managerial Effectiveness to
Pharmacy Students”, American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 66 (Winter 2002), 377-380, 379
(citing also discussions of other published management studies on the subject referred to in D. Whetten and
K. Cameron, Developing Management Skills (5th Ed.) (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002), 3-
297).
65
See 14 Employment Coordinator: Personnel Manual § 16:70.
66
D. Latif, “Model for Teaching the Management Skills Component of Managerial Effectiveness to
Pharmacy Students”, American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 66 (Winter 2002), 377-380, 380.
 Leadership and Management

experience with feedback (“practice”).67 For example, new sales representatives might
first go through a short orientation that exposes them to the requisite body of conceptual 18
knowledge and then spend a week or two accompanying experienced sales
representatives to observe how they do their jobs and apply the skills communicated
during the orientation phase. Once the observation stage is over the new sales
representatives would return to headquarters and “practice” applying the skills in
workshops that include exercises, simulations and role playing and where immediate
feedback can be given by trainers. Cameron and Whetten developed their own
“suggested skill learning approach” with five components: skill preassessment, skill
learning, skill analysis, skill practice and skill application.68 Others suggest that
classroom training must be supplement by development experiences such as
understudying, temporary appointments, partial assignments of managerial duties and
mentoring programs.69

One last, and extremely important, issue that must be considered with respect to both
leadership and managerial training is the process used to select candidate for those
training activities, an exercise which requires an understanding of the tools that are
available to evaluate an individual’s potential for successful completion of the training
and using the training to provide valuable and effective leadership and managerial skills
to the organization. It has been suggested that organizations should ask the following
questions when assessing an individual’s potential for development as a higher-level
manager and/or executive70:

• Does the candidate really stand out among other managers and leaders?
• Is he or she interested in problems outside the immediate job or area of
responsibility?
• Does the candidate make continual efforts to increase job knowledge and skills?
• Does he or she display the desire and ambition to succeed?
• Does the candidate have sufficient education and experience? Is the candidate willing
and able to undertake further training?

It is not easy to answer each of these questions; however, the human resources
department can facilitate the process by developing and using tools to gather and analyze
information regarding an individual’s potential for promotion, an assessment of an
individual’s managerial skills and aptitudes and an individual’s self-assessment of his or
her readiness for an intensive management training program.71

67
Id. (citing, as further resources relating to Social Learning Theory, A. Bandura, A Social Learning
Theory (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1977) and D. Kolb, Experimental Learning: Experience as
a Source of Learning and Development (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1984)).
68
K. Cameron and D. Whetten, “A Model for Teaching Management Skills”, Organizational Behavior
Teaching Journal, 8(2) (1983), 21-27, 23-24. For further discussion, see “Management: A Library of
Resources for Sustainable Entrepreneurs” prepared and distributed by the Sustainable Entrepreneurship
Project (www.seproject.org).
69
See 14 Employment Coordinator: Personnel Manual § 16:71.
70
See 14 Employment Coordinator: Personnel Manual § 16:72.
71
For example of forms that can be used to gather and collective the information described in the text, see
14 Employment Coordinator: Personnel Manual §§ 16:76 – 16:78.
 Leadership and Management

The New Generation Gap: Millennials Managing Older Workers 19

Workers from so-called “Generation Y”, people born between 1980 and 2000, now form the largest group
in the American workplace. While many of these workers, often referred to as “Millennials”, begin with
entry-level positions, some of them find themselves supervising the activities of colleagues who are old
enough to be their parents or grandparents—a situation that often creates tension and confusion on both
sides of the relationship. Walker collected and compiled responses from hundreds of readers of “The
Workologist”, a column that regularly appeared in The New York Times, in an effort to get a “real world”
picture of how older workers can get along with younger supervisors. Walker reported that several readers
who were over 50 had contacted him to share stories of their job interviews with younger hiring managers
and tell him that they often felt baffled about the process and the real reasons behind their failure to land a
position. Noting that the overwhelming majority of respondents who revealed their ages were 50 or older,
Walker observed the following common themes and suggestions emerged:

• Experience, measured by years of services, should certainly be respected; however, older workers
should acknowledge and accept that their younger supervisors have competencies in areas that are
relevant to current operation of the business. Both parties should be willing and able to share
information that can enhance the way that the recipient sees and performs his or her job.
• Following on the points mentioned above, older workers should be open to learning from their younger
supervisors and should carefully listen to the supervisor’s expectations regarding the outcome of the
older worker’s activities.
• Older workers should exercise caution and restraint when giving “advice” to younger supervisors and
do so only when it is solicited or the project has reached a juncture where it is clear that input from
everyone involved is needed in order to determine that best way to proceed. Once the advice is given
the older worker should let the supervisor decide what to do with it—if the advice is not taken the
older worker should simply move on and not press the issue.
• Older workers should always demonstrate to their supervisors, regardless of their age, that they
understand and appreciate the authority formally vested in the supervisor’s position by the
organization. A younger supervisor, although confident about his or her skills and abilities, may be
threatened by real or imagined career aspirations of older subordinates and it is important for the
supervisor to feel that he or she will be supported by everyone on the team.
• Older workers should package the skills and talents they have accumulated over their careers as
valuable assets that are available right now to be used to pursue and achieve the future goals of the
organization. Older workers should make it clear they are not there to replay the past but to
energetically participate in new activities that require the collaboration of people of all ages with
different aptitudes and world views.
• In almost every industry and context the common thread of change over the years has been the
development and implementation of new technologies and technology is one of the greatest potential
hurdles to collaboration across generations. Younger supervisors should have some patience with
older workers and organizations should be sure to offer appropriate training to all new workers,
regardless of age or experience; however, older workers must demonstrate that they have been working
on learning and using new technologies and should not be dismissive of social media and other
communications tools that are here to stay.
• Younger supervisors should not forget that the ability of the organization to attract and retain qualified
older workers can enhance the brand of the organization among a very large and relatively wealthy
demographic group. While “startups” often begin with a push toward relatively young market niches,
more and often than not they will eventually want to expand and offer some form of their product or
service to older consumers (or companies owned and managed by “baby boomers” or “Gen Xer’s”).

There has been no shortage of additional advice for Millennial managers of how to be more effective in
overseeing their baby boomer subordinates. Moats Kennedy recommended that Millennials make a special
effort to seek input from baby boomers on how things should be done and should plan for more face-to-
face meetings with baby boomers than they might normally be accustomed to given that Millennials have
been brought up relying more heavily on e-communications via e-mail and social media. Tennant reported
 Leadership and Management

on advice from McDaniel regarding tips for younger professional managers that included similar
encouragement to Millennials to proactively seek advice from older workers, preferably in person, and 20
involve them in decision making and praise them publicly for providing ideas that prove to be valuable.

Ladimeji drew from experiences in assisting companies with recruiting younger workers who often ended
up overseeing older workers to provide some guidelines that Millennials might follow in order to
effectively manage Baby Boomers. For example, while a lot has been said and written about extreme
differences between Millennials and Baby Boomers, younger managers should understand that research has
shown that there are a number of similarities as to what workers want and expect from the supervisors,
regardless of age or experience: challenging work, good pay, opportunities for advancement and learning,
fair treatment and work-life balance. Younger managers would do well to stick to these basics when
establishing and maintaining relationships with their older subordinates.

In addition, while recognizing that there are similarities across generations, younger managers should also
be aware that treating all workers the same will not achieve the desired results. In fact, research has shown
that Millennials, workers from Generation X and Baby Boomers have very different ideas and preferences
in key areas that are fundamental elements of management style: work ethic and values, communications,
motivational cues, feedback and rewards, collaborative style and leadership style. Millennial managers, or
managers of any age for that matter, need to be willing and able to adjust their management styles to fit the
outlook and expectations of specific workers. Specific illustrations offered by Ladimeji included the
following:

• While Millennials are generally more attuned to e-communications through e-mail and social media,
younger managers may need to plan to spend time in face-to-face meetings with Baby Boomers and
preparing more formal memos which older workers seem to prefer as vehicles for receiving
instructions and assessments.
• While work-life balance seems to be important and relevant to all workers, it appears to be less
important to Baby Boomers as a motivational tool in comparison to the desires of younger workers.
Research shows that Baby Boomers place a higher value on hard work and productivity than other
generations and Millennial managers should keep this in mind when setting schedules and designing
incentives.
• Regular feedback on performance is more important to workers from Generation X and Baby Boomers
than it is to Millennials and there are also differences among generations with regard to money, status
and titles.

All in all, the ingredients for effective collaboration across generations are fairly simple and timeless.
Older workers should approach the situation with an open mind, a bit of “curiosity”, energy and respect for
others and younger supervisors should sincerely respect and appreciate the unique skills, experiences and
competencies that older workers can bring to the tasks that need to be done in order for everyone to feel
fulfilled and excited about the work they are doing together. One strategy that should be considered is for
both parties to sit down and identify a discrete initial project for the new worker that simultaneously
showcases one of his or her special skills and, just as importantly, provides real and immediate value to the
company that the supervisor can observe and measure. Such an approach can lower the anxiety levels for
the new worker and launch a process of building trust between the parties. At the same time, the new
worker should commit to a training program that addresses any gaps in his or her skills that the supervisor
reasonably believes will be necessary in order for the new worker’s role to expand. However, a cautionary
note applies: if an age gap really appears to be too wide perhaps the best thing to do is for everyone to
move on. Of course, egregious cases may raise questions of legal liability for age discrimination; however,
litigating the issues can be difficult and sap energy and time from all of the combatants.

Sources: R. Walker, “Getting Along With a Younger Boss”, The New York Times (August 9, 2015), BU1;
M. Moats Kennedy, “Millennial Managers: Tips for Managing Boomers”, Moats Kennedy Inc. (July 30,
2012); D. Tennant, “Tips for Millennials on Overcoming the Awkwardness of Managing Baby Boomers”,
IT Business Edge (June 6, 2013) (citing A. McDaniel, The Young Professional’s Guide to Managing:
Building, Guiding and Motivating Your Team to Achieve Awesome Results (Pompton Plains, NJ: Career
 Leadership and Management

Press, Inc., 2013)); and K. Ladimeji, “Can a Millennial Manage a Baby Boomer?”, Recruiter.com (April
24, 2014), https://www.recruiter.com/i/can-a-millennial-manage-a-baby-boomer/ [accessed August 15, 21
2015].
 Leadership and Management

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About the Author

This Work was written by Alan S. Gutterman, whose prolific output of practical guidance and tools for
legal and financial professionals, managers, entrepreneurs, and investors has made him one of the best-
selling individual authors in the global legal publishing marketplace. Alan has authored or edited over 300
book-length works on entrepreneurship, business law and transactions, sustainability, impact investment,
business and human rights and corporate social responsibility, civil and human rights of older persons, and
international business for several publishers including Thomson Reuters, Practical Law, Kluwer, Aspatore,
Oxford, Quorum, ABA Press, Aspen, Sweet & Maxwell, Euromoney, Business Expert Press, Harvard
Business Publishing, CCH, and BNA. His cornerstone work, Business Transactions Solution, is an online-
only product available and featured on Thomson Reuters’ Westlaw, the world’s largest legal content
platform, which covers the entire lifecycle of a business. Alan has extensive experience as a partner and
senior counsel with internationally recognized law firms counseling small and large business enterprises in
the areas of general corporate and securities matters, venture capital, mergers and acquisitions, international
law and transactions, strategic business alliances, technology transfers and intellectual property, and has
also held senior management positions with several technology-based businesses including service as the
chief legal officer of a leading international distributor of IT products headquartered in Silicon Valley and
as the chief operating officer of an emerging broadband media company. He has been an adjunct faculty
member at several colleges and universities, including Berkeley Law, Golden Gate University, Hastings
College of Law, Santa Clara University and the University of San Francisco, teaching classes on corporate
finance, venture capital, corporate governance, Japanese business law and law and economic development.
He has also launched and oversees projects relating to promoting the civil and human rights of older
persons and a human rights-based approach to entrepreneurship. He received his A.B., M.B.A., and J.D.
from the University of California at Berkeley, a D.B.A. from Golden Gate University, and a Ph.D. from the
University of Cambridge, and he is also a Credentialed Professional Gerontologist (CPG). For more
information about Alan and his activities, please contact him directly at [email protected], follow
him on LinkedIn, and visit his personal website to view a comprehensive listing of his works and subscribe
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