Management skills development: the current position and the future agenda

Abstract

In the last ten years, the nature of managerial work has changed considerably largely because the organisational, economic and technological context in which managerial work is conducted has changed beyond recognition. Organisations have been delayered; new concepts such as "the self-managed work team" have been developed; organisations have been subjected to a range of guru driven change such as business process reengineering; the scale of IT-enabled home-based working has increased; the rapid evolution of information and communications technologies have increased the volume and variety of communication that managers have had to learn to cope with; and, increasing globalisation has created a more competitive environment where businesses have had to become leaner, more flexible and adaptable - this often having been achieved by the ruthless implementation of cost-reduction programmes. The consequence of this are that the skills and "capabilites" that managers need to be effective have change radically. The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of these changes and to assess the implications of management development and education programmes.