Managerial Self-Development

MANAGERIAL SELF-DEVELOPMENT

By E. Mukuka

12.1 INTRODUCTION- THE NEW BUSINESS REALITY

As even the casual observer of today’s business scene can attest, large corporations are locked in battles for their very survival. Whatever the reason for struggling in today’s business environments, the effect is the same: increased competition.

While many organizations have ceased to exist over the years, many that have continued in business have done so only after flirting with bankruptcy or merger.

Such a failure rate is not surprising considering that the competitive marketplace – both domestic and international – keeps changing at a dramatic rate.

The harsh realities of this new competitive environment have dictated new rules for corporate managements. They have been forced to downsize their companies, to streamline operations, to make their management more flexible, to rethink and revamp their strategic direction, and to become more focused and disciplined in their implementation of strategies.

Executive Development

Def.: Development is defined as any activity that broadens managers’ knowledge and experience and helps them enhance their capabilities.

Management development is the problem of how an organization can influence the beliefs, attitudes, and values of an individual for the purpose of “developing” him, i.e. changing him in a direction which the organization regards to be in his own and the organization’s best interests.

Adequate managerial performance at the higher levels is at least as much a matter of attitudes as it is a matter of knowledge and specific skills. The acquisition of such knowledge and skills is itself in part a function of attitudes. But there are just a few studies of how a person:

 develops loyalty to a company, commitment to a job, or a professional attitude toward the managerial role;

 how he comes to have the motives and attitudes which make possible the rendering of decisions concerning large quantities of money,...