The Managerial Job
The efficient manager is an enterprise possession whose value is incalculable. He can make even poor organization structure operate effectively. Some one or a few managers within a firm are often responsible for successful operations over long periods of time; when these men are gone, these same firms have started down the long road to bankruptcy. It is abundantly clear that the quality of the manager makes most of the difference between success and failure. Consequently, it is of crucial importance to every enterprise to achieve success in stuffing management positions.
Before selecting a person for a position, as much as possible must be known about its nature. Management is a most difficult activity, and men in these positions must be effective decision makers. They are often called upon to decide issues on short notice, and management issues tend normally to be very complex in terms of all the factors which affect them. The manager must recognize these elements, weigh them correctly, formulate sets of simultaneous equations, and often solve them while the person who requests the decision awaits the answer.
The managerial job is complex even in small firms. The quality of executives needed is effected by the social responsibility of the enterprise. It is a premise of great importance that no firm will exist in the long run unless it contributes positively to the general welfare. Private enterprise contributes its share to the general welfare by providing goods and services to improve the standard of living, by adopting approved employee-relation practices, and by facilitating the purposes of the community.
Staffing is the executive function which encompasses the recruitment, selection, training, promotion, and retirement of subordinate managers. Only the front-line supervisors, among all managers, do not select subordinate managers, for, by definition, they compose the first link between enterprise management and the non-managers who work for them – the work force.
Since staffing is one of the functions which all managers undertake, the immediate responsibility for its efficient execution rests upon every manager at all levels. But it is much too common for managers to neglect their staffing function. Such neglect is compensated for in some enterprises by permitting the personnel department to select managers. But neither the personnel department nor any other service group is the proper place for this function. The development of future executives cannot be routinized. There is a need for direction from top policy makers.
The responsibility for staffing rests upon the chief executive officer and those of his immediate subordinates who compose the internal policy-making group of executives. They also have the duty of developing policy, assigning its execution to subordinates, and making certain that it is being properly carried out.
Topic #5
Selection of Managers. The Recruitment Process.
When outside personnel are sought it may be for several reasons. In most cases, college graduates are recruited for their technical abilities, with little attention given to their managerial potential, although with hope that somehow enough of the recruits will eventually succeed as managers. On the other hand, some firms recruit college men in the hope that their broad educational background will serve them in becoming good managers. In either case, enterprises assign such recruits to non-managerial positions from which they may eventually become candidates for front line supervision.
A second reason for recruiting outsiders is to fill an immediate need for a supervisor or superintendent, a department, division, or a functional manager, or, indeed, to fill the presidency of a firm.
There are three steps in this activity. First, the discovery for potential candidates involves initial screening for intelligence, age, and maturity. Every enterprise has certain minimum requirements in these areas, and it saves money to find out, as early as possible, whether the prospects can meet them. Secondly, persuading the potential managers to become candidates sometimes involves selling (рекламирование) the firm to them. Thirdly, each candidate receives an extended guided interview.
Screening.
Since the need for men with fairly high intelligence is pressing, the candidate is usually given a standard intelligence test by the personnel department. If he is a college graduate, he may perhaps skip this on the assumption that he would qualify. Candidates should be informed by the company representative that acceptance will depend on either superior grades or a proportionally good test score.
Age is of general importance for managerial candidates. Good training programs emphasize the importance of an early start. They contemplate one or two years to be spent on non-managerial tasks; another two to five years in front-line supervision; and some fifteen years beyond this point for the development of full managerial potential. Since the “typical” executive of a successful enterprise is selected in his early twenties by the firm in which his career is built, it is advantageous to place an upper-age limit for inexperience managerial candidates at roughly twenty-seven years.
Maturity is an elusive quality that defies quantitative measurement. It is certainly not highly correlated with age or experience. The managerial candidate may reflect his maturity by the scope of his past experience and what he has learned from it, by his present general knowledge and breadth of view, by the common sense of his objectives and the means by which he proposes to achieve them, and by his sense of personal responsibility. The detection of such things is a heavy, but crucial, burden to place upon the recruiting officer.
Selling the firm (продвижение фирмы).
Men found eligible in terms of intelligence, age, and maturity may need to be sold on the firm, and the recruiting officer should pursue the objective with the same vigor and imagination that the salesman employs in selling the firm’s products to customers. He is the key salesman; his product is the enterprise, its location, size, prestige, prospects, incentives, and morale. His success depends on persuading qualified but hesitant men to want to work for the enterprise. The candidates are then requested to complete an application form, at their leisure, and to appear for an extended interview on a given date.
Interviewing.
Candidates who qualify on the basis of the screening process and the information carried on the application form are ready to be interviewed preferably at the plant site, both intensively and extensively. The candidate is passed along from one manager to another on a prearranged schedule, the smooth operation of which reflects good planning and respect for the value of time to all concerned.
Topic #6