Self-Development, Managerial Success and - CiteSeerX

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Self-Development, Managerial Success and Effectiveness: Some Empirical Evidence J. G. BURGOYNE Introduction The subject of the theoretical analysis and empirical investigation reported in this paper is the self-development of managers and its predictable and observable effects on performance, success and effectiveness. The concept of self-development implies the possibility of an ability on the part of the manager to apply his existing managerial and other skills to the problem of his own development, and to take the initiative in equipping himself with the competences appropriate to his current and future activities. In as much as the manager can become better at self-development, this concept also raises the possibility of second order learning, learning to learn, which is one of the meanings attached to the term &dquo;meta goals&dquo; (Boydell, 1976) or deuteroleaming (Bateson, 1973). The concept and possibility of self-development is of both theoretical and practical interest at the present time. At the theoretical level both the pure and applied social sciences are coming to the conclusion that approaches to understanding human behaviour based on simple notions of man, for example as a habit system, cannot work, and that more complex basic assumptions about the nature of man will have to be accepted. One suggestion (Harre and Secord, 1972) is that humans could be construed as rule following &dquo;agents&dquo; rather than passive, reactive &dquo;patients&dquo;. The concept of &dquo;agent&dquo; implies the capacity to initiate and self-control, while the concept of patient implies external control. In the applied social sciences it has been suggested that approaches and prescriptions based on &dquo;patient&dquo; type assumptions about people have not functioned in the spirit of &dquo;value free science&dquo; as their proponents would claim, but as conscious or unconscious collusions with the value systems of the dominant coalitions which have been tended to be the clients of such work (Heather, 1976). In as much as prescriptions based on &dquo;patient&dquo; assumptions are self-fulfilling, that is they influence those on which they are imposed to behave in a patient-like way, this criticism is likely to be valid. In the context of management development, it has been suggested that a patient orientation, leading to the development of managers as resources, rather than an agent orientation treating managers as resourceful, may have resulted in relative weaknesses in development management (establishing new activities) as opposed to operations management (keeping established activities going) (Morris and Burgoyne, 1973). In practical terms the concept of managerial self-development is attractive for a number of reasons. Firstly it offers an alternative to the elaborate systems sometimes regarded as necessary to diagnose specific training needs of all managers individually on a continuous basis, and then to meet them with individually tailored programmes. Self-developing managers would presumably

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look after their own needs, possibly more effectively than an elaborate formal system could ever hope to do in practice. Secondly, an organisational management development policy based on the self-development concept could be economical in terms of resources, particularly if &dquo;deuterolearning&dquo; (learning to

learn)

can

be

concept offers future, or how

relatively easily brought about. Thirdly, the self-development

solution to the dilemmas of obsolescence and an unknown something to ensure that managers have the competences to the future rather than the past, when the future is not known and appropriate cannot be guessed with any certainty. The &dquo;self-developing manager&dquo; could be expected to develop and adapt his competences in ’real time’ to meet the situations that confront him. The self-development concept may also have another form of attraction in as a convenient rhetoric in difficulty economic times to justify a practice reduction in investment in human development, and to rationalise the reneging on moral obligations and psychological contracts in the context of staff redundancy programmes. In the latter case, the &dquo;self-development&dquo; concept may be central to an expedient organisational switch from a psychological contract in which the individual accepts the organisation’s right to allocate him to jobs at its discretion, and train him appropriately, in return for job security, to one in which the individual is held to be responsible to himself for ensuring that he maintains himself with marketable skills, which the organisation may ’hire’ for only as long as they are useful. Because there are other possible reasons for the attraction of the self-development concept it is additionally important to find out whether in fact selfdevelopment managers are more effective or successful, and if so to understand the process which makes this so. As Cantor (1958) points out, since managers have a strong influence over the learning of themselves and their subordinates it may be as important that they have an understanding of the learning processes involved, as it is important that they have an understanding of marketing, accounting, economics, organisation theory and other bodies of knowledge relevant to the performance of managerial tasks. However understanding of the learning process is possibly the weakest of all these areas, and is rarely included as a topic in management development programmes. a

to do

-

The Problem There are therefore two main questions about self-development: 1. Is there any empirical support for the theoretically plausible proposition that self-developing managers should be more effective and successful? 2. To the extent to which there is, what are the processes within the person through which self-development takes place, and how can these be learnt or

taught?

An Approach The approach taken in this study has been to speculate about some of the processes likely to be involved in managerial self-development, and hence the likely observable characteristics of &dquo;self-developing managers&dquo;, and to test

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empirically

whether managers who have these characteristics are in fact more effective. If such a relationship does exist, this will give some support to the proposition that self-developing managers are more successful or effective, and some indication that the processes involved are the ones hypothesised here.

successful

or

Processes Associated with Self-Development Perhaps the most straightforward way of thinking about the processes likely to be involved in self-development is to consider those things that teachers are presumed to do for students as &dquo;patients&dquo;, and hypothesise that the selfdeveloping &dquo;agent&dquo; might do these for himself. This approach has been explored by Thomas (1976) and Burgoyne (1973), and used as the basis of a measure of teacher and learner attitudes to learner independence (Boydell, 1975). Some of the main processes might be the setting of learning goals, choosing between alternative learning events or opportunities to achieve these goals, and evaluating the effectiveness of the outcome of learning experiences. Initial investigations have been carried out into the choice process (Burgoyne, 1973) and evaluation process (Burgoyne, 1975), which suggest that managers are capable of, and to varying degrees do, use them in a self-development process. Another approach to understanding the processes of self-development has been to look for reasons for its non-occurrence. Lawler (op. cit.) suggests that the ability to suspend judgement is critical. Argyris (1976) has suggested that many people get &dquo;locked into&dquo; a non-learning stage in which their &dquo;espoused theory&dquo; (what they consciously believe and articulate) becomes detached from their &dquo;theory in use&dquo; (the beliefs implicit in their actions) in such a way that they remain unaware of this detachment, and in circumstances where it is not likely to be brought to their attention (such as other people operating &dquo;theories in use&dquo; they say it is impolite to tell people about the disfunctional consequences of their behaviour). Another possible block, which is the focus of this study, is in the area of setting of personal learning goals. The idea of a person setting learning goals implies that the person in some way &dquo;knows what he does not know&dquo;. This is not a paradox since it is possible to know of an area of knowledge or expertise without having that knowledge or expertise. It is however equally possible for a person not to know what he does not know, in which case it seems likely that this would constitute a block to self-development. It follows from this that one possible characteristic of the self-developing manager is a rich cognitive map of the possible skills, qualities and competences which could be useful to him in performing a managerial function. The hypothesis to be tested in this study is that managers with a rich cognitive map of this kind will be more effective and/or successful. If this relationship is found it will be some weak evidence for the belief that being self-developing makes managers more effective, and that being able to conceive of a varied set of managerial skills and qualities is part of the self-development process. A Test of the Hypothesis The hypothesis was tested by correlating a measure the complexity of the cognitive maps of managerial skills and qualities, with various common sense

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indications of their

success and effectiveness, in a sample of managers. The of managers was taken as a &dquo;vertical&dquo; slice from one organisation, to ease the problems of comparability of effectiveness/success criteria. The measure of complexity of the individual manager’s cognitive maps of managerial skills and qualities was itself complicated. It was achieved by taking each manager’s combined answers to two interview questions: one about the skills and qualities which he perceived as contributing to his existing managerial capability and another about those skills and qualities which he lacked, but which could also contribute to his capability. The combined answers therefore covered the spectrum of managerial skills and qualities which each manager could conceive of. To get a measure of cognitive complexity these combined answers were content analysed for each manager to see how many of ten areas set out in a taxonomy of managerial qualities and skills previously established (Burgoyne and Stuart, 1976) were covered. This therefore gave an index of cognitive complexity of cognitive map of managerial skills and qualities with a possible range of 0-10. The criteria for success/effectiveness were:

sample

1. Level of 2.

seniority Age-grade lead. The

-

measured by salary grade. average age for the person’s salary as

grade, minus his

-

own

3. Self

There

age.

rating

were

of effectiveness in the

28 managers in the

job. sample used

for this

study.

Results The correlation between complexity of cognitive map of managerial skills and the three success/effectiveness criteria were:

Conclusions These results give general support to the hypothesis that managers with richer cognitive maps of managerial skills and qualities are more effective and successful. This is weak support for the conclusion that a rich cognitive map of managerial skills and qualities is part of a self-development process which causes managerial effectiveness and success. The support is ’weak’ because there are other plausible explanations of the data, such as success causing the richer cognitive map, or some third variable like &dquo;articulateness&dquo; causing both. From the theoretical point of view, the next step is to try out a &dquo;stronger&dquo; test of the theory, by a &dquo;predictive&dquo; study involving the following up of a group of managers to see if those who have, or can be helped to acquire, more complex cognitive maps of managerial skills do better against criteria of success and effectiveness in their subsequent careers.

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From a practical point of view an implication of the theory is that a key way help managers to develop might be to help them enrich their understanding of the variety of managerial skills and qualities. Both practical and theoretical interests could therefore be served by carrying out an experimental programme of this nature and following up its effect to test further the theory on which it is based. to

’

References

ARGYRIS, C., 1976. Theories of Action that Inhibit Individual Learning. Mimeograph. Harvard University. BATESON, G., 1975. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Paladin. BOYDELL, T., 1973. Tutor control scales. Management Education and Development. 6, (2) 100-104.

BOYDELL, T., 1976. Experiential Learning. Manchester Monographs Number 5. BURGOYNE, J. G., 1973. The case for self-controlled management development and some implications. European Training 2, (1), 10. BURGOYNE, J. G., 1973. A new approach to evaluating management development programmes: some exploratory research. Personnel Review, Autumn. BURGOYNE, J. G., 1975. The Judgement process in management students’ evaluation of their learning experiences. Human Relations 28, (5). BURGOYNE, J. G., and STUART, R., 1976. The nature, use and acquisition of managerial skills and other attributes. To be published in Personnel Review. CANTOR, N., 1958. The Learning Process for Managers. Harper and Brothers, New York. HARRÉ, R. and SECORD, P. R., 1972. The Explanation of Social Behaviour. Blackwell, Oxford. HEATHER, N., 1976. Radical Perspectives in Psychology. Methuen, London. THOMAS, L., 1976. Learning to learn in practice. Personnel Management. June. MORRIS, J. and BURGOYNE, J. G., 1973. Developing Resourceful Managers, I.P.M.

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