Free Custom «Managerial Skills» Essay Paper

Purpose

This research paper aims at examining the importance of administrative skills, human skills, technical skills and citizenship behavior which are necessary for predicting the effectiveness of managers. It also aims at finding whether these skill dimensions vary depending on the gender or organizational level.

Introduction

Human resources are regarded as important assets and especially as the most important factor in an organization’s competitive advantage.

Dimensions of Managerial Skill

One study revealed the predictor of managerial effectiveness as human relations competence, administrative competence, and technical competence. Another one revealed the above three except for administrative competence which was replaced with conceptual skill.

The most recent empirical study of managerial skills consists of administrative skills, human skills, technical skills and citizenship behavior. Technical skill is the proficiency of a manager in particular techniques or methods related to the functional area of that manager. Administrative skills include areas such as organizing, planning, coordinating and delegating. The human skill is the ability of the manager to mingle, mix and interact with members of the team. Citizenship behavior involves other packets of work behavior such as cooperation, loyalty, persistence which are also beneficial to an organization (Tonidandel, Braddy & Fleenor, 2012).

The above four factors were tested in two stages: The first stage involved a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), which gave excellent results. Secondly, the four factor model was compared to a unidimensional model. The result was that this model gave more good results than the alternative model.

Although all of the four skills contribute to managerial effectiveness, some skills seem more important than others. Human skills would influence managerial effectiveness more than administrative skill. Various skills depend on other critical variables (Tonidandel, Braddy & Fleenor, 2012).

The two moderators of the relationship are as under.    The first one is gender as a moderator whereby both human skills and citizenship behavior regarded as interpersonal skills would influence managerial effectiveness more for women than for men. On the other hand, technical and administrative skills will influence managerial effectiveness more for men than for women. The second moderator is the organizational level whereby human skills influence middle managers’ effectiveness more than executives’. On the other hand, the executive’s effectiveness will be influenced more by administrative skills than for middle managers.

Limitations and Future Research

According to Tonidandel, Braddy and Fleenor (2012), one of the limitations is that in spite of obtaining excellent results for the four predictors, they only accounted for 15% of the variance in managers’ effectiveness. Another limitation is the correlational design of the study. Though there were several examples used to validate the managerial skill, there is no sufficient evidence to prove the skill as yielding higher levels of effectiveness.

In addition, the variable only assessed the general managerial effectiveness rather than specific effectiveness which would have been better, accurate and reliable.

Conclusions and Implications

The study showed that all of the four managerial skills influence managerial effectiveness to a larger extent. The people with the task of recruiting selecting and training managers should consider the four aspects. A more attention should be given to administrative skills, putting more emphasis to higher organizational level managers. Managers should focus first on administrative skills, then on human skill. The managers’ skill development can not only be beneficial to them alone, but also to the entire society. In addition, the study gives a necessary empirical test of gender as a moderator for managerial effectiveness. More study should be done to come up with more variables that predict skills and characteristics that make managers more successful as proposed by Tonidandel, Braddy & Fleenor, 2012.