Does It Matter What Managers Do - Free Essay Example

Business Strategy Review, 2001, Volume 12 Issue 2, pp 50-58 Does It Matter What Managers Do? Colin Hales After half a century of research, we now have a fair idea of what managers do. This differs both from the â€Å"heroic selfimage† idealisation and from the sanitised â€Å"management science† idealisation. Despite IT and all the talk of empowerment, management as a profession in its own right is, if anything, becoming more, not less, widespread. What managers do therefore matters simply because so many people are doing â€Å"management† as their main role. But does what managers do matter in terms of its effects on the people being managed, and, if so, how? The answer is obviously yes, but the central message of this article is how little we know through systematic research about this – particularly given how much preaching there is on how to do it well. We now have a reasonably clear picture of what managers do. But does it matter what they do and, if so, why? The cynical, not to say nihilistic, tone of this question should not detract from its importance. Unless we believe that managers’ behaviour is intrinsically interesting or self-evidently relevant, what Business Strategy Review  © London Business School matters is its effects. Much research has been devoted to organisational structures and to managers’ decisions and decision-making processes, as well as relating performance measures to outcomes that are essentially financial. There is, however, surprisingly little research on the effects of managerial behaviour on the people being managed. Throughout this article, when we refer to the effects of what managers do, it is these effects on the people being managed that we are concerned with. What Do Managers Do? Some Answers Half a century of research has given us a coherent and illuminating body of evidence on what managers do. The activities common to all or most managers are: ? Acting as figurehead, representative or point of contact for a work unit. Monitoring and disseminating information. Networking. Negotiating with a broad constituency. Planning and scheduling work. Allocating resources to different work activities. Directing and monitoring the work of subordinates. Specific human resource management activities. Problem-solving and handling disturbances to work flow. Innovating processes and products. ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Does It Matter What Managers Do? 51 ? Technical work relating to the manager’s professional or functional specialisation. These generic activities are applied across a wide range of concerns. Managers themselves often emphasise four in particular: ? ? ? These variations occur across individuals, jobs, functional specialisms, levels of manageme nt, forms of organisation, industries/economic sectors and national cultures. (For a more detailed review of the above evidence, see Hales 1986, 1999, 2001. ) What Do Managers Do? Some Unanswered Questions However, this body of evidence is by no means the last word. A plethora of different categories, taxonomies, conceptual frameworks and perspectives confirms the suspicion that what we know about managerial work rather depends on how we go about finding out. More important, there are also questions that this body of research has failed to answer or, indeed, ask. First, it is still not clear which activities are exclusively â€Å"managerial† – as distinct from other behaviours in which managers may engage, and activities which are concerned with â€Å"managing† but are carried out by non-managers or undertaken by everyone as part of their daily lives. The question â€Å"what do managers do and no-one else does? remains unanswered. Second, the descriptions of managerial work have been treated as largely unproblematic, as if what managers must spend their time doing is self-evident and we do not need to delve further into it. The question â€Å"Why do managers do what they do? † has received scant attention from resear chers. Third, although the many documented variations in managerial work make a kind of intuitive sense, they have not been systematically explained. Research to-date has not convincingly shown any substantive causal links, as opposed to correlations, between what managers do and who they are and where they work. For example, whilst it is commonplace to assert that what managers do varies â€Å"by organisation†, how and why organisational structures and processes shape managerial behaviour has not been adequately explained. Thus the question â€Å"Why do managers do different things? † still does not have a satisfactory answer. Finally, and most important of all for my argument here, almost all researchers have shied away from judging whether the managerial behaviours they describe represent, or contribute to, â€Å"good† or â€Å"effective† management from the perspective of the people managed, as opposed to â€Å"good† or â€Å"effective† Day-to-day â€Å"people† management. Management of routine information. Day-to-day monitoring and maintenance of work processes. Non-managerial activities, like conducting or assisting with technical work. ? In short, managers share a common and probably inescapable preoccupation with routine, day-to-day maintenance of the work processes and people for whom they are responsible – keeping the show on the road. This work is characterised by: ? ? Short, interrupted and fragmented activities. An obligation to react to events, problems and requirements of others. A preoccupation with the urgent, ad hoc and unforeseen, rather than the planned. The embedding or nesting of activities within others. A high level of verbal interaction, often face-toface or by phone but now, increasingly, by email. A degree of tension, pressure and conflict in seeking to juggle competing demands. Considerable choice and negotiation over the nature and boundaries of the job and how it is done. ? ? ? ? ? Beyond these common characteristics, managerial work has been shown to vary considerably in terms of: ? The balance between different elements of work content. Types of contact patterns. Patterns or rhythms of work. Where work is carried out. The extent of dependency on others. The amount of interaction involved. The degree of choice that is available. ? ? ? ? ? ? Summer 2001 52 Colin Hales profitability-related outcomes of managerial (or organisational) decisions or processes. There has been a reluctance to answer the question â€Å"Does managerial behaviour make a difference? † – or, more bluntly, â€Å"Does it matter what managers do? Rarely is the research evidence on managerial behaviour subjected to the brusque question: â€Å"so what? † Let us look at these distinctions in a bit more detail. When research on management was in its infancy, purely descriptive accounts based on systematic research were a welcome antidote to the assorted reminiscences, homilies, flatteries, self-delusions, and speculations that were the staple of writing about the practice of m anagement. In this context, valid, empirical research on managerial behaviour is selfevidently interesting, pertinent and valuable. Management researchers also seek to justify their work in terms of its ability to improve the processes that might themselves shape â€Å"Managers share a how managers work, such common and as management education, probably inescapable training, recruitment and preoccupation with selection (by showing what routine, day-to-day managers are to be trained and recruited for) or managerial maintenance of the appraisal, remuneration and work processes and career planning (by showing people for whom they are responsible† what managers should be rewarded and appraised on). In other words, certain forms of managerial behaviour are implicitly regarded as the end to which these other activities should be directed. Rarely, however, is better understanding of managerial behaviour justified in terms of its consequences, where managerial behaviour is examined as the means by which other, desirable or undesirable, outcomes are brought about. Nor will it do to defend this omission by arguing that managerial behaviour can be subject only to a kind of internal audit, confined to examining the extent to which it matches its own internal dynamics or rules of the game. This not only begs the question about who defines these rules, but also forecloses any discussion of what managers are for, and, therefore, whether their behaviour matters to anyone else and, if so, how. Much of the work on managerial competencies treats the measurable ability to perform specific types of managerial work, rather than its effects, as the desired end. What is missing is an examination of the behaviours that actually connect the skills and traits that constitute competencies with performance outcomes – in other words, an indication of what â€Å"competent† managers actually do. Again, it is assumed that the behaviour that flows from the possession of certain competencies is self-evident or a black box that does not merit direct investigation. Is the Role of Managers Changing? Recently, a growing body of opinion has implied that interest in managerial behaviour, never mind any attempt to link it with performance outcomes, has become redundant. Radical organisational restructuring and changes in the language of management are said to be eliminating or marginalizing the manager as a distinctive or decisive organisational role. There is nothing new in these claims: the demise of the manager has long been contemplated, not to say willed, by those sceptical of what, if anything, managers â€Å"do†. However, whereas before the claim was that management as a practice would implode under the weight of its own contradictions, now the claim is that the manager will disappear as a result of dramatic changes in organisational structures made inevitable by competitive pressures and technology. Most attention has been on the apparent shift from hierarchical and rule-bound bureaucracies to decentralised and empowered networks or postbureaucratic organisations. In these new postbureaucratic organisations, skilled knowledge workers and smart machines combine in flexible, task- or problem-based self-managing teams. These, in turn, are organised in loose, federated networks, where expertise, problem-solving and learning, rather than precedents and procedures, shape how work is done and performance, not conformity, is the only criterion of effectiveness (see, for example, Drucker 1988, Hecksher and Donnellon 1994, Handy 1989). Two somewhat different futures for managers are envisaged as a consequence of these changes, one more optimistic than the other. The first, more optimistic, view contends that whilst some managerial posts – predominantly in middle management – disappear, the important change is to the character of managerial work. According to this new managerial work thesis, Business Strategy Review Does It Matter What Managers Do? 53 the key driver is the atrophy of hierarchy and rules. In this world, middle managers run small, decentralised business units in entrepreneurial ways, free from the stifling constraints of regulatory controls and the demands of bureaucratic reporting relationships. Empowered employees work in self-managing teams free from day-to-day managerial control, leaving front-line managers to function as team leaders, coordinators and facilitators. Consequently, the traditional role of manager disappears, to be replaced by a particular brand of professional knowledge worker charged with a looser entrepreneurial or leadership role (Dopson and Stewart 1990, Kanter 1989, Mintzberg 1998). These new â€Å"managerorchestrators† must grapple with the fuzzy, complex task of facilitating and co-ordinating the diverse fforts of a variegated network of participants. Inspiration, expert advice, collaboration, negotiation and instigation of change replace the mundanities of command, control and administration. â€Å"New† managers lead teams, negotiate integrated effort across boundaries, inspire and promote organisational learning, and conceive, instigate and facilitate change. Their new-found freedom from hierarchical scrutiny and control both enables and obliges them to exercise judgement, unleash creativity and take risks. In short, they cast off the dowdy feathers of administration for the rich plumage of leadership. The more pessimistic prognosis claims that the distinct job of manager will disappear. Middle management jobs will go as functional departments co-ordinated through a hierarchical system of line management are replaced by business units managed by teams to whom operational control has been decentralised and which report directly to the centre through electronic, rather than human, information and control systems. In this world, the middle management functions of enforcing operational controls and conveying control information pass to unit management teams and IT systems respectively. First-line management jobs supposedly will disappear as functional work groups under day-to-day managerial direction and control are replaced by empowered self-managing teams. Thus, where once stood towering, elaborate management structures, there will be empty spaces across which corporate leaders on the one hand and low-rise business units and empowered teams on the other communicate directly and electronically. Periodic delayerings represent the progressive flattening (in every sense) of managerial hierarchies to clear the ground for this. Those managers who remain will be there to facilitate their own departure by coaching and empowering those about to start managing themselves. The result will be the â€Å"postmanagement corporation†, liberated from the stultifying dead hand of the â€Å"corpocracy† (Koch and Godden 1996). For other observers, the decisive recent change has been not to the architecture of organisations but to the tenor of management discourse and how management is conceived and understood. A â€Å"Rarely is the recurring theme in this new research evidence on language of management is managerial the de-coupling of behaviour subjected management as a practice to the brusque from formally designated question: â€Å"so managerial roles, such that what? †Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"we are all managers now†, even if, in practice, â€Å"we always were† (Grey 1999). The Taylorist ideology that conception must be separated from execution has been supplanted by an empowerment ideology that they should be re-combined. Managers Are Everywhere However, the â€Å"post-bureaucratic†, network organisation and the radical reconfiguration or demise of the managerial role that will accompany it may be still some way off. Radically new organisational forms remain confined to a few recurring and celebrated cases and extravagant claims about the adoption of such forms are often little more than rhetoric, given that much recent organisational change has entailed an intensification, not a departure from, bureaucratic â€Å"In short, they controls. Further, the extent cast off the dowdy of decentralisation and feathers of empowerment associated administration for with the transition to post- the rich plumage bureaucratic organisation of leadership† has also been exaggerated, as a number of research studies have found. Supposedly decentralised organisations often undergo very modest organisational change and, consequently, there is little change to managers’ roles and work practices. Fully autonomous, selfmanaging work teams are restricted to a few specialised and exceptional instances and there is often a stark contrast between the extravagant Summer 2001 4 Colin Hales rhetoric and the modest reality of empowerment programmes (Hales 2000). Consequently, much recent organisational change has created not post-bureaucratic, network organisations but merely slimmed-down versions of bureaucracy – â€Å"bureaucracy-lite†, so to speak. The principle of hierarchy, where there is co-ordination through individu al vertical responsibility and accountability, has not been abandoned, but retained in an attenuated and more efficient form. Centrally-imposed rules, designed to give a heavy steer to managerial conduct, have not been torn up â€Å"Many business but have been rewritten organisations in the US to focus on results and UK – supposedly rather than processes. the super-thin models These changes to that promoted the different varieties of outbreak of copycat bureaucratic control, rather than radically corporate anorexia – new forms of organbecame, during the isation, mean that there 1990s, not lean and mean but fat and mean, remains some-thing with a growing number very familiar about the manager’s role. It of managers, if a continues to be defined dwindling number of in terms of individual workers† responsibility for the performance of an identifiable, bounded organisational sub-unit and vertical accountability to a boss for that performance. Little fundamental change to the definition of the managerial role means little change to the substance of managers’ work activities. Managers continue to be preoccupied with routine, dayto-day monitoring and maintenance of work processes, managing staff and processing information – often to the exclusion of instigating change, developing staff or acting more entrepreneurially. For all the fashionable hype about leadership, it is unfashionable management that is being practised and its fundamental characteristics have not changed (Hilmer and Donaldson 1996). Reports of the death of the â€Å"manager† are a trifle premature. In fact, other evidence suggests quite the reverse – a burgeoning of managerial positions in some sectors and the spread of â€Å"managerialism† to a growing number of social institutions. Even many business organisations in the US and UK – supposedly the superthin models that prompted the outbreak of copycat corporate anorexia – became, during the 1990s, not ean and mean but fat and mean, with a growing numbers of managers, if a dwindling number of workers (Gordon 1996). Additionally, many public sector and voluntary organisations (eg health, education, charities, the police, the BBC), in which professionals or members had previously managed themselves, became subject to tighter and more elaborate mana gerial controls executed by a growing body of administrators. Greater accountability for and, hence, tighter control over, public expenditure and the creation of forms of internal market apparently required an army of expensive administrators to police. Equally ironically, these changes were pushed through under the ideological banner of the enterprise culture. The widespread disempowerment of professionals in favour of managerial control has meant that the recent accusation that the BBC has become over-managed and under-led chimes funereally elsewhere. The Growth of Managerialism â€Å"Managerialism† – the application of a particular utilitarian and supposedly value-neutral means-ends logic – increasingly pervades spheres of life outside the workplace. Consumers are â€Å"managed† through the ever more laborate paraphernalia of marketing, citizens are increasingly managed in their dealings with the state and its agencies or in their use of public space, and political parties offer not alternative visions of society but alternative management teams, aspiring to do what works and asking to be judged on delivery. Likewise, consumers must increasingly â€Å"manage† their purchasing behaviour, by attem pting to make informed choices and negotiate their way around a bewildering array of offerings; families feel compelled to â€Å"manage† their domestic life (how F. W. Taylor would have approved of the notion of quality time spent with one’s children) and people â€Å"manage† their relationships, substituting friends for an instrumentally constructed network of contacts. The manager, whether called that or not, has become the quintessential contemporary character embodying the triumph, at least for now, of manipulative social relations in the utilitarian pursuit of amoral efficiency. The locus of social decision-making has, in many instances, shifted from democratic processes between individual and state to negotiation and transaction amongst organisations. Further, the basis of that decision-making has shifted from the Business Strategy Review Does It Matter What Managers Do? 55 pursuit of the public good, where considerations of content and effectiveness predominate, to the reconciliation of private interests in which considerations of form and efficiency prevail. In these corporatist processes, managers have become the key protagonists and managerialism is the guiding principle (Entenman 1993). Thus, whilst managers may have waned here and waxed there, management as a practice (whoever carries it out) and managerialism as an ideology (whoever subscribes to it) have flourished. Managers continue to matter because there is still a large and growing number of them, either in the conventional sense of those taking responsibility for the work of others or in the sense of de facto managers disciplining themselves in their work and their lives according to a particular instrumental logic. How Managers Matter: The Problem of Managerial and Leader Effectiveness Even if managers continue to matter, whether it matters what they do, in the sense of there being clear links between their behaviour and particular kinds of outcome, is less clear-cut. Of course, much depends upon which outcomes are considered relevant or important. Until now, a top-down organisational perspective has predominated with managerial impacts assessed in terms of the performance of the organisation, sub-unit or work group for which the manager is re-sponsible. There is a general conviction that certain kinds of managerial behaviour are more effective because they are more likely to bring about desirable organisational outcomes – employees work â€Å"better†, resources are used more efficiently, goods and services are more effectively delivered, stakeholder needs are more accurately met, and so on. Anecdotal or circumstantial evidence in support of this view needs to be treated with some caution. Autobiographies depicting the CEO as hero singlehandedly building up a successful enterprise or turning around an ailing one are, inevitably, selective and partial. The research evidence is equivocal. Whether research purports to study â€Å"leader effectiveness† or â€Å"managerial effectiveness† is of little consequence since the labels are more a reflection of academic tribalism than real differences in focus. But, whatever the preferred terminology, the research evidence is an imperfect guide to whether it matters what managers do. Survey evidence sometimes confirms the conventional wisdom that top managers influence business performance whilst at other times it does not. Either way, there is the danger of a circular logic which says that managers of highly performing organisations must, perforce, be â€Å"effective† and vice versa. More experimental, or quasi-experimental, research on manager/leader effectiveness is hampered by recurring and seemingly intractable problems of measurement and validity and, for all its volume, remains inconclusive. However managerial effectiveness is measured, there are difficulties. If it is judged â€Å"often the focus is on in terms of organisational managers’ traits, or group performance personality or attitudes outcomes, much depends rather than their actual on the choice of behaviour – in effect, performance criteria. looking at who Given the susceptibility of managers are rather financial measures to than what they do† other influences, there have been recent attempts to evolve broader measures of long-term performance, such as economic value added, performance pyramids and the balanced scorecard. In all of these, however, the problem of tracing collective performance to individual behaviour still has to be resolved. Studies that rely on reputational measures â€Å"Tighter control over of effectiveness, based on others’ judgements of public expenditure managers’ proficiency or and the creation of promotability, run the forms of internal risks of simply capturing market apparently self-fulfilling prophecies. required an army of In any case, often the expensive focus is on managers’ traits, administrators to personality or attitudes police† rather than their actual behaviour – in effect, looking at who managers are rather than what they do. Whilst this approach may identify associations between personal characteristics and measures of group performance it fails to identify the causal connections between them. The overall result is a suggestion that certain traits, attitudes or behaviours may promote certain favourable organisational outcomes but little sense of how they do so. Summer 2001 56 Colin Hales As well as the problem of measurement there is also the wider question of whether it is sensible to regard the actions of individual managers as capable of changing the organisational milieu in which they operate. It may be more appropriate to regard managers as social actors whose actions and identities are shaped and constrained by, as well as â€Å"Individual serving to reproduce, the managers may not social and institutional make a difference systems in which they are because no-one does: located. This may be so even in the exceptional case organisational of highly charismatic outcomes emerge, founders of organisations without evident who are more able than authorship, from most to stamp their complex negotiated personal imprint upon interactions† them and whose personal values become embodied in organisational processes. Once established, organisations take on a life of their own as past actions and events become institutionalised into norms and practices and ideas that entrap their creators. How much more so is this the case for middle managers who are recruited to, and in the image of, a pre-existing institution – or for senior managers who have assiduously scaled the organisational ladder. For example, it is interesting how The Economist’s weekly â€Å"Face Value† column on individual Chief Executives often tells a story more of incumbency and battles against organisational baggage than of consequential leadership. Individual managers may not make a difference because no-one does: organisational outcomes emerge, without evident â€Å"Studies that do authorship, from complex incorporate this negotiated interactions – view from below even if, after the event, have tended to focus participants and observers on subordinates’ may try to make sense of these outcomes by perceptions of the attributing them to the managers actions of specific themselves, rather individuals. Consider, for than of particular forms of managerial example, how a number of recent UK enquiries behaviour† into organisational failure (eg the Redfern report on Alderhey hospital, the Phillips report on BSE and the Cullen enquiry into the Paddington train crash) have all concluded that a â€Å"failure of management† meant not the failure of particular individual managers but of management systems and processes – not a particular manager’s culpability but rather â€Å"institutional paralysis†. How Managers Matter: An Alternative Perspective An alternative way of approaching the issue of whether it matters what managers do, which has until now been largely neglected by management research, is to consider the problem from the point of view of those being managed. Specifically, does managers’ behaviour impact significantly upon the experience of those whom they are managing? In other words, does it matter to others what managers do? Certainly, there is implicit recognition in a number of places that it does. How employees are â€Å"managed†, in the broad sense of the kinds of work regimes to which they are subject, has long been seen as having a decisive effect on their experience of work and, hence, their satisfaction with and commitment to it. For example, most criticisms of both bureaucracy and scientific management are couched in terms of their dehumanising or de-motivating effects on those who are managed in this way. More specifically, it has long been argued that particular human resource management strategies and policies are more likely to enhance employee experience of work and thus improve their performance at work (for example, Pfeffer 1995). There is a popular perception too that not only management systems but also individual managers can make a difference in this respect. Most employees, for example, would be able to give instances of managers for whom, in their experience, it was a pleasure to work and others about whom the opposite could be said. However, reliable evidence on the relationship between managers’ behaviour and employees’ experience is hard to come by. Studies of manager (or leader) effectiveness attempt to link managerial attributes or behaviour to work group performance without examining the meanings that those being managed place upon that behaviour. Ethnographic studies offer rich accounts of the meanings that managers themselves place upon their own actions but say little about how their actions are interpreted by others. Studies that do incorporate this view from below have tended to focus on subordinates’ perceptions of the managers themselves, rather than of particular forms of managerial behaviour, often more as part of a wider Business Strategy Review Does It Matter What Managers Do? 57 When Managers Did Make a Difference? One graphic demonstration of the disastrous effect that managerial (or â€Å"leader†) behaviour can have upon those being managed, or led, is offered in Alan Clark’s book, The Donkeys. In it, Clark adduces systematic, compelling and corroborated evidence, drawn from War Office records, eyewitness accounts, diaries and letters, that demonstrates how a series of increasingly catastrophic military blunders in the first year of the Great War were directly attributable to the actions, or, at times, inactions, of the British High Command. These were fivefold. First was the failure to exploit the German retreat and disarray with the use of cavalry after the Battle of the Marne in September 1914, under conditions that the High Command spent the rest of the war attempting, at huge human cost, to recreate. Second was the refusal, during the winter of 1914-15, to consolidate, through prudent withdrawal, the subsequent trench-line around Ypres to one that could be defended without heavy casualties. Third was the failure to exploit the breakthrough at Neuve Chapelle in March 1915 until it was too late, followed by a persistence with attacks when there was no longer any chance of success – an action that resulted in total casualties of about 60,000. Fourth was the disastrous Aubers Ridge offensive of May 1915 in which over 11,000 were killed in a single day and which more or less completed the destruction of the regular army. Finally came the ill-conceived attack at Loos in September 1915 in which failure to exploit a breakthrough on the first day (a breakthrough that had been achieved entirely through the courage of the attacking men) was followed by a series of suicidal frontal assaults against machine-gun fire in which, in the space of three and a half hours, 12 battalions numbering 10,000 conscripts suffered 8,246 casualties. In short, Clark paints a picture of hesitancy and procrastination when rapid, decisive action was called for and of profligate recklessness when caution and circumspection were required. Clark shows how this resulted directly from the decisions and, at times, indecision, of particular generals in the British High Command. These, in turn, sprang from a disastrous admixture of: personal vanity and an overwhelming desire not to damage a spuriouslygained â€Å"reputation†; a preoccupation with individual careerism and intrigue disguised by claims of dedication to a common cause; petty jealousies and rivalries prosecuted behind superficial displays of loyalty and comradeship; an arrogance and indifference towards those who had to carry out their orders; and, above all, an individual and collective incompetence coupled with resentment of those possessed of greater talent or nerve and a proclivity to blame anyone but themselves for the consequences of their mistakes. oncern with workplace conflict. Yet, occasionally powerful evidence emerges to suggest that managers’ or leaders’ behaviour can have a decisive, not to say catastrophic, effect (see box). Conclusion Despite claims that they are about to be included in the roll-call of quaint trades and defunct occupations, managers continue to matter. Headline-grabbing instances of delayering have been more than offset by the less dramatic burgeoning of managerial positions in private sector and – even more – public sector rganisations and by the spread of the cult of managerialism within and beyond the workplace. But if managers still matter, whether it matters what they do and, if so, how has not been satisfactorily investigated, never mind resolved, by research. Many studies of managers at work avoid the issue altogether whilst studies of managerial (or leader) effectiveness often treat the behaviours that mediate between certain managerial attributes and group performance as selfevident. Even if there remains a popular suspicion, based on personal experience, that individual managers can, by their actions (or inactions), make a difference, how they do so and the extent to which they do so are far from clear. Indeed, a lot of research on managerial work and effectiveness is not only inconclusive but myopic in that it disregards the effect of managerial behaviour on the experience of those being managed. By doing so, it not only fails to recognise the consequences of this for group performance but also fails to give voice Summer 2001 58 Colin Hales o those who are as central to the management process as managers themselves. Furthermore, those whose voice is not being heard are those for whom managers are still, generally, held responsible, given that, in practice, few organisations have abandoned the principle of hierarchy by which individual managers are held responsible and accountable, even if they have marginally reduced the number of hierarchical levels. Until res earch begins to listen to this voice, the suspicion that managers’ behaviour colours the experience of those whom they manage, for the worse as much as for the better, will remain only a suspicion. Consequently, our understanding of managerial practices and, more broadly, our conception of what managerial responsibility means will remain unbalanced and incomplete. And so will our efforts to educate and train managers. Colin Hales is Professor of Management and Director of the Centre for Research on Managerial Behaviour at Westminster Business School, London. References Clark, A. (1961) The Donkeys, London: Pimlico. Dopson, S. and Stewart, R. (1990) What is Happening to Middle Management? British Journal of Management 1(1): 3-16. Drucker, P. 1988) The Coming of the New Organization, Harvard Business Review, Jan/Feb: 4553. Entenman, W. F. (1993) Managerialism: The Emergence of a New Ideology, University of Wisconsin Press. Gordon, D. (1996) Fat and Mean: The Corporate Squeeze of Working Americans and the Myth of Managerial Downsizing, New York: Free Press. Grey, C. 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