Are managers born or made? Perhaps a bit of both. The Karpin report into Australian management which came down last week paints a depressing picture. It shows that Australian business thinking is too short-term and does not draw on the talents of women and migrants. It is clear that market forces, the laissez-faire approach and even blatant self-interest have not been enough to generate world best-practice management or even to ensure than a high proportion of managers have management training. The report called for changes to the approach of educational institutions and the fostering of an entrepreneurial culture in Australia. It came to the alarming conclusion that nearly half of the nation’s 400,000 front-line managers have no formal management training. The report said the ad-hoc training on the job or throwing in at the deep end was a critical weakness in the Australian economy. It called for business managers to undergo formal training at TAFE colleges in “”workplace management”.
The report’s exposure of the weaknesses in Australian management, though painful, is welcome. Some hard work is needed by business, governments and educational institutions to improve the situation. It will have to start with the recognition that Australian businesses can no longer pluck professional engineers, doctors, lawyers, architects or whatever off the floor and make them general managers of factories, hospitals or a large building project without some solid formal management training. However, it has to be education of the right kind. There are any amount of Mickey Mouse management seminars about. Indeed, there are a fair number of third-rate tertiary management courses. There are also some very good ones. The report recommended 1500 managers from small and medium business go overseas each year to learn more about management.
It also recommends full-fee tertiary management courses overseen by business, rather than the universities. These recommendations have merit. There is a fair amount of casual evidence to back the report’s finding that many Australian businesses have poor management. Employees perennially cry that management is remote, uncommunicative and makes poor decisions. Further, there appears to be great willingness on the part of workers to be more productive, if they could overcome the suspicion that they will be exploited by management. But education alone will not overcome the problem. Australia has a seemingly chronic us-and-them or capital-vs-labour mentality in business. It comes from our history _ the big strikes of the 1890s and the compromise industrial-relations clause in the Constitution which encourage big inter-state unions, rather than enterprise units.
The mutual suspicion between management and employees can be overcome when both recognise their future is in the success of the enterprise and that they have a joint interest in it. It will mean managers giving wider role for employees and perhaps, more importantly, more owners giving employees a greater financial stake in companies through share schemes. In short, Australian managers will need to be more innovative and trusting if we are to compete internationally and maintain our comparative standard of living.