Management styles and skills
This management style relies on strict hierarchy, one-way top-down communication and centralised decision-making.
What is a traditional management style?
This term describes using the fewest possible resources to produce a given output.
What is efficiency?
This term describes any person or group with an interest in the decisions and activities of a business.
What is a stakeholder?
This classical management perspective focused on boosting efficiency through time-and-motion studies of tasks.
What is the scientific management perspective?
This level of planning covers the long-term direction of the whole organisation, typically 3–5+ years.
What is strategic planning?
This management style is flatter and more flexible, encouraging employee participation and open, two-way communication.
What is a contemporary management style
This term describes the extent to which a business actually achieves its stated goals or objectives.
What is effectiveness?
This stakeholder group is mainly interested in dividends and growth in the value of their investment.
Who are owners / shareholders?
This classical perspective emphasises formal rules, set procedures and a strict hierarchy of authority.
What is the bureaucratic perspective?
This level of planning turns strategic goals into plans for individual departments, typically 1–2 years.
What is tactical planning?
This management skill involves getting along with, motivating and understanding people in the workplace.
What is an interpersonal skill?
This type of business goal relates to profit, sales growth or increasing market share.
What is a financial goal?
This stakeholder group is interested in job security, fair pay and safe working conditions.
Who are employees?
This approach argues there is no single 'best' way to manage — the right style depends on the situation.
What is the contingency approach?
This level of planning covers day-to-day tasks and activities, typically short-term.
What is operational planning?
This management skill involves setting a long-term direction and forming a picture of where the business is heading.
What is vision / strategic thinking?
In SMART goals, these are the two criteria represented by the letters A and R.
What are Achievable and Relevant?
This stakeholder group is concerned with the business complying with laws and paying appropriate taxes.
Who is the government?
Communication in a bureaucratic organisation typically flows in this direction, through formal channels.
What is top-down / one-way (formal) communication?
This is the first step in the controlling process, where a benchmark or target is set.
What is establishing standards?
This skill lets a manager change their approach in response to unexpected challenges or a changing environment.
What is flexibility / adaptability?
This letter in SMART stands for giving a goal a clear deadline.
What is T — Time-bound?
This stakeholder group is interested in reliable, on-time payment and ongoing orders from the business.
Who are suppliers?
In the scientific perspective, leadership tends to be this style, with managers closely directing workers' tasks.
What is an autocratic leadership style?
This is the final step of controlling, taken when actual performance doesn't meet the standard set.
What is corrective action?