CRITICAL MANAGEMENT PERSPECTIVES - Essay Example

Most contemporary literature in business and psychology strongly indicate that in order to gain high performance from employees, they must perceive a sense of belonging within the organisation. Very centralised organisations, which are being phased out by more inclusive decision-making models, simply cannot satisfy the complex needs of workers and produce negative psychological responses to management presence. Therefore, the role of line management within organisations is evolving with the necessity for managers to adopt more principles and ideologies that are aligned with contemporary human resources theory.

Old school management models consider the role of management as being one of planning, organising, leading and controlling, however this is insignificant in the modern business environment if the organisation is to be adaptable to changing market conditions. Today, managers must take a softer approach to leading, a human resources philosophy that attempts to gain trust from employees and where workers are considered highly valuable assets and management works directly to better develop their skills and competencies whilst serving as a role model to gain commitment and loyalty (Armstrong 2007).

There is, therefore, an absolutely necessity for line managers to find congruence between traditional management practice and human resources to build a positive organisational culture that is cohesive and dedicated to achieving strategic goals. To develop this culture, which leads to competitive advantage through human capital development, managers must be visionary, communicate regularly with employees, and inspire to prevent resistance to change (Fairholm 2009). In an environment where change and adaptability is absolutely vital to revenue production and sustaining competitive advantage, line managers can no longer negate the absolute necessity to adopt human resource principles into their management models.

This essay describes why such congruence in role responsibility is vital to organisational performance and supersedes old-fashioned hard management models. What drives congruence inevitability Buchanan and Huczynski (2010) describe contingency theory which states that as external market conditions change, the organisation structure must be adaptable in order to remain competitively relevant. Pressures from the external environment mandate that the organisation makes changes to structure which often requires decentralisation in order to maintain flexibility and competitive advantages.

In the traditional organisation with high levels of control and bureaucracy, organisational politics are part of the culture and there are significant levels of power distance between managers and employees. In this type of structure, senior-level managers attempt to coordinate power resources at the highest levels of the hierarchy which is defined as resources that one maintains whilst others lack. Such power resources can range from financial assets and budget to knowledge. This type of organisational po