Matching Managers With Specific Jobs

Most management jobs are too general—so they cannot indicate the qualities, skills and experience a person should possess for a management position.

Application of job analyses—job description and job specification is a useful way of trying to match managers to the job. However, these are more applicable at the first level manager and less applicable at higher levels. At lower level management jobs are more specific while at higher levels managers have to deal with wider areas and have more freedom to make decisions and take action.

Selecting Managers

Just like other employees, managers can either be selected from within or without the organization. Selection from within involves promotion, i.e. management positions are filled by people who are already in the organization.

Advantages of promoting from within

•    Promotes and generates competition since people know that the higher level positions will be filled from within they work hard at their jobs with hopes of being promoted.
•    Promotion from within may serve as a way of motivating employees therefore it may lead to increased morale.
•    Promotions from within means that managers already know the qualities of the ones to be promoted as they have worked with him and observed how well he performs.
•    Promotion from within is less expensive than from without. No money is wasted on advertisements and interviews.
•    Promotion from within also means the person promoted can take up his work with minimum time waste as he does not need any orientation. Less time is also used in making the promotion decisions since the likely persons are already in the organization.
 
Disadvantages of promoting from within

•    Internal people may not actually be the most qualified. They may lack sufficient knowledge, intelligence or interpersonal skills.
•    It may lead to in breeding—managers have little scope as they all share the same experience. They are likely to see things from a limited point of view, they have almost the same ideas and approaches.
•    It is likely to create internal instability or disharmony—most people may feel qualified yet only one is selected. Others may feel discriminated upon and may give less co-operation to the promoted colleague.
•    The promoted managers may be complacent in their work as they feel they know the organization too much. The work may not be as challenging as it would be for a new person from outside.