ABSTRACT
Understanding and improving managerial performance has long been a difficult and sometimes controversial issue. Academics and practitioners alike have invested a considerable amount of time, effort and money in attempting to identify a logical and universally acceptable set of principles or structure that can be used to understand the determinants of successful managerial performance. Research into managerial performance has a relatively long history, going back to the turn of the century. Much of it might be characterized, albeit rather crudely, by suggesting that it has attempted to understand performance by systematically reducing and simplifying complex human behaviour. For example, Frederick Taylor’s ideas about scientific management and Henri Fayol’s principles of management are landmark studies. Briefly, the management competency approach attempts to describe performance by establishing a series of criterion-related factors, or constructs, of performance. The approach analyses attitudes about performance and statistically isolates apparently significant factors.
