P. Dugay et al., THE CONDUCT OF MANAGEMENT AND THE MANAGEMENT OF CONDUCT - CONTEMPORARY MANAGERIAL DISCOURSE AND THE CONSTITUTION OF THE COMPETENT MANAGER, Journal of management studies, 33(3), 1996, pp. 263-282
The character and conduct of the manager has formed a central focus of
attempts to govern economic life throughout the present century, And
current programmes of organizational change involve radical attempts t
o reconstitute the nature and conduct of management, This is attempted
through the identification and implementation of management competenc
ies. Discourses of organizational reform such as human resource manage
ment, total quality management and business process re-engineering all
place a critical emphasis on anti-bureaucratic, organic and flexible
forms of organization, which are also seen to require the development
of particular capacities and predispositions among managers, Essential
to their vision of 'managerial work' is a composite of 'entrepreneuri
al' attributes, Management competencies appear to offer a congenial me
thod for the reconstitution of the manager along 'entrepreneurial' lin
es, not simply because they are inherently founded on managers' self-m
anagement and self-presentation of identified behaviours, but also bec
ause they represent individualized forms of business functions (and ar
e often associated with the establishment of market relations within t
he organization).