Political Management: Developing the Management Portfolio

Abstract

Although the focus of management education is on helping the powerful to be more effective in using their power, it gives less attention to the role of politics, in exercising power, than other areas of education. Political understanding is relevant in every kind and at every level of organisation. This article pursues the argument that political competence be included in any portfolio of basic management skills. Referring to their own previous work in this area, the authors, offer a number of issues for consideration by management educators interested in the same objective. These include the question of how political “nous” becomes a teachable skill; how the obtaining of such skills contrasts with other development models used by psychologists; the process of enabling managers to explore their “bottom line”; and understanding the political purposes of the different interests involved in management education ‐client organisations, participants and trainers.

Citation

Baddeley, S. and James, K. (1990), "Political Management: Developing the Management Portfolio", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 9 No. 3, pp. 42-59. https://doi.org/10.1108/02621719010134788