The Making of the Modern Manager: Core Management Competences and Their Attributes

There are few concepts in the field of business or commerce that have the breadth and reach as the subject of management, and the modern manager requires many talents to deliver to this wide range of expectations. Throughout the Four Industrial Revolutions, managers were responsible for ensuring that the right strategy was underpinned by the right technology, and that the right people in the right place at the right time, with the right skills, had the resources and an environment in which innovation, adaption and action could take place. The role of the manager in Industry 4.0, like many of their historical counterparts, is to ensure that their organisations respond to the rapidness of the transformation that is taking place, initiating and adopting new approaches to integrate new technologies, establish new forms of organisation and meet new sets of expectations from stakeholders, whether they be shareholders or members of the workforce. A stand-out feature is not management’s singularity—effective at managing people, understands technology and processes, sets prices and contracts, but its complementarity—personal and conceptual, in which relationships and competences overlap. The core management competences outlined in previous chapters are made up of knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviours that are relevant to individuals. It is proposed that these competences will be relevant as organisations develop their responses to opportunities that Industry 4.0 presents.