Center for Management of Emerging Companies

Thornton's 3Ds of Management Styles

Managers have a wide array of choices with respect to management styles and Thornton's 3Ds of Management Styles attempts to simplify the matter by identifying three basic styles: directing (“tell employees what to do”), discussing “ask questions and listen”) and delegating (“let employees figure it out their own way”). Each of these styles has its advantages and disadvantages depending on the situation and the choice determines how managers go about other activities such as communication, goal-setting, decision-making, performance monitoring and establishing rewards systems.

Leadership Attributes

Extensive time and resources have been devoted to the search for “attributes” and “traits” of effective leaders, as well as characteristics of dysfunctional leaders.  Much of this work has been conducted under the umbrella of settling debates about whether leaders are “born or made” and, to the extent that genes are not totally responsible for leadership success, what strategies can be used to teach people how to execute the behaviors though to be associated with effective leadership.  Leadership is important to the progress and success of emerging companies and this report provides an overview of some of the more interesting research on "leadership attributes" and the conclusions of researchers that their is hope for teaching persons in leadership roles how to execute the behaviors associated with effective leadership.

Japanese Management Systems

The tremendous economic success enjoyed by Japan and its companies in global markets during the 1970s and 1980s led to a flood of research and analysis regarding Japanese management systems, including comparisons with the methods used in the US and Europe and prescriptions from commentators as to how Japanese management practices might be transferred to firms in the US in order to boost their performance.  The work conducted in this area corresponded with an explosion of global economic activity and it was often argued that international competitiveness could be directly tied to the managerial styles and systems.  At the same time, the study of culture began to play a more important role as researcher explored how societal cultures influenced the way that managers coordinated activities in their organizations.  This report provides a brief introduction to some of the work that has been conducted on Japanese management systems.  Beginning with this post, we are shifting to a new monthly publication schedule that will transition to a newsletter format, although special posts will still be made as necessary for development that we believe merit the immediate attention of our visitors.