Karpin on Management: Is That All Managers Should Be Doing?

The recent Karpin Committee report once again focused attention on managerial skills and competencies, as it prognosticated on the skills and knowledge required by current and future Australian managers, and the kinds of educational experiences necessary to foster them. In doing so, the report made critical assumptions about the kinds of functions and behaviours that can be properly called ‘managerial’. Indeed, leadership is elevated as the conspicuous task of managers (leaders?). But is this what managers should be doing? Closer examination of the Karpin model of ‘management’, in the broader context of the literature on management and managerial behaviour, shows that the Karpin view is narrow and partial — it ignores or devalues key managerial functions while promoting others. This is due, in part, to the fact that the committee's approach is devoid of any theoretical framework for designating particular behaviours as ‘managerial’. If the Karpin recommendations are to steer management education into the third millennium, the result will be, in turn, a narrow and partial educational experience. This paper argues for an approach to management education driven, not by a populist vision of managers simply as entrepreneurial leaders, but by an appreciation of the necessarily broader range of managerial functions and the way in which they are integrated. It proposes such an approach, derived from management theory and elaborated in the context of Australia and the Asia-Pacific region in the 1990s and beyond.