The Complementary Management Model

This chapter introduces a new theoretical model of people management and leadership. The Complementary Management Model describes it as a bundle of specific tasks that represent preconditions of human performance. The two service functions of support and discipline are concretized in each of the tasks. Ideally, the employee fulfills all of these tasks in their entirety as a self-manager. As a complementary actor, the line manager intervenes in a compensatory manner only when the employee is unable to fulfill these management tasks. If this does not happen, senior managers and HR advisors step in. Through these three elements of the core model, Complementary Management ties in with, among other things, the theoretical approaches of Shared Leadership and Leadership as a Service as well as with task models of leadership and management. Implementing this core model requires four further elements: management routines, management instruments, management unit design, and management resources. The systematic relationship can be summarized as follows: the management actors fulfill management tasks (e.g., performance feedback) using management routines (e.g., interviews), apply management instruments (e.g., work schedules), require management resources (e.g., business information), and do all this on the basis of the unit structures (e.g., the design of their job). The main purpose of the model is to provide a theoretical basis for corporate models (= principles and guidelines) of management and leadership.