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Challenges for Intellectual Leadership in Management
Koontz, Harold
7/4  (Summer 1965): 11-18

The article presents information on challenges for intellectual leadership in management. The task of the manager is to establish an internal enterprise environment for effective and efficient operation of individuals working together in groups. This environment is characterized by commonality of purpose, an intentional structure of roles, the removal of obstructions to performance and motivation of individuals for performance. The manager, then, is an environment creator and his job is to design and operate an environment where people, working together in groups, contribute, as individuals, toward attainment of group purposes. A major challenge to managers is that of needed flexibility in the face of change. Change in the external environment of an enterprise implies that those responsible for the internal environment must not only be aware of the external, not only be able to move with it but, have time to plan and be able to forecast it. It means that effective management is flexible management. It implies that a manager understand resistances to change, especially the well-known fact that human beings tend to resist change. A final challenge for intellectual leadership lies in the opportunity for more managerial inventions. It is an interesting thing how so much creative talent has been channeled into the invention of physical designs and chemical compositions and how little into social inventions.

 

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