Conceptual Skills of Management

Manager has been considered as one of the most vital job in the company or organisation. Manager is an individual who coordinates and plans the work of other people so that an organisation can achieve its objectives. This essay will focus on the conceptual skills. Conceptual skills can be described as a sets of ability to manage, lead and making decision for the company’s good, so that the company will be benefited and achieve its objectives regarding the action of the manager. This essay selects Alan Joyce, the CEO of Qantas as the example of someone who must possess conceptual skills. The purpose of this essay is to identify and discuss the importance of conceptual skills that managers are required to demonstrate and also providing evidence and theoretical analysis about it. It is important because conceptual skills are important for the top managers. This essay will show the readers the theory of Katz about the managerial skills and how Alan Joyce of Qantas must use them so that he will able to overcome problems that facing the organisation and continue to operate as a successful airline in both the global and domestic market.

There are several managers that work in one organization. However, not all of these managers work at the same levels. They work at a different position and level. This kind of system is called “levels of management”. There are three levels of managers; top managers, middle managers and lower-level managers (Robbins, Bergman, Stagg, & Coulter, 2012, 17). Top managers are the highest role of management hierarchy. Top managers are usually consist of CEO (Chief Executive Officer) and the Board of Directors. Basically, Board of Directors is a group of representatives that are chosen by the shareholders. After the shareholders formed it, it is the decision of Board of Directors to choose who will be the CEO of the organisation. Then, there are middle managers, which consist of branch managers and the heads of the department. Finally, there are the lower-level managers. It is consist mostly by supervisors.

According to Katz (1955), each managerial level should possess compulsory skills. These skills are called “management skills”. Management skill is an important way to describe what a manager does. Each level of management has different set of management skills. Katz stated that the basic managerial skills were not natural qualities in the managers’ personality, but it is something that managers might and ought to develop themselves in their managerial campaign by giving them the fundamental understanding to access this information. Based on these assumptions, Katz declared the three necessary skills that managers should have; technical, human, and conceptual skills (1955, as cited in Peterson & Van Fleet, 2004). Katz (1974, as cited in Blakely, Martinec, & Lane, 1995) specified that lower-level of management are required having technical skills, executive levels are required