The Development of Management and Leadership Capability and its ...

National Management Standards and general frameworks
The ideas of management competence were adopted at national level in the MCI
Management Standards, in the 1990s. These were offered as a tool for employers, but also as
a framework for structuring management and leadership development in the education sector
i.e. for the accreditation of vocational qualifications. The standards were first accredited as
the basis for qualifications in 1991, and a revised set similarly accredited in 1997.
The original Standards were a complex framework, taking a largely task-based view of
management broken down into managing operations, managing finance, managing people,
managing information. Each of these main groups was broken down into units of competence
and further into elements of competence. For each element, performance criteria and range
indicators were produced, for use in assessment. These early Standards were also
differentiated for various levels of management - supervisory, first line, middle, and senior
management.
Management standards
Nearly ten years on and after several rounds of adjustment, the national Management
Standards are now maintained by the Management Standards Centre, part of the Chartered
Institute of Management. The current Standards define the purpose of management as 'to
achieve the organisation's objectives and continuously improve its performance.' There are
now seven 'key roles' making up the framework - manage activities, manage resources,
manage people, manage information, manage energy, manage quality, and manage projects.
A proposed revision of the National Standards (on the MSC website) makes the framework
slightly simpler. There is a proposed new definition of the key purposes of management and
leadership - 'to provide direction, gain commitment, facilitate change and achieve results
through the efficient, creative and responsible deployment of people and other resources.'
51 skill items are proposed arranged into six clusters: providing direction, facilitating change,
achieving results, working with people, using resources, and managing self. It is interesting
to note that this rather simpler, more fluid and person-centred framework is closer to those
employers have been using for a long time.
Versions of competence frameworks are used across large areas of the public sector, for
example the Senior Civil Service (see Cabinet Office website) and the leadership of the NHS.
Employers have struggled with earlier versions of the National Standards and how to use
them alongside their own competence frameworks. The complexity of accrediting tailored
management learning against the Standards has made such accreditation problematic for
employers (Hirsh, Burgoyne and Williams, 2002). This is one of the issues being addressed
in the shortly to be released revision of the standards.
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