Management Styles within Large and Small Firms and How These Styles Essay

Management Styles within Large and Small Firms and How These Styles May Impact On the Employment Relationship - Essay Example This adoption of managerial styles has yielded long term workforce commitment and led to sustainable levels of overall organisational success (Turnbull and Blyton, 2004, p22). This statement clearly implies that management styles have a profound and measurable impact on the long run success of firms, although there have been claims that the managerial styles in large firms differ from those adopted in small firms (Longnecker et al., 2000, p75), due to a number of possible reasons. As a result, the employment relationship also differs within large and small firms operating within the same industry. According to the European Commission (2005, p14), a small enterprise is described as a business, which employs less than 50 individuals. The annual balance sheet or the annual turnover for this business does not go beyond the 10 million euro mark (European Commission 2005, p14). On the other hand, a large enterprise is a business, which has more than 250 employees, and has exceeded the limi ts of a medium-sized enterprise (QFinance 2012, p1). Therefore, this study is attempts to critically appraise the management styles within companies of various sizes, in order to ascertain and illustrate the impact that variations in management styles may have upon the employment relationship. Management styles can be defined as the characteristic ways in which decisions are made related to the subordinates. They are the efforts, direction, and strategies used by the manager to develop an efficient workplace, and accomplish organizational goals. There are five management styles and they include autocratic, consultative, persuasive, democratic, and laissez faire management styles (Chartered Technofunctional Institute 2012, p1). This study is informed by reference to relevant examples and case studies drawn from academic literature, seeking to ensure a balanced examination of the issues relating to managerial styles and their relationship to the employment relationship. In order to do so, this study provides a comparison of the managemen t styles within firms with reference to theoretical concepts in order to examine the difference, if any, present in the styles used by small and large companies. This essay also describes how the concepts of ‘Unitarism’ and ‘Pluralism’ influence employment relationships, and moves on to a discussion played by trade unions and whether their presence or absence might affect the way in which employers and employees deal with one another. These discussions will be used to inform an examination of the main area of inquiry, providing an informed appraisal of the way in which management styles might affect the employment relationship in firms of varying size. Management Concepts Underlying the Management Styles within Large and Small Firms An abundance of academic literature has been published in the field of management, with one of the earliest theories on management style being that of Frederick Taylor (Casell et al. 2002, p673). This management style (Taylorism ) advocates the standardization of strict standards for performance, and was therefore widely adopted by large industrialized firms (Marlow and Patton, 2002, p22). Taylorism was based on quantity and time as important standards for the measurement of output (division of labour), meaning that the adequacy of any worker was judged by the capability to meet a particular production quota (Berk and Berk 2000, p91). Casell (et al. 2002, p674) states that critics of this management style argue that it degrades the workforce, treating them as mere factors of production: the emphasis on judging people according to rate of output also meant that the quality of an item did not matter, only