Business
Management Problems in Barbados: Analyzing the Causes and Solutions
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are not representative of Barbados TODAY. There may be a deficiency in management competency in organizations, hindering operational performance.
5 min read
Originally published by barbadostoday.bb (opens in new tab)
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author(s) do not represent the official position of Barbados TODAY.
There appears to be a management problem in Barbados.
Listening to the call-in programmes on any average day, having a casual chat with a consumer trying to procure a service from some of the local businesses or even a member of the public interacting with Government departments – the complaints are universal. Failure to meet agreed timelines, poor communication and follow-up, lack of trained human resources, and even the organisation’s ability to meet deliverables due to resource constraints. These summarise the issues affecting the delivery of services and suggest a failure of basic principles and processes in the operations of the organisation. Principles that point to management effectiveness.
Whether it’s Henri Fayol’s modern management theory, Koontz and O’Donnell’s functions of management, or Peter Drucker’s work in the field of business management, there are enough theoretical frameworks that can be employed to improve our management capacity. The University of the West Indies and other tertiary institutions offer several faculties of management that train scores of students per annum for there to exist a deficiency in the operational performance of organisations, at both the public and private sector levels.
What then is contributing to the dearth of management competency in the executive suite? The issue may lie in the suitability and deployment of skills within the institution and the concomitant failure to employ the appropriate systems to support the management function.
Though management itself is a profession, the situation at hand must not be confused with technical skills in professional services. A person trained as an attorney, architect, engineer, accountant, economist or even a politician who studied political science, is not necessarily a competent manager. Unless these individuals developed specific skill sets in management, it cannot be assumed they would perform effectively as the chief functionary of the organisation.
Small business owners, too, are often guilty of not employing effective management capacity in their operations to ensure the firm can pivot to a higher level of growth and profitability. Often the self-employed person or entrepreneur, who may have a particular skill or hobby they wish to monetise, enters the marketplace without a clear plan for the development of the business idea. The business model is more geared towards the production of the good or service for which the business owner is skilled, without thought to records management, resource organisation and allocation, key performance indicators to monitor and measure growth, and a blueprint for business development and expansion. The absence of these processes and systems to ensure a viable and profitable business will result in the firm being stunted, uncompetitive, undercapitalised, resourced constrained and unsustainable. The outcome is usually the closure of the business or limited operation for a finite period.
