Employee

Relations
18,1

Getting personal in
personnel recruitment
Brian P. Mathews

68

University of Luton,UK and

Tom Redman
University of Teesside,UK
Introduction
When the literature on recruitment advertising is examined on what should be
contained in a recruitment advertisement, it is not uncommon for writers to express
strong opinions that the personal attributes of the ideal candidate are one area that
should definitely not appear (see, for example, CCH, 1993; Redmond, 1989). Vaughan
(1989) supports the case for a bureaucratic, depersonalized approach to management.
He suggests that it is difficult to decide whether advertisements for managerial
positions that specify personal and social attributes are dangerous or merely absurd.
Further, he maintains that they vary only slightly and generally call for applicants
with strong leadership and communication skills. Other critics have suggested that
the use of personal attributes in recruitment advertisements serves little purpose.
According to Fowler (1990, p. 32):
Many advertisements specify qualities such as enthusiasm, or drive. Together with
describing jobs as challenging, these words have become advertising clichs, and do
little to inform or attract applicants.

Employee Relations, Vol. 18 No.1,

1996, pp. 68-78. MCB University
Press, 0142-5455

This position seems to conflict with the preferences of the target market themselves.
In a survey of over 25,000 managers and professionals, The Guardian(1988) found
that 67 per cent of respondents wanted to know the personal characteristics required.
Further survey evidence conducted by City Research Associates (1988) for Price
Waterhouse, provides additional support, finding that 82 per cent of managers prefer
advertisements with the full details of the specification of the person sought. It also
runs counter to recent developments in managerial thinking. For example, the increasing
debates on managerial competences with its emphasis on personal skills (Boyatzis,
1982), charismatic leaders (Atwater et al., 1991) and calls to develop diversity and
encourage individuality in managers (Allcorn, 1990; Mandell and Kohler-Gray, 1990).
In support of their inclusion, some writers advise not only that personal attributes
should be present but that they should be used as the central theme to structure the
recruitment advertisement. Hill and Maycock (1991) suggest that adverts that use
personal attributes through a life theme as their most prominent feature appear to
be more successful than their traditional counterparts. Recruitment campaigns for
Business Sales Consultants by Volvo and pub managers at Joshua Tetley, using
advertisements based on personal attributes, produced a high quality and very costeffective response, with advertising costs per appointee at Volvo of 480 (Lunn, 1987).

Barsouxs (1993) comparative review of recruitment advertisements in the UK,

Germany and France, also found an emphasis on personal attributes in UK
advertisements. Advertisements for German managers stressed technical qualifications
and in France even the type of awarding institution. Barsoux concludes that while
French and German advertisements for managers are boringly straightforward,
those for British managers are positively racy. Further, such managers are not
selected for their brains, as managers are in France, or for their expert knowledge,
as in Germany. Instead, the British place a premium on character and behaviour,
on social, political and putative leadership skills. Considering this UK emphasis
on character, it seems that it may be appropriate for personal attributes to appear
in recruitment advertisements.
The views and advice appear to be locked in conflict, but there is very little
empirical research on actual practice to help resolve the issues. To what extent do
practitioners heed the prescriptive advice of personnel texts? There is a dearth of
reported research on recruitment advertising as a whole (Redman and Mathews,
1994). The aim of this article is to examine the usage of personal characteristics in
job advertisements. We restrict ourselves to an investigation of advertising within
the personnel/human resource management (HRM) discipline. Given that the literature
on recruitment stems from this area, one can reasonably expect that such advertisements
would typically display good practice. This focus also permits us to explore whether
advertisements for posts at different levels or functional areas within personnel
management vary regarding the inclusion and range of personal attributes. We
conclude by debating the issue of whether advertisers should employ personal
characteristics in their advertising strategy, and possible drawbacks involved.
Research design and data collection
The source for advertisements in this study was the Institute of Personnel and
Developments monthly journal, Personnel Management. By using this journal, the
target market of the advertisement is relatively certain. It does focus on managerial
occupations and generally is aimed at professionals or those with aspirations to be
so. This focused data collection strategy may inhibit generalization to other media
(e.g. newspaper) and managerial disciplines, but it does permit a greater depth of
analysis.
A coding frame was developed to record the personal characteristics. This was
a two-stage process. First, a superficial scan of about 800 advertisements was made.
This provided a listing of personal characteristics that were mentioned and an idea
of the relative frequency of each. These were put into alphabetical order and a unique
code allocated to each. Advertisements were then coded systematically using this
coding frame. Additional characteristics identified during the coding phase were
added to the end of our list.
Along with the characteristics, a range of other demographic information was
collected allowing us to report on differences between levels in the organization and
in differing functional areas. We categorized the posts into junior, middle and senior
management according to the job title, experience requirements and remuneration
package. Junior managers may have the title assistant or trainee; middle

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Employee
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managerial posts tend to be referred to simply as managers. The top end comprises
directors and senior managers. The functional area was derived principally from
the job title. Five categories were defined to cover the range of personnel/HRM areas.
Specialist functions, such as health and safety, were not specified because of the
relatively small incidence of such advertisements.
For the main study, we planned for a data set of about 1,000 usable advertisements.
While statistical reliability was not the main driving force in this choice, it was not
thought worthwhile to work with smaller numbers. Should confidence intervals be
required, this sample size allows estimates with accuracy around 3 per cent.
Editions of the journal were selected at random from the 1989 to mid-1991 issues.
The complete set of advertisements were coded from each of the selected journals.
The sample could be said to be a cluster sample. In total, six editions were used and
1,138 advertisements were coded with 1,106 usable. This reduction was as a result
of the exclusion of one display advertisement placed by a recruitment consultant
which contained only job titles.
In order to examine the nature of changes over time in the use of personal
attributes, a further set of 500 advertisements was coded from two issues of the
same journal published in 1980, ten years prior to the centre of our main sample.
Results
The first stage in the analysis is to examine how many of the advertisements contain
reference to personal characteristics and the specific nature of these. At a macro
level, the vast majority of the advertisements carry some reference to personal
characteristics. To be specific, some 81 per cent contained reference to at least one.
Our record was the one advertisement that beat the coding system and referred to
17 different personal characteristics. A more typical number was two to three.
There are some 88 different characteristics listed. Only six of these words appear
in 10 per cent or more of the advertisements, hence only the most prominent of these
are worthwhile analysing in detail. There seems little to be gained from discussing
the minute differences of low count characteristics, since little meaningful comparison
can be drawn. For this analysis, only the first ten most frequently used characteristics
will be included. Looking at the current usage and the changes that have occurred
over the last ten years the results are shown in Table I.
Overall, the incidence of personal attributes in recruitment advertisements is
high; in both periods, four out of five recruitment advertisements specify one or
more.
In terms of the specific attributes appearing, we find evidence of both continuity
and change. Communication skills remain the single most common attribute to be
specified, but the usage has increased markedly, now present in some 29 per cent
of advertisements. On the other hand, a number of attributes have shown a substantial
decline. For example, requests for managers with negotiation skills has markedly
declined, dropping from the third most frequently requested attribute in the 1980s
to 53rd in the 1990s. This reflects the decreasing influence of trade unions, the decline
in collective bargaining, and the reduced importance of what Tyson (1987) terms
the contracts manager role of personnel management. It seems, certainly as far

Rank
(n = 1, 106) Now

No.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

Communication
Enthusiastic
Interpersonal
Innovative
Initiative
Committed
Self-motivated
Creative
Analytical
Energetic

Number with attributes

Ten years ago

(n = 500)

No.

319
147
141
132
110
107
93
91
80
79

29
13
13
12
10
10
8
8
7
7

Communication
Teamwork
Negotiation
Management
Progressive
Analytical
Administrative
Initiative
Leadership
Enthusiastic

65
59
33
30
26
25
24
22
22
19

13
12
7
6
5
5
5
4
4
4

899

81

396

79

as personnel managers are concerned, that we have entered the non-negotiating

nineties.
In contrast, we find an increase in requests for managers to be flexible, innovative,
creative, energetic, self-motivated and willing to take the initiative. This again seems
to fit the picture portrayed by the new managerialism literature, which suggests
that for managers to be successful in the 1990s they need different skills and abilities
to those of their predecessors (Kanter, 1989; Peters and Waterman, 1982). A central
theme within much of this literature is that managers need to become more
entrepreneurial (Fulop, 1991) and market-minded (Peters, 1991). Our analysis of
recruitment advertising seems to suggest that the enterprise message is reaching
those recruiting managers.
Perhaps the only surprising omission from the top ten attributes for managers
is that of teamwork, down from a ranking of second in the 1980s to 17th in the
1990s. Teamwork has been described as the concept of the 1990s (Income Data
Services, 1988) and one explanation may be that being a team player is now so
ingrained into the managerial job specification that there is simply no need to
explicitly request it any more. We also found some advertisements struggling to
balance and articulate their requirements, on the one hand between aggressive,
individually driven entrepreneurial managers, and team players on the other. For
example, one advertisement for an advertising company bore the headline Players
with brains. They continued by detailing their requirements: Imagination, balanced
by a commonsense approach; a strong sense of urgency but without compromising
on quality of work, and finally, an individualistic approach with the ability to fit
in with the team.
Finally, there were many attributes requested which defy classification, such as
requests for street-wise, fun loving personnel managers with bags of oomph,

Getting personal
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recruitment
71

Table I.
Incidence of personal
characteristics now and
ten years ago (number
and percentage of
advertisements)

Employee
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and some we can only describe as odd. For example, in one company the successful
applicant had to have a golf handicap of no more than 18!
Managerial levels
Variation with seniority within the organization is now reviewed. As a manager
rises in an organization it is not unreasonable to expect the nature of the job to
change and thus the required personal attributes necessary. It would be expected
that the patterns in word usage would follow a sequence related to the operational,
tactical and strategic focus of the levels. One might also reasonably expect attributes
relating to different levels of authority to appear (see Table II). Yau and Sculli (1983)
provide a review of managerial skills and traits and are able to differentiate between
these levels.
Junior
Rank (n = 453)

Table II.
Incidence of personal
characteristics at
different levels of
seniority (number and
percentage of
advertisements)

No.

Middle
(n = 261)

No.

Senior
(n = 148)

Communication 130

29

Communication

75

29

Communication

41 28

Enthusiastic

81

18

Interpersonal

36

14

Strategic thinker

29 20

Initiative

54

12

Enthusiastic

27

10

Innovative

25 17

Interpersonal

53

12

Innovative

26

10

Interpersonal

20 14

Innovative

50

11

Analytical

22

Creative

14

Self-motivated

48

11

Energetic

22

Energetic

14

Organization

32

Committed

21

Enthusiastic

13

Energetic

31

Organization

19

Influential

13

Flexible

30

Creative

18

Management

12

10

Analytical

26

Initiative

17

Positive

12

364

80

203

78

Number with
attributes

No. %

124 84

Advertisements for senior managers are more likely to specify personal attributes
than junior or middle management roles. Middle management advertisements are
least likely to specify attributes. Perhaps this reflects the malaise surrounding
middle management in general (Syedain, 1991). According to Golzen (1990), describing
oneself as a middle manager these days is about as wise as claiming to be a communist
in Eastern Europe.
As it turns out, the top ranking skill is consistent throughout good communication.
Entrepreneurial attributes are ranked higher in the more senior positions, but are
still important in the lower and middle positions. This seems to reflect the view of

a number of writers that organizations are now so complex that entrepreneurial

skills are required at all levels, not merely within a small number of senior managers
(Evans, 1986; Nilakant, 1991). The middle manager needs interpersonal skills and
a more analytical approach. Strategy does get a mention at the senior levels and,
interestingly, enthusiasm is negatively related to seniority perhaps it is not becoming
to be enthusiastic at board level.

Getting personal
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recruitment
73

Functional areas
Turning to the functional areas, there is a less marked basis for expecting variation.
One argument might be that we could expect differences in the attributes required
of a human resource manager (Guest, 1987) compared to a traditional personnel
manager (Thomason, 1991). We might also expect that the attributes of an industrial
relations manager, with an emphasis on dealing with trade unions and negotiation,
would differ from, say, a training or resourcing specialist (see Table III).
Two main findings emerge. First, there is general support for the expected
stereotypes of the functions. Training and development specialists are required to
have superior presentation skills. Industrial relations managers, on the other hand,
are expected to possess negotiation skills and be positive. HRM advertisements ask
for strategic thinkers and, interestingly, energetic managers. Also, some less marked
differences are worthy of note. Specifically, industrial relations managers are expected
to be ambitious (which may help them to move out of a declining specialism).
Training manager profiles are unique in seeking analytical skills, an ability often
cited as lacking in personnel overall. Otherwise, there appear to be relatively few
material differences between the individual personnel management functions in
terms of percentage ranking.
Second, however, the resourcing functions specify personal attributes somewhat
less than other areas. We see no obvious explanation for this, but could speculate
that recruiters are unsure of exactly what the personal attributes of a good resourcer
should be, whereas those for the mainstream functions are much more familiar. On
the positive side, given the recent fluctuations in the labour market, there is recognition
of the need for problem-solving ability and the drive to reach a satisfactory
conclusion in such posts.
Discussion
Our research identifies the use of well over 80 different personal attributes mentioned
in personnel job advertisements. It appears that over 80 per cent of advertisements
contain reference to at least one personal characteristic and that their use has increased over the last ten years. Given the clear message from the normative literature,
it is a major matter for debate whether personal characteristics should appear at
all. If a reasonable case can be put for including personal characteristics, then there
comes the issue of what characteristics should be used.
The language of personal attributes, skills and competences for managers is still
rudimentary (Hirsch and Bevan, 1988). However, many organizations are now
spending considerable efforts on researching managerial behaviour and effectiveness
(Lipshitz and Nevo, 1992). For example, studies of the characteristics of successful
personnel managers find that personnel managers themselves consider personal

Employee
Relations
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No.

Training/
development
(n = 277)

No.

Industrial
Relations
(n = 78)

Communication 120

29

Communication 92

33

Enthusiastic

62

15

Innovative

44

Interpersonal

52

12

Interpersonal

Committed

46

11

Initiative

43

10

Innovative

38

Self-motivated

General
Rank (n = 417)

No.

Communication

23

29

16

Positive

14

18

42

15

Enthusiastic

12

15

Creative

38

14

Initiative

12

Analytical

37

13

Achievement

10

Organization

33

12

Innovative

10

36

Enthusiastic

30

11

Interpersonal

10

Flexible

35

Initiative

30

11

Negotiation

Proactive

27

Strategic thinker 28

10

Self-motivated

10

Creative

24

Presentation

Ambitious

338

65

83

Number with
attributes

Resourcing
Rank (n = 106)

Table III.
Incidence of personal
characteristics in
different functional
areas

26

81

235

85

No.

Human Resource
Management
(n = 135)
No.

Communication

28

26

Communication 32

24

Enthusiastic

18

17

Enthusiastic

20

15

Interpersonal

16

15

Energetic

19

14

Innovative

14

13

Strategic think

19

14

Committed

12

11

Committed

18

13

Self-motivated

Innovative

16

12

Drive

Interpersonal

15

11

Flexible

Creative

14

10

Initiative

Influential

14

10

10

Problem solving

Initiative

14

10

80

75

110

81

Number with
attributes

attributes to be by far the most important criteria that determine success, outweighing
both experience and training (Buckingham and Elliot, 1993; Guest and Horewood,
1981). It seems that personnel managers believe who you are, that is the nature
of the managers personality and social skills possessed, are essential minimum
characteristics for success, while education, experience and job knowledge are
merely desirable. It is not surprising then, as our study shows, and in stark contradiction
to the prescriptive literature, that this emphasis finds expression through the job
advertisement in the recruitment of managers.
Further evidence on the use of personal attributes in recruitment advertisements
also suggests that there is a reasonable justification for their use. For example, the
Halifax Building Society found that when recruiting older workers, such as women
returners, detailing qualification requirements puts off such applicants. The Halifax
discovered that by emphasizing skill requirements and personal attributes the
attraction of such applicants was enhanced (Lodge, 1990). Personal attributes thus
appear to possess considerable potential in helping the recruiter to target the
advertising campaign and thus facilitate cost effectiveness.
There is, however, potential for using personal attributes as a form of covert
discrimination. Tillsley (1990), in her study of recruitment advertisements, identified
implicit ageism in the attributes used in personnel management advertisements.
Recent research suggests that some less scrupulous recruiters are using certain
personal attributes as a form of covert age discrimination. In particular, McGoldrick
and Arrowsmith (1993) identify enthusiastic and energetic (our ranking of second
and tenth) as possessing ageist overtones. Other words, further down in our rankings
but by no means of infrequent usage, with similiar echoes of ageism include
ambitious and dynamic.
It also seems that a further implication of the use of personal attributes in job
advertisements poses a particular threat to the recruitment advertising industry,
that of increasing the shelf life of a recruitment advertisement. The finding of a
recruitment campaign for business sales consultants for Volvo contradicts conventional
wisdom that there is a strong effect of the law of diminishing returns at work with
the multiple use of the same job advertisement over time (Duncan, 1985). The
performance of a theme-based advertisement, incorporating individual attributes,
was similarly successful between one placed in September 1989 and one placed in
January 1990. This led Hill and Maycock (1991, p. 14) to conclude that:
Whereas employers and agencies are inclined to vary the presentation and copy from
appearance to appearance, it appears to make more sense to use a productive advertisement
repeatedly.

Thus, such warnings to recruitment managers as those proffered by some practitioners

may be encouraging organizations to indulge in unnecessary expenditure if personal
attributes in life-theme-based advertisements can be used more widely, successfully
and, importantly, repeatedly. According to Avis:
In brown-field sites it is too easy to say lets do what we did before. Recruitment managers
will dig out the last advertisement and change a word or two and it wont work (quoted
in Lodge, 1990, p. 26).

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It appears that, by using personal attributes constructed into life-themes, it is

exactly such a strategy that may work. From our research, one in five advertisements
contains no reference to personal attributes. In the remainder, a typical number
would be two. For a life-theme strategy to be effective, a much greater emphasis
on attributes would be expected. Thus, in current advertisements there is little
evidence to support the idea that life-themes are being used extensively, a finding
consistent with the authors subjective assessment of the advertising copy.
Nevertheless, there are some concerns with an unbridled use of personal
attributes. For example, to produce a recruitment advertisement without such key
features as a job title and qualifications required seems a radical step, but this is
exactly what some recommend. Some writers appear concerned about such a
strong reliance on personal attributes and life-themes. OReilly (1991, p. 33) has
suggested that such advertisements with their call to dynamic individuals would
attract legions of self-deluded superficial types. However, the consultants SRI
claim such time-wasters can be weeded out by structured telephone interviews.
The most recent survey by Price Waterhouse (reported by The Times, 1993)
confirms that care is needed. Managers can be put off by some of the words used;
dynamic and proactive are cited as examples. Although these words are not in
our top ten, they do appear in a small but significant proportion of advertisements
(4-5 per cent). Other writers warn of pre-occupation with managerial personality
in general (Vaughan, 1989).
Blackhurst (1991) has argued that the 1990s has witnessed the growth and success
of grey power in managers. This is a welcome respite from the 1980s which are
depicted as an era where the cult of personality dominated managerial thinking.
According to Blackhurst, the colourful psychedelic managerial stars of the 1980s,
such as Sir Ralph Halpern and Sir Terence Conran, were found wanting. Such
managers have been replaced by the uncharismatic, low key, dull but effective
managers of the 1990s. A vivid example of this development is the rise to power of
the outstanding grey John Major.
Conclusions
Attributes emphasize key determinants of future managerial success as perceived
by managers themselves and also facilitate recruiters in targeting their advertising
efforts. It would thus seem to be appropriate to conclude by advising the designers
of recruitment campaigns to spend less money on creative visuals for advertisements
and more on research to establish the essential personal attributes for managerial
success in their organization. These should then be incorporated into their recruitment
campaigns, possibly by way of a structured life-theme. In short, we advise recruiters
to get personal in their recruitment advertisements.
However, our research suggests that most recruiters do not seem to be very
sophisticated in their application of personal attributes. Rather than being used in
a structured and meaningful way they tend to be scattered throughout the advertisement.
Further, we find that, although a very wide range of attributes are used, these tend
to be concentrated in a small number of words that are applied with relatively little
discrimination across functional specialisms.

Personal attributes do figure prominently in recruitment advertisements. Empirical

sources suggest that personal attributes in managerial recruitment advertisements
are expected and valued by potential applicants. Despite the condemnation of using
personal attributes in recruitment advertisements by much of the prescriptive
personnel management literature, on our evidence it is encouraging to note that
practitioners are more aware of their value than are the producers of such advice.
Only further, particularly experimental, research will allow a more definitive verdict
to be given on the effectiveness and value of personal attributes in different management
specialisms.
References and further reading
Allcorn, S. (1990), Keep individuality in top management, Personnel Journal, April, pp. 17-22.
Atwater, L., Penn, R. and Rucker, L. (1991), Personal qualities of charismatic leaders, Leadership
& Organization Development Journal, Vol. 12 No. 6, pp. 7-10.
Barsoux, J.L. (1993), Job ads: reading between the lines. International Management, May, p. 65.
Blackhurst, C. (1991), The rise of grey power, Management Today, August, pp. 27-32.
Boyatzis, R.E. (1982), The Competent Manager: A Model for Effective Performance, John Wiley &
Sons, New York, NY.
Buckingham, G. and Elliot, G. (1993), Profile of a successful personnel manager, Personnel
Management, August, pp. 27-31.
CCH(1993), British Personnel Management, Job advertising, 17-300 to 17-650.
City Research Associates(1988), The Price Waterhouse Recruitment Advertising Survey, Price
Waterhouse, London.
Duncan, D.C. (1985), The Economics of Selection: Costing for Manpower Decisions. NFER-Nelson,
Windsor.
Evans, P. (1986), New directions in career management, Personnel Management, December,
pp. 24-9.
Fowler, A. (1990), How to write a job advertisement, PM Plus, October, pp. 31-2.
Fulop, I. (1991), Middle managers in the entrepreneurial movement, Journal of Management
Studies, Vol. 28 No. 1, pp. 25-44.
Golzen, G. (1990), New roles for middle managers, The Sunday Times, 24 June, p. l.
The Guardian, (1988), Why Work?, The Guardian Newsapers Ltd, London.
Guest, D. (1987), Human resource management and industrial relations, Journal of Management
Studies, Vol. 24, pp. 503-21.
Guest, D. and Horewood, R. (1981), Characteristics of the successful personnel manager, Personnel
Management, May, pp. 18-23.
Hill, J.R.W. and Maycock, A.B. (1991). The designing of recruitment advertisements featuring
questions which have a thematic content, paper presented at the Occupational Psychology
Conference.
Hirsch, W. and Bevan, S. (1988), What Makes a Manager? In Search of a Language for Management
Skills, Institute of Manpower Studies, Brighton.
Income Data Services (1988), Flexible Working, Study 407, IDS, London.
Kanter, R.M. (1989), The new managerial work, Harvard Business Review, November-December,
pp. 85-92.
Lipshitz, R. and Nevo, B. (1992), Who is a good manager, Leadership & Organization Development
Journal, Vol. 13 No. 6, pp. 3-7.
Lodge, S. (1990), Image maker, Personnel Today, 12 June, pp. 25-6.

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Lunn, T. (1987), A scientific approach to successful selection, Personnel Management, December,

pp. 43-5.
McGoldrick, A. and Arrowsmith, J. (1993), Recruitment advertising: discrimination on the basis
of age, Employee Relations, Vol. 15 No. 5, pp. 54-65.
Mandell, B, and Kohler-Gray, S. (1990), Management development that values diversity,Personnel,
March, pp. 41-7.
Nilakant, V. (1991), Dynamics of middle manager roles, Managerial Psychology, Vol. 6 No. 1,
pp. 17-24.
OReilly, N. (1991), The meaning of life, Personnel Today, February, p. 33.
Peters, T. (1991), Middle Managers Manifesto, Tom Peters Group, Palo Alto, CA.
Peters, T. and Waterman, R.H. Jr (1982), In Search of Excellence, Harper & Row, New York, NY.
Redman, T. and Mathews, S.P. (1994), Job marketing: an evaluation of managerial recruitment
advertising practice, Human Resource Management Journal, Vol. 4 No. 4, pp. 14-28.
Redmond, S. (1989), How to Recruit Good Managers, Kogan Page, London.
Syedain, H. (1991), Middle managers: an endangered species, Management Today, pp. 46-50.
Thomason, G.F. (1991), The management of personnel, Personnel Review, Vol. 20 No. 2, pp. 3-10.
Tillsley, C. (1990),The impact of age upon employment, Warwick Papers in Industrial Relations,
No. 33, University of Warwick.
The Times, (1993), Weasel words, 11 March, p. 33.
Tyson, S. (1987), The management of the personnel function, Journal of Management Studies,
Vol. 24, pp. 523-32.
Vaughan, E. (1989), The leadership obsession: an addendum to Manghams in search of competence,
Journal of General Management, Vol. 14 No. 3, pp. 26-34.
Yau, W.S.L. and Sculli, D. (1983), Managerial traits and skills, Journal of Management Development,
Vol. 9 No.6, pp. 32-40.
(Brian P. Mathews is Prinicipal Lecturer in Marketing, University of Luton, Park Square, Luton,
Bedfordshire, UK; Tom Redman is Principal Lecturer in HRM at Teesside Business School, University
of Teesside, Normanby, Middlesbrough, Cleveland TS6 0QS, UK.)