Question

How learning can be underpinned by a normative ‘management by numbers’ approach and/or is the political, social and economic context in which managers operate acknowledged?

Answer 1

In a business management, factual data is often considered as a leading indicator. Most of the mangers swear by the fundamental of management by numbers. They always strive to portray the business objective in form of numbers. There are 3 components of this approach:

• Targets: every manager is given monthly target to achieve
• Ranking: the efforts of the individual are compared by ranking the efforts of all employees in the department
• Intelligence: this refers to the use of number for more strategic planning and policy formulation rather than setting targets or performing rankings.

Learning however is more qualitative domain of business. Learning needs, to some extent can be managed by numbers but the overall learning experience can’t be totally factually based. The effectiveness of an individual’s learning can’t be gauged by the amount of trainings that he received. Instead the effectiveness of an individual’s learning can be estimated by the change in his behavior and approach towards business.

Learning can be underpinned by management by numbers approach only in the aspect of identifying the learning needs. Seeing an individual’s performance, the areas in which he is lagging can be nominated for training. This can holistically facilitate his overall improvement.