A study comparing British and German approaches to man­agement has revealed the deep gulf which separates managerial   behaviour   in many German and British companies. The gap is so fundamental, especially among   middle   man...

A study comparing British and German approaches to man­agement has revealed the deep gulf which separates managerial   behaviour   in many German and British companies. The gap is so fundamental, especially among   middle   managers, that it can pose severe prob­lems for companies from the two countries which either merge or collaborate. The findings are from a study called “Managing in Britain and Germany” carried out by a team of German and British academics from Mannheim University and Templeton College, Oxford.                                    The differences are shown most clearly in the contrasting attitudes of many Germans and Britons to managerial expertise and authority, according to the academics. This schism results, in turn, from the very different levels of quali­fication, and sorts of career paths, which are typical in the two countries.  German managers – both top and middle - consider technical skill to be the most important aspect of their jobs, according to the study. It adds that German managers consider they earn their authority with col­leagues and subordinates from this “expert knowledge” rather than from their position in the organisational hierarchy. In sharp contrast, British middle managers see them­selves as executives first and technicians second. As a result, German middle man­agers may find that the only people within their British partner companies who are capable of helping them solve routine problems are technical specialists who do not have management rank. Such an approach is bound to raise status problems in due course. Other practical results of these differences include a greater tendency of British middle managers to regard the design of their departments as their own responsibility, and to reorganise them more frequently than happens in Germany. German middle managers can have “major problems in dealing with this”, the academics point out, since British middle managers also change their jobs more often. As a result, UK organisations often undergo “more or less constant change”.                                                         Of the thirty British mid­dle managers in the study, thirteen had held their cur­rent job for less than two years, compared with only three in Germany. Many of the Britons had also moved between unrelated depart­ments or functional areas, for example from marketing to human resources. In con­trast, all but one of the Germans had stayed in the same functional area. Twenty of them had occupied their current positions for five years or more, compared with only five of the Britons. The researchers almost certainly exaggerate the strengths of the German pattern; its very stability helps to create the rigid atti­tudes which stop many German companies from adjusting to external change. But the authors of the report are correct about the drawbacks of the more unstable and less technical­ly oriented British pattern. And they are right in con­cluding that the two coun­tries do not merely have different career systems but also, in effect, different ways of doing business.