Robert L Katz identified three kinds of skills for administrators. Which among the following skills was NOT identified by Katz?
Design skill
Design skill was not one of Katz’s three — option 3.
Katz’s three managerial skills. In his 1955 Harvard Business Review paper “Skills of an Effective Administrator”, Robert L. Katz argued that effective administration rests on three developable skills rather than on innate personality traits — a deliberate break from the trait theories that dominated until then.
| Skill | What it is | Where it matters most |
|---|---|---|
| Technical | Proficiency in a specific activity — methods, processes, procedures, tools; knowledge of the work itself | Lower / supervisory management, closest to the operation |
| Human | Ability to work with people — to lead, motivate, communicate and build cooperative effort within a team | All levels, roughly equally — every manager works through others |
| Conceptual | Ability to see the enterprise as a whole — how functions depend on one another, and how the organisation relates to its industry, community and economy | Top management, where decisions affect the entire organisation |
The central claim of the paper is that the mix changes with level. As a manager rises, the technical component falls away and the conceptual component grows, while the human component stays important throughout. That is why an outstanding engineer does not automatically become an outstanding general manager, and why promotion without conceptual development so often fails.
Why “design skill” is the distractor. It comes from a different framework. Harold Koontz and Cyril O’Donnell added design skill as a fourth — the ability to work out practical solutions to problems, not merely to recognise them. A manager who can only see a problem is, in their phrase, no better than a “problem observer”. It is a genuine concept, but it is not Katz’s, and the question asks specifically what Katz identified.
Why the framework endures. Katz’s point that these are skills, not traits, made management development possible as a discipline: skills can be taught, practised and assessed. Every later competency model — Mintzberg’s managerial roles, Boyatzis’s competencies, modern leadership pipelines — builds on that assumption.
Hence, the answer is Design skill.
Similar Questions
Match List - I with List - II.
List - I
(Name of Study)List - II
(Name)A. Time and motion study I. Koontz and Donnell B. Hawtdorne experiments II. Elton Mayo C. Universalist approach III. F.W. Taylor D. Bureaucracy IV. Max Weber Choose the correct answer from the options given below :
Match the List-I with List-II
LIST I
Approaches of ManagementLIST II
ExplanationA. Decision theory approach I. Managing is seen as mathematical process B. Management science approach II. Managerial practice depends on circumstances C. Operational approach III. Focus is on making decisions D. Contingency approach IV. Draws together concepts, principles, techniques and knowledge from other fields of managerial approach Choose the correct answer from the options given below:
Match the following and select the correct code of matching :
List - I List - II (a) F.W. Taylor (i) Fair day's pay for fair day's work (b) Henry L. Gantt (ii) Motion study (c) Frank and Lillian Gilbreth (iii) Graphic scheduling for planning and controlling of work (d) Max Weber (iv) Bureaucratic organization Code :
Assertion (A) : Taylor stressed on revival of interest in human resources at work by focussing on increased production by rationalizing everything.
Reason (R) : He assumed that “workers want to earn maximum for minimum work”. Codes :
According to Henry Fayol, which one of the following combinations of qualities are required in a manager?
Neo-classical organisation theory emphasises on which one of the following?
Important Questions from Theories of Management
The following statements relate to value based organisations. Choose the correct code for the statements being correct or incorrect.
Statement I: Nature of a corporation has been analysed by theorists as private rights theory, social institution theory, contractual theory of the firm.
Statement II: Nature of the corporation has been explained by input-output model under stakeholder theory; each stakeholder group constituency is integral to the operation of a corporation.
In which of the following streams was Classical theory of organisation developed ?
1. Bureaucracy
2. Administrative Theory
3. Scientific Management
________ argues that managers merely act as custodians of the organization and its operational activities.
- Match List I with List II related to Elton Mayo's Experiments on Human Relations.
List I (Experiment) List II (Year) (a) Philadelphia textile mill
experiment(i) 1924-27 (b) The Great Illumination
Experiment(ii) 1928-31 (c) Special study of Human
attitudes and sentiments
(Interviewing Programme)(iii) 1923 (d) Bank wiring experiment (iv) 1931-32 - Consider the following statements and choose appropriate answer from the options given below.
Statement I: Gullick and Urwick developed organisational principles.
Statement II: According to Gullick and Urwick the Co-ordination through authority is an important principle of organisation.
