My situation at Abbey is that there is a management style changing to cope with external pressures of expansion and development to dominate competition, which is leading to performance pressures of individuals within the company like myself and will affect the way we work at the company as a whole as well as individuals. The main internal pressure[ 6] within Abbey National is expansion of areas and departments within the company itself.
Therefore the management techniques and control of the organisation is changing in order for the manager to adapt to the situation in hand because more workers are being employed, increase in the amount of workload and most importantly more responsibility for the manager in the workload they have to cope with.
There are many styles of management to adapt to the situation but the one, which Abbey think is the best on is the Democratic Management style[ 7]. Abbey has many teams in their company so they would like the manager’s team to make the decisions and then the feedback of the decisions should go to the manager.
This will mean that the team will b held liable for the decisions that it decides to make. The manager will need to have a good overall understanding of the decisions that are being made. Abbey has confidence in the team manager’s teams that they will use the responsibility given to them wisely. Abbey have tried many management styles to cope with this demand but they weren’t as successful as a Democratic Management which the company eventually incorporated.
Abbey tried a Consultative Management style approach but did not prefer this type of management style because it takes a lot of time to make a final decision.
This is because the manager in this style would prefer to ask other colleagues questions and from them results he/she would make a final decision. If Abbey did follow the Consultative management style then inside the organisation there would be a series of mechanisms like newsletters, suggestion boxes, team briefings and other mechanisms. This makes it easier for the manager because it gives him/her the fell of the concerns of other people involved in the decisions-making process, as well as draw on their expertise.
Abbey also tried an Autocratic management style[ 8] but this management style did not work either for the company. This management style was suited and used by many organisations, but now they either follow the Consultative style or the Democratic Management style. This style was adapted by Abbey where the manager tells his workers what to do and when to do it rather than asking them for any opinions on how the task should be done. This is like stamping the authority that I am the manager in charge of you so you do what I say you do.
This makes the manager at Abbey the only person making the decisions whereas the Consultative everybody was working in a team and they were all contributing to the decisions -making process. Abbey changed their management style to Democratic management style after hard work and grafting by the company and with that they learnt to cope with the internal pressures of the company and adapted themselves to the competition of other banks across the U. K.