Increasing Organisational Effectiveness with Managerial Interpersonal Skills – The Role of Organisation Design

Abstract

The impact of managerial interpersonal skills on various organisational phenomena, including organisational effectiveness, is still somewhat unclear and requires additional, more in-depth insights. The interpersonal dynamics through which managerial interpersonal skills can contribute to performance enhancement at all organisational levels take place within a predefined organisational context, highlighting the importance of organisation design for achieving organisational goals and high organisational performance. However, the role of organisational context, defined by organisation design choices, in the effective demonstration and use of managerial interpersonal skills on a daily basis and in the subsequent positive impact of these skills on the organisation is still poorly understood. The main objective of this paper is to examine the role of organisation design characteristics in the relationship between managerial interpersonal skills and organisational effectiveness. To this end, an empirical study was conducted using a specially designed questionnaires on a sample of 89 medium-sized and large companies (over 100 employees) from Croatia. The collected data was processed using SPSS statistical software, with the main statistical analyses being correlation and linear regression. The results indicate that the interpersonal skills of managers overall and at different management levels (top, middle and lower levels) are moderately strongly related to organisational effectiveness and that the organisation design context in which these skills are expressed plays an important role in the aforementioned relationship. Design characteristics such as the number of hierarchical levels, span of control, communication system or the number of geographical locations in which the company operates significantly alter the impact of managerial interpersonal skills on organisational effectiveness. These and other interesting findings of the study represent a valuable contribution to the relevant literature by providing a deeper understanding of the role of organisation design in promoting the positive impact of managerial competent interpersonal behaviour on enhancing organisational effectiveness.