Article Review: Soft vs Hard Management

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This article was in the Harvard Business Review December of 2001. Is “hard” management the way to go or is the other way around is “soft” management the best way to manage? In the article Peace is arguing that soft managers are better managers than hard managers. Peace describes a hard manager as a person who is self-confident, arrogant, and thick skinned. While he describes a soft manager one that listens to criticism and takes time to notice employees opinions. If one has ever worked they have probably experienced hard and soft managers.
In the article Peace describes two stories that illustrates the positive aspects to soft management. In the first story he tells of when he was a manager at Synthetic Fuels Division of Westinghouse. The company was going down and running out of funds to support itself, and the company was looking to sell itself due to financial difficulties. They had already laid off over 100 employees to try and conserve the company long enough for sale. It was coming close to time to lay more people off in an attempt to show that the company would do anything to save itself. Peace and the other mangers came up with a list of 15 people that they were going to lay off, but Peace told the other managers that he would like to break the news to these 15 instead of them doing so. Peace did not have to do this himself, but he chose to do it to show these employees that it was at much dismay that they had to layoff these 15 employees. In doing so Peace not only ...

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