Premium
A trainability concept for management potential and an empirical study of its relationship with intelligence for two managerial skills
Author(s) -
GILL ROGER W. T.
Publication year - 1982
Publication title -
journal of occupational psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.257
H-Index - 114
eISSN - 2044-8325
pISSN - 0305-8107
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8325.1982.tb00086.x
Subject(s) - moderation , psychology , test (biology) , applied psychology , empirical research , cognitive psychology , social psychology , developmental psychology , statistics , biology , paleontology , mathematics
This article argues for a trainability concept for management potential, and reports a study of the relationships between intelligence and (a) post‐training performance and (b) gain in performance due to training for two managerial skills, prioritizing and decision making. Thirty‐three subjects took part in two short in‐basket exercises, with a prioritizing and decision‐making training procedure interposed between them, and also completed Heim's AH5 intelligence test. Performance in both skills, before and after training, was found to be unrelated to intelligence as measured. Gain in performance, however, was found to be curvilinearly associated with intelligence in respect of both skills with an inverted‐U shape for decision making. It was concluded that there may be an optimum range of intelligence for trainability in decision making and therefore for management potential. This implies that ability to learn decision‐making skills may be related less to intelligence than to other attributes, intelligence may be overemphasized in assessment of management potential, and intelligence should be seen as a moderator of ability to learn rather than of level of achievement.