Techniques of project management

Extract

This paper addresses certain aspects of management practice. As such, it is unusual if not unique in the catalogue of topics discussed by the Institute, and it is instructive to examine briefly why this may be.

Firstly, management and the skills associated with its successful practice are not specifically actuarial concerns. There are numerous platforms from which one may advance theories of management practice and, because management skills are of general application, those platforms are generally broader than the technical disciplines which draw us together as members of one profession.

Secondly, the opportunities for and the consequences of good management are necessarily imprecise, relating as they do to the enhancement of ventures of all kinds through the intelligent use of that most indispensable resource available to managers: the individuals on whom they can call to execute the consequences of their decision-making. The degree of imprecision is so great that the practice of management is frequently termed an art rather than a science. The net of actuarial science has a mesh of a shape to catch a number of philosophies (such as the concept of Equity) which are not purely value-based—but the philosophy of human-resource management has never been one of these, escaping from the sweep of our professional scrutiny to be caught (if at all) in the trawl of the behavioural sciences. It is certainly possible to succeed in the written examinations leading to an actuarial qualification without any consideration of the aptitudes, skills and resources needed for good management.