The effects of managerial activities on managerial success and effectiveness

The purpose of this paper is to identify the influence of managerial activities on the success and effectiveness of managers using data collected from Canadian, Hong Kong and Taiwanese managers. The results show that for all 3 samples, "effective" activities are different from "successful" activities, which therefore implies that Kerr's (Kerr, 1995) folly of "rewarding A, while hoping for B" holds across national boundaries. In the Canadian case, while none of the managerial activities is related to success, traditional activities improve unit performance. In Taiwan, communications activities enhance managerial success. None of their activities however affects unit performance. The Hong Kong results show that HRM and networking activities are detrimental to success and effectiveness respectively.