In Brief: Differing Views of Management Styles; Taking Executive Views to Social Media

Management styles don’t always achieve their desired results, a July survey by the American Management Association reveals. 

The survey shows that managers and employees have divergent views on the efficacy and appropriateness of different management styles.

“The style a manager uses when leading people is critical because it has a profound impact on [employee] motivation, performance and overall effectiveness,” said Manny Avramidis, CEO of the American Management Association. Managers should choose “the most appropriate style for the circumstances, and both manager and employee have to be comfortable with the style used in order to get the best results.”

In the survey, about half of employee respondents said they’re managed in the style they prefer, while the other half felt dissatisfied with their manager’s style. Some 55% of managers surveyed said they use a democratic style, but only a third of direct reports agreed that they’re managed that way. Nearly 1 in 5 workers called their manager’s style autocratic. 

With Opinion Pages Waning, Execs Turn to Social Media 

As major news outlets eliminate their opinion sections, more business leaders are posting op-eds on social media, Axios reports. Many executives now share their thoughts and opinions on LinkedIn, which has seen a 23% increase in CEO posts during the past year.

Still, placing an op-ed at a major national publication brings prestige and a large audience, even as such placements become harder to secure. New York Times opinion articles reportedly attracted 37% more readers during a recent 30-day period than its general news coverage. op-eds in The Wall Street Journal had 571% more readers than the paper’s general news.

Of note for PR professionals who ghostwrite executive op-eds, publications such as The Hill and Entrepreneur Magazine will not accept content written or assisted by artificial intelligence. Harvard Business Review requires AI-assisted work to be disclosed.

Medium.com, where anyone can publish, does “not welcome” AI-assisted work. ChatGPT and other AI tools are allowed when creating content for Substack and LinkedIn. 

College Students Pursue Degrees in Artificial Intelligence

Colleges and universities are beginning to market undergraduate AI degrees to students, NBC News reports. 

Computer science degrees were once considered the ticket to high-paying tech jobs, but now job cuts and increased competition have made it harder for those students and recent graduates to land tech internships or entry-level positions. It remains to be seen how AI majors will fare, but 13 U.S. schools offering AI degrees include Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pennsylvania, Arizona State University, and the University of Texas at Dallas.

In announcing the University of Southern California’s Artificial Intelligence for Business degree, professor Yolanda Gil said the program “will empower business and organizational leaders to understand the possibilities, as well as the limitations, of AI technologies and to help them better understand the people they serve, predict trends and improve decision-making processes.” 

According to Nancy Xu, founder of AI-powered tech recruiting platform Moonhub, “we don’t have enough people who work in AI and we need more people.” 

Where Americans Get Their Local Political News

American adults most often get news about local government and politics from friends, family and neighbors (70%), a new survey from Pew Research Center finds. Local news outlets are the second most common source of local political news (66%).

Just over half of respondents (54%) say they often or sometimes get news about local politics from social media. Among U.S. respondents ages 18–29, 71% get news about local government and politics from social media often or sometimes, compared with 36% of those 65 and older. 

Conversely, Americans 65 and older are more likely than adults under 30 to get local political news from local news outlets (75% vs. 53%) and from local politicians (39% vs. 20%). 

But people are more interested in news about national politics than local politics, Pew’s survey finds. Americans are more likely to say they are at least somewhat interested in presidential elections (81%) than in local elections (70%).