However, a note of caution is sounded by Hales and Tamangani (1996) who argue
that claims about the emergence of the “new managerial work” may be overstated.
The nature of managerial work is not radically different in decentralised compared
with centralised organizations, according to their study of hotel and retail companies
in Zimbabwe. What differs is the tactics used to induce managers to carry out their
responsibilities; performance monitoring in decentralised organizations, systems and
regulations in more centralised ones. Furthermore, they argue, the managers in the
decentralised organizations they studied were not less autocratic, merely autocratic
for different reasons; they chose to be autocratic because of their responsibility for unit
performance rather than as a reaction to head office regulations.