Financehome The British manager, and indeed many American psychologists and social scientists, will observe this practice with some suspicion, since although certain intelligence and aptitude tests have been well validated within careful defined limitations, there is very little evidence to justify the testing of personality, particularly as such tests might well take place at a moment when the man or woman who is being tested is in the throes of some abnormal emotional disturbance such as a bereavement or other personal upheaval. Inany case it may fairly be asked what right a business has to probe into the private lives of the people it wishes to employ. Lastly, it is interesting to mention, as an example of the freshness and originality of the American approach to train The Training of Managers . a minor feature introduced in some courses mg, a ness Game. Readers who have been familiar with the delightful if ruthless 'Monopoly' or who have joined in TEWTS or War Games, can visualize how the operations of competitive business may be designed in terms of a game. Such games have been developed in which the activities of research, production, marketing, and finance are represented on paper or by counters and players, equipped (on paper) with a certain amount of capital, and set to compete with each other, using their capital to develop production and marketing resources as they consider wisest and as the trends of the market dictate. Sometimes the games are so complicated that the results of decisions made and the reactions on competitors must be calculated on a standby computer! It is claimed that such games are of value in training executives in decision making; certainly the postmortem discussions are useful in bringing out the interaction between the different functions in business, and the games themselves illustrate the use of management accounting and control procedures. The young aspirant to a career as a manager, wondering how he can best equip himself by study and experience for this most arduous yet most rewarding of responsibilities, may well be perplexed at the variety of paths from which he must make a choice. Postgraduate course, technical apprenticeship, evening classes, sandwich course? the decision is important as he will be committing much of his time and energy to it and these are the main resources out of which he must build his career. 187 the Busi It may be some comfort to him to know that the seasoned personnel director is no less perplexed confronted with the problem of how best to ensure for his organization a planned succession of men with the right character, experience, and training to fill each management position as it falls vacant. Job rotation, role playing, external courses. personal finance