MANAGERS' PERCEPTIONS

Managers' Perceptions of the Strategic Role of Management Development

Managers' Perceptions of the Strategic Role of Management Development

Review

This article focuses to the on-going debate surrounding management education and development through an examination of the development experiences of managers studying for an MBA by distance learning at Warwick Business School. It analyses the extent to which management development opportunities, both formal and informal, are seen to support managers in their day-to-day roles and deliver those skills necessary for the future.

The research attempts to elaborate the kinds of development undertaken by the managers, how the managers themselves perceive these initiatives and their relative effectiveness as learning opportunities. The research also provides the opportunity to compare responses from US managers with those from managers in other countries and thus go some way to answering questions about the extent to which there has been international convergence in management development away from the highly differentiated experiences (Luoma, 2005, 645-656).

The survey evidence shows that in some respects the experience of US and Overseas respondents are quite similar; they both receive large amounts of training and development from their employers and show a preference for more 'non-formal' routes of learning. In other ways their experiences are quite different: US managers take up their first full-time job and their first managerial appointment earlier than the overseas respondents and overseas respondents placed much more emphasis on networking and learning from outside their own organizations than did US managers. The research also suggests that integrating management development activities with other human resource policies and practices, such as performance evaluation and reward remains problematic and that there is a strong perception amongst managers both in the US and overseas that their organizations do not view management development in a strategic way. (Priem, 2001, 57-66)

When looking at future development ...