A Guide to Management Development Techniques

Citation

Mumford, A. (2002), "A Guide to Management Development Techniques", Industrial and Commercial Training, Vol. 34 No. 5, pp. 198-198. https://doi.org/10.1108/ict.2002.34.5.198.1

Fee correctly says that there has been little attempt to evaluate comparative strengths and weaknesses of various techniques of developing managers. He browses over various issues of definition, the first resulting in him saying that there is no difference between a technique and a method. Nor does he find any great value in trying to define what a manager is. Of slightly more general significance, though not subsequently used in the book, is his review of the issues of what the words management development, management training, management education and organisational development mean. While, in my view rightly, he says that the word development needs to be understood as embracing both input and output, he also concludes that education is in some sense more wide ranging and larger than development.

His review of how managers learn is, one might say politely, selective. He offers views from my own textbook (while criticising some aspects of it) and uses Kolb’s learning cycle and the Honey and Mumford learning styles in his description of learning. In his later analyses, he refers frequently to the likelihood or otherwise of a technique matching a particular learning style. Quite rightly he emphasises that this is part of an attempt to be learner centred in the choice of technique, and he regards the connection to the preferred learning style as one of the most important criteria in choice of technique. It has been the case with a number of authors, excluding Honey and Mumford themselves, of assuming that managers have only one preferred learning style. While the relationship between a learning style and a particular technique is the most important issue for this book, it may be worth pointing out that while 35 per cent of managers do have only one strong preference, 46 per cent have preferences for two or more. Fee provides a handy appendix on the relationship between learning styles and particular techniques, which inevitably seems simplistic given its appearance on one page.

The analysis of the relationship between a technique and learning style is not accompanied by analyses of any other factors, which is rather a pity. While it is helpful to be reminded that issues of practicality and cost effectiveness should form part of the reason for choice, it would have been good to have been given some examples of this in practice.

This is a useful short work on a subject given far too little attention. It does not assess things at the depth provided in my own resource, but is clearly aiming to meet a slightly different perception of the market for such a book. The coverage in terms of described techniques largely overlaps my own with some, in my view slightly odd, additions. While I quite accept that they can contribute to the analysis of a development need, I do not regard psychometrics, assessment techniques or development centres as being development techniques. A valuable addition compared with my own resource is that Fee presents a number of case studies of particular techniques. So, as a short, quick guide, perhaps as an introduction to the subject, this is a useful little book. It would have benefited from an introduction which spelled out in more detail why the choice of techniques should receive more attention – perhaps by adding to his case studies of the successful introduction of techniques, some examples of where a technique has been wrongly chosen.