Editorial

Citation

Paauwe, J. and Williams, R. (2001), "Editorial", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 20 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/jmd.2001.02620baa.001

Editorial

About the Guest Editors:Jaap Paauwe is Professor of Business and Organisation at the Rotterdam School of Economics, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. He is a research fellow and coordinator for the research program "Organising for Performance" of the Erasmus Research Institute for Management (ERIM). His present research interests include HRM and performance, HRM in different institutional settings, organizational change and learning and contingent labour.Roger Williams is Professor of Industrial Psychology at the Rotterdam School of Economics, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. His research interests are in the areas of individual and organisational learning and development leading to sustainable performance improvement. Recent projects in which he has been involved concern the forces influencing the development of Internet companies, and determinants of expatriate managers' success and failure.

One of the most important changes with which the manager of the early twenty-first century has to cope is the dismantling of the boundaries which have for so long given much needed stability to organisational life.

Four different boundaries are being dismantled around today's manager. The first, and a major reason for publishing this collection of papers, is the removal of boundaries between countries. The modern manager's career will expose him or her more and more to a variety of cultures. Not just through having to work away from the home country on short-term flying visits or the full expat experience, but also due to the increasing globalisation of business. The Internet is opening up a new world of business exchanges resulting in widely expanded worldwide procurement and sales opportunities. Internationalisation, working with and through people from other cultures, is a given for many modern managers.

The second form of boundary that is becoming ever more amorphous, is that of the organisation itself. As a result of joint ventures, strategic alliances, outsourcing and virtual networks supported by the latest information technology, the actual limits of the organisation itself are becoming ever more translucent and vague. Managers are having to learn to manage people over whom they have no legitimate authority – and yet whose performance may be vital for their own success.

The third group of boundaries being rapidly dismantled around the manager are the functional boundaries within his own – and others' – organisations. Managers do not just have to work with people from other national cultures, and from other organisations, but they also have to learn to operate successfully within cross-functional groups. The growing emphasis on customer satisfaction and delight, leading to a concentration on the management of key processes as well as on results, combined with the ever growing tendency to organise on the basis of task forces and projects, means an ability to make a contribution through moving quickly in and out of a variety of teams, irrespective of their constitution. An ability which is becoming highly prized.

And the final boundary which is falling victim to the pace of modern life is perhaps the most important. The boundary between work and non-work, between life at the office and life at home is crumbling rapidly. For many managers the competitive pressures coming from globalisation, and the spread of the subsequent downsizing have increased the pressure on managers to produce and lessened the time available for them to do it in. And the technological revolution has made it possible and often indeed preferable for many to work from home as well as – and often for as long as – from the office.

In this volume we look at how Dutch management development professionals are coping in a country where these fundamental changes in the manager's working environment are clear for all to see .

In the first paper we discuss seven key questions which could – and perhaps should – be asked of any MD programme irrespective of time and place .

In paper two, Jansen, Van der Velde and Mul report the results of a survey of nearly 100 large Dutch companies concerning their MD policies and practices. From the results they developed a useful typology of four types of management development which, the authors suggest, could well be related to the organisations' own stage of development.

Following on this paper are a number of papers outlining the experiences of three major organisations, each of which have had to face many of the challenges posed in this introduction.

Mahieu starts her paper with a short historical sketch of MD within the Shell group. This is followed by a more detailed overview of developments since the corporate change in emphasis to more efficiency starting in the mid 1990s and what this switch in emphasis has meant for management development within Shell. The trend to individuals taking more responsibility for their own development is clear as is the relation with relevant environmental changes.

Similarly Reitsma shows in his paper the changing environment within which Unilever has to operate. This paper describes the major changes in strategy within Unilever occurring from 1995 onwards and their consequent effects on people development policy and practices. This has resulted, amongst other changes, in a new emphasis on the integration of people development with other company systems and on shared responsibility for development between the individual and the company. Attention is also paid in this paper to the recently developed Unilever Performance Development Planning process .

Hoeksema and de Jong, in their paper, stress the importance of MD for international co-ordination and consultant motivation. Their company was formed after the recent merger between the two major consultancy companies Price Waterhouse and Coopers. Both had an increasing number of clients who operated globally and both at the same time had to cope with the fact that many of their consultants regarded their time as a consultant as but a useful stepping stone in their managerial careers. The authors outline the role that management development policies and practices can play in facilitating both international coordination and consultant motivation in the newly formed operation.

Two further papers take us back to the more academic world. First, Ardts and his colleagues make a new and stimulating analysis of the socialisation literature and suggest how, given the desired outcome, the different available instruments may best be combined.

Then Van der Sluis and Hoeksema report their ongoing research into the interaction between individual characteristics, organisational characteristics and management learning. Their observations have some interesting possible implications for practitioners.

Finally, the concluding paper takes up again the theme of reflection as we review possible lessons which can be learned from this collection of papers using the same seven-question framework outlined in this introduction.

Jaap Paauwe and Roger WilliamsGuest Editors