Any organization with a comprehensive training program has a leadership development curriculum. These programs include everything from conventional classroom learning with guest speakers to high-tech simulations and lavish retreats. There also may be mentorship thrown in, as well as multiple job rotations. Despite the well-rounded curricula, many…

Discusses an approach to planning that is necessary if management development is to be successful. (JOW)

Examines the effectiveness of wilderness labs as a medium for developing management skills. Wilderness labs involve taking managers out of the corporate comfort zone into the outdoors to confront physical challenges. (JOW)

The training manager can be successful in a period of economic difficulty by shifting the focus of the training program from activities to results. Benefits of this approach are wider options, flexible programs, budget justification, and support of senior management. (SK)

Effective outdoor management development programs have certain features: emotional intensity, psychological safety, consequences, enhancement of self-confidence, use of metaphors, unpredictability, peak performance experiences, multiple skill/knowledge types, development of the whole person, and focus on transfer. They succeed because they sustain…

Surveys the current status of outdoor training for management development in Britain, including types and quality of providers and courses and advice for organizations interested in offering such training to their employees. (SK)

Criteria for success in management are (1) a partnership between employee, employer, and trainer; (2) continuing education; (3) relevance; (4) interdisciplinary training; (5) action learning; (6) networks; and (7) effective training. (JOW)

Comparison of advantages and disadvantages of three types of management development for women (single sex, mixed sex, and mentoring) concludes that, despite some strengths, single-sex programs risk further isolating women and perpetuating occupational sex segregation. Integrating men and women in management training and mentoring has the best…

Raises concerns about Hanover and Cellar's study : gender and racial composition of the sample, effects of organizational status, questionable variables in the work environment measure, other organizational demographics, and the degree of participants' familiarity with each other. (SK)

Looks at three issues related to management education and development in Great Britain: (1) where responsibility should be for initiating and coordinating action; (2) who should pay for postgraduate management education; and (3) how should the question of quality be addressed. (JOW)

Management development programs should be considered a way to reenergize organizations. Their effectiveness should be measured by managers' intention to use new knowledge. Barriers to new actions should be minimized and the practice of new actions/skills reinforced so they become continuous and long term. (SK)

The author states that to meet the needs of--and to retain--the people in whom organizations have made hefty investments, companies must reexamine and most likely redesign human resource development programs. She presents ways to acknowledge the differences between managerial men and women and establish effective career development practices. (CT)

The authors argue that relatively few local governments conduct rigorous cost-benefit evaluations of their supervisory training and management development programs. The authors conclude that more attention to upper-level evaluation is warranted and provide an evaluation grid with practical suggestions for each level of training program evaluation.…

Explains a procedure to avoid the detrimental biases of conventional self-reports of training outcomes. The evaluation format provided is a method for using statistical procedures to increase the accuracy of self-reports by overcoming response-shift-bias. (Author/MER)

Explains why some programs fail to prove themselves in evaluations yet have substantial benefits. Documents a method of administering self-reports, pre-then-post testing that helps to eliminate response-shift bias. (Author)