Management Development - Essay Example

The field of human resource development is particularly related to organizational learning and transfer of learning, each of which is a significant objective. The last twenty years have yielded a large amount of research about which factors are key influential factors in the process of transfer of learning (Mailick, 1998, pp. 57-68). This has led to the practices of management training becoming highly popular over the past few decades, since its link to increasing aptitude and improved management practices for both middle managers and top managers.

However, research (Mumford, 1994, pp. 20-33) shows that most of the substantial resources that companies are allocating to such management training will be wasted, since institutional learning and training hardly transfers into the organization’s workplace. For this reason, the programs have not had a significant impact yet, which leads researchers to further study into such features of human resource management (Ashton et al, 1975, pp. 1-9). The past few decades have been a misguiding era due to the conflicting management beliefs, findings, and practices in the global economy.

While there is still much debate about the effectiveness, methodology, and validity of management development (Mumford, 2004, 71-84), companies are still investing millions in executive management education. This does not pertain only to academic training. The corporate training programs are innovatively designed to cater to several needs of the trainees, such as punctuality of delivery, profound information coverage and job relatedness. For this reason, these training sessions provide learning, which is presented in the context of an organizational workplace, administered at the appropriate time, and sized in small and effective doses, which are easy to comprehend.

However, these programs have also failed to produce desired results of significant magnitude, which is why the true effectiveness of management development is still in question. Discussion The operations of a business being international in the new global economy (ILO, 1998, pp. 10-28), further complicate the management and technique required for survival far beyond how they would be for a domestic firm. Research (Hill, 2007, pp. 28-51) shows how the strategy of the organization (what to do) is receiving more attention on an international scale than its own implementation (how to do it) or the training of international managers (the people who will do it).

The shortage of qualified and capable international managers is a large reason why these companies cannot successfully practice such international strategies, even though the quantity of available research (Rothwell, 2006, pp. 66-79) on the IHRM policies that MNEs practice is insufficient to support this fact. This research is especially limited regarding international markets other than those of the west and their IHRM practices, thus constraining the validity of this discussion. One major criticism that the existing research (Garavan et al, 1999, pp. 191-207) on management development observes is that the core problems that affect the implementation of management have not received sufficient attention.

This pertains especially to the academic perspective about management, which tends to restrict its scope particularly in the UK. This does not allow for room to