Management Development: A Literature Review and Implications for Future Research – Part II: Profiles and Contexts
| Date | 01 January 1990 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/EUM0000000000775 |
| Published date | 01 January 1990 |
| Pages | 3-11 |
| Author | John Storey |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
MANAGEMENT DEVELOPMENT:
A
LITERATURE REVIEW
3
A
n overall assessment of the management
literature. What are the implications for
the conduct of future research?
Management
Development:
A Literature Review and
Implications for Future
Research — Part II:
Profiles and Contexts
by John Storey
About Managers and Management Profiles
While, as noted in Part I of this article[1], the vast bulk
of the management development literature relates to the
question of "the what is done" to managers in all of the
forms as therein described, there is another segment
which concerns itself with the products of those
interventions. That is, a certain portion of the literature
is focused on managers themselves and in particular on
those managers
who
are designated as "high-achievers".
Thus,
a
number of
studies have
sought
to
identify the kinds
of factors which contribute to the making of "effective"
and "successful" managers. (The complication that an
outwardly successful manager, in the sense of someone
who has attained a prestigious position, may not
necessarily be a particularly
effective
one, is a problem
that will be considered later.)
In addition to these studies of the high-fliers, this area
of literature has also concerned itself with the particular
developmental requirements of varying "types" of
managers: specialists and generalists, women, and
managers at various levels.
Before reviewing these contributions, the author wishes
to anticipate a theme which
will
be elaborated in the final
section of
this
article. There are many studies
in
industrial
sociology and other cognate disciplines which could speak
to the questions raised in the debate about management
development. However, they are not normally drawn upon
by the rather cloistered world of management development
as presently constituted. Accordingly, following the review
of the studies usually recognised as patently within the
management development genre, the kinds of contri-
butions which could be made by studies from outside it
will be examined.
To
an extent, this may be seen as a problem of discipline
boundaries, but the issue actually goes deeper than that.
Both in terms of practice and theorising, the field of
management development in Britain has been stunted by
conventional views on what constitutes its proper realm
of concern. To anticipate the argument even further in
the conclusion of this article, if the issue is broadened
so that the question becomes not simply, "What steps
do organisations take to 'develop' their managers?" but
"how is the 'managerial stock' actually managed"?, then,
the danger of reducing research in this area to a set of
pre-assumed categories may be lessened. The problem
is illustrated by the numerous, but usually futile, attempts,
to get senior management to report on
how
much money
they spend on "management development". The elasticity
of the concept is such that meaningless estimates are
typically elicited. If there is genuine interest in knowing
more about
how
managers are transformed from untutored
and relatively naive recruits into economically productive
assets,
then what we need to know about managers and
managing will be found to include questions about what
it is that managers are expected to do, and what they
actually
do,
what sources of recruitment are looked to and
why, how they are informed of their objectives, how they
are motivated, rewarded and evaluated and so on.
The review
in
this sub-section begins with an examination
of those studies within management development
per se
which have sought to educe the characteristic features of
"successful managers". The idea has been that particular
attributes may be isolated which lend themselves to
replication. Thus, Margerison[2,
3, 4]
and Margerison and
Kakabadse[5] report on studies of American chief
executives. The explicit aim of these reports is to identify
the key influences in the career developments of these
executives and to seek from them distilled wisdom about
what aspects of development up-and-coming successors
should concentrate
upon.
The
dual
features of
a
wide
range
of experience at an early stage in the career path and early
exposure to positions of real responsibility appear to be
the key features emerging. Heller[6]
in a
more
journalistic
fashion similarly
aims
to learn the secrets of
the
achievers,
while Lawrence and Kleiner[7] adopt a psychological
approach to identify the attitudinal and "action'' qualities
which the "successful" exhibit. The authors then discuss
what implications these findings carry for future
management practice. In the 1980s this branch of literature
on "managers as heroes"[8] appears to have flourished[9,
10, 11,
12]. In his book, Kay[9], the City Editor of The
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