Management Development: Strategies for Action (Developing strategies) - Softcover

Mumford, Alan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0852925182 ISBN 13: 9780852925188

Publisher: Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development, 1993

Synopsis

Personnel professionalism requires directors and managers to keep fully abreast of current business strategy; this series provides the tools for them to make a full contribution to organisational success. This book shows organizations how to combine formal and informal approaches to management development, how to compare internal and external courses, how to look far more closely at the different needs and learning styles of individuals and how to help them learn from experience. The author argues that usual methods of developing potential, promotion planning, training women and getting the best from all managers can be improved dramatically - provided people are willing to go back to first principles and continuously improve techniques.

About this title

Review

This is a brilliant statement about the field of management development. -- John Burgoyne, Professor of Management Learning, Lancaster University Management School and Henley Management College

From the Author

Management Development: Strategies for Action is a fully revised and updated version of Alan Mumford’s well known book, the first edition of which was published in 1989. In subsequent editions, published in 1993 and 1997, new material was inserted but essentially the original structure and objectives was retained. This continuity was partly a reflection of the popularity of the book but also the viability of the key ideas and approach. Previous editions were primarily aimed at practitioners working in the field of Management Development including many managers themselves. As the book title suggested, a key purpose was to prompt action; it was important that practitioners and managers actually worked out what they could do with the material covered. Then, as now, learning is the central issue and without a strategy for action which is realised as action, can any manager claim that learning has occurred?

Through the collaboration with Jeff Gold, Principal Lecturer in Organisation Learning at Leeds Business School, this edition has been totally rewritten, partly to bring it up to date but also to meet the needs of a wider range of readership. The book still provides the guidance for practitioners which gave unique strength to earlier editions but also seeks to meet the needs of the large number of students who now study Management Development as subject for either a professional qualification with the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development or as part of their MBA or other Masters level qualifications.

One of the important enhancements in the new edition is the attention to paid many of the ideas from research and practice that have constructed the field of Management Development. There are vast number of books about what good management is, and what effective managers do and just as many ‘experts’ in business schools, consultancies and elsewhere offering advice on how to be a manager. There are many answers to the problems of how to develop managers and how managers learn. As a consequence, there is a burgeoning stock of ideas and an ever-growing list of books, journals, conferences and websites devoted to the subject of Management Development. One of our key points is that there are no single statements about management which can be applied to all managers in all organisations and what managers do and what they have to learn is contingent on the specific demands of a particular environment. Therefore, we seek to provide also a critical view of what is happening, especially where broad generalisations are made about what managers should learn and how they should be developed. We encourage the readers of the book to take a sceptical view of some of the grandiose claims that characterise Management Development.

Edition details

• Publisher: Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0852925182
• ISBN 13: 9780852925188
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 248