Read this essay to learn about Management Development. After reading this essay you will learn about:- 1. Meaning of Management Development 2. Need for Development 3. Approaches 4. Methods 5. Effective Management Development Programme.
Contents:
- Essay on the Meaning of Management Development
- Essay on the Need for Management Development
- Essay on the Approaches to Management Development
- Essay on the Methods of Management Development
- Essay on the Effective Management Development Programme
Essay # 1. Meaning of Management Development:
Development is different from training. While training improves skills of a person on the present job, development improves his skills on future jobs. It enables a person to assume jobs of higher skill, competence and responsibility.
It is the “long-term training designed to increase an employee’s job effectiveness and to develop his or her ability to assume greater job responsibilities”. It prepares people to assume jobs with higher responsibilities in future.
Training is, thus, related to the current job that a person is performing. Development improves his ability to perform present and future jobs with greater competence and skill. “Training increases the skill while development shapes attitudes.”
The top management should place high priority on the corporate agenda to develop the employee competencies. Development aims at changing the capacity of people to perform their work better and increase their potential to accept future assignments of higher value.
Development is a step further than training. It develops the competence of managerial personnel to assume present and future responsibilities. It promotes the view that one should make learning a habit and see work problems as opportunities for learning.
It, thus, follows that:
a. Management development is a continuous process.
b. It is based on the premise that there is always a gap between present and future potential to perform. Development aims at exploiting the untapped potential of a person to convert it into organisational performance.
c. It is a challenging process as it enables to forecast environmental opportunities and threats and relate them to organisational strengths and weaknesses.
d. It is a goal-oriented process as it prepares people to focus on goal achievement activities in the optimum way. Optimisation results in effective use of resources.
Essay # 2. Need for Development:
Development programmes are required for the following reasons:
1. It improves knowledge, skills and attitudes of a person and makes him effective on the job.
2. It prepares a person to assume jobs of higher skills and competence.
3. It leads to individual growth and organisational effectiveness.
4. It identifies creativity and potential for innovation and makes people competent to hold jobs that require special talents.
5. It promotes career development, managerial and communication skills of people.
Essay # 3. Approaches to Management Development:
There are two approaches to management development:
1. Programme-oriented approach and
2. Manager-oriented approach.
The programme-oriented approach emphasises on training managers irrespective of their abilities and competence. Since managers differ in their orientation towards the problem, complexities, experience, capacities and personalities, a common training programme cannot be adopted by all organisations.
Thus, management development programmes are oriented to the nature of managers. Need analysis is recommended and training programmes suitable to their nature are devised. This is the manager-oriented approach.
Essay # 4. Methods of Management Development:
Similar to methods of training, management development programmes fall into two major categories:
1. On-the-job methods:
In these methods, managers observe the behaviour of other managers and learn through them. Excellent managers, thus, act as role models for other managers who follow their behaviour.
Different on-the-job methods are as follows:
(a) Coaching:
The superiors provide coaching to the subordinate managers and guide them to acquire various working skills. This develops potential managers who succeed the outgoing managers.
(b) Job rotation:
Managers work on different jobs by rotation and acquire varied skills to work on those jobs. Managers gain experience of different departments to perform a wide variety of tasks.
(c) Training positions:
The fresh appointees work under managers as trainees and assistants. Gradually, they develop managerial skills and become competent to assume higher managerial positions.
(d) Planned work activities:
The trainees take important job assignments and attend meetings to learn managerial aspects of the organisation and, thus, develop their managerial skills.
2. Off-the-job methods:
In these methods, managers are trained outside the work place. While working outside the organisation, they meet people from other organisations, share their experience and knowledge and get mutually benefitted.
The important off-the-job management development methods are:
(a) Classroom coaching:
Classroom coaching develops various case studies and role playing methods to enhance skills of managers. It introduces managers to new concepts, principles, theories and business situations and enhances their knowledge on management development areas.
(b) Sponsored programmes:
Various outside agencies and universities conduct programmes for management development. Managers attend these courses rather than getting training within the organisation. Lectures and demonstrations form part of such development programmes.
(c) Seminars:
Managers of different departments pool their ideas, information and suggestions and learn through each other’s experience in seminars. Problems of different nature are discussed and solutions are suggested without disturbing the actual work situations.
(d) Simulation:
Models of real business situations are created and managers perform roles similar to the actual work place. Without disturbing the work situations, managers develop competence and skill to deal with behavioural and non-behavioural aspects of their jobs.
Essay # 5. Effective Management Development Programme:
The following measures make the training or development programmes effective:
1. Responsibility:
The responsibility for conducting training programmes should be of staff managers and development of human resource or manpower should be the prime responsibility of line managers.
2. Training the trainers:
Managers conducting training programmes must be trained. Ineffective trainers make the training programme also ineffective.
3. Need analysis:
Need analysis should be carried before conducting a training programme. It identifies the need for exploiting the potential of a person in order to effectively contribute to organisational performance. It finds gaps between the present and future which can be filled through development programmes.
4. Proper selection:
Since selection of employees/managers precedes training, only those employees should be selected who have the potential of enhancing their skills by attending the development programmes. Training can only modify their behaviour, it cannot change the nature and personality of a person.