Management Development:

Management development is any attempt to improve managerial performance by imparting knowledge, changing attitude or increasing skills. In other words, it is a systematic process which prepares managers to handle present and future responsibilities.

According to DeCenzo and Robbins, “Management development is more future oriented and more concerned with education, than is employee training or assisting a person to become a better performer.”

Thus, management development is the process of enhancing one’s ability to overcome the environmental managerial challenges that is encountered by an organizational setting.

Objectives of management development program:

1. Increase the productivity and effectiveness of managers.
2. Assist the organization to identify its future leaders and accelerate their upward mobility.
3. Enable organization to produce the number of competent manger to anticipate growth needs.
4. Encourage self-development and increases ability of managers to take greater responsibility.
5. Enhancing managerial job satisfaction.
6. Encourages the climate of participative management where individual and the organization can mutually set performance goals and measurement techniques.

Techniques of management development:

a. On the job management development: On the job management development includes the following development methods.

i. Job rotation: It means moving management trainees from department to department to broaden their understanding of all parts of the business and to test their abilities. The advantages of this method are: It develops the links between departments, develops employee’s flexibility to undertake different types of activities.

ii. Coaching: Under this method, the trainee is guided actively by senior managers. The coach gives guidance through direction, advice criticism and suggestion in an attempt to aid the growth of an employee (trainee).The disadvantages of this method are there is a possibility of continuing the current management style and practices in an organization, heavy reliance on coach’s ability etc.

iii. Under study assignment: Under this technique, the potential managers are given opportunity to relieve (ease) an experienced manager of his/her job and act as his/her substitute during the period. Through this method, an individual get opportunity to see the job in total in short period.

iv. Committee learning/action learning: Under this technique, a group of people or team is assigned and gives an opportunity share in managerial decision making, to learn by watching other and to investigate specific organizational problems. This is temporary in nature, however, it increases trainees’ exposure to other members, broadens his /her understanding and provides an opportunity to grow and make recommendation under the scrutiny of other committee members.

b. Off the job management development: It includes the following methods.

i. Lecture courses: Different universities and colleges are providing training and development to suit particular organizational needs. This formal lecture courses offer an opportunity for manger or potential mangers to acquire knowledge and develop their conceptual and analytical abilities. This is a popular method of bringing all participants up to a common level knowledge.

ii. Transactional analysis: It is both an approach for defining and analyzing communication interaction between people and theory of personality. The basic foundation of this analysis is that personality consists of three egos state they are the parent ego, the child ego and the adult ego.

• Parent ego: It is an ego state of authority and superiority. A person acting in a parent state is usually dominant, scolding and authoritative. The parent state act what he/she was taught so the attitude and behavior is incorporated from external sources.
• Child ego: The child consists of tall the forces and emotion that are natural. The person at this state can be obedient or manipulative, charming at one moment and repulsive the next. The child is emotional and act according to how he/she feels at the moment.
• Adult ego: The adult ego state is objective and rational. It always seeks for information, analyze it and then only show its behavior .It deals with reality and think before acting.

iii. Simulation: Simulation includes role play, case studies and decision (management) games.

• Role play: Role playing is acting on a specific situation. The aim of role playing is to create a realistic situation and then have the trainees assumed the part of specific person in that situation.
• Case studies: Under this technique, trainees study the cases of determined problems (taken from the actual experiences of organizations) analyze the causes, develop alternative solutions, select what they believe to be the best solution and implement it. It encourages discussion among participants as well as excellent opportunities for individual to defend their analytical and judgmental abilities.
• Decision (management) games: Under this technique, the computer management games are used, which creates the real business situation. The team of member or trainee makes decision by analyzing such situation. Management games can be a good development tools.People learns best by being involved. The trainees develop their problem-solving skills as well as to focus attention on planning rather than just executing activities.

iv. Sensitivity training: Under this method, members are brought together in a free and open environment in which participants discuss themselves. They express their ideas, beliefs and attitudes. The objective of sensitivity training is to provide manger s with increased awareness of their own behaviors and of how others perceive them greater sensitivity to the behavior of others and increased of group process.(It helps to increase the ability to understand other’s behaviors, improved listening skills, greater openness, increase tolerance for individual differences and improved conflict resolution skills.)

Evaluating training effectiveness:

Evaluation involves the assessment of the effectiveness of the training program. Evaluating training effectiveness is one of the major functions of training and development program. It acts as a check to ensure that the training is able to fill the competency gaps within the organization in a cost effective way. The reasons behind evaluation of training program effectiveness are:

1. It ensures the fulfillment of the job requirement.
2. Its feedback mechanism helps to take quick corrective actions, whenever and wherever required.
3. Cost-benefit trade-off can be ascertained.

Criteria for measuring training effectiveness (Kirkpatrick Model)

Training effectiveness can be measured under four basic criteria. They are:

1. Reaction (Thoughts and feelings of the participants about the training): Reaction implies how favorably the participants have responded to the training. This evaluation is primarily quantitative in nature and is a feedback to the training and the trainer. The most common collection tools is the questionnaire that analysis the content, methodology, facilities and the course content.
2. Learning (The increase in knowledge or understanding as the result to the training): At the level of learning the evaluation is done on the basis of change in the attitudes, skills and knowledge of the trainees. The evaluation involves observation and analysis of the voice, behavior, text. Other tools used besides observation are interviews, surveys, pre and post tests etc.
3. Behavior (extent of change in behavior, attitude or capability): Behavior evaluation analysis helps to know about the transfer of learning from the training session to the workplace. Under this level, how an individual execute his/her activities after training is evaluated.
4. Result (the effect on the bottom line of the company as a result of training): The result stage makes evaluation towards the objective of an organization (such as: higher productivity, better quality etc) .Here, the definition of the result depends upon the goal of the training program. The evaluation is done by using a control group allowing certain time for the result to be achieved.

Methods (Approaches) of evaluation training effectiveness:

Following are the method for evaluating the training effectiveness:

1. Test –retest method: Under this approach, participants are given a test before they being the program. After the program is completed, the participants retake the test. The change in the test score indicates the change in the level of knowledge. This method is easy and simple to conduct however, it is not a valid method.
2. Pre-post performance method: In this method, each participant is evaluated prior to training and rated on actual job performance. After instruction is completed the participants are reevaluated. This method is very useful to examine the effects of training on changing the participants knowledge and skills and their attitudes in the real job situations.
3. Experimental-Control group method: This method is used to evaluate the difference in the knowledge, skills and intelligence of the control and experimental group. Members of the control group work on the job but do not undergo instruction. The experimental group is given the instruction. At the end of the training program, the two groups and reevaluated and if the performance of the experimental group improves, training is regarded as on effective one.

Process of evaluating training program:

1. Developing evaluation criteria.
2. Pre-testing the trainees.
3. Providing monitoring the training.
4. Comparing pre and post ability of the trainees.
5. Evaluation of fulfillment of competency group and take corrective action.

Training and management development in Nepal

Training and management development program is considered as a cost burden function in most of the organization in Nepal. These organizations view training as the requirement of the staff and so the staffs need to pay for the expenses incurred. These organizations do not want to involve their organizational cost in those programs. However due to globalization the new manager and new management teams are changing those views and willing to provide training on organization’s expenses. They think if the people are competent enough to execute the activities then, organization can able to compete as well as capitalize the opportunities and sustain in long-term.

Problems in training and management development are:

1. Views as cost burden activities.
2. Show unwillingness to conduct.
3. High labor turnover.
4. Lack of training institution.
5. Lack of implementation
6. Don’t know about career development. Etc.