What is Management Development?

Management techniques are continually evolving, organizations are changing drastically and reformating in an effort to meet changed external and internal environments and improve their performance. The realization of this truth led to the advancement of management development as an important aspect of management. Management development advances the need to educate, train, and develop the skills of managers, supervisors, and even workers of an organization.

Many business organizations have recognized that there are several incentives in investing in management education, training and development. The reason being: Whenever vacancies arise, they would be in a position to promote from their own cadre than to recruit skilled managers from outside, thus promoting loyalty among the workforce; Job satisfaction keeps people from looking towards greener pastures, thus reducing labor turnover; The organization would be able to attract best talent if it maintains a good reputation for training and development of its workers.

Management development may be defined as – company or organization extended or sponsored education, or as training and educating employees of an organization, institution, or industry, to empower them with required skills, authority, and position to be able to manage rapid changes that their unit is likely to face. To define, create, and exploit the organization’s resources in this way requires the managers to possess a portfolio of suitable personal competencies of their own. Creating this portfolio is what management development is all about.


It must be noted that business management in the United States of America was on more professional scale even by the beginning of the 20th century, whereas it was not the case with U.K., Europe, or in other parts of this world. U.S. organizations recognized very early the importance of management studies. The industry implemented various theories to try and improve the working efficiency and increase production. Well-known American universities like Harvard, Stanford, and others offered management studies.

Though Britain was the first industrialized country, its business leaders did not find any necessity for such studies. Even until the World War II management learning in most of the Europe took place through practical experience.

Most of the industries in U.K. and Europe were family-owned. It was considered that experience is more important than training and education, especially education! It was believed that ‘managers are born and not made.’ There was no way others can learn management, as no such subject or course was available in British and European Universities.

By 1960s, this gap began narrowing between U.S., European, and other countries of the world. Improved technology and communications, exchange of ideas led to the universal acknowledgment of management development as an important factor that cannot be ignored in management studies.

In late 1960s, professional institutes of management were set up in other parts of the world, but based on mostly US Business School Curriculum. They played an important role ever since, and by late 70s, started to bring in professional management methods into organizations.

It’s since 1980s that management development has been seen as a key dimension of economic success. The modern management theory shifted from its market focused and competitive positioning of their products, to a more ‘resource-based view of management’ (Thomson, Mabey, Storey, Gray & Iles, 2001). Here, management is considered as one of the most important resources of an organization (capital, human resources, etc). Thus, the focus has now shifted to ‘core competencies’ and how they, whether skills, knowledge, technology, brands, or operational systems, are exploited and integrated and how these are taken benefit of and made proper use to the benefit of the organization.