The Blackwell Encyclopedic Dictionary of Organizational Behavior

Document
inception of action learning, project-based learning and live learning in more open-ended, TEAM
BUILDING activities offered by independent training institutions.
Page 306
The 1980s introduced theories of management learning which emphasized the three-way responsibility
of individual, organization, and educational institutions for planning, individual learning, and
ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT. The focus has therefore moved since the late 1940s when
management was seen as an, albeit newly fledged, emerging, positive science in which predictability,
planning, and deterministic models of behavior were the basis of understanding. More recently,
theorists have characterized the essential unpredictability of organizational processes, seeing
management education as an opportunity for the individual to acquire behavioral SKILLS, including the
skills of learning. Current practice is embedded in an understanding that individuals present for a formal
program of management education with a good deal of experience and some possibly quite specific
expectations, and exit the formal stage of management education with an increased range of options for
managing his or her own subsequent CAREER.
Parallel developments in the theory of organization have repositioned organization development in
terms of the management of change. This has been based on a more subtle understanding of the nature
of ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE and ORGANIZATIONAL CLIMATE as looser and less
systematic congeries of beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, and symptomatologies than totally structured
patterns of belief and interpretation. The concept of the LEARNING ORGANIZATION has become
significant as a function of this transition. Organization development theory, summarized in Burke
(1994), offers a wider framework for the definition of management education. This approach reinforces
a substantial broadening of knowledge and practice to include an emphasis on network structures, new
forms of employer–employee contracts, and different approaches to the utilization of organizational
POWER beyond those modalities relevant in hierarchical organizations. The identification of the
opportunities available to an individual organization by means of a correct analysis of market
segmentation, growth, and product development has been modified to incorporate new thinking about
STRATEGIC ALLIANCES within and between organizations, and the role of cultural variables.
There has been a parallel shift in the orientation of professionals to the generation of new knowledge.
Earlier models of management education located knowledge in university research faculties and
identified the task of professional schools of management as that of disseminating knowledge which, in
a sense, they "owned." It is now more generally presumed that knowledge is generated in the field at
least as much as in the academy.
The changing structures of organizational power and the expectations of a more liberally educated labor
force have refocused the emphasis on initiative, EMPOWERMENT, and entrepreneurial modes of
behavior. The relationship between instructor and student is becoming much more of a partnership. A
recent compilation which deals with these issues is Mastering Management Education, (Vance, 1994)
which covers such topics as the art and power of asking questions, experiential learning, simulation,
group-based learning, as well as the traditional topics as testing, ASSESSMENT, case-based learning,
and microcomputer skills.
file:///C|/downloadnetlibrary/Blackwell%20Ency/nlReader.dll@BookID=48684&FileName=Page_306.html (1 of 2) [2008-04-01 01:28:23]