Daniel O’Hare, Sheffield Hallam University

Introduction

Whenever one closely observes and experiences the world we live in today, it is not difficult to identify a litany of examples amplifying inept, poor and incompetent management in the United Kingdom. Acknowledging a multiplicity of reasons for this unsatisfactory state, personnel who orchestrate organisations, whether in the public, private or voluntary sector, must bear a portion of responsibility. The question arises however, to what extent could these obvious shortcomings conceivably be attributable to any of the following? Poor personal effectiveness, a weak human resource strategy, lack of training, lack of managerial expertise, minimum management education and development, or indeed a sinuous or symbiotic amalgam of all these factors?
Despite the rhetoric of the United Kingdom’s governmental lamentations, ‘education, education, education’, the sadly neglected area of educating and developing UK managers to levels on par with Europe and many parts of the world, reflects adversely on the quality and performance of UK organisations. Perhaps as a nation, the UK is not educating and developing managers to sufficiently high standards.

At the commencement of this study, the author posed a number of questions relating to the intended key areas of research. These questions were as follows-

In UK management education/learning institutions, are mechanistic formulaic processes being compounded by accepting ‘dirty fish from dirty pools’, shining those ‘fish and returning them to dirty pools’ with the requisite badge?
What attention is given to learning how to reflect and think during the teaching/learning processes of management education and development?
What attention is being accorded to the student’s employing organisation, pre, during and post immersion in this teaching/ learning process?
What attention is being given to the connection, if any, between what the student is learning and the current requirements of his/her employing organisation, or indeed the ever-increasing and complex demands in a continuously changing world?
How effective are current UK management educational processes?
How does the UK fare when compared to management educational processes in other parts of the world?
How in fact do management educators quantify the ever-changing requirements of the world of business?
How do these learning processes prepare students, in particular, younger students, for the political organisational turbulence and machinations they will undoubtedly face?
This study has both addressed and provides substantial answers to these issues.