Management development and firm performance in Germany, Norway, Spain and the UK

Abstract

While comparative studies of human resource management (HRM) are relatively plentiful, few have examined the way organisations in different countries train and develop their managers, or the impact of this upon firm performance. Given the centrality of management capability for corporate and national competitive performance, this represents an important area of enquiry. Utilising telephone interview data from the human resource development manager and a line manager in 482 domestic and multinational organisations in four European countries, patterns of management development (MD) are found to differ according to country and, to a lesser extent, by international strategy. However, a significantly greater amount of organisational performance is explained by internal MD strategies adopted by the organisations concerned and the credence accorded these by line managers. Journal of International Business Studies (2008) 39, 1327–1342. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8400405

Investing in management development in turbulent times and perceived organisational performance: a study of UK MNCs and their subsidiaries

“…Mabey and Ramírez (2005) and Mabey (2008) examined the relationship between MD and organisational performance across multiple, pre-2004 EU enlargement countries utilising matched inputs from both human resource development (HRD) specialists and line managers.…”

“…Mabey's (2008) study includes both domestic and multinational organisations, again utilising a multi-respondent and multi-country approach, set within a process model framework. In this study, the dependent performance variable was an index of subjective organisational performance and the role of international strategy was added as an input.…”

“…A limited number of studies have examined whether there is a link between MD and organisational performance (Mabey and Gooderham 2005;Mabey and Ramírez 2005;Mabey 2008) -and thereby treat MD as an explanatory, or input, variable in analyses of performance. These studies generally find evidence of a positive relationship between MD M. Sheehan 2492 and organisational performance, with a consistently significant finding that perceived provision/importance of MD as viewed by line managers is the 'glue' that cements the MD -performance relationship.…”

Mapping India’s regional subcultures: Implications for international management

“…The seven dimensions cumulatively explained 63.97% of the variance. Reliability of the dimensions was assessed using Cronbach's α, which ranged from 0.63 to 0.89 and are in line with previous studies in international management literature (Lawler, Chen, Wu, Bae, & Bai, 2011;Mabey, 2008;Thomas & Au, 2002). In addition, as suggested by Bartram (1994), Nunnally and Bernstein (1978) and Robinson, Shaver, and Wrightsman (1991), given the large individual-level sample size, we considered an alpha threshold of 0.60 to provide adequate power to identify substantial differences between regions.…”

Predicting Management Development and Learning Behaviour in New Zealand SMEs

“…The importance of understanding intrinsic barriers to MD engagement stems from the view that MD in the SME context is driven not only by organizational and external environmental forces, but also by the individual needs, disposition and unique characteristics of the owner-manager (Cullen and Turnbull, 2005;Mabey, 2008). Bishop (2008) suggests that an individual's participation in MD activities is not a simple and objective matter of weighing up economic costs against the economic returns of an MD programme.…”