Management performance for rural development: Packaged training or capacity building

Abstract

Development project training has two objectives: a direct objective to improve organizational performance and an indirect objective to enhance an organization's ability to function effectively within a changing environment. Traditional training approaches that emphasize knowledge transfer fail to meet these objectives because they are place‐oriented and thus emphasize giving standardized training to groups of unrelated trainees at a particular facility; they emphasize teaching the skills trainers know rather than determining management needs or building upon knowledge trainees already possess; learning is expected to occur by inference from artificial examples rather than by attacking real problems; trainees are generally drawn from only one management level at a time; actual performance and skills are not examined; and training is treated as a discrete event rather than as just one ripple in a constant stream of management development activity. To overcome these six weaknesses, an alternative approach is advocated. That approach has two major chaacteristics: it is action oriented and it has an organizational capacity development bias rather than a transfer of knowledge to individuals bias. The action orientation and enhancement orientation are described in detail, the approach is illustrated by a Jamaican example, and implications of adopting an action‐based approach are specified. The authors contend this alternative approach is practical, necessary, and rewarding to those who engage in it.

Linking action training to bureaucratic reorientation and institutional reform

“…From a broader perspective, action training is part of recent efforts to redefine technical assistance roles and project mechanisms to better 'fit' the context of the developing country, the needs of the beneficiary population, and the development task at hand (Honadle & VanSant, 1985;Korten, 1980;Leonard & Marshall, 1982;Rondinelli, 1983;Uphoff, 1986). Honadle and Hannah (1982) provide one of the most cogent critiques of the traditional mode of classroom training used by most donor agencies and public administration institutes in developing countries, and most clearly outline an alternative strategy of action training. They argue that traditional management training has emphasized the one-way transfer of generic skills to specific individuals, rather than the development of relevant skills that are likely to be assimilated by organizations.…”

Supporting justice policy reform: A case study in the role of training*

“…Thus, a particular training method may consistently produce results that are quite satisfying to trainers and trainees (e.g., the training is reliably enjoyable and may even result in some knowledge or skill acquisition) but lack validity in effectively impacting the performance problem it is intended to address. Much packaged training being adopted by some human services organizations today produces reliably positive impacts on trainee attitudes or knowledge acquisition with no demonstrated or even theoretical link to individual performance-not to mention organizational productivity Bazemore 59 (Honadle and Hannah, 1982). In the case of agency productivity, one may extend the research metaphor further to suggest that many training methods are directed at an inappropriate "unit of analysis" in that they target the behavior of individual staff with little concern for organizational climates and cultures which may limit the productivity of even highly skilled professionals (Shein, 1985;Schneider, 1990).…”

Exploring local leadership in Lao-based INGOs

“…In the field of capacity building, scholars have noted the importance of systematic capacity building. Furthermore, development scholars argued that capacity-building occurs over time; it should be perceived as a process as opposed to a single intervention (Honadle & Hannah 1982, Ogilvie et al 2003. The findings in this study show that in practice capacity building work remain stuck in the "quick-fix" approach.…”

“…In the field of capacity building, scholars have noted the importance of systematic capacity building. For example, Honadle and Hannah (1982) developed a systematic framework for capacity building. The framework comprises of "action-oriented" dimension -training the work group does not separate out individuals but involve using real problems and applying the skills to real jobs and "enhancement" dimension -building on existing knowledge and skills not transferring what the trainers know.…”