A Survey Research of Contemporary Management Development Practices In Malaysian Corporations

Abstract

<p class="MsoBodyText3" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 4pt; line-height: 12pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;" lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">This survey was designed and developed to assess key issues related to management development practices in Malaysian corporations especially on needs assessment, programme selection, programme evaluation, and future directions and trends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The survey research instrument is a questionnaire that was distributed to 189 selected Malaysian corporations listed on the Main Board of the Bursa Malaysia or formerly known as Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange (KLSE). These corporations represent a cross-section of local industries and was selected through stratified random sampling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The 16-percent or 31 responses were collated and the data analyzed and interpreted using descriptive statistics. The major findings suggest that despite being aware of the importance of MD practices to achieve productivity and enhance corporate performance, most Malaysian corporations are unsure how to practise MD. They seldom implement value-added MD programmes to improve managerial productivity and enhance managerial performance achievements. The main reason given is cost-effective considerations vis-à-vis actual bottom-line results. Specifically, the majority of the respondents articulated their concern over several areas such as the lack of needs assessment, indiscriminate programme selection, non-standardized programme evaluation and vague ideas about future directions and trends in MD activities. On the whole, the survey research suggests that there is a need for Malaysian corporations to redress the prevailing weaknesses so that any concrete management development initiative undertaken can produce the desired results and productivity outcomes including bottom-line achievements. </span></span></p

Practices of Management Development: A Malaysian Case Study

“…This is a case study which is embedded with several units of analysis, such as organizational units and MD initiatives and practices. The survey by Law (2007b) provides a useful insight into some of the opinions, experiences and issues of MD practices in corporations in the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange (KLSE) and provided invaluable data for this case study. Future research is recommended on testing of relevant hypotheses.…”

“…The approaches include the university residential programs, executive MBA, short-courses and company-specific programs. The exploration of MD research in an individual organization will add to the knowledge obtained from the survey conducted by Law (2007b). This research will furnish empirical information for understanding the practice of MD themes and issues within one researched organization.…”

“…This case study involves exploring MD initiatives by using semi-structured interviews to illustrate and describe MD practices. This would provide a source of qualitative information which adds to the information gathered from the studies by Law (2006;2007a;2007b). This paper tries to explore MD practices developed in a large Malaysian insurance company, Malaysian Assurance Alliance and assess how MD initiatives fit into the organizational needs and tasks.…”