An empirical examination of factors that influence selection in strategic management development
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine empirically the influence of fifteen environmental, organizational, and managerial factors on the selection of managers for strategic development, to discover the "ideal" impact of these same factors on the selection of managers for strategic development, to determine whether relationships exist between an organization's business strategy and its management development strategy, and to ascertain to what extent organizations base the selection of their managers for development on strategic plans. No empirical studies have evaluated the impact of factors that influence selection in strategic management development.
A questionnaire was developed and mailed to four hundred twenty-eight members of the Management Development Professional Practice Area of the American Society for Training and Development. Eighty-six usable responses were returned. Thus, the participation rate was twenty percent (20.09%). Analysis of the data included descriptive statistics, composite rankings, paired t-tests, and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA).
Results of the analysis showed the factors that influence the selection of managers for strategic development the most are as follow: (1) annual profit, (2) economics, (3) the manager's attitude, (4) the organization's culture, and (5) the competition. However, when respondents ranked the "ideal" impact of the same factors on the selection of managers for strategic development the analysis produced the following results: (1) the organization's long term goals, (2) the manager's goals, (3) the manager's performance appraisal, and (4) the nature of the specific task tied with technology. Clearly, major differences exist between what practitioners perceive to be the "ideal" influence of the factors and the current impact of the factors that influence the selection of managers. Using ANOVA, a few statistically significant relationships were found to exist between an organization's business strategy and its management development strategy for some of the fifteen factors of interest. Also, top management was found to base the selection of managers for development on strategic plans at a remarkably low level.
The related literature on the strategic development of management suggests that relationships exist between an organization's business strategy and its management development strategy. Data presented in this study supports speculation that relationships exist between organizational strategy and management development strategy.