Individual Change in a Management Development Program

Abstract

Research into laboratory processes and outcomes has suffered from a lack of precise methods and continuity of effort essential to the construction of empirically grounded theoretical models of learning and behavior change. Data are presented here from a study of perceived behavior changes in employees of a large industrial concern one year after their participation in training.

Participants are seen by co-workers as increasing significantly more than controls in effective initiation and assertiveness, in capacity for collaboration and operational skill in interpersonal relations, and in diagnostic awareness of self and the ability to fulfill perceived needs.

Further systematic inquiry into the determinants of laboratory education is needed to complete the spectrum of alternative designs and outcomes.