Book Description

Despite of the rapid globalisation and international business there has been a growing consensus that the quality of an organisation's human resource is a critical factor in order to manage the change. Economic reform in China has led to rapid business expansion within the region. Chinese policy makers are aware that the development of its managers is crucial to creating competitive advantage in its post-WTO period. Training and education is therefore an important means of management development improving the competencies of managerial personnel with a global view. As a consequence large numbers of Chinese managers have been sent on training and education in the Western countries in order to bring new ideas and approaches to their organisations. This thesis questions whether the training has successfully achieved its objectives and how the effectiveness of such a training intervention can be addressed. It has been widely accepted in the training' community that evaluation of training effectiveness is an essential step in designing a training program. However evaluation is often problematic, particularly when the training seeks to achieve outcomes which are not readily measurable, as is the case in management training and development. Moreover, the involvement of various stakeholders from West and East adds complexity. This research presents a survey study covering 526 stakeholders who are involved in China's overseas management training and development. The approaches to evaluation are explored from a holistic perspective and an evaluation framework which uses stakeholder-based approach is developed for management training and development in a cross-cultural context. Moreover this study addresses the empirical and methodological deficiencies 'of research on Chinese managers' development activities in Western countries. This research therefore contributes not only to theory on evaluation, but also on management training and development in cross-cultural settings. A mixed methods approach by triangulation of quantitative and qualitative information is employed to study training effectiveness from the perspectives of different stakeholders. The findings show important variables affecting Chinese managers' learning in Western countries and factors influencing the transfer of Western management to Chinese organisations. The specific characteristics of China's overseas management training are also examined which lead to the conclusion that the evaluation of a management training intervention should not be regarded as evaluating a training programme, but must be integrating with the processes ofmanagement training and development.