Management Training and Development Needs Assessment Practices in the Jordanian Private and Public Sectors: Integrated or Isolated?

SUMMARY

This paper aims to unveil the current plans, procedures and practices of management training and development (MTD) needs assessment in the Jordanian private and public organizations. Self-completion questionnaires were distributed to 64 training managers of whom 30 were from the private sector, and 34 were from the public sector. The major research findings include that only one-third of the investigated organizations report having a formal and systematic plan for the analysis of their managers' MTD needs; the majority of these organizations have conducted their MTD needs analysis for lower level management; and, even worse, the overwhelming majority of the respondents report assessing their managers training need in the absence of functional and organizational needs analysis. Also, the findings of the study show that in few of the organizations do training managers report having MTD needs assessment procedures linked with managers job description and management performance appraisal schemes. Finally, the author recommends that training managers should monitor effectively their MTD needs assessment plans and procedures. These plans should be related to the organization needs analysis and to the management appraisal scheme. Also, training managers are advised to make simultaneous analysis of the individual, functional and organizational needs before designing any training programme.

KEYWORDS:

• Managers training and development needs assessment
• Jordan
• private sector
• public sector