Management development is a major part of what is called organization development. This is the process of examining a company infrastructure from a point of behavioral science and then affecting positive change within the organization. There are many techniques used such as psychometric testing, surveys, competency frameworks and management development. The definition of organization development is a contractual agreement between a sponsoring organization and a change agent to improve organizational performance.

Pre World War II there was a man named Kurt Lewin who worked at the University of Michigan and experimented with a collaborative change process with training groups. These training groups were not like an actual company organization, they were groups of people who met for experimental purposes without a set agenda. They would be given a hypothetical scenario and asked to respond in a natural way based on what was labeled as, the here and now.

Lewin died in 1947 however the department continued the work on based on the three stage process of implementing collaborative change; planning, taking action and measuring results. The training simulation would work by reviewing individual group member reactions to any given scenario and identifying the problems. These problems included leadership, self serving, communication, status and group structure. Read More→