Paul Donovan

Training programs enhance the skills of participants. Role-play, one method used for such skill development, is learning through performing a set of behaviors, in accordance with predetermined expectations of a job role in an organizational context. Some learners find role-play daunting, even traumatic. To counter this experience, this article shows an innovative role-play format where, in advance of the program, tutors design and create a “disaster” video—an encounter where almost everything goes awry. In class, the video is shown and the group is divided into two teams: and one team designs and demonstrates a “corrected” version of the encounter. The second team composes a set of best practices on the ideal way to conduct such an encounter. The role-play event is performed in plenary by the “Demonstration” team, and the “Best Practices” team applies their guidelines to the other team’s performance. Instructions on how to use the exercise are given.

In the field of management, a practice–theory gap has developed and consequently, management education has been criticized for being irrelevant to the needs of stakeholders. This article argues that introduction to management courses in higher education perpetuate this gap by not teaching what managers do. These courses fail to communicate well the threshold concept of managing as accomplishing results through other people. Understanding this threshold concept would give students clearer perspectives on the distinction between doing work and managing work in organizations—between being “one of the team” and “managing the team.” Using a class exercise as exemplar, the author demonstrates the use of a set of debate questions in the form of contestable statements regarding doing and managing, which are argued by students in small groups in class before final resolution in a plenary session. Students emerge from these debating sessions with a clearer definition and understanding of the core work that managers actually do. Learners also become cognizant of the need for managers to have an appropriate balance between the amount of managing and doing work they engage in on a daily basis. Without these understandings students become “stuck” and their learning lacks posteducational relevance.

Management development exercises aimed at passing on or scaffolding knowledge and skills in training programs are plentiful but exercises that can help change attitudes are in short supply. Role debate is a structured debating exercises where participants reconsider the way they think about important job-related issues. This article shows a case study where role debate enabled call agents to gain a greater grasp of their organization’s customer service policy. In role debates, participants, working in pairs, take up opposing stances on a given issue. After a few minutes debating, participants switch roles and argue the opposite to their initial stance. This allows for issues to be considered from many perspectives and for attitudes to adjust. Role debate has a wide applicability for teachers and facilitators in numerous settings. Instructions on how to design and conduct as well as several examples of role debates are given.

Considerable expenditure on human resource development (HRD) has not necessarily resulted in a significant impact on organizational performance, and research suggests that the failure to transfer learning may be an important explanation. The search for factors affecting transfer has been extensive, as shown inGrossman and Salas'sarticle in this issue, but, as they also show, more research is needed. The purpose of the present study is to ascertain the views of HRD practitioners (in Ireland) about the factors that they believe are relevant to the transfer of learning in the workplace. The aim is to discover whether practitioners have identified potential factors which researchers have not explored or not explored sufficiently. This group of practitioners was chosen because of the considerable control they wield over significant tranches of organizational resources. The method first involved engagement with 28 senior HRD practitioners in a workshop setting to create a transfer inventory based on their expert opinion. The initial inventory was then responded to online by a group of 314 practitioners indicating the relevance of the items to the question of transfer. Factor analysis was used to achieve parsimony among items, and 21 potential factors were identified. This study focused on the 15 factors adjudged by practitioners to be most relevant. It is concluded that trainer effectiveness, organizational linkage and training event climate, all deemed relevant by practitioners, may justify further research.