Outdoor Management Development: Towards a critical perspective

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject Leadership and Human Resources - Miscellaneous, grade: 1.0, University of Innsbruck (Department of Organisation and Learning), course: Issues in Management Development, language: English, abstract: Outdoor Management Development is a concept, based on experiential learning theory, and combines several tasks and activities conducted in the outdoors, with the purpose of facilitating management development and improving organizational processes. The mainstream literature is primarily concerned with the effectiveness of training programmes and the quantifiable observation of performance. Thus, it is strongly biased towards positivism and functionalism. The purpose of our paper is to provide an overview of the literature, and to develop a critical perspective on the concept. We argue that Outdoor Management Development must not be seen as a neutral management tool, but is subject to specific social and political contexts. It should be seen as an emergent process and approached with reflexive awareness. We argue that reflexive practice may be capable of dealing with the issues of context, politics and process, we are discussing throughout the critical part of this paper.