Structured management training in the UK and Ugandan civil services.

The aim of the research was to discover strategies for increasing the responsiveness of civil service management training in Uganda in light of the U.K. experience in civil service management training between 1979 and 1991. While the literature has tended to advance theory on management development and training, and to outline characteristics of good management training programmes, there is need to relate the theory much more to the type of organisation.Using Case Study method, the study investigated the development of management training in six U.K. and Ugandan Civil Service organisations, with a view to testing the conjecture that the existence of structured management training in a civil service organisation is evidence that there has been a trigger for change to which top management has responded by instituting a radical change programme, one that involves transformation of policies, structures, processes, products etc.; and an indication that there has been a fundamental change in the way top management perceive the role of management training. Fieldwork findings led to the construction of a new model for understanding the development of structured management training in a civil service organisation. This states that, for structured management training to develop, there must be a trigger for change, perceived as a crisis that requires a significant top management response in the form of a radical transformation of the organisation; the definition of the response to the trigger in management terms by top, rather by senior or middle managers; top management commitment to the implementation of the change; a clear organisational vision, held by the top, shared by key groups, and which incorporates a management development strategy that involves setting up supporting mechanisms and deliberately developing features of structured management training; sufficient autonomy; financial resources and resources of expertise.Recommendations for the U.K. relate to fostering the ongoing development of mechanisms, while those for Uganda focus on the need to implement the radical change programmes that have already been proposed as a result of the recent Public Service Review.