Outdoor Management Development

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 OutdoorManagement 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.