Management development : does the epistemology matter?

Cook and Brown's (1999) and Spender's (1997) dynamic epistemological models are used as a framework to analyse the management development (MD) literature. The purpose of the analysis is to explore what assumptions are held within that literature about the nature of knowledge and learning processes in MD programs, and to consider the theoretical implications for knowledge creation and organisational learning (OL). The paper's findings are consistent with a key contention of these authors that much research on organisations tends to privilege individual and explicit forms of knowledge, and ignore the generative potential of the interplay between the different forms of knowledge (Spender, 1997:123; Cook and Brown, 1999:397). As this privileging of some knowledge forms frames many MD program designs, it highlights implications for the efficacy of these programs and the need for further exploratory research.