ABSTRACT
At this juncture in its development, the Administrative Staff College faces a challenging situation. It has a tradition of both pioneering spirit and effective leadership in the development of managers at mid-career. For more than fifteen years, until the advent of the British business schools, it faced little competition. Within the last decade, however, there has been a proliferation of new forms and techniques of management and to some extent distinctive methods of management training. More firms now recognize that education and training can increase the effectiveness of a manager by adding to his knowledge and his range of skills. On the other hand, there is by no means a consensus about the best combination of approaches and methods for effective training. This lack of consensus is particularly marked in relation to the task of developing managers from the middle levels for more senior positions, much depending upon the assumptions made about the nature of the task of development and the nature of managerial work and the processes by which managers in their mid-thirties best learn.
