ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates how a constuctionist understanding of the management development process can have practical applications. Past contributors to the debate on management (Argyris, 1996; Eastman and Bailey, 1996) have criticized constuctionist perspectives as offering little in terms of practical relevance. Their view is that whilst they allow researchers to gain important insight into the influence of localized norms and prevailing patterns of behaviour, they do not offer managers solutions to their day-to-day problems. This chapter, therefore, seeks to challenge this view by illustrating how research in management development using constructionist approaches can lead to the development of practical understanding whilst at the same time offering new insights in management development and the behaviour of managers. It does this in two ways. First, it argues that constructionism does provide rational designs by which managers are able to ‘test’ their actions. Second, it shows how these designs can give managers insights into problems and issues that are more effective than those offered by science-based researchers as a
result of them being the product of philosophically inspired creations of the managers themselves, as opposed to the potentially ‘imprisoning’ models updated from outside.
