ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to highlight the Gulf Polytechnic experience in management education with special reference to its objectives, scope, mode of operation, early results, future prospects, and conceptual implications. Perhaps one of the triumphs and failures of management education is its rampant pluralism. Scores of models continue to coexist and compete with each other, offering different emphases and ‘mixes’. The rapid socio-economic transformation of the 1970s fuelled by increasing oil revenues and Bahrain's ascent to a regional centre, started to have its full impact at the turn of the decade. The one-track two-tier system has undoubtedly made significant strides within a phenomenally short period. However, for its long-term viability to be assured, it has yet to attain self-sustained growth. A particularly fortunate aspect of having both the one-track programme and Continuing Management Education Programme offered by the same department developed more as a matter of serendipity than design.
