The Training Triangle: Expectations of Course Members, Tutors and Sponsoring Organisations

The Triangle, Stuart, in an important article on management development, talked of the “contractual triangle”, the relationships of the three parties involved in a management development programme — the manager, the educational institution and the manager's employing organisation. He argued a case for encouraging the parties to make explicit their expectations from the development process and to confront the areas where conflict becomes apparent in order to develop what he terms “compatible contracts”. This paper sets out some of the preliminary findings of a number of research studies which the authors have been conducting in an effort to understand more about these expectations and about the relationships, particularly between the manager and the educational institution. The overall research programme will, it is hoped, shed light upon the nature of the expectations of each party to the development contract; it will explore the extent to which these expectations are attainable; and it will consider more fully the notion of the “compatible contract” and ways of achieving it.