Content area
The premises of the present research lie in determining the effectiveness of the State of Qatar's approach to management developmental programmes for government organizations. It examines the system of management in Qatar, assesses the validity of management development programmes being implemented in the country, analyses the influence of various variables on the success of these programmes and propounds means and ways to improve the present system. Studies and surveys involving a population of 55 senior managers, 40 instructors and trainers, and 107 participants undertaken for the present research have established that the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the management development programmes being pursued in this country are due to the following major reasons:
These programmes are not designed in the light of managers' training needs. Most often, no attempts are made at studying these needs and whenever studies ae conducted, they are hardly correlated to the programmes. There is a lack of coordination with regard to the policy, planning and the execution of management development programmes.
These programmes do not take into account the environmental conditions - internal and external, prevalent in the public organizations. Qatar's social, political and economic conditions positively affect the government organizations' efficiency externally as does the atmosphere provided by the management and employees of these organizations internally.
The system of evaluating the success of management development programmes is very weak and does not necessarily reflect on future programmes. It has been firmly established that these programmes are not evaluated in their pre or post implementation stages. This closes the doors for improving these programmes or amending them for future requirement.
Incentives given to the participating managers to improve their knowledge and skills are not adequate and hence, ineffective. The moral and material incentives extended to them fail to incite substantial improvement as they are meager and inadequate.
In the light of the above findings, this study recommends that the training needs of the managers be determined prior to designing a development programme and the communication gap among the policy makers, planners and the institutions executing them be bridged. This would make management development programmes less complicated and more effective. Further, the internal and external environmental variables should also be addressed to make government organizations more compact and smooth running. The utility of management development programmes should be evaluated at each stage so as to amend or improve them for further application. The system of incentives should be made more effective by adding values to them. This would enable the participants of these programmes take them more seriously which in turn would result in the overall improvement of the government organizations. Besides, these steps would help the State of Qatar in smoothly implementing the drive to Qatarize managerial and administrative positions in those organizations.