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Postgraduate business education in the higher educational institutions in Japan was poorly developed, and lagged far behind not only the other advanced economies, but in some of the developing countries until the end of the 1980s. However, during the 1990s it has undergone considerable changes as part of the reform in postgraduate education in Japan. This article attempts to explain why MBA education did not develop in Japan in the first place, and then how these changes came about. It also looks at the changes in social and economic backgrounds that promoted and speeded these changes. Finally it attempts to view the future of postgraduate professional education in Japan.

Business schools have been under fire for their alleged inefficacy in developing students’ managerial skills in MBA programs. On the basis of extant learning theories, the purpose of this paper is to propose a reconsideration of learning goals and assessment procedures for managerial skill development within MBA education.

The authors review the literatures on stage, experiential, social, and action learning theories to identify pedagogical suggestions for optimal skill development and to highlight the constraints program administrators and teachers face in efforts to advance students’ acquisition of complex managerial skills in MBA classrooms.

Conceptually, the authors argue that an emphasis on mastering complex managerial skills – as an expected learning outcome – might be an overly ambitious goal that can lead to neglecting early attainments in skill acquisition and create false impressions of MBA program failure. Furthermore, the authors discuss how MBA programs could consider the use of newer evaluation procedures for evaluating skill development.

The paper calls for greater attention to intermediate stages of managerial skill development for establishing learning goals, the consideration of knowledge structures for assessing the degree of skill development, and a focus on managerial skill development as a life‐long process.

Based on the 1991 Shirley Lerner Memorial Lecture, a discussion is conducted of the challenges and opportunities facing teachers and researchers arising from the rapidly changing practice of industrial relations. A widening of the scope of the subject, to include its individual as well as collective aspects, it is argued, is fully compatible with seeing the main focus as the employment relationship. The challenge to the subject′s research tradition of empirical enquiry, multi‐disciplinarity and above all, its integrity, is much more fundamental. Maintaining this tradition is not only vital for industrial relations, but also for the future direction of the business schools in which most industrial relations teachers and researchers find themselves.

This paper seeks to highlight the significance of the recent debate on the “academic‐practitioner divide” for postgraduate marketing education in terms of informing objectives, chosen scope and structure and service provision.

Data were collected on 60 programmes at 45 UK higher education institutions (HEIs) by desk research and from 129 PG students enrolled at five British Universities by means of a questionnaire.

It was found that these were close parallels between PG and UG programmes in the UK. From the perspective of students intending to become marketing practitioners, five key strengths and weaknesses of current marketing education provision were identified.

Data on current PG marketing programmes was only collected from a sample of UK HEI's and not internationally. Data from students was collected only from five UK Universities.

Suggestions are made for the ways and means by which PG programmes can be enhanced pedagogically and made more relevant to practice. Brief proposals are also made in respect of improving input into programme and class design by current practitioners – especially programme alumni.

It is hoped that all sections of this paper will be of value to postgraduate programme leaders in directing, leading and developing their courses strategically and tactically.

The study aims to explore, via empirical evidence, executive assessment of Master of Business Administration (MBA) graduates in Nigerian companies.

The research utilized a descriptive research design with structured questionnaire developed from relevant extant literature. Relevant data analysis, including determination of the psychometric properties of the research instrument, was undertaken via the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software.

The research results indicate that MBA graduates in the surveyed Nigerian organizations exhibited desired managerial tendencies only at an average extent.

The limitations associated with the research include the use of convenience sampling approach, limited sample size and combination of respondents from different industrial sectors.

The research has practical implications for organizational executives associated with management development programmes via MBA, in addition to university administrators with regard to content, format, curricula and process for MBA education programmes.

The research is original and has practical and theoretical values.

Summarizes a study that consisted of an empirical analysis of organizational career planning and management techniques ‐ activities, programmes and processes that are part of the human resource management role. Focuses on the actual use of these techniques and their evaluation by management and employees in 60 high‐technology organizations in Israel and the UK. The findings illustrate the applications of these techniques, their perceived quality and their estimated necessity. Presents an analysis ofthe management perceptions and employees’ attitudes towards the various techniques. Reports findings which indicate the actual use of the career development techniques and reveal problems of organizational communication.

This paper examines and discusses the developments in the field of career management, bringing in the international perspective. In particular, the paper explores career management practices in 108 Indian organizations. A factor analysis procedure suggested five groups of practices: formal planning, formal active management, developmental, career stages and assessment. These are found to be associated with certain organizational and cultural characteristics. The research has both theoretical and practical implications.

Reports that the evaluation of organizational units is of great importance for the organization. However, we face severe difficulties when conducting such processes, especially with regard to the human resource management (HRM) department. Discusses conventional approaches to such evaluation, focuses on their limitations, and suggests a new method for such an evaluation. The suggested method is based on an additive measure comprising HRM practices carried out in the organization. It was applied in an empirical study in which the HRM quality of 51 organizations was evaluated by four different sources: the organization’s top management, the organization’s employees, the environment (assessment of reputation), and an objective measure that was established based on the suggested approach. Concludes that, among the set of intercorrelations between the sources, the last one had the highest correlation with the others, which may indicate the value of the suggested method.

Construction companies face dramatic changes in today's competitive market conditions. IT is increasingly becoming a competitive tool in this market place. The industry is taking a fresh view of how to use IT in order to improve productivity of the sector. In order to assist in this process, Sarshar et al. (2000) undertook a major review of academic research and industrial best practice and formulated a vision for managing construction project information in the next 5–10 years. This paper compares two case studies of the actual use of IT against this vision. The paper highlights some common gaps in current IT applications in construction companies. Based on these gaps some recommendations are made on the areas, which the industry might focus upon.

This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.