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This two‐part article starts by summarising the “story of stress” as developed in the training and development literature and presented on courses for stress management. The story is viewed as helpful but incomplete, for it is only in its simplicity that it accounts for individuals′ similarities, and only in its vagueness does it account for their differences. A need is identified to embellish the story of stress with a comprehensive framework which describes and provides a rationale for both the diversity and similarity of individuals′ stress reactions. In particular, a framework is required which goes beyond “fight or flight” and illuminates how people are physically, behaviourally, mentally and emotionally under stress. What is needed is a coherent and holistic account of personal character in stress. One such characterisation of stress is described, based on stress continuum. At one end of the continuum is located the variety of temporary startle reactions of individuals to transient stressors; towards the middle is the range of stressed responses displayed by individuals experiencing continuing, strengthening and cumulating stressors; and at the other end comes the emergence of stress characters which have cemented habitual and enduring stressed behaviours into characteristic ways of being in the world. Parts 1 and 2 expand upon this continuum. Part 1 provides a holistic description of the full range of individuals′ startle reactions and stressed responses. Part 2 describes the emergence of stress characters, links these characters to the stressors that prompt them and the effects they produce, and considers the methodological implications of the frameworks for those wishing to help alleviate individuals′ stress. Overall, the article develops the original stress story towards one which matches, and beyond that serves to integrate and provide a rationale for, the full qualitative diversity of individuals′ stress.

Learning is a natural human activity. The more trainers seek to contrive learning processes the more problems are created. The author argues for the removal of the mystification and jargon and for the re‐creation of the individual's instinctive and natural abilities to learn/help others to learn.

In our last paper we gave consideration to some concepts of reality within the context of management learning events. Drawing upon the extant body of theory and our own observations from practice we developed working models which enable a greater understanding of reality as a dimension which has important implications for the design of management learning events and for the type of learning which ensues.

Management development has shifted its emphasis in recent years from planned management learning organised for managers to self‐development programmes. However, the individual must guard against isolation.

The behaviour of managers oriented to learning from action is reviewed, and analysed in relation to the work of Kolb, Honey and Mumford. It is proposed that there is a difference between action and experience. The steps necessary to convert action into experience are defined, following an examination of blockages and defensive routines.

The ‘design’ of management development programmes is usually seen by practitioners in the field as a matter of choosing the methods appropriate to the ‘content’ of what they want to teach or the learning they hope to bring about. In a previous paper in this series we have argued that the real difference between programmes, which determines the extent to which they achieve their goals, lies in the assumptions which are embodied in them, usually implicitly, about how people learn.

Amongst the many attempts to define management training and development, the one with which this article is in most accord is that of: an attempt to improve managerial effectiveness through a planning and deliberate learning process.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.

In our previous paper we developed a taxonomy of managerial skills and qualities; reported a modest research study giving some evidence for the validity of the taxonomy; and presented some further empirical evidence about the sources from which the managers we have investigated acquired these skills and qualities.

The need for management training, development and educational activities to be grounded in practical experience and real life situations has become a loud and frequently heard cry in current debate on how to improve the efficacy of such activities. Not the least vociferous in this rallying call have been, for example, proponents of what have come to be known as ‘Action Learning Programmes’. What is being echoed are comments, by the participants in managerial learning events, of the kind ‘… that sounds fine, but the reality is …’, ‘…in reality things just aren't like that…’,‘… playing with Lego bricks is fun … but what's it got to do with my job?…’,‘… but when I get back to the real world … ’, etc. Such statements reveal a feeling that, in entering a learning event, reality has somehow been left behind.