Aerospace Management

Aerospace management research papers focus on what is needed educationally to participate in an aerospace program. The duties of an aerospace manager are also covered.

Although the firm makes a number of development opportunities available to staff such as specialist courses for functional managers and negotiating skills workshop, it relies heavily on GMP as the primary vehicle for staff development at the managerial level. The GMP program is a two-week intensive study course, with the following elements:

1. The first week focusing on general management concepts in the context of the business
2. The second week focuses on the acquisition of leadership and interpersonal skills.
3. Interviews with 24 senior managers established a framework for the learning needs of the organization.
4. A three-page survey questionnaire was distributed to approximately 290 managers who attended GMP, which resulted in general levels of satisfaction with the learning experience.

Data Collection - Aerospace Management

The diagnostic methods used in collecting this data, however, are not fully indicative of the actual learning needs of the firm or the effectiveness of the GMP training protocol in meeting these needs. Because the firm is relatively large, the interviews with the 24 managers that established the learning needs of the firm are a relatively small sampling and may not be statistically significant. As senior managers, they are presumably concerned with strategic objectives, but the priority that they assigned to these objectives may be skewed by the small size of the sampling. Despite its shortcomings, the survey of senior managers produced some indication of the perceived needs of the firm. It is not clear, however, that these needs have been translated into specific management development objectives. In effect, they articulate broad objectives, but do not indicate the steps that are necessary in order to achieve the objectives.

GMP Methodology

In addition, a traditional data gathering methodology was used to determine the satisfaction levels of GMP graduates. The methodology is based on self-assessment alone, which can result in error due to the bias on the part of the respondent towards the GMP training protocol. In effect, there is no guarantee that the GMP intervention resulted in actual change in behavior as opposed to self-perceived changes in behavior. A 360-degree approach would have helped to reduce the potential for this type of error to impact the results of the manager's assessment. This suggests that an additional survey should be undertaken to determine if the self-assessment results of the traditional survey method are supported by the results of a 360-degree assessment approach, which would help to determine if the training intervention had the desired outcome in improving performance.