Management Development as Public Policy: Australia's Frontline Management Initiative (FMI) 1995–2002

This is one of few empirical studies of the implementation of the Frontline Management Initiative. It is based on qualitative research in six Australian organizations. Arising from a 1990s policy view, represented by the Karpin Report, that Australia's competitive weakness was partly an outcome of poor management capabilities, the FMI was introduced in order to train first-line supervisors, who were seen as key in changing work practices. The FMI, however, suffered from the weaknesses in competence-based training (CBT), exacerbated by problems in the Australian National Training Framework. Lack of uniformity in curricula and standards, coupled with a fuzziness in defining frontline management, undermined this exercise in management development as public policy. Narrowly-specified outcomes did not deliver the claimed ease of assessment but undermined content. More fundamentally, ‘unitarist’ assumptions such as those underpinning the FMI are based on an inadequate understanding of workplace learning. Even the highly structured CBT approach cannot prevent learners from exploring their own interests and affirming their own counter- identity, in ways that may run counter to enterprise productivity.