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Foreword to the 4th Edition - 1999The theme for this, the fourth edition of International Executive Development Programmes, is Adding Value through Executive Development. Contributions addressing this theme were invited from a number of Business Schools in Europe and North America and together they amount to an impressive body of evidence that investment in management development pays off. Such evidence is more and more demanded by businesses, conscious of the need, in today's intensively competitive environment, to eliminate all those activities which cannot be shown to be adding value. In the past, executive development was largely an act of faith, but increasingly boards of directors are seeking reassurance that the not inconsiderable sums they are spending on developing their executive teams can be justified in terms of the return. This is not to say that each and every course or workshop must be shown to have a direct favourable impact on the bottom line. Business School clients are sophisticated enough to appreciate that value can be defined in other ways than the profit and loss account. A programme which leads to increased understanding of and commitment to the company's strategic objectives may well constitute real value in relation to its cost, but the impact on the bottom line may not be seen for months or even years and even then will be impossible to isolate among all the other factors affecting trends in the company's financial performance. The articles that follow, fall into four categories. The contribution by Keith Patching of Cranfield represents the first of these and provides an overview of some of the methodological issues involved in the evaluation of management development programmes. The second group of contributions consists of two articles in which schools set out their general approach to the question of adding value. The contribution from the French School, HEC, describes its international and cross cultural programmes. In one of these, it collaborates with five other European Schools to provide a blend of European cultures, while its Global Leadership Programme, in modular form, moves from Europe to North America and Asia. Also in this section the essay by SDA Bocconi argues that two factors making for increased value added in management development programmes are the growing use of information technology and heightened competition between providers - not just Business Schools, but also consultants and Company 'universities'. The third group of contributions consists of case histories of evaluation exercises. All but one of these relate to custom or tailored programmes which are, for obvious reasons, easier to validate than open enrolment programmes. Lancaster University provides an account of the world's first in-company MBA that the Centre for Management Studies conducts for British Airways. In this instance, clear examples of added value are identified as a result of the in-company projects which the participants carry out. The author also points out some of the barriers to the achievement of added value such as company culture. Columbia University tells the story of Sony MobileComm America, a company that was losing money rapidly. Using Columbia's Strategic Learning Process and focusing on improving inventory management the learning partnership between the School and the Company resulted in dramatic improvements to the bottom line. Roffey Park's contribution consists of two cases exemplifying how the School adds value in developing international managers - for Volvo and Lexmark.. City University gives an account of the role of executive development in creating a global business for Prudential Portfolio Managers. The Italian school, Il Sole 24 Ore, shows how it creates value to its clients for in-house courses. Chicago University Business School, by contrast, gives an account of its work in evaluating open enrolment programmes. Post-programme interviews are conducted with participants to elicit examples of perceived value gained. Among the outcomes identified are confidence building, thinking 'outside of the box' and the ability to benchmark oneself and one's company against others. Finally there is a group of papers in which various specialised schools set out their approach to the question 'How do we add value?' in the context of their particular missions. The European Institute of Purchasing Management does so in the context of its specialist role developing executives in the purchasing function. Specialisation of a different kind is provided in the account by the Giordano dell'Amore Foundation of its work developing management competence in the financial services industry in Africa. Philip Sadler
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