The Educational Dimension of the Management Process*

This paper is concerned with the nature of education which may be undertaken within the process of managing. Following Bateson, four levels of learning are examined in relation to education within the managing role and through disengaging from the immediate managing role, i.e. education ’out of role’. Both of these approaches require that attention be given to the micro-political and social contexts of managers in organisations. From a perspective that organisations exist to serve the needs of persons it is argued that the educational task is to accentuate the personal role in relation to the institutional role, to permit learning at all four levels