The Deracination of Politics

Abstract

This article considers the utility of Outdoor Management Development (OMD) in providing a radically different form of management development. It examines OMD by adopting the notion of deracination-to pull up by the roots-as a metaphor for the way OMD practitioners claim to operate in an environment manifestly different from that which either normally exists or which exists during the more traditional forms of management development. The primary problem which OMD appears to be used to resolve is managerial Machiavellism: either managerial teams that are disunited or leaders that need educating in ways to unite such teams. By making use of the `difference' between OMD and traditional development environments-that is the apparently more cooperative, novel and authentic nature of the `great outdoors' OMD allegedly reaches parts of management that other development formats do not. However, using data drawn from an ethnographic study of OMD courses, this article criticizes each of the claims to `difference': most of the courses exhibited the reproduction not the elimination of Machiavellian management. This article draws the conclusion that the deracination of politics appears to be an impossible task under the present forms of OMD.