Syntes: Powell & Yalcin (2010) — fifty years of managerial training showed moderate effects, strongest on learning

Källa: Skylar Powell, K. & Yalcin, S. (2010). Managerial training effectiveness: A meta-analysis 1952-2002. Personnel Review 39(2), 227–241. https://doi.org/10.1108/00483481011017435

Verified content

• [abstract] Meta-analysis of managerial training studies from 1952 to 2002: 85 interventions, 4,779 subjects.
• [abstract] "The results do not suggest a great deal of improvement in the effectiveness of managerial training from 1952 through 2002 and effect sizes have remained moderate."
• [abstract] Outcome type moderated results: programmes aimed at learning outcomes "tended to have the largest effect sizes and were consistently significant relative to programs targeted at behavior and results outcomes."

Limits

• [assessment] Abstract only; no numeric effect sizes. "Moderate" is not defined as a number. Management training is a subset of workplace training. The nightly run of 2026-11-07 already noted this paper as closed.

Why it is in the library

C33 claims organised workplace training raises learning and on-the-job behaviour by about half a standard deviation or more. This 50-year managerial-training meta-analysis reports only moderate effects overall, with learning the largest and most consistently significant compared with behaviour and results — a possible bound on the behaviour prong, once the full text gives numbers.

Added 2026-11-08 by the project (weekly source sweep, kind: old; read: abstract). [abstract] = from the published abstract; [full text] = read in the full text; [assessment] = the project's own assessment.