A synthesis of training self-assessment and Shannon entropy in training need assessment of managers

In order to successful environmental confrontation, managers should be equipped to required knowledge and skills and this will be reached through appropriate training. Not only successful organizations don’t look at organizational training as waste cost, but also focus on it so that promote their human resource capabilities and reach competitive advantage.  Effective training depends on appropriate training needs assessment. There are a lot of different methods used to assess training needs in organizations. The main origins of differences are first, diverse methods in gathering and analyzing data, and second the reference of assessing training needs in organizations. However, there is a consensus that an appropriate method for need assessment should has a theoretical and measurement accuracy, yet be free of dysfunctional complexity. For this reason, the presented study has introduced a mixed method of training self-assessment and Shannon entropy in training need assessment of managers conducted on 172 top and middle managers in 17 companies of Rafsanjan industrial estate. Training self-assessment and Shannon entropy were used to gather training needs and determine importance coefficients respectively. As a result, a pool of training need assessment of managers was explored on which needs were arranged based on priorities of importance coefficients.