Finding the niche to reposition leadership in Africa’s developing economies for the global highway: review of literature on leadership development programmes – methods and techniques*

Africa’s developing economies remain in critical need for leadership. This paper asserts that Africa’s new growth opportunities rest with leadership that could champion organizational performance, innovativeness, and good ethics among others. A review of extant literature on leadership development programmes (LDPs) was done to examine possible initiatives that leadership developers can use to influence leadership practices in Africa. This paper proposes that in Africa, LDPs can be used to inculcate authentic leadership practices and enhance networking and acquisition of innovative skills among others. Furthermore, LDPs could target the youth considering them as an investment into tomorrow’s leadership talent pool. The paper suggests that Africa’s niche for the global highway rests in contextualization of LDPs from other regions to Africa’s unique environment.     

Does valuing androgyny and femininity lead to a female advantage? The relationship between gender-role,transformational leadership and identification

The notion of ‘think manager–think male’ has been demonstrated in many studies. The current study examines whether leaders are perceived as more effective when they have ‘feminine’, ‘masculine’ or ‘androgynous’ characteristics, and how this relates to the leader's and followers' sex. Using carefully matched samples of 930 employees of 76 bank managers, we studied the relationship between managers' gender-role identity (perceived ‘femininity’, ‘masculinity’ and ‘androgyny’) and how this relates to leadership effectiveness in terms of transformational leadership and personal identification with the leader. Our findings show that among both male and female leaders, ‘androgyny’ was more strongly related to transformational leadership and followers' identification than ‘non-androgyny’, and that leaders' ‘femininity’ was more strongly related to leadership effectiveness than ‘masculinity’. Furthermore, the results show that women paid a higher penalty for not being perceived as ‘androgynous’ (mixing ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’), in comparison to men with regard to personal identification. When examining same- versus cross-sex relationships, we found that ‘non-androgynous’ male managers were rated higher by their male employees than by their female employees. Our findings suggest that women and men who are interested in being perceived as effective leaders may be well advised to blend ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ behaviors, and even more so when they are in situations of non-congruency (i.e., women in leadership roles and leading in cross-sex relationships). We discuss the implications of these findings for both theory and practice.     

Introduction: Knowledge Construction and Creation in Organizations*

While adopting a knowledge‐based perspective on organizations has been valuable, since, among other things, it enables us to see links between organizational learning and a firm's competitive advantage through the development of idiosyncratic capabilities, it has nonetheless tended to treat organizational knowledge as ‘given’, exploring how it is related to other ‘given’ variables. The focus of this special issue is to unpack the notion of organizational knowledge by exploring the processes and practices through which knowledge is constructed and created in organizations. A constructivist perspective assumes that ‘knowledge’ presupposes work and seeks to explore how what comes to be considered as organizational knowledge is established and validated (or fails to do so). By seeing organizational knowledge as work we can further probe into how knowledge is shaped by organizational strategies and incentives and, more radically, how power and politics influence the struggle between competing bodies of knowledge in organizations.     

Responsible leadership development – crucible experiences and power relationships in a global professional services firm

There is increasing consensus that Human Resource Development (HRD) has a central role to play in promoting the principles and practices of corporate responsibility (CR). An important HRD intervention involves developing responsible leaders able to attract support for CR throughout the organisation, but empirical research is lacking in this area. This article contributes to the theoretical and practical knowledge of responsible leadership development (RLD) by addressing two questions: first, how does RLD engender learning that goes beyond basic cognitive awareness? Second, what affects participants’ abilities to manifest this learning in the workplace? A review of the RLD literature reveals a ‘knowing-doing gap’, which, it is posited, may be linked to a lack of theorisation around power. This issue is investigated by means of a case study on a responsible leadership development programme run by a professional services firm. Drawing on Bourdieusian concepts of language and power, the study reveals some of the mechanisms that inspired new socially responsible values whilst also demonstrating some of the contextual barriers inhibiting their manifestation in the workplace. It is argued that HRD professionals need to engage with Bourdieusian ideas of language and power to promote deeper learning around responsible leadership, which can more easily be embedded into the workplace.     

Leadership Development in Organizations: Multiple Discourses and Diverse Practice

Research on leadership development in organizations is abundant, as are the resources invested in developing their leaders. Although rarely made explicit, much of this writing and activity is driven by functionalist assumptions, with a primary concern for good design and enhanced corporate performance. Given the politically sensitive, culturally complex and institutionally embedded nature of leadership, as well as controversy over the way leadership itself is best defined and developed, the author argues that this reliance on a single perspective is potentially limiting. The aim of this paper is to enhance leadership development practice in organizations by proposing a fresh and theoretically informed approach for exploring the multiple meanings of leadership development. This is done, first, by clarifying the discursive assumptions underlying studies in this field and revealing the distinctive insights that arise from functionalist, interpretive, dialogic and critical discourses of leadership development; and second, by exploring how each of these discourses, or ‘readings’, might promote quite different approaches to leadership development in organizations.     

Enacting the ‘true self’: Towards a theory of embodied authentic leadership

This paper argues that although authentic leadership may be rooted in the notion of a ‘true self’, it is through the embodiment of that ‘true self’ that leaders are perceived as authentic or not. In making this claim, we consider ways in which a somatic sense of self contributes to the felt sense of authenticity, and how through engaging with somatic cues, leadership can be performed in a way which is experienced as authentic, both to the leader and to those he or she seeks to lead. In developing our ideas further, we draw from the acting theory of Stanislavski (1936a, 1936b, 1961) to explore how authentic dramatic performances are created, focusing on the role of emotional memory, the magic ‘if’ and physical action in performances. We propose three key components of a resulting theory of how embodied authentic leadership is created: self exposure, relating, and making leaderly choices.     

On studying leadership in the strategy field

This article is primarily concerned with the study of leadership in the strategy field. It argues that as our perspective on the strategy process itself changes so too must our perspective on top leadership and our approaches to studying it. From a review of the literature the article identifies some of the current issues and challenges in studying leadership and strategy and argues for more dynamic and contextually-sensitive approaches than those that have dominated up to now. It presents and develops a framework for the future study of leadership based on three main foundations: Mintzberg's (1978) concept of strategy formation, Pettigrew's (1985) contextualism, and the author's empirical studies to date. The framework focuses on the process of leadership and its role within the more inclusive process of strategy formation. This process-within-a-process perspective, it is argued, potentially opens the way to gaining fresh perspective on leadership by inviting attention to such underexplored issues as how and why leadership effectiveness varies with time and context, how the symbolic and substantive aspects of leadership interact to produce outcomes of strategic significance, and how successive leaders and their tenures are connected in the strategy formation process over time. At a time when the field of sociology is showing an increasing interest in the concept of strategy, there appears to be great scope for a more serious infusion of the sociological perspective in the opposite direction, and frameworks, such as the one presented in this paper, may help to get such a movement underway.     

Parents,Perceptions and Belonging: Exploring Flexible Working among UK Fathers and Mothers

This paper advances knowledge regarding how fathers and mothers perceive and experience flexible working opportunities. It does this through applying the theoretical concept ‘belonging’ to ‘Parsonian’ classifications of parenting and work. In so doing it makes transparent the misconceptions and inequities which exist among parents and their organizational environments. Focusing initially on a qualitative study of fathers’ experience of working flexibly, the paper shows how fathers felt marginalized from the possibilities of flexible work due to line managers’ assumptions that men belonged to an ‘instrumental’ economic provider group. The paper contributes a new angle to debate by articulating how fathers perceived employed mothers as belonging to an ‘expressive’ child‐oriented group, with privileged access to flexibility. However, drawing upon a study of maternity and flexible work we query fathers’ assumptions that flexibility was easily available to mothers, suggesting that fathers’ perceptions of maternal privilege were misconceived. While mothers were categorized as belonging within an ‘expressive’ group associated with childcare, they were nevertheless discouraged from accessing flexibility. Inequities between women and men (with regard to flexibility) thus appeared to be less significant than fathers supposed.     

Do we measure leadership effectively? Articulating and evaluating scale development psychometrics for best practice

Leadership assessment has been a particular point of difficulty for contemporary scholarship, with many practitioners rejecting academically-driven leadership instruments and scales and preferring their own, less rigorous, scales. We believe that current conceptualizations and measurements of leadership are problematic, indicated by contemporary challenges that can be widely understood as failures of leadership (e.g. the Australian Banking Royal Commission and Volkswagen's ‘Dieselgate’). Also, how effective leadership is measured needs to change. This paper presents a systematic review of 17 leadership scales developed in the new millennium. The majority of scales lack some degree of rigor. Our response has been to conduct eighteen critical checks over four stages of scale development: theory generation, item development, content validity, and empirical evaluation. On the premise that understanding past practices, with their limitations, can be used to drive forward a suite of more effective organizational tools, we provide best practice recommendations using contemporary psychometric research.     

Business forecasting: the good news and the bad

This paper records a personal view of the wide range of problems, philosophical and pragmatic, currently afflicting ‘business forecasting’. It is based on several years experience in both forecasting methodology development and direct project work with decision makers. The paper is not intended as a review of the current consensus, academic or otherwise but to engage in ‘constructive criticism’. In doing so the author has attempted to keep to the desired structure of ‘decision makers perception’, ‘methodology criticised’ and ‘development suggestions’ but the nature of the problem demands a more interactive approach which has resulted in fuzzy sets rather than distinct clusters of topics.     

Developments in implicit leadership theory and cognitive science: Applications to improving measurement and understanding alternatives to hierarchical leadership

After reviewing key findings regarding leadership categorization theory, we develop new perspectives regarding the design of behavioral measures of leadership and the implications of shared leadership and complex adaptive leadership conceptualizations of leadership. In particular, by applying recent developments in cognitive science, we explain how an understanding of symbolic, connectionist, and embodied representations of knowledge can benefit behavioral measures of leadership. Additionally, we address some practical issues associated with the measurement of leadership and argue that ratings which tap episodic memory at the event level may be more meaningful than ratings based on semantic memory. Finally, we discuss how notions of shared leadership and of leaders as catalysts for complexity can create unique complications for leadership perceptions, coordinated behavior within a group, and the measurement of leadership.     

The social construction of strategic coherence: Practices of enabling leadership

The construction of “strategic coherence,” defined as the development of a system of mutually compatible meanings among organization members about desirable organizational directions, is clearly a crucial issue for organizations. Yet, how to achieve it is in part an open question. While previous studies have considered how strategic coherence may emerge across top levels of management through strategic planning activities and negotiations among senior leaders, we know much less about the contribution of other actors and processes behind the scenes (in non-strategy roles). Drawing on an ethnographic study of a public hospital's planning and project management practices, this paper therefore focuses on the bundles of practices, people and tools through which strategic coherence can emerge across different levels and sectors in mundane activities. We build on the concept of “enabling leadership”, grounded in practice theories of leadership, as our analytical lens. The study reveals how strategic coherence is socially constructed by practices of ‘fueling’, ‘shaping’ and ‘entwining’ mutually compatible meanings, in interactions among diverse people and tools. We propose a grounded model of the construction of strategic coherence as the progressive socialization of meanings about organizational direction that is not just administered from the top, nor naturally emergent from the grass-roots, but that is a collective and inherently socio-material accomplishment of enabling leadership.     

In learning mode? The role of mindsets in derailing and enabling experiential leadership development

In comparison to the vast literature on leadership theories, concepts, and behaviors, relatively less is known about why leaders often learn little from their leadership experiences, as well as how to support them in doing so. We propose that leaders learn more from their challenging leadership experiences when they are in learning mode, defined as intentionally framing and pursuing each element of the experiential learning process with more of a growth than a fixed mindset. We describe how the extent to which leaders are in learning mode stems from salient mindset cues and guides whether they work through the experiential learning process with a predominantly self-improvement or self-enhancement motive. We theorize about several other likely mediators and moderators of when being in learning mode will manifest in experiential leadership development. Practical implications at the micro, meso, and macro levels, as well as within management education are outlined.     

From imagination to application: Making the case for the general method of theory-building research in applied disciplines

The author examines what factors determine leadership success in UK social enterprises. Despite the attention prompted by the UK government's ‘Big Society’ policies, this remains a relatively unexplored field in the leadership literature. Based on in-depth interviews with successful social enterprise chief executives, carried out between April and December 2010, this article challenges the dominance of competency models, based on purely behaviourist tradition. It examines the impact of personality, values, circumstance and career arc on the way these leaders perform in an attempt to take a fresh look at the interaction of traits, behaviours and situational flexibility in determining successful leadership in this type of organization. A number of key factors are identified and categorized as dimensions of ‘being’, ‘doing’ and ‘style’. Consistent contra-indicators are also identified, providing the basis for an approach to both leadership selection and development in this growing sector of the economy.     

A cross-national comparison of public project benefits management practices – the effectiveness of benefits management frameworks in application

Abstract

Benefits are the principal reason why an organization may seek to enact change through programmes and projects. The discipline of identification, definition, planning, tracking and realization of benefits is recognized to be instrumental in achieving organizational strategy. In this study, we describe the results of a cross-national comparison of public sector benefits management (BM) practices in Australia, Canada, the UK and the USA. It explores ‘BM practices in action’, considering to what extent ‘espoused’ or ‘mandated’ frameworks are actually practised and perceived by their users. Employing qualitative analysis, semi-structured interview data were analysed from 46 participants with experience in sponsoring, managing and/or reviewing government projects. The results expose considerable variation in the adoption and standardization of BM frameworks from inter and intragovernmental perspectives. We evidence a strong focus on benefits identification across the data set, specifically at the outset (the business case stage seeking project approval) and observe deterioration in focus as the project or programme progresses through the authorization (or assurance) approval gates towards close-out and operations. The results further emphasize the prominence of political interest, leadership buy-in, a benefits-driven culture and a transparent benefits reporting mechanism in the implementation of ‘effective’ BM frameworks.     

Leadership in Interorganizational Networks: A Literature Review and Suggestions for Future Research

The present review is an investigation of the ways in which interorganizational networks coordinate their activities for the benefit of all parties. In this context ‘interorganizational networks’ consist of three or more separate, collaborating entities, and the question of their leadership has been well researched in a number of disciplines. Its interest to economic actors is growing. However, the findings of studies that have focused on leadership in such networks are somewhat incoherent. As demonstrated in the present review, this incoherence largely results from the consideration of different forms of network (e.g. hierarchical vs heterarchical), levels of analysis (e.g. organizational vs network), and terms used to describe the phenomena (e.g. governance or orchestration, quite apart from leadership). Against this background, the present review contributes to the body of knowledge on this topic in two main areas. First, the literature is reviewed in order to provide an overview of the key characteristics of forms of network and levels of analysis. Moreover, the view that leadership in such networks influences all members in order to ‘make things happen’ is suggested. Secondly, future avenues of research are identified in order to stimulate progress in this important area of study.     

Advancing the science of 21st-century leadership development: Theory,research, and practice

Leadership development seeks to understand, predict, and intervene effectively in addressing the questions of how individuals develop as leaders and how collections of individuals develop a capacity for leadership. These questions are attracting scholars interested in the factors and processes involved in developing leaders and leadership. Presented in the special issue is a set of state-of-the-science empirical studies and theory development articles representing 21st century leadership development. We also provide a brief overview of issues related to the leadership development field – broadly construed to include individual leader development – that are especially pertinent and where the research evidence is scarce or contradictory. These areas are theoretical foundations of leadership development, practices and methods of development and talent selection for development, accurately estimating return on investment for leadership development initiatives, the role of time in developing leaders and leadership, understanding and remedying biases and inequities in leadership development, and the role of development in mitigating the so-called dark side of leadership. Although we have learned much about leader and leadership development over the past 20 years, there is an ongoing need for more research and theory development especially with respect to identifying causally and practically relevant knowledge able to inform policy.