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This article explores the relationship between management and leadership development and leadership practice. Critical studies of management and leadership development programmes have mainly focused on such programmes as spaces for identity work and/or identity regulation. This article extends the literature by investigating the notion of organisation, the organisational view, in a large management and leadership development programme and how it works as a source of authority for the participating managers. Our inquiry is based on ethnographic studies of both an in-house management and leadership development programme in a large Danish public organisation and of the managerial practice of six participating managers. Drawing on a communicative constitution of organisations perspective, we analyse how the management and leadership development programme (re)produces a unitarist organisational text, an organisational view that assumes the members of the organisation have the same goals and perspectives. We further analyse how this organisational text shapes the authority relationships that managers engage in in their leadership practice. The article demonstrates how the unitarist organisational text fails in authorising participating managers as it clashes with the plurality of perspectives and interests in the organisation and is not recognised as a source of authority by employees and collaborators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article empirically evaluates the effect of the digital matrix on the value base of public sector micro-organisations. The results indicate that the digital matrix is a factor that optimising the value base of government start-ups and has a significant impact on their productivity and performance. Indeed, the optimisation of resources, generated by the digital matrix, leads to business performance and operational efficiency at the strategic planning level. The interconnection between the matrix and the value chain favours the technical flexibility of operationalisation strategies in the value-based public sector micro-organisations' management. Thus, the matrix allows young public sector micro-organisations to optimise their resources for a greater appropriation of the value created. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mindfulness is increasingly being used within leadership development to enhance managers' wellbeing and leadership capability. Given the relational nature of leadership, we posit that an interpersonal form of mindfulness has the potential to offer benefits over and above those provided by personal or internal mindfulness. We therefore chose a Delphi research methodology to consult and achieve consensus among expert practitioners, exploring if and how interpersonal mindfulness, in the specific form of the Interpersonal Mindfulness Program (IMP), can contribute to leadership development. Our aims were, firstly, to identify the necessary components of an IMP-based leadership development program and, secondly, to create guidelines for practitioners. Through four phases of data-gathering and feedback, we achieved consensus among 39 experts on guidelines for how to develop a leadership development program based on the IMP, contextual factors that will act as facilitators or barriers, and selection and screening of participants. The intention is that the resulting guidelines will support the implementation of coherent, consistent IMP-based leadership development, sensitive both to its origins and to the context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Promoting the capacity for critical reflection is a pivotal part of management learning and education. Based on the concept of developmental learning, the purpose of this paper is to explore and outline two types of critical reflection: critique for improvement and critique for emancipation. Critique for improvement is based on a performative intent and is aimed at using critical reflection to improve organizational practices. Critique for emancipation is based on a critical performative intent and focuses on emancipation from repressive ideological and social conditions that place unnecessary restrictions on the development of human consciousness. In this paper, it is argued that managers and leaders enrolled in management education need to be exposed to both critique for improvement and critique for emancipation. A heuristic conceptual framework is therefore proposed, along with strategies for how to balance the two types of critique in management learning and education and propositions to be explored in further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peer interaction is a standard aspect of most leadership development programmes and is seen to be conducive to learning. Realising deeper and critical reflexivity in peer interaction is, however, challenging. This study employs conversation analysis to empirically explore peer interactions in a leadership development programme for first-line managers in the public sector in Denmark. The analysis shows that a socio-moral order, that is normative expectations inherent in interactions, guide peer discussions and shape the conditions for reflection and deeper reflexivity. The socio-moral order was based on a central principle of treating each other as experts on one's own practice. This principle allowed for reflection but turned attention away from critical reflexive practices. As a result, peer discussions took a more conservative rather than a transformational orientation. The study extends the theoretical understanding of the conditions for critical reflexivity as it demonstrates how the socio-moral order of interaction regulates engagement in critically reflexive practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we illustrate how ideas and practices of mindfulness can be integrated into management education, drawing from our work on postgraduate programs run with working managers. Our purpose is particularly to show how mindfulness can be introduced into the curriculum in a way that is acceptable for participants and clients, and brings benefit to participants. Following a brief review of literature on mindfulness in organizations, we share the curriculum innovation we designed and provide detail of its effectiveness derived from our follow-up evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the widespread implementation of liberalization policies across the continent and resultant ‘subsidiarity’ of the industrial sectors by mostly Western multinational firms, management development in Africa has been dominated by Western approaches. The alternative is contextualization of research approaches that take into account the cultural and societal values of the people being researched. The article therefore proposes two methodologies believed to be contextual to management development research in multinational firms in Africa. These include indigenous methodology and postcolonial methodology. The two methodologies are complemented by appropriate data collection and analytical approaches, which have also been suggested. Data for this conceptual paper were mainly from review of extant popular and academic literature. The article concludes that applying the proposed methodologies could help tackle the neocolonial influence in African industries to decolonize indigenous people from Western hegemony and management development approaches that do not tackle the development problems of indigenous managers. Theoretically, the article contributes to literature on postcolonial management and organizational studies and, practically, contributes to alternative and appropriate approach to research into managerial skills development problems in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows how the MBA plays a role in some students’ lives that goes beyond conscious cost–benefit analyses and instrumental value and engages the personal and intimate. It presents a thematic analysis of essays written by MBA students exploring what their MBA was for. The analysis revealed that the MBA functioned as an element or character in a life story and how, in some instances, doing the MBA was not about the MBA as such. The article advances our understanding of the MBA as an element in a life story, as a rite of passage, and as part of the intersection of boundaryless careers and changeable life patterns. Enhancing the awareness of this on the part of students may improve their understanding of what they are doing by embarking on an MBA and could enhance the ability of faculty and business schools to address the sometimes less explicit interests of their students. The article also confirms the value of a qualitative ‘storied’ approach to the study of the MBA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic crisis of 2008/2009 has increased unemployment among managers, particularly older managers, a group under-researched empirically. This longitudinal study assesses the efficacy of executive coaching for a group of unemployed professionals who participated in an intensive coaching programme aimed at reintegrating them into the economy. Results suggest that the majority were positive about coaching, a process that helped them to reflect on and learn from their new circumstances. Findings also contradict other studies, indicating cautious, cool and even hostile responses to coaching. The study highlights the mental fragility of previously successful, now unemployed managers. From a policy perspective, interventions should start earlier (before employees leave an organisation) and finish later. From a social science perspective, executive coaching represents a modest but sometimes effective initiative to help unemployed professionals to re-write their life stories to make sense of their experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Research from the interdisciplinary field of social cognitive neuroscience provides insights as to how managers learn and develop, resulting in theoretical propositions and practical implications. Third-generation management development is applied as a conceptual framework for the organization and presentation of relevant evidence from the neuroscience literature. Neuroscience offers potential to theoretically advance our understanding of management development as well as practically enhance managerial capacity to (a) reflect with a deeper sense of self-awareness, (b) analyze with greater balance across hard and soft data, (c) position organizations within broader perspectives, (d) collaborate interpersonally by establishing relationships that engender egalitarianism and trust, and (e) enact change in a nonlinear manner. Ten propositions are developed linking neurological processes to management development. Practical implications are suggested as well as research considerations for future integration between neuroscience and management development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The convergent and discriminant validity of two methods to assess a broad spectrum of aberrant personality tendencies was examined in a large sample of managers who were administered the NEO-PI-R (N = 11 862) and the Hogan Development Survey (N = 6774) in the context of a professional development assessment. Five-Factor Model (FFM) aberrant compounds, defined as linear combinations of NEO-PI-R facets, converged for the antisocial, borderline, histrionic, avoidant and obsessive-compulsive tendencies with their respective Hogan Development Survey counterparts. Alternative linear FFM combinations did improve convergent results for the schizoid and obsessive-compulsive pattern. Risk for various aberrant tendencies was roughly equal across different employment sectors, with a higher prevalence of borderline, avoidant and dependent tendencies in the legal and more histrionic tendencies in the retail sector. Adopting FFM aberrant compound cut-offs developed for coaching purposes to flag at risk individuals showed that 20% to 25% of all managers qualified for at least one and 10% to 15% were flagged as at risk for two or more aberrant tendencies. The theoretical implications and the repercussions of this research for the design of professional development and coaching trajectories are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can managers prepare for extreme but exceptional events and for the challenge of managing complexity and uncertainty in their daily business? Confronted with the challenge of achieving high and reliable performance in risk-prone, fast-paced, and unpredictable environments, managers and management scholars can learn a lot from the organizing principles of mindful organizing (MO). MO is based on lessons learned from the high-reliability seeking of organizations such as aircraft carriers and nuclear power plants as well as from the analysis of severe crisis events in these organizations. MO provides the guiding principles and proactive managerial mind-set to build collective organizational capabilities for anticipating the evolution of unexpected events and acting resiliently in times of crisis. The paradigm of MO differs from the rationality-based classical management paradigm, takes the complexity and unpredictability of organizations into account, and puts the design of sensemaking processes at the center of managerial attention. This article explores how the managerial paradigm of MO can be used in action-learning management development programs. I explain how to use the staff ride, a qualitative event analysis focusing on individual and collective sensemaking, to illustrate for managers how unexpected events evolve and how to develop collective patterns of mindfulness. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the ways in which leadership and management development (LMD) in England has been researched and analysed over the past 40 years. The article is in two parts. The first analyses the ways in which patterns of provision have evolved in response to changing conceptions of how the school system should be organized and how, consequently, the roles of those responsible for administering, managing and leading it should be constructed. This analysis shows how patterns of LMD provision have changed, with a slow but consistent movement from relatively limited and fragmented provision to one of the most centralized forms in the world. The second part broadens out the analysis, using as a framework three ‘perspectives’: the functionalist, the constructivist and the critical. It explores the literature on LMD, identifying areas of consensus or conflict, and suggesting where more work needs to be done. This includes more work from a variety of constructivist perspectives, especially on leader identity formation; more critical analysis of the content and processes of LMD; and more work on the ways in which power is distributed and used in LMD, especially at the ‘meso' level between the individual programme or activity and national policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on leadership behaviour and effectiveness of university academic program directors who have responsibility for managing a program or course1 of study. The leadership capabilities were assessed using the Integrated Competing Values Framework as its theoretical foundation. Data from 90 academic program directors and 710 significant others from four Australian universities were analysed. The results lead to the conclusions that these academic program directors were reasonably effective and had the ability to implement and further develop their leadership capabilities, even though they had no formal authority. In their role, these directors mainly focused on ‘getting the job done’ and ‘working with people’. At the same time, they placed less emphasis on monitoring their programs, maintaining networks and introducing changes, thereby putting their programs at risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Problem-based learning (PBL) has attracted increased interest in higher education due to claims that it provides a more active and productive learning environment.Yet, to date, most empirical research on the instructional effectiveness of PBL has been conducted in medical education. This article examines the instructional effectiveness of a problem-based curriculum at a business school in Thailand. The quasi-experimental study draws on seven years of student evaluation data to compare the instructional effectiveness of courses offered in a PBL track with other courses taught in the college. The results suggest that students perceived PBL as an effective approach to learning. PBL courses fostered a more active, engaging classroom environment that helped graduate management students understand how to apply theory to practice. The findings offer initial empirical support for the use of PBL in management education and counter the belief that Asian students are not responsive to learner centred approaches to education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Steven Covey's The 7 habits of highly effective people, one of the most influential and popular contemporary self-help texts, has resulted in the development a large multinational consulting business, several spin-off texts, and much imitation since its publication in 1989. An examination of the text, informed by Critical Discourse Analysis, is conducted with a view to unearthing the textual, discursive and socio-cultural practices that have enabled the work and its message to become so popular. 7 habits is an epiphanogenic (or epiphany-inducing) technology emerging from an 'effectiveness' discipline supported by three socio-cultural trends: the postmodern, saturated self; the coming of neo-liberal society and the financialization of the self; and the subjective turn. Covey's discipline of effectiveness aims to produce a self that is simultaneously de-saturated, financialized and expressivist, but supportive of conservative, universalist and late-capitalist modes of being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adopting a post-structuralist analytical framework, this article fuses two seminal notions, Alvesson and Willmott's identity regulation in organizations and Collinson's emphasis on insecurity within processes of identity construction, to unravel subjectivities and the production of identity in two global, corporate management development programs. Drawing on interviews and observation in the settings, the article contrasts discursive practices in the two programs. It then examines the micro-processes of program participants' identity work in each context, using as a heuristic tool Collinson's theory of conforming, dramaturgical and resisting selves. Contributing to critical studies in management education, this framing draws attention to the dynamics of power in shaping identities within management development. The study suggests new notions of how identity regulation and insecurity interact, relating to two 'ideal types' or models of management development emerging in the fieldwork. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the management capacity of the officers at station level within the South African Police Service (SAPS). Primarily management development is investigated in relation to the effect on service delivery at station level in the SAPS. Station managers in the SAPS are expected simultaneously to drive complex transformation processes as well as competently manage their stations in order to address crime properly in the jurisdictional area of each station. To build the management capacity of the station managers in order to drive the transformation process, a management capacity-building programme was designed by a partnership of six universities in South Africa to assist in the management of crime at local level. This programme became known as the Police Station Management Programme (PSMP). The PSMP was specifically designed to build capacity in terms of the management dimensions of the job profile of station managers in the SAPS. The research problem addressed in this article broadly focuses on the perceived variation in the levels of managerial capacity of a group of current station managers in the SAPS and on how, if at all, these perceptions changed as result of a management development intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to explore how the practice of critical reflection within a management learning process can be facilitated through the application of reflective processes and tools. A distinction is drawn between reflection as a form of individual development (of say, the reflective practitioner) and critical reflection as a route to collective action and a component of organizational learning and change. Critical reflection, however, is not a process that comes naturally to many managers and may have to be learned or facilitated, either in formal classroom contexts, or through learning processes such as coaching, mentoring and action learning. The article discusses some of the tools available to learning facilitators, in helping a group or client towards a more critically reflective understanding of their situation and organization. These include processes such as storytelling, and reflective and reflexive conversations, and the use of tools such as reflective metaphors, critical incident analysis, reflective journals, repertory grids and concept mapping. Such tools provide an aid to critical reflection, which is seen as one process that mediates between experience, knowledge and action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today's rapidly changing business environment makes organizations pay special attention to the functioning of their internal processes. Among other things, the processes of management development (MD) are expected to reflect better the new competitive reality, which is characterized by dynamism, connectivity, non-linearity and emergent properties. This article studies MD in the light of complex adaptive systems (CAS), and presents key ideas of a systems approach to MD. The article elaborates a framework that combines MD's situational context, developmental guidelines derived from the CAS theory, and examples of relevant MD practices. The framework offers MD professionals a practical means to assess and strengthen MD's role in business. Furthermore, directions for future research on systems-based MD are brought up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses management training and development in small businesses of Europe. The role of leadership and management in boosting efficiency, productivity and innovation in European firms has moved up the public policy agenda as being driven by Europe's competitive position in global markets. However, small firm participation in formal management development has been significantly lower than that for large organizations. The European Union innovation and competitiveness policy focus is on the comparatively small segment of small and medium enterprises that have the capacity and intention of innovating and competing outside their local markets. An active minority of small firms that adopt structured, management policies and activities, reports significantly higher growth.

This article illustrates a number of ways in which competency or capability-based management development (CBMD) can work simultaneously both for and against the interests of organizational agents. It does so by demonstrating how CBMD might usefully be understood as both ideological and quasi-religiously faith-based. These features are shown to provide opportunities for resistance and micro-emancipation alongside those for repression and sub- ordination. The study employs a combination of `middle range' discourse analytical techniques. In the first instance, critical discourse analysis is applied to company documentation to distil the ideological stance of an international organizations CBMD programme. Critical discursive psychology is then used to assess the ways in which employees' evaluative accounts both support and resist such stance. The analysis builds upon previous insights from Foucauldian studies of CBMD by foregrounding processes of discursive agency. It also renders more visible and discussible the assumptions and dilemmas that CBMD might imply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning at all levels is essential for organizational survival. Drawing on the literature in adult and organizational learning this article proposes a sociological model of organizational learning based on Parsons' general theory of action. The model defines individuals and organizations as learning systems, and uses diagnostic questions related to adaptation, goal attainment, integration, and pattern maintenance to identify individual and organizational learning needs. The article applies the model to a strategic planning scenario, showing how managers may be able to use the model as a guide to address the learning needs of individuals and organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on implications for research and practice on management development in Europe. A consistent feature of recent human resource management studies and a central element of the resource-based view of human resources, is the relationship between management development and organizational performance. In their proposed research agenda for investigating such high performance work systems (HPWS), authors have pointed out that there is an empirical need to gain a better understanding of the processes through which HPWS add value.

This article presents information on experimental learning as management development (MD). Great attention over time has been given to the theoretical and practical aspects of management development. Theories and models have been developed and companies have invested large resources in this area. During the past decades, the locus or subject for MD has been a cornerstone in the MD literature. Management development has been perceived as overlapping with or identical to manager development, based on a definition or management as behavior, traits, style or techniques of individuals who are or are expected to become managers.

This article presents information related to management development in European small and medium enterprises. The article draws on recent Great Britain and European Union studies to demonstrate that there is a significant segment of more active small and medium enterprises. These are distinguished from the mass of more traditional firms by factors such as workforce size, sales turnover, the strategic and personal motivations of owners and managers and a more structured and systematic approach to their development of management capabilities.

This article presents information related to management and leadership development in Norway. The bottom line of management and leadership is a reputation for having done well. From this perspective, managers and leaders evaluate themselves and are evaluated by others, in terms of their contributions to organizational outcomes. Good and efficient management is seen as a valuable asset to be cultivated and therefore modern organizations seek to improve management and leadership practices by using considerable resources for training and development.

This article compares European approaches to management education, training and development. Managerial competencies and skills are increasingly attracting the attention of practitioners and policy makers. With the increasing emphasis on the use of knowledge and skills, countries have, over a period of time, built strong systems of training and development, have generally performed well and as a consequence, particularly during the 1990s, many European countries expanded their training infrastructures.

This article presents information related to the policies, practices and impact of developing managers in Europe. There is broad agreement that inadequate management and leadership continues to be a significant inhibitor of economic competitiveness. For example, the British government has recognized the need to "generate a much better evidence base on the impact of management and leadership skills and actions on organizational effectiveness." The issue as to how organizations can create and sustain managerial competences and how firms in Europe seek to achieve this is discussed here.

The influence of astrology and alchemy on organizational conduct has not hitherto attracted much serious social scientific attention. Retro-organizational theory licenses paying closer attention to topics that are systematically occluded by modern knowledge regimes and is invoked in this article to examine the manner in which premodern cosmologies underpin certain contemporary organizational practices. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI) is presented as a particularly conspicuous example of how the modern may be suffused by the pre- modern. An astro-genealogical account of the development of the MBTI® is offered, tracing its Jungian origins and exposing structural debts to Renaissance thinking and earlier forms of symbolism. The article concludes with a consideration of Latour's claim that 'we have never been modern' and suggests ways in which his hybridization critique of modernity connects with astrological and alchemical cosmology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on industrial management in the 20th century. After a decade of updating and modernizing U.S. manufacturing with advanced management techniques (AMTs), competitive results have been generally disappointing. Industrial managers under pressure have relied on AMTS to solve their problems. But in this era of ever more intense and fast-moving competition, this has generally proven inadequate. The mediocre results of this conventional, operational mindset demonstrate that sheer productivity improvement or other conventional performance objectives seldom build unique competitive advantage. Winning in competition today requires a different management approach, one which is focused on establishing competitive superiority. It hardly seems old-fashioned or stubborn to be employing the latest techniques but ironically, this is as limited in a strategic sense as three yards and a cloud of dust. But since typical industrial managers do not seem to know what to do differently, today's dilemma is the product of current as well as century-old history.

The author describes the use of a group-analytic approach within a local government management development programme, in particular during the 'large-group' sessions. Large-group sessions seem particularly effective in demonstrating the extent to which a manager is both committed to and able to understand and work with change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to determine if a developmental assessment center process improves managerial performance in the workplace. Focus was placed on the behavioral level of evaluation. The research design made use of a two-group design with random selection and a control group. A sample of 76 managers, at supervisory level, was used. Behaviorally anchored rating scales were developed to measure the job performance of participating managers. The results indicated significant differences between the experimental and the control groups for six performance dimensions. Significant differences were also found in all the second-order factors and the total managerial performance score. Thus, the developmental assessment center process had a positive impact on managerial performance, and this effect was still measurable 3 months after center attendance. In order to generalize the results of this study, it is essential to do further research on the utility of the developmental assessment center. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]