Organizational Performance: The Future Focus of Leadership Development Programs.

Executive Summary

This article analyzes 54 studies on leadership development research from 1984 -- 2000 and determines the extent to which the intended outcomes of those leadership development programs focus on organizational performance, taking Burke and Day's (1986) meta-analysis as its starting point. Burke and Day's analysis, commonly regarded as the principle empirical support for the evaluation of the effectiveness of managerial training, found mixed results on the effectiveness of programs with only 2 out of 70 studies having organizational performance as the explicit outcome. This research confirms that from a sample of available studies organizations have begun to take a more systemic approach to leadership development, as 16 of the studies analyzed focus on organizational performance as the outcome of the leadership development experience. However, results on evaluations of effectiveness of the leadership development programs continue to be mixed.

Many organizations are concerned about leadership inadequacies of their employees, and as a result, are committing to education and training that deepen the skills, perspectives, and competencies of their leaders. Gibler, Carter, and Goldsmith (2000) indicate that annual budgets for leadership development programs will continue to grow throughout the next decade as companies "recognize the shortage of talented managers, the importance of developing bench strength, and the need to widen perspectives in order to compete globally" (p. xii). Most organizations recognize that effective leadership is one of the most powerful competitive advantages an organization can possess. However, research reported in the literature on the effectiveness of leadership development programs is sparse, which leads one to believe that relatively few organizations are evaluating the effectiveness of their leadership development programs. That leadership development efforts will result in improved leadership skills appears to be taken for granted by many corporations, professional management associations, and consultants (Sogunro, 1997).

Most organizations today are facing a multitude of outcome-based demands on their time and resources -- demands that stem from a variety of driving forces including federal mandates, increased competition, and national accreditation standards. Leadership development outcomes are even more important in global organizations than in traditional organizations because of dual reporting structures, proliferation of communication channels, overlapping responsibilities, and barriers of distance, language, time, and culture (Friedman, 2000). Ultimately outcomes, and specifically organizational outcomes, should be the driving force and energy behind the design and implementation of all leadership development programs.

Outcomes of leadership development programs are defined in terms of organizational performance. An outcome is defined as "a measurement of effectiveness or efficiency (of the organization) relative to core outputs of the system, subsystem, process, or individual" (Holton, 1999, p. 33). For this research, leadership development is defined as "every form of growth or stage of development in the life-cycle that promotes, encourages and assists the expansion of knowledge and expertise required to optimize one's leadership potential and performance" (Brungardt, 1996, p. 83). Leadership development studies include not only formal training programs, but also the full range of leadership experiences as defined by McCauley, Moxley, & Van Velsor (1998). The full range of leadership experiences include mentoring, job assignments, feedback systems, on-the-job experiences, developmental relationships which include exposure to senior executives, and leader-follower relationships.

The purpose of this research is to analyze the outcomes of available leadership development studies from 1984 -- 2000, after Burke and Day's meta-analysis (1986), to determine if leadership development programs have changed from a focus on individual performance to a focus on performance at the organizational level (Rummler & Brache, 1995). It uses a "macro" lens that incorporates the full range of leadership development programs (McCauley, Moxley, & Van Velsor, 1988), a new evaluation instrument, the Results Assessment System (Swanson & Holton, 1999), and a new high-performance leadership competency model (Holton & Naquin, 2000). Hopefully, this research will provide some theoretical undergirding for future research in determining the underlying reasons organizational-level outcomes do not appear to be the major driving force behind design and implementation of leadership development programs. This research also analyzes the changes in content of the leadership development programs, the types of leadership development intervention categories, and the intervention instruments used.

Burke and Day's Meta-Analysis of Managerial Training