It is possible that personal development has an important role in leadership development as motivation is an important factor for the development of leadership. Studies have shown that motivation to learn is an important factor in the success of training (e.g. Burke & Hutchins, 2007), and it has also be suggested that motivation to be a leader is important to engage in experiences that promote leadership development (Day & Harrison, 2007). For these reasons, a second aim of this systematic review is to establish the relationship between the theoretical underpinnings that inform leadership development and personal development: Is there any connection between particular theoretical frameworks and personal development? Do the theories of personal development inform leadership development in any form or shape?
SUMMARY
We don’t know much about leadership development. There is a serious scarcity of empirical investigation and theory development in the field. Nonetheless, this has not reduced the motivation of organizations to utilize this developmental tool. On the contrary, the employment of leadership development seems to be growing due to the assertion that leadership development is imperative for the competitive advantage of organizations (e.g. Conger & Xin, 2000). So, if there is no theory about how leaders develop, what sorts of theoretical underpinning inform the leadership development literature?
One possible theoretical foundation might come from the adult development theory. Some authors have suggested that leadership development might, in fact, be embedded in adult development (Day, 2009; Day & O’Connor, 2003; Mumford & Manley, 2003). If this is the case, then, theories about adult development might form the foundation for leadership development. Subsequently, do the theoretical underpinnings that have informed the leadership development literature include personal development in their treatment of leadership development?
SELF AND IDENTITY
“…too often organizations seek to simplify the definition of self by limiting it to an implicit ‘what you see at work is what you get connotation’” – Taylor, 2006
The self can be defined as “the psychological apparatus that allows organisms to think consciously about themselves” (Leary & Tangney, 2005: 8). This apparatus underpins all beliefs, perceptions and feelings an individual has about him or herself, allows individuals to self-reflect about their experiences, and enables individuals to regulate their own behavior (Leary & Tangney, 2005). Moreover, the self can also be conceptualized as a dynamic action system, since it constantly absorb and adapt itself in relation to information received from the social environment, and it produce behavior (Mischel & Morf, 2005). This dynamic action system or apparatus can be divided into three primary aspects: the affective self, the executive self (self-regulation) and the cognitive self (Heatherton, Krendl, MacRae & Kelly, 2007).
The affective self refers to an individual’s self-esteem, which can be defined as an individual’s attitude or evaluation towards him- or herself (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, Solomon, Arndt & Schimel, 2004). This evaluation occurs through several parameters, including social acceptance, self-acceptance, and correspondence between experiences and expectations (Kwan & Mandisodza, 2007), which will guide the emotional reactions of an individual that, subsequently, shape future actions and thoughts (Heatherton et al, 2007).
The executive self refers to the human ability to self-regulate one’s actions and thoughts (Heatherton et al, 2007). Self-regulation, or self-control, can be defined as the inhibition or nullification of habitual, innate or automatic behaviors, emotions, impulses or desires (Muraven & Baumeister, 2000; Muraven, Baumeister & Tice, 1999; Vohs & Schmeichel, 2007). A self-regulatory act, which takes place when individuals adapt, modify or change their response or themselves, can be divided in three periods: beginning, middle, and end (Vohs & Schmeichel, 2007). The beginning period is the most commonly associated with self-control and relates to the period in which an individual originate the self-change. This phase is commonly undertaken, however, in order to successfully change the self or its response, an individual needs to continue to regulate the self through the middle period, until the goal is achieved (end period). Thus, self-control often fails due to the difficulty of regulating the self continuously until the end period.
The cognitive self refers to an individual’s self-concept (Heatherton et al, 2007), which can be defined as a multifaceted cognitive structure that contains the memories, traits, values, beliefs, attributes, roles, identities and personal goals that an individual has about him- or herself (Campbell, Trapnell, Heine, Katz, Lavalee & Lehman, 1996; Gecas, 1982; Markus & Wurf, 1987). The self-concept is a dynamic structure that intervenes in the most important interpersonal and intrapersonal processes, reflecting and regulating therefore an individual’s behaviours (Markus & Wurf, 1987). The contents of the self-concept helps an individual to answer the questions “Who am I? What am I?” and includes roles, values and identities. Identity can be expressed by the images, personal features, feelings, roles and social status on the individual, and thus links the self-concept with society through the social categories and the meanings attached to those (Shamir, 1991). Since an individual’s identity is socially constructed, individual’s identities might be regulated and modified by organizations (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002; Brown, 2001). In addition, identity is a multidimensional construct, represented by three levels (individual, relational and collective levels; Sedikides & Brewer, 2001), and thus the organization itself has been considered to have an identity, which is formed by the collective self-concepts of its members (Brown & Starkey, 2000). Both these identities (the individual’s and the organization’s) might influence the collective and the individual conceptualizations of what leadership is and the forms of leadership that are expressed and encouraged in the organization.
HOW THE SELF CHANGES?
“It is in changing that things find purpose” – Heraclitus
The self is not a fixed structure that remains stable throughout an individual’s life. On the contrary, all the aspects of the self – affective, executive and cognitive – can change throughout an individual’s life. For instance, self-esteem is believed to be more a state-like characteristics than a trait in an individual that is vastly influenced by the environment in which the individual inhabits (Trzesniewski, Donnellan & Robins, 2003). Moreover, the executive aspect of the self might be considered by itself a venue to change, since self-regulation entails the individual modifying his or her own cognitive, behavioral or emotional response (Muraven, Baumeister & Tice, 1999). The difficulties people have in making concrete lasting changes in their lives might also be associated with this aspect of the self. Failures most likely occur because individuals possess limited resources available for self-regulation (Muraven & Slessareva, 2003).
In addition, it has been suggested that “the ideal self is the driver of intentional change in one’s behavior, emotions, perceptions and attitudes” (Boyatzis & Akrivou, 2006: 625). The ideal self is a self-representation within an individual’s self-concept that corresponds to the attributes an individual would like to possess (Higgins, 1987), and, therefore, inconsistencies between this ideal self and the real self (also known as actual self) have emotional and behavioral effects that influence an individual’s self-regulatory mechanisms (Boldero & Francis, 1999). Another self-representation within the self-concept, the possible selves, has also been associated with change (Markus & Nurius, 1986). The repertoire of possible selves that an individual possesses constitutes the potential selves that an individual either would like to become or fears becoming. Since possible selves are the cognitive expression of an individual’s goals, motives, fears, and aspirations, they encourage individuals to try new behaviors, and produce a parameter for self-evaluation. Due to this motivating role and due to the fact that possible selves are not restrained by reality, they are considered malleable to changes (Markus & Nurius, 1986). Indeed, empirical evidence confirms that possible selves are utilized when individuals adapt to professional roles in such a way that they are used as parameters for their provisional selves, that is, the gradual changes and experiments in new behaviors that individuals perform until they reach their role identity (Ibarra, 1999).
These three aspects of the self can therefore be transformed within the context of leadership development and might be important for determine – and modifying – an individual’s conceptualization of leadership. Several authors have suggested that the self is involved in changes within leadership development programs (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002; Carden & Callaham, 2007; Dubouloy, 2004; Florent-Treacy, 2009; Gagnon, 2008; Kets de Vries & Korotov, 2007).
SELF AND LEADERSHIP
An extensive literature connects the constructs of self and identity with leadership (e.g. Day & Harrison, 2007; Hogg, 2001; Moss, Dowling, & Callanan, 2009; Shamir & Eilam, 2005; see Table 5). The occurrence of these constructs in the leadership literature might be associated either with the leader or the follower, which indicates that the relationship between leader and followers (assuming the tripod ontology of leadership) either influences or is influenced by particular self and identity constructs in them.
For instance, the definitions of authentic leaders and authentic leadership rely heavily on the concept of self-awareness (Avolio & Gardner, 2005). In fact, its proponents suggest that the leader self-awareness is “fundamental to our conception of authentic leadership” (Ibid: 324). Moreover, they also assert that self-regulatory processes also constitute essential elements of this leadership theory since, according to these authors, authentic leaders utilize the process of self-regulation to align actions and intentions with their values. In addition, self-awareness and self-regulation of followers are also considered in this theory, as it has been suggested that authentic leaders improve the self-awareness and self-regulatory processes of followers.
TABLE 5- SELF AND IDENTITY CONSTRUCTS ASSOCIATED WITH LEADERSHIP
SUMMARY
Three features of self and identity constructs were considered in this introduction: (1) its ubiquitous role in several aspects of the individual, such as one’s emotions, beliefs, perceptions, and behaviors; (2) its ability to change and its involvement in the process of change and development; and (3) its associations with both leadership and leadership development. Altogether, these characteristics suggest that self and identity construct might be extremely important for our understanding of how leaders develop. For this reason, the third and last aim of this review is to establish if, and how, any of the theoretical underpinnings that might inform the literature of leadership development incorporate self and identity constructs.
CONCLUSIONS AND REVIEW QUESTIONS
The leadership development literature is underdeveloped. Compelling empirical evidence about the process, mechanism, causes, consequences and validity of leadership development initiatives are missing (e.g. Day, 2000; Day & Halpin, 2004). Likewise, theoretical advancements are also sluggish due to the challenges faced by researchers in building theory either through an inductive or a deductive strategy. In contrast, the practice of leadership development is bourgeoning, as organizations now believe on the competitive advantage that such development brings (e.g Conger & Xin, 2000).
As practice cannot be enlightened by a leadership development theory, it is important to determine which theories, perspectives, and frameworks have informed the development of leaders so far. As we have seen in this chapter, there are several likely candidates. For instance, there is an extensive range of leadership theories that could underlie this field, as most of the leadership theories mentioned above could have been translated into leadership development initiatives. Equally, theories of adult development could also support the leadership development literature, since several authors have indicated that they might share – or be – the same mechanisms (e.g. Day & O’Connor, 2003). Furthermore, it is also possible that some of the epistemological and ontological paradigms that have influenced particular perspectives on leadership might also have an impact in the leadership development literature.
Determining the particular lenses in which leadership development have been considered so far might be important for the advance of the field for several reasons. Firstly, if one is to build a comprehensive theory about leadership development, the foundations utilize so far might be invaluable for understanding the evolution of the field and for establishing a future direction of what is require in theory building. Secondly, it is possible that the leadership development literature is build in wobbly theoretical grounds, and thus, it is critical to discern the biases that the field might have acquire through the utilization of inadequate or unsubstantiated frameworks. Thirdly, as we seen with the discussion of the leadership literature, different levels of analysis and variables produce different ways of conceptualizing leadership; likewise, they might also yield differences in development. One leadership development initiative might be completely different from another if they apply different theoretical backgrounds, levels of analysis, epistemological and ontological assumptions or if they focus their development efforts on different variables. Distinguishing the differences and similarities among these programs are essential for theory building and for empirical study, as different programs might have distinctive mechanisms, processes, variables, and outcomes. Hence, the first aim of this paper is to systematic review the leadership development literature to establish what are the theoretical perspectives that underpin leadership development?
A second aim of this study is to determine the importance of personal development as a framework for leadership development. Historically, one of the first leadership development programs offered – the T-groups in the 1960s – focus on personal development (Conger, 1992; Kets de Vries & Korotov, 2007). Has the leadership development literature followed this tradition? In order to investigate the representativeness of personal development in the theoretical perspectives that underpin leadership development, this study will address the following question: Which of the theoretical perspectives that underpin leadership development are applied to personal development?
Finally, due to the association of self and identity constructs with both the phenomenon of leadership and of leadership development, a final aim of this review is to determine if the theoretical perspectives that inform leadership development have taken into consideration these constructs. This objective will be investigated through the following question: Which of the theoretical perspectives that underpin leadership development have address self and identity constructs?
SYSTEMATIC REVIEW QUESTIONS
The questions that will be addressed in this systematic review are the following:
1. What are the theoretical perspectives that underpin leadership development?
2. Which of the theoretical perspectives that underpin leadership development are applied to personal development?
3. Which of the theoretical perspectives that underpin leadership development have address self and identity constructs?
CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY
This chapter describes the rationale for selecting systematic review as a methodology, as well as the procedures and protocol employed by the study. Five phases compose the systematic review procedure: (1) selection of a consultation panel, (2) design of search strategy, (3) establishment of a selection criteria and a quality appraisal standard; (4) data analysis, and (5) data synthesis.
THE SYSTEMATIC REVIEW PROCESS
Literature reviews are invaluable components of academic research since they “enable the researcher both to map and to assess the existing intellectual territory, and to specify a research question to develop the existing body of knowledge further” (Tranfield, Denyer & Smart, 2003: 208). However, appraising the current knowledge in a field as fragmented, heterogeneous and extensive as management raises several issues, such as implicit biases, incompleteness, and lack of transparency. For this reason, the systematic review – a methodology originated in the medical science for assessing the evidence of the effectiveness of specific interventions – has been applied in management research (Tranfield et al, 2003).
A systematic review can be considered a type of research project, with specific a priori defined research questions and methodology (Denyer & Tranfield, 2008). Similar to an empirical study, the systematic review follows explicit and replicable methods in order to assure transparent, reliable and unbiased conclusions. The difference lies in the fact that the population and sample selected by the researcher is found in databases, peer-review articles, books, conference papers, among others.
The systematic review methodology furnish specific techniques for researchers to identify studies in a particular phenomenon, to establish and appraise which studies will be selected for the review, to extract, analyse and synthesize the evidence in the selected studies, and to describe the findings about the current state of knowledge about a particular phenomenon. These techniques have been employed in this protocol in order to determine what is known and not known about the role of identity in leadership conceptualizations, leadership development and personal development.
CONSULTATION PANEL
The first step in a systematic review is to establish a consultation panel, composed of academic and practitioner experts, to assist in the process, suggests relevant sources and to help with inclusion/exclusion decisions (Denyer & Tranfield, 2008; Tranfield et al, 2003). As illustrated in Table 6, the following panel was selected for this review:
TABLE 6 – CONSULTATION PANEL
Dr. David Denyer, my PhD supervisor, is associated with the Centre for Executive Learning and Leadership, and with the Research Methods Group of the Evidence Network. He is an expert in the areas of evidence-based management, management knowledge, strategic change, social and organizational networks, networked learning, and e-learning. David was instrumental in helping with the process of the systematic review.
Dr. Kim Turnbull-James is the Director of the Centre for Executive Learning and Leadership. She is a Chartered Psychologist and has great experience in executive coaching and leadership development. Her research interests include leadership development, organization politics, organization dynamics on organization leadership, and collaborative learning for leadership. Dr. Kim provided invaluable feedback in the synthesis on the data and the development of my perspective categories.
Dr. Suzanne Gagnon research interests include leadership development, identity construction and cross-cultural competence. Dr. Gagnon comments and suggestions were very useful in helping me determine the parameters and distinctions necessary to develop my category of perspectives.
Mark Probert is a student with my cohort. Our research interests overlap and he has extensive experience in executive development. His feedback and comments on early drafts were very helpful.
Heather Woodfield is an expert in information research. Her input in selecting search strings and understanding the nuisances of the databases were very important.
SEARCH STRATEGY
The second stage of the systematic review is to determine a search strategy, which will determine the documentations that will be analyzed in the review. The search strategy is composed of the search strings, keywords, and sources of information (databases and other sources of information, including books, cross-reference publications, working papers and articles suggested by the consultation panel) that will form the resources utilized to retrieve the data that will be analyzed and synthesized in the systematic review.
DATABASES
Four databases were selected for this review (see Table 7). Two of the databases, Proquest and EBSCO, were explored thoroughly, while the other two were examined quickly to determine if they provide any addition source of information that was not retrieved by the first two databases. The distinction in scrutiny was established by the use of different search strings: while the first two databases utilized a complete search string, the latter were investigated using a tight search string. The choice of databases for a complete or prompt analysis was based on their relevance for the literature investigated. EBSCO and Proquest constitute the two main source of information for business and management literature, and thus contain the major publications on leadership and leadership development. PsychINFO, as the main source for psychological literature, is important for retrieving any addition information about self and identity that might not be uncovered by the former databases. Likewise, Eric, as the main source for educational literature, might contain some articles on the field of management development that were not considered beforehand.
TABLE 7 – DATABASES SELECTED
OTHER SOURCES OF INFORMATION
In addition to articles retrieved in the database search, books, cross-reference papers, working papers and references suggested by the consultation panel were also considered for inclusion in this systematic review. The rationale for the inclusion of these sources, plus a criteria selection is indicated in Table 8.
TABLE 8 – ADDITIONAL SOURCES OF INFORMATION
KEYWORDS
A list of keywords (see Table 9) relevant for this review was identified through the original scoping study and through the literature considered in the introduction of this report (see Chapter II). These keywords formed the basis for the development of the search strings.
TABLE 9 - KEYWORDS
SEARCH STRING
As mentioned previously, this review considered two sets of search strings: a comprehensive search string and a tight search string. The comprehensive search string utilized is described in Table 10. These were combined in different ways to explore the Proquest and EBSCO databases, related to the particular research question they were addressing (see Table 11).
The tight search string considered only a few of the major keywords (leadership development, theory and perspective) in order to uncover any potential article in PsychInfo and Eric that were not considered before.
TABLE 10 – SEARCH STRINGS
(*) A variation of the search string was necessary for this construct due to differences in database characteristics.
TABLE 11 – REVIEW QUESTIONS WITH CORRESPONDING SEARCH STRING STRATEGY
RESULTS FROM THE SEARCH STRATEGY
The use of the above search strings in the databases produced the results shown in Table 12. As indicated in the table, some restrictions were applied to the database results, since the general result included articles that were not relevant for this study. A main restriction was to limit the search to academic articles (scholarly journals or periodical in Proquest and EBSCO, respectively). A second limitation, applied only to EBSCO, was to limit the search to the topic of leadership exclusively, as the search generated hits that pertain to other literature, such as career development and personnel management.
TABLE 12 – RESULTS OF THE COMPREHENSIVE SEARCH STRATEGY
An initial examination of these results indicated that the hits pertaining to the review questions two and three were included in the hits related to the review question number one, as this review question used a more inclusive search string. For this reason, the evaluation of the data and analysis was conducted with the results of this search only, which contained the hits of the other searches. This approach to the analysis and evaluation of the data not only reduced the need to verify for duplicated within searches but also allowed a more comprehensive view of the literature in relation to the topics of personal development and self and identity constructs, as the utilization of these terms might be embedded in the papers without being considered in the abstract or citation.
The results of the tight search strategy in PsychInfo and Eric produced six and no hits, respectively. No division among research questions was performed for this search.
SELECTION CRITERIA
The third phase of the systematic review, after the selection of a consultation panel and the design of a search strategy, is the establishment of a set of selection criteria that will define which of the articles produced by the search strategy would be included in the systematic review. Two stages of selection were conducted based on particular inclusion and exclusion criteria: one that appraised titles and abstracts and one that evaluated the papers as a whole. In addition, a quality appraisal was defined to attest that the literature selected express creditable data.
SELECTION CRITERIA FOR TITLES AND ABSTRACTS
The criteria for including articles based on their titles and abstracts are described in Table 13. The 5.731 hits from Proquest, EBSCO and PsychInfo combined were first scrutinized utilizing these restrictions in order to remove articles that did not pertain to the focus of this study, and also to eliminate duplications from the different databases. A large number of articles (4.087 articles – 71.3% of the original number of hits) were eliminated at this step.
TABLE 13 – SELECTION CRITERIA FOR TITLES AND ABSTRACTS
SELECTION CRITERIA FOR FULL TEXT PAPERS
The 1.644 articles remaining were scrutinized based on the paper as a whole. At this stage, papers could still be eliminated according to topic as sometimes it was difficult to establish based on abstract alone if the papers express a particular approach or perspective on leadership development.
As a result, several articles passed the selection by abstract, and only through reading the article it was possible to reject it based on topic. This was the case of several articles that described or evaluated programs or explain a particular method of leadership development. In addition, as will be explained in more details in the conceptual findings (Chapter IV), it was necessary to define the focus of the theoretical perspectives investigated in this study, and therefore articles that did not fall within the perimeters of this focus were also eliminated.
Moreover, articles that pertained to the management development literature often pass the title/abstract selection criteria, but were eliminated when examined in full. This occurred because, even though in this study the terms leadership development and management development were considered to be distinct, several authors utilize them interchangeable. Therefore, it was necessary, when not clear in the abstract, to read the article in full to establish the meaning of the term. Articles that utilized the term management development, but within the paper mention explicitly about developing leaders and/or leadership skills were included. Articles that did not mention leadership anywhere in the paper were excluded.
In addition, full papers could also be eliminated based on the content of the paper, in spite of being the appropriate topic. In relation to the content of the paper, there are separate criteria for conceptual and empirical papers. Conceptual papers have to include:
- Thorough review of the pertinent literature, including key authors and seminal papers in the fields of leadership development, leadership, self/identity and/or adult development. In addition, the author should show the relation between the literature cited and the arguments he or she was proposing.
- Unambiguous indication of the theoretical framework or model on which the author based his or her arguments.
- Comprehensive presentation of the key concepts, constructs, ideas, themes, and perspectives such as leadership development, conceptualisation of leadership, self/identity and adult development.
- Clear indication of the objectives of the publication, such as presentation of new model, framework or theory; synthesis of existing knowledge; criticism of existing model, framework or theory; suggestion of future research.
Empirical papers have to include:
- Thorough review of the literature pertinent for the study.
- Clear indication of the relationship between the study and existing theories in the fields of leadership development, leadership, self/identity and adult development (informed by theory; generating theory; atheoritical)
- Unambiguous evidence that the author’s epistemological, ontological and methodological assumptions were congruent.
- Clear research questions and link between research question and methods utilised.
- Evident rationale for conducting study and clear link between this rationale and findings, and between rationale and research question.
- Clear evidence that the authors addressed issues of validity, reliability in their methods, regardless if those were quantitative or qualitative.
- Clear evidence that the authors addressed issues of generalizability and that the claims made were strong.
- Inclusion of details about data collection, data analysis, sample selection and size.
- Thorough, unambiguous and rigorous presentation of data and results obtained.
- Clear connection between the results/data presented and the findings/conclusions drawn by the authors.
- Discussion about the limitations of the study, since all methodologies have shortcomings associated with their implicit assumptions. The recognition by authors of these limitations is a clear indication that the author was aware of them in their conclusions of the study.
QUALITY APPRAISAL
A final criterion for excluding articles from this review refers to their quality. Two issues about quality were considered. First, the practitioner literature was originally selected for this study, as it was believed that a comparison between the theoretical perspectives that inform the academic literature and the practitioner literature was relevant for this study. However, when reading in full, it became clear that not only the quality of the practitioner literature was, for most part, very poor and unsubstantiated but also that it did not bring anything new or interesting to the study. On the contrary, the practitioner literature seems to duplicate, badly, the information from the academic literature. Hence, after analyzing in full a large portion of the practitioner literature, it was decided that practitioner literature would be excluded from the study.
A second issue about quality refers to the quality appraisal selected for this study (see Table 14 below). Articles that were selected after the abstract and full paper selection were scrutinized in relation to their quality in contribution to the field, strength of argument, theoretical basis and methodological rigor. Papers could still be eliminated from this study if their quality was not deemed satisfactory.
TABLE 14 – QUALITY APPRAISAL CRITERIA
FINAL SELECTION OF PUBLICATIONS
Utilizing the criteria for full papers described above, the 1.644 articles remaining in the study after the title/abstract elimination stage were further reduced, as show in Table 15. As explained in more details above, there were seven reasons for removing articles at this stage. Two of these reasons were associated with the quality of the publication (practitioner articles and articles that failed the quality criteria), while the remaining were related to the focus of the article.
TABLE 15 – REASON AND AMOUNT OF ARTICLES ELIMINATED IN FULL TEXT
Thus, with these reductions, a total of 72 articles were included in this review from the database search. In addition, 31 sources were later incorporated, through cross-referencing, resulting in a total of 103 publications utilized in this review.
Cross-referencing articles were, for the most part, scrutinized by the same selection criteria as the articles obtained through the database. The only exceptions were background publications, that is, seminal publication about a particular perspective that did not focus on leadership development. These articles were included in this study as they were considered indispensable for the accurate description of each theoretical perspective.
DATA ANALYSIS
The fourth phase of the systematic review is to analyze the data contained in the articles selected for the study, either as a result of the database search or as a result of cross-referencing the selected articles. The articles included in report were analyzed utilizing an extraction form (see Table 16).
TABLE 16 – EXTRACTION FORM
SYNTHESIS
The final step in the systematic review is a synthesis of the data. In this study, a narrative summary of the data was utilized to synthesize the data conceptually. When developing this narrative summary, a modified ground-theory approach (Flick, Von Kardoff & Steinke, 2004) was utilized to determine categories of theoretical perspective. The change in the ground-theory approach comprised the inclusion of articles in the study even after saturation was achieved. In addition, the data was also synthesized using basic descriptive statistics.
CHAPTER IV: CONCEPTUAL FINDINGS
“…the complexity and multidimensionality of the very nature of leadership mitigate the possibility of a simple or unitary definition. Leadership cannot mean only one thing because it can and does take on multiple meanings and appearances” – Day & Harrison, 2007:361
The results of the data synthesis are described in detail in this chapter, which is organized as follows: Firstly, I define the term theoretical perspectives, as not all theories that inform the leadership development literature were considered theoretical perspectives. As explained in more details below, only theories that seek to elucidate the aims, assumptions and contents of leadership development were regarded as such. Secondly, I expound how the classification scheme was created and analyze how other authors have categorized leadership development. Thirdly, I describe in depth the eight categories of perspectives proposed in this study: personal growth, psychodynamic, cognitive, competence-based, critical theory, systems, strategic and consolidative. Finally, I delineate the role that self and identity constructs play in each of these categories.
DEFINING THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
There are several theories that inform leadership development; however, they seem to be referring to different aspects of leadership development. Similarly to leadership, leadership development is also a multidimensional phenomenon (e.g. Day & O’Connor, 2003) and therefore, in order to produce any meaning about the utilization of different theories by the leadership development literature, it is necessary to somehow separate these theories into specific components of the phenomenon itself.
One way to uncover the multidimensional nature of leadership development is through an examination of the elements that constitute it. As illustrated in Figure 6, the elements of leadership development can be organized by asking who is involved in leadership development programs, where do they occur, how they are delivered, what is developed, and why do they occur. So, the who element constitute the stakeholders that are involved in leadership development, such as the participant that take part of the leadership development initiative, the provider that lectures or facilitates the initiative, the HRM staff that was involved in organizing or selecting and contracting the provider, and the executives who might support the initiative. The where element comprise the physical locations in which the leadership development initiative takes place. Historically, leadership development initiatives for business started in university settings, but later other settings began to be used, such as consultancy firms, the outdoors, and the company itself (Conger, 1992). In-company programs have recently become popular and some organizations now even have their own in-company “universities” for training and development (e.g., Fulmer, 1997). The how element is composed by the methodology utilized in the program, including the interventions and learning approaches. Interventions, also known as initiatives, are the specific methods or techniques utilized for development, such as lectures, action learning projects, multisource feedbacks, coaching, job assignments and job rotation.
Learning approaches seem to be the point in which theories start to make an impact in the leadership development literature. The involvement and selection of stakeholders, the location of development and the methods utilized appear to be informed by practice. In other words, the who, where and part of the how of leadership development seem to have been originated through the actual routine and experience of developing leadership. Learning approaches, on the other hand, seem to be based on learning theories, such as Kolb’s experiential learning and Mezirow’s transformational learning.
FIGURE 6- ELEMENTS OF LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
A second cluster of theories seem to be present in the what and why elements of leadership development. The what element comprise the content and focus of leadership development endeavors, while the why element is associated with the objectives, justifications and beliefs one has about leadership development. These two elements are highly intertwined, as the purpose and rationale about leadership development usually guides the selection of content and focus. Thus, on a first analysis, it was possible to distinguish two groups of theories that inform leadership development: learning approach theories and rationale theories.
Learning approach theories were considered to be beyond the scope of this study for several reasons. Firstly, they are not particularly related with leadership development, being associated with the educational literature and with how individuals learn. Any educational undertaking – be it children learning to read, adolescents grasping a second language or managers comprehending the political environment of their organization – will, or can, be informed by these theories. Secondly, they do not expose any predispositions towards variables, levels of analysis or ontological and/or epistemological stances concerning leadership or leadership development. And, finally, on a more practical level, selecting only one group of theories was necessary to reduce the size of the study to a manageable one. An analysis of the use of learning approach theories in leadership development is a worthy research endeavor, nonetheless, to conduct the in-depth scrutiny of the literature necessary for this systematic review on the two clusters of theories, with the given time frame, would be impossible.
Thus, rationale theories constitute the basis for the theoretical perspectives analyzed in this study. Since these theories expose the what and why elements of leadership development, theoretical perspective was defined in this study as the group of theories that provides a lens that express the raison d'être for leadership development.
DEVELOPING CATEGORIES OF PERSPECTIVES
Arranging the rationale theories in categories of theoretical perspectives was considered the most effective and pertinent manner to synthesize the data. In an iterative process of reading, appraising, questioning, and understanding, the clusters became evident in themselves. Theories naturally fell into specific types.
In order to corroborate them, however, it was important to determine how other authors have classified leadership development. Even though terms such as categories, categorization or classification were not included in the database search, several categorization schemes were cited in the literature selected. An analysis of these demonstrated that, not surprisingly due to the multidimensionality of leadership development, they were related to different elements of leadership development. For instance, some authors grouped leadership development according to the type of learning they sponsor (e.g., formal training, developmental activities, and self-help activities, Yulk, 2010). These types of categories, however, are not related to the theoretical perspectives analyzed here, so it was necessary to select classification schemes that specific dealt with what elements (content, focus) and/or why elements (assumptions, purpose). Using this criterion, six classification schemes were selected (see Figure 7). It is possible that they do not represent a comprehensive inventory of all classification schemes of leadership development dealing with content, focus, assumptions and/or purpose as this was not examined systematically; nevertheless, they do provide a good foundation for judging the validity of the classification scheme developed in this study.
As illustrated in Figure 7, the numbers of categories in the classification schemes differ (five categories in Campbell et al, 2003; four categories in Conger, 1992; three categories in Cacioppe, 1997, Conger & Benjamin, 1999, and Kur & Bunning, 2002; and two categories in Day, 2001). Their emphasis also varies, as some classification schemes only consider the individual (Conger, 1992) while the remaining consider the individual as well as aspects of the organization, such as its social environment and its strategy. These different emphases on the classification schemes are represented by the vertical lines in Figure 7. The thick line divides the categories focusing on the individual from the categories focusing on organizational aspects. The dashed lines divide aspects within the individual or within the organization that are addressed by distinct categories. Thus, there seems to be no definite system for categorizing leadership development, and different levels of analysis (individual, dyadic, organization) can be included in the same classification scheme. Also, none of the categorizations analyzed considered ontological and epistemological issues, which were considered in perspectives and approaches to leadership (see Table 4). All these factors might be relevant to analyze the categories that surfaced in this analysis, but in order to do an examination of these factors, it is necessary first to describe the categories obtained in this study.
FIGURE 7 – CLASSIFICATION SCHEMES FOR LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
THE PERSPECTIVES
Eight categories of theoretical perspectives on leadership development were generated in this study: (1) personal growth perspective; (2) psychodynamic perspective; (3) cognitive perspective; (4) competence-based perspective; (5) critical theory perspective; (6) systems perspective; (7) strategic perspective; and (8) consolidative perspective. These are described in details below.
PERSONAL GROWTH PERSPECTIVE
“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true” – Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
The personal growth perspective is at the same time one of the oldest and newest perspective on leadership development. It is one of the oldest since leadership development programs based on this perspective began on the 1980s, descending from popular leadership training in the 1960s and 1970s, such as the Outward Bound Program and New Age Programs (Conger, 1992). From this origin, it absorbed its main assumptions and humanistic personal-centered principle of becoming “true to oneself” (Conger, 1993). It is also one of the latest perspectives since new developments in the field – such as positive psychology and its application to management science, Positive Organizational Studies – combined with a moral collapse in our organizations has brought this perspective into the spotlight again (e.g. May, Chan, Hodges & Avolio, 2003).
The positive psychology movement can be considered a modern version of the humanistic movement, since they seem to share several of its major assumptions. Similar to Maslow’s concept of self-actualization, prominent positive psychology scholars state that the field “It is about identifying and nurturing their strongest qualities, what they own and are best at, and helping them find niches in which they can best live out these strengths” (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000:6; cited in Luthans & Avolio, 2003). Likewise, a Positive Organization Science position assumes that “understanding how to enable human excellence in organizations will unlock potential, reveal possibilities, and move us along a more positive course of human and organizational functioning” (Spreitzer, 2006:306). Hence, based on these bodies of theories, the central assumptions of the personal growth perspective can be described through the ancient Greek aphorism “Know thyself” and through the concept of self-actualization. From these two central beliefs, all the assumptions of this perspective derive.
For instance, in relation to their stance about leadership, this perspective assumes that effectiveness leadership is directly associated with an individual being a “whole person” (Conger, 1993:25). This assumption is, in a sense, further developed through the concepts of authentic leadership and transformational leadership. Several of the articles categorized in this perspective focused on the development of these types of leadership, which shared the idea of the leader inspiring and motivating followers into becoming leaders themselves (Avolio, 2004; Gardner, Avolio, Luthans, May & Walumbwa, 2005). Therefore, it is possible to distill an influence of the concept of “becoming better” and “making others better” in these two leadership styles as development of these types of leadership are associated not only with the leader’s self-awareness, self-regulation and self-development but also with the leader promoting and encouraging these same processes in his or her follower (Ibid).
In addition, this perspective considers that the leader’s moral consciousness is paramount for effectiveness leadership since, in today’s hectic and changing business environment, leaders are expected to make moral judgments, take accountability for their action and behave beyond self-interest (Branson, 2007; May et al, 2003). Moral consciousness and authenticity can be considered to be strong associated concepts as both are directly tied to the idea of an inner or true self. For example, in its core, moral consciousness can be defined as obtaining self-knowledge, since in order to make moral decisions the leader needs to be aware of the subjective and personal influences in his or her choices, and this awareness can only be obtained by understanding one’s inner world and experiences, and by developing an “inner voice” that guides the leader in the direction of righteous actions (Branson, 2007). These “inner voices” also direct individuals toward authentic behaviors since authenticity entails experiencing a sense of self (Avolio & Gardner).
In relation to leadership development, it is believed that “…most managers are ignoring an inner call to realize their potential to become leaders. If they could get in touch with their innermost desires and abilities, more managers could transform themselves into leaders” (Conger, 1992:46), and thus, the role of leadership development initiatives is viewed as promoting awareness towards these inner features. In order to do so, programs that approach leadership development through the lenses of personal growth focus on the deepest aspects of the participant’s self, such as their values, motives, self-concept and self-esteem (Branson, 2007). Since these programs deal with the deepest and most personal aspects of an individual, another assumption that they have is that they create a transformation in the individual’s way of perceiving themselves that “will reconfigure our whole past so that we experience the world differently and better” (Conger, 1992:73).
It has been suggested that one major limitation of this perspective is that the benefits obtained from participating on this type of programs might not be related to leadership and organizational effectiveness (Conger, 1993). This limitation, however, might have been at least partially addressed through the positive psychology literature, which shows that happy individuals are indeed more productive and effective at work (Lyubomirsky, King & Diener, 2005).
PSYCHODYNAMIC PERSPECTIVE
“…abnormal behavior is more ‘normal’ than most people are prepared to admit” – Kets de Vries, 204:184
Like the previous perspective, the psychodynamic perspective also focuses on the deeper aspects of individuals; however, the theoretical foundation utilized to understand, bring into awareness and modify these inner aspects diverges significantly between these two perspectives. While the personal growth perspective assumes a humanistic view of the world, which promotes a very optimistic view of humanity, psychoanalytical and psychodynamic theories suggest that we are fragile creatures that invariably have been – to one extent or another – damaged in our formative years (Cotter, 1996).
The wounds that every individual is believed to acquire in their first years of life are thrust into the unconscious, where they continue to influence our actions, thoughts and feelings through defense mechanisms such as transference, resistances and development of a false self (Dubouloy, 2004; Kets de Vries & Korotov, 2007). Several of the main assumptions of the psychodynamic perspective are related to the role of the unconscious: (a) individuals are products of their past; (b) there is an irrational, unconscious side to every individual, which lays beyond their conscious awareness and produces a “dark side” to their personality; and (c) there is a “inner theatre” operating within each individual that shapes their character and links the components of their mental lives (emotions, cognitions and behaviors; Kets de Vries, 2008).
Leadership, and in fact several aspects of the organizational life, are seen through the lenses of these assumptions, such that the effectiveness and performance of leaders can be severely impart by these psychological wounds and seemingly irrational attitudes, which can be explained in light of experiences of the past (Kaiser & Kaplan, 2006). For instance, the differences between personalized and socialized charismatic leaders have been shown to be rooted in early development processes (Popper & Mayseless, 2007). Narcissism originates from the conflicts and frustration of growing up, as the infant has an omnipotent sense of self that needs to be frustrated in the right doses by ‘good enough’ parenting (Kets de Vries, 2004). Personalized leaders, such as Hitler, are characterized by narcissistic and self-aggrandized behaviors and attitudes that are considered to be rooted in narcissistic deprivation (Popper & Mayseless, 2007); that is, as a child, these individuals were exposed to too much, too little, or irregular stimulation from their parents that produce feelings of rage, envy, humiliation, and a desire for status and power (Kets de Vries, 2004). On the other hand, socialized leaders, such as Gandhi, are motivated by moral and social issues and demonstrate respect towards followers, since due to a supportive parental environment, they are able to go beyond narcissistic interests (Popper & Mayseless, 2007).
Even if as a child an individual received the appropriate amount of frustration from their caretakers to challenge the infantile omnipotent view of themselves, developing thus a healthy narcissism, other intra-psychic factors might impair their leadership effectiveness. For instance, transference – the assumption that “no relationship is a new relationships, and that all relationships are colored by previous relationships” (Kets de Vries & Korotov, 2007:380), especially the relationship with the primary caretakers – might influence how leaders react to followers, and also how followers react to leaders (Kets de Vries, 2008). In addition, a healthy narcissism do not preclude the development of hidden feelings, conflict, anxiety and defensive behaviors within the unconscious of the individual caused by unacceptable feelings or thoughts (Kets de Vries & Korotov, 2007).
The role of leadership development programs that utilized the psychodynamic perspective, therefore, is to work with these unconscious wounds, experiences, repressions and transferences so that leaders can “recognize their strengths and weaknesses, understand the cause of their resistance to change, and recognize where and how they can become more effective” (Kets de Vries, 2004: 188). In order to bring into consciousness, and thus modify, the consequences of developmental psychological wounds, leadership development programs in this perspective work with a psychodynamic framework that divides the leader’s “inner theatre” into three triangles: the mental life, the conflict and the relationships triangles (Kets de Vries & Korotov, 2007). In the mental life triangle, the interconnectedness between cognition, behavior and emotion are emphasized and the role of emotions to promote behavioral changes are addressed. In the conflict triangle, defensive barriers are identified and overcome through the processes of confrontation and clarification. And, finally, in the relationship triangle, patterns of interactions that originated from past relationships are recognized since it is assumed that “when a person understands old patterns of interaction and then learns to assess functionality or dysfunctionality of these patterns in current relationships – the process of transformation and change is more likely to be successful” (Kets de Vries & Korotov, 2007:381)
The value of leadership development programs utilizing this perspective is not clear. Anecdotal evidence and qualitative data suggest that they promote remarkable individual changes – such as rekindled interest and motivation about one’s work, increased awareness about interpersonal relationships, release of creative potential, development of a new sense of self-confidence and self-esteem – that later can be translated into more effective leadership (Dubouloy, 2004; Kets de Vries & Korotov, 2004). Some of the changes that might occur in this type of programs, however, might be beneficial to the individual but might be seen as detrimental to the sponsor organization. For instance, leaders might develop a new identity in these programs that are in opposition with their role in their organization and even as a leader (Ibid).
COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE
“We have found that a majority of weakness in leadership effectiveness are the result of required skills that have never been learned” – Kiel, Rimmer, Williams & Doyle, 1996:68 (cited in Halpern, 2004)
The cognitive perspective, similar to the previous two perspectives, also has a psychological foundation. The main psychological theories utilized at the basis of this perspective, however, are related to cognitive psychology and, more specifically, to the information-processing view of how individual diagnose and make sense of complex information, and how they learn and acquire new skills (Lord & Hall, 2005).
Due to its origins, the cognitive perspective views leadership as an intricate form of social problem solving, in which leaders have to solve complex, novel, ill-defined problems in real time and with a range of limitations, such as resources, timeframe, conflicting problems and goals and systems demands (Mumford, Zaccaro, Harding, Jacobs & Fleishman, 2000). Leadership effectiveness, therefore, depends on the development of expertise in solving these problems, as expertise releases cognitive resources, utilizes a great number of concepts and organizes information in relation to identifying principles, which allows the leader to apply these concepts in a flexible manner, which is necessary to create n solutions to novel unknown problems (Mumford, Marks, Connelly, Zaccaro & Reiter-Palmon, 2000).
This belief about the nature of leadership produces an important assumption, which has direct impact on the development of leaders. As the development of leadership skills requires experience, individuals cannot be innate leaders (Mumford, Zacarro, Harding, et al, 2000). In other words, regardless of the motivation, intelligence or charisma an individual might possess, they will not be effective leaders in an organization without the necessary learning experiences that allow them to practice and mature their leadership skills. This is not to say, however, that individual characteristics do not influence the development of leadership skills. On the contrary, evidence suggests that particular patterns of personality, ability and motivation affect performance and skill development (Mumford, Zaccarro, Johnson, Diana, Gilbert & Threlfall, 2000), which implies that the intelligence, motivation and/or charisma that a leader possesses are important – but not sufficient – for their effectiveness.
A second key assumption generated by this skill-based model of leadership is that leadership development cannot occur as a punctuated, one-time event fashion. The attainment of expertise is a long and slow process, calculated to take ten years or more (Mumford, Zaccaro, Harding, et al, 2000); and, therefore, an individual needs time and particular learning experiences for the development of his or her leadership skills.
This notion, that the individual must go through a maturation process of their cognitive skills in order to develop leadership, is very similar to the ideas postulated by cognitive theories about how adults develop. In fact, there are a number of authors who have suggested that leadership development is, ultimately, adult development (Day, Harrison & Halpin, 2009; Mumford & Manley, 2003). A particular theory that has been extensively applied to leadership development – and also leadership – is Kegan’s constructive-developmental theory, which put forward that idea that adults move beyond the stages of sense-making and knowledge transformation that children develop when growing up (e.g. Harris & Kuhnert, 2008; McCauley, Drath, Palus, O’Connor & Baker, 2006). In adulthood, therefore, individuals can change the way they construct their subjective understanding of the world and of themselves – from a simplistic view in which the individual’s needs, desires and interests are the focus of their sense of self, and opinions that diverge from theirs are not integrated; to an intermediate stage where their sense of self derives from their relationship with others and is dependent of it, and thus, they can empathize, assimilate the opinion of others and coordinate their needs and desires with those of others, but they can also be manipulated and pressured by the social milieu; to a final stage where their sense of self stem from their values and principals but is also open to assimilate new perspectives and the opinion and experience and others (Harris & Kuhnert, 2008; Kuhnert & Lewis, 1987; McCauley et al, 2006).
This change in the way individuals make sense of their world and of themselves is directly linked with the type of interventions proposed by the cognitive perspective. This perspective assumes that leadership development is skill development. And skill development involves changing how leaders access and utilize information as well as modifying quantitatively and qualitatively the knowledge base that they utilize in these information processing operations (Lord & Hall, 2005). Moreover, qualitative changes in an individual’s knowledge base require involvement of his or her self-identity. The leader’s identity becomes central to the model of leadership skill development since it provides the structure through which knowledge is organized and the motivation for the individual to seek experiences to practice these skills (Ibid). Thus, when leaders move from a novice perception of leadership to an expert one, their self-concept as a leader also evolves and becomes integrated with their skills and knowledge about leadership. Furthermore, it has also been suggested that this movement from apprentice to expert also involves a shift in the leader’s identity, from an individual level to a collective one (Ibid), which is very similar to the changes proposed in Kegan’s constructive-development theory.
The association between the types of interventions that this perspective promotes and leadership effectiveness is more straightforward than that of the two previous perspectives, due to the empirical evidences and theories connecting performance with skill development and developmental stages (e.g. Harris & Kuhnert, 2008; Kuhnert & Lewis, 1987; Mumford, Zaccaro et al, 2000).
COMPETENCE-BASED PERSPECTIVE
“To be an effective leader, manager or professional, a person needs the ability to use knowledge and to make things happen. These can be called competencies…” - Boytazis & Saatcioglu, 2008:93
“Competencies are a behavioral approach to emotional, social, and cognitive intelligence” – Boyatzis, 2008: 7
The competence-based perspective can be seen as a collage between the personal growth and the cognitive perspectives. Similar to the latter, it focuses on skills and knowledge, and similar to the former it also considers motives, values and individual qualities. The foundation of this perspective, however, differs from the previous perspectives in that it has not been exported directly from psychology to leadership development. The idea of competencies as the differentiator of performance was first established in the human resource management literature and in the management development literature before being applied to leadership development (e.g. Boyatzis, 1982, 2008). Nonetheless, the model that supports the competence-based perspective does originate from psychology; more specifically, “the model can be considered an adaptation of the classical psychological model of behavior. That is, behavior is a function of the person and the environment” (Boyatzis, 1982: 16). Hence, this theoretical perspective has a behavioral psychology underpinning.
Competencies can be defined as underlying personal characteristics – such as traits, motives, skills, knowledge, self-image and social roles – that promote effective performance in a job (Boyatzis, 1982). Central to this definition is the notion that the competency matches the environment, that is, in order to promote maximum performance, a set of competencies need to be consistent with the organizational environment and the demands of the job (Ibid). This means that the competencies of an effective leader in a particular organization might not be translated into performance in another company, in another role (such as a promotion) or even in a different unit or subsidiary of the same organization. Another crucial issue is that, due to its behavioral background, competencies are measured, assessed, and developed in relation to demonstrable behaviors (Boyatzis, 2008). Competencies are, thus, composed of sets of behaviors and their underlying constructs: whilst behaviors constitute the manifestations of their constructs, different behaviors might represent the same construct (Ibid).
These two main concepts are useful to differentiate the competence-based perspective from the cognitive perspective. Not only they have distinct origins, but also their focuses are different. Even though both consider skills and knowledge, for the cognitive perspective, these are divorced from the location in which they are applied and from a particular set of behavior they might promote, as the purpose of development are the cognitive and knowledge structures, the processes, and understanding that the leader cultivates over time. For the competence perspective, on the other hand, behaviors are the unit of interest.
Since behaviors are the focus of this perspective, which behaviors – and thus, which competencies – do leadership development programs based on this perspective promote? Two factors are critical to answering this question. First, it is important to categorize the different types of competencies. And, second, it is necessary to establish how competence models are developed.
In relation to the kinds of competencies that can be developed, there are three noteworthy classification schemes. The first category separate clusters of threshold competencies from clusters of competencies exhibit by exceptional performers (Boyatzis, 1982, 2008). Threshold competencies are essential to the performance of a job, but are not associated with outstanding effectiveness. Examples of these competencies include basic cognitive abilities (memory and deductive reasoning), knowledge (declarative and procedural), and basic interpersonal skills. This type of competence is probably not the focus of leadership development programs, as they most likely determine the employability of individuals and their promotion to leadership and management positions. Competencies that lead to superior performance, on the other hand, comprise the desirable behaviors that leadership development programs utilizing this perspective would aim to develop. These have, recently, been divided into cognitive (e.g., system thinking), emotional intelligence (e.g. self-awareness) and social intelligence (e.g. empathy) competencies (Boyatzis, 2008).
The second and three classification schemes are somewhat associated. While the second classification system organizes competencies in the acronym KSAO, that is, Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, and Other, with other containing personality constructs; the third set of categories differentiates which of the components of the acronym comprise stable and/or dynamic competencies (Leiba-O’Sullivan, 1999). Stable competencies consist of those competencies that are relatively fixed and difficult to change (e.g. personality), while dynamic competencies are more malleable characteristics, and therefore, more prone to changes by a developmental program (Ibid).
In relation to the development of competence models, there are two classification schemes describing the process utilized by organizations (Muratbekova-Touron, 2009), which can actually be arranged as a single scheme. The first classification organizes three main approaches: the borrowed approach is the most inexpensive and easier to achieve since it is base on utilizing the competence model developed by another organization, but it has the disadvantage of not considering the culture and needs of the borrowing company (Ibid). The borrowed-and-tailored approach is an intermediate type of approach, since it combines using the competence model of another corporation, but modifying it to adapt to the organization’s needs and culture. Finally, the tailored approach consists of an organization developing its own competence model from the beginning.
The second classification scheme can be built into the first, since it defines the three ways in which an organization can create its own competence model (Briscoe & Hall, 1999). The first method is the research-based competency approach which involves interviewing executives and top performers about “critical incidents” (that is, examples of particular behaviors) that typify their source of their success. The data from these interviews are later analyzed to distill the most important behaviors for effective performance in the organization. The second method that corporations can use is the strategy-based competence approach, which defines the competence model based on the strategic goals and directions that the organization would like to take. The final method is the value-based competency approach, which designs the competence model based on the values that the corporation would like to promote.
Competence models are widely use by organizations (Brownell, 2006), and some authors have summarized the advantages for corporations to do so, such as linking the organizations interests with performance, behavior and rewards; measuring performance accurately; producing a common framework; protecting the morale of personnel; and connecting developmental activities to organizational goals (Muratbekova-Touron, 2009). There are, however, several problems with the use of competence models for leadership development. For instance, regardless of the method in which the competence model was build, it produces a perception of stability which is rarely seen in the business world today. Competence models, when developed by the organization, are a very expensive and time-consuming process and when the model is finalized, it is in danger of being obsolete (Emiliani, 2003). Even if the competence model is developed using the strategy-based approach, it would require its developers to estimate the future needs of their company (Briscoe & Hall, 1999), an almost impossible task due to the complexities and instabilities of today’s corporate world.
Another concern about this perspective specific to leadership development is that it does not seem to have particular conceptions about leadership. On the contrary, leadership seems to be perceive as a the demands of a particular job, and therefore, has its set of competencies – traits, motives, skills, knowledge, self-image and social roles – that are considered important for leadership effectiveness. Hence, through this perspective it is difficult to distinguish the differences between a manager and a leader. Articles seem to treat management and leadership developments concurrently. As mentioned in the methodology section, management development articles were included in this review if they explicitly mentioned leadership development or develop of leaders or development of leadership skill as well. This seemed to be the case of several competence-based perspective articles.
CRITICAL THEORY PERSPECTIVE
“Fairly mundane acts are given a particular aura and appear to be significant and remarkable when framed as leadership” – Alvesson & Sveningsson, 2003: 1454
The critical theory perspective stems from the application of Critical Theory to the thinking, research, and practice of management science and, more specifically, of management education (Reynolds & Vince, 2004). Critical theory is a philosophy and a social theory developed by the members of the Frankfurt School that, drawing from the Enlightenment tradition, seek to elucidate the meaning of human needs and to increase autonomy in social and personal life (Alvesson & Willmott, 1992; Prasad & Caproni, 1997).
Critical theory has a social constructivist view of the world, so they believe that, as members of society, humans are constantly creating, reinforcing and modifying their sense of reality through processes of sense-making and “social negotiation” (Prasad & Caproni, 1997). These processes are not considered to be arbitrary, since they are influenced by the interactions with powerful cultural builders, such as institutions and the media. Neither are these processes considered to be benign, since although they promote societal order and meaning, they also produce false expectations and unseen contradictions, thwarting human potential, societal possibilities and fulfillment in life (Ibid). For this reason, critical theory disputes the dominant perception that people’s sense of being, expectations and taken-for-granted assumptions are autonomous and independent from historical processes (Alvesson & Willmott, 1992).
An essential belief of critical theory is that “social science can and should contribute to the liberation of people from unnecessarily restrictive traditions, ideologies, assumptions, power relations, identity formations, and so forth, that inhibit or distort opportunities for autonomy, clarification of genuine needs and wants, and thus greater and lasting satisfaction” (Ibid: 435). Hence, the goal of critical theory is to enable individuals to change their lives by promoting self-knowledge and awareness of “how the reality of the social world, including the construction of the self, is socially produced and, therefore, is open to transformation” (Ibid).
When applied to management education, and particular to leadership development, critical theory conceptualizes that these types of programs are, indeed, social practices promoted to control employees’ identity and identification with the organization through identity regulation (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002). As mentioned above, critical theory assumes that through social interactions we are constantly re-constructing our sense of reality, including our self-identity. For this reason, self-identity is viewed not as a trait (or a set of traits), but as an orderly narrative assembled out of cultural elements (such as symbols, values, language and clusters of meanings) that is continuously built and rebuilt by the individual through reflections and experiences that are, themselves, formed by unconscious processes, early life experiences, interactions with other members of society, and exposure to institutional messages (Ibid). If an individual’s life is stable and consistent, the narrative that constitutes his or her self-identity will be fairly stable as well because the elements, discourses and experiences that this individual is exposed to will also be fairly consistent. However, with today’s unpredictabilities and inconsistencies, this malleable nature of self-identity means that we are constantly involved in identity work, that is, shaping, restoring, preserving, reinforcing or revising the narrative that constitute our self-identity. Identity regulation, then, consists of the discursive practices, promoted in leadership development programs (and other organizational activities), that focus on defining and endorsing an appealing identity that engages participants’ hopes, aspirations and fears in order to trigger and direct the participants’ identity work in such a way that they transform their self-identity towards one that is beneficial to the organization.
Two empirical studies seem to corroborate this view of leadership development programs (Carden & Callahan, 2007; Gagnon, 2008). For instance, Gagnon (2008) studied two in-company leadership development programs in depth, through interviews, ethnographic work and observations. In one of the programs, identity regulation was a central theme in participant’s discourse and in the practices, selection process and timeframe of the program, which clearly defined and promoted a particular desirable identity that participants were encouraged to absorb. Actually, numerous mechanisms were explicitly put in place to connect participants’ performance with the characteristics of this identity. The second program analyzed in this study had a less stringent process of identity regulation; however, participants were still encouraged to reformulate their identity. In the program examined by Carden and Callahan (2007), changes in the identity of participants were also detected, this time in the monthly reports they wrote throughout the duration of their 18-month in-company leadership development program.
In university-based programs, identity regulation might be less robust than those observed in these two studies, since university-based programs are removed from the direct control of sponsor organizations. Nevertheless, identity regulation might still be present through the utilization of techniques, such as MBTI and 360-degree feedback, that was been suggested to endorse characteristics sought by organizations (Ford & Harding, 2007).
The critical theory perspective on leadership development can be used not only to critique and explain the process that participants undergo in these programs, but can also be used to challenge taken-for-granted assumptions, confront established thoughts and actions, and promote new concepts of self and leader identity that are freed from the manipulations of institutions and society (Ford & Harding, 2007). This critical theory lens on leadership development has only been applied very recently to leadership development. The why and what of this perspective creates can be seen in the critical theory’s aims to liberate individuals from the restrictions and oppression created by historical and cultural norms, expectations, assumptions, ideologies and identity regulations. Nonetheless, without considering the merit of promoting this type of program for the greater good of society (which most likely would be an assumption of critical theory due to their purpose and philosophy), their effect on leadership effectiveness is unknown.
SYSTEMS PERSPECTIVE
“little blind creatures poking their sticks at different parts of the elephant, each with a different with notion of what the beast must look like” – Rifkin, 1980:231, cited in Axley & McMahon, 2006
With the systems perspective, we leave the realm of the individual and begin to consider the realm of the patterns, relationships and interconnectedness. Similar to the interconnectedness that it postulates, systems theory comprises of an amalgamation of theories and models that have been applied to a diverse literature, from biology and modern physics to management and sociology: chaos theory, complexity theory, systems thinking, complex adaptive systems, open systems theory, self-organization theory, planned change theory, intentional change theory and organizational learning, to name a few (e.g. Axley & McMahon, 2006; Taylor, de Guerre, Galvin & Kass, 2002).
The paradigm shift that many associate with systems theory seems to be related to the realization regarding the inter-dependent relationships and interactions that characterize some systems. With this recognition, systems were classified in a nine-level hierarchical continuum from most simple to higher complexity, and systems categorized in the higher levels of this continuum (level four to nine), such as open and complex systems, were postulated to be controlled by the principle of self-maintenance (Schneider & Somers, 2006). Social organizations were deemed to be complex (Ibid), and for this reason, the characteristics of complex systems can be applied to aspects of organizational life, including leadership and leadership development.
Complex adaptive systems are composed of multiple elements that may act independently from each other (Boyatzis, 2006), however, since they are constantly interacting with each other, they tend to intermingle and co-evolve in symbiotic fashion (Luoma, 2006). Yet, as different constituents of the system interact with several others in a myriad of reactions and interconnections with all other elements, it is usually impossible to determine a clear pattern of cause and effect nor it is possible to anticipate or pin down their interactions (Ibid). As organizational life can be seen as a complex adaptive system (Schneider & Somers, 2006), these features of connectivity and co-evolution might have important implications for leadership development. First, it suggests that the development of relationships might be fundamental for leadership effectiveness. Leaders can be considered one element of the organization system and, as such, it is important for them to promote and improve their interconnectedness with other elements (other members) of the organization. A relationship-building focus for leadership development has already been proposed to enhance the organization’s social capital and the leader’s ability to act as a change agent (Uhl-Bien, 2003). Second, these features also suggest that interventions in an isolated unit, such as a department, a team or an individual, do not increase the performance of the entire system, since elements need to be continuously linked to other systems in order to produce the same effects (Luoma, 2006). Thus, this concept goes against the focus of several theoretical perspectives in leadership development, as they concentrating on changing the individual, ignoring the links and connections that individual has in the system.
Self-organization is a natural consequence of countless interactions that occur in complex systems (Luoma, 2006). The multitude of interactions among the elements of the system moves the system in the direction of chaos (Ibid). However, since complex systems (like open systems) import energy from the environment, this constant incoming energy supports a dynamic order that will create spontaneously new orders (such as new behaviors) from within the system, without the involvement of a central controller (Ibid). As leaders might perceive themselves as the “central controller” of the organization, it is important that they develop a resistance to eradicate disorder, as this would obliterate the system’s capacity for self-organization (Stumpf, 1995). Actually, leaders may be essential players in the self-organization of the system (Schneider & Somers, 2006), as they can provide the organization with the necessary direction, values, and energy inputs that channels people’s behaviors and lets the organization in the “edge of chaos”, as this is the most creative and innovative position for an organization (Luoma, 2006). The “edge of chaos” is also the position of optimal adaptability and buffering, as extremely chaotic systems are not able to sustain new behaviors and extremely ordered systems do not allow new behaviors to be incorporated (Schneider & Somers, 2006). In extremely chaotic systems, tiny forces – as the flapping of wings of a butterfly, miles and miles away – can disrupt them since they have very few stable elements. Due to this constant external interference, no buffering and little adaptability are possible since new behaviors go as fast as they came. In contrast, in extremely ordered systems, elements are so rigid that only trifling changes are allowed, and thus, they have low adaptability and evolutability (Ibid).
In leadership development, then, it is important to make leaders aware of the importance of chaos and to develop their capacity to function and direct this state. In order to fulfill this role properly, issues of direction, values and the ability to understand the relations, networks, interdependencies, and evolutions of the organizational environment are probably vital. Hence, leadership development, according to this perspective, should focus and develop leaders’ ability to use systems thinking by analyzing entrenched mental models and assumptions, by developing their capacity to build a shared vision among elements of the system (members of the organization) and by educating them of their roles within the system, in the form of team learning (Senge, 2006).
Empirical evidence seems to be lacking for the implications of leadership development programs that utilize this theoretical perspective for leadership effectiveness; however, as the complexities of the business world and its necessity to adapt increase, this perspective will probably become paramount for leaders to effectively direct their organization towards success.
STRATEGIC PERSPECTIVE
“No longer simply a reward for high potential executives or a chance to renew an individual’s knowledge base, programs are increasingly harnessed as opportunities to recast the worldviews of executive teams and to align organizations to new directions.” – Conger & Xin, 2000:73
The strategic perspective does not seem to have a proper underpinning, as it appears to be built on an assortment of concepts from other perspectives – namely, the competence-based perspective, the systems perspective and the cognitive perspective – that were collate and refurnished with the purpose of strengthening the strategic role of leadership development within organizations. The strategic perspective, therefore, seems to stem not from bodies of theory and philosophies in other fields (like the previous perspectives described above), but from a business imperative due to intensifications in the competitive environment and transformations in the corporate arena (e.g. Bailey & Clarke, 2008; Yeung & Ready, 1995).
This business imperative dictates that it is not enough to concentrate on the business strategy, but is also necessary to focus on the strategist, that is, the executive in charge of the direction of the organization (Seibert, Hall & Kram, 1995). This is where leadership development with a strategic lens comes into play. Thus, improvement of the organization’s strategy is the end goal of development, but in practice the focus of development will vary depending on the theoretical perspective from which this perspective is attainting its beliefs.
So, for instance, competence-based beliefs and assumptions can be utilized by this perspective by considering strategic-related aspects, such as strategic thinking and the ability to create a vision, as core competencies (Bonn, 2001; Zaccaro & Banks, 2004). In addition, personal characteristics (such as high tolerance to stress, robustness, and ethical values and principles) and frame of references –which includes empathy and understanding about other individuals and groups; knowledge about social issues, economic influences and technological trends that can affect the organization; understanding about the organization’s history, culture and values and how these impact all aspects of the organization; and awareness of personal weaknesses and strengths – are also considered competencies that the strategic leaders needs to develop (Barber, 1992). Thus, the outline of the KSAO framework is clearly express here.
The influence of the competence perspective here is significant; however, the strategic perspective cannot be considered an element of the competence-based perspective since leadership development initiatives focusing on strategic issues can also utilized the framework of other perspectives. For instance, systems perspectives concepts, such as complexity, chaos and learning organization can also be employed within this perspective (Swain, 1999). Another concept that probably originated either from the cognitive or the systems perspective is the need to change the leader’s mental models (Thomas & Carnall, 2008). As a systems influence, mental models can be seen as learning to cope ambiguities and complexities and understanding the intricacies of the corporate world. As a cognitive influence, mental models can be seen as developing multiple perspectives that incorporates the opinions of others.
Thus, due to this rooting in other perspectives, articles that have been classified in the strategic perspective could have been allotted specifically to the competence, the systems or the cognitive perspectives. Nonetheless, the strategic perspective was deemed as a distinct perspective since by separating it from the other perspectives, it might be possible to bolster – not only in theory, but most importantly in practice – the strategic role of leadership development.
CONSOLIDATIVE PERSPECTIVE
“wisdom is associated with an ability to perceive the broader picture and ‘the connectedness of things’”– Brown & Starkey, 2000:13
The consolidative perspective is composed of recent attempts in the leadership development literature to conceive a more comprehensive conceptualization of the phenomenon. These endeavors focus not on a single factor or influence on leadership development, but aim at incorporating a holistic view of either the leader or both the leader and the organization. In building these new attitudes toward leadership development, some authors utilized particular theoretical foundations that were also used by some of the perspectives described above; however, due to their holistic lenses, different bodies of literature, which were considered separately by different perspectives, might now be considered within a single framework. Hence, the clustering of the models and theories combined here into a single perspective derives from their common purpose of consolidating different lenses to form a more inclusive view of leadership development and not from a shared theoretical origin.
In relation to individual leader, one model and one theory were considered in this review. The model postulates that four domains within the leader should be considered by leadership development initiatives: the analytical, conceptual, emotional and spiritual domains (Quatro, Waldman & Galvin, 2007). The analytical domain emphasizes cognitive skills and capabilities of the leader, such as problem solving and planning. The conceptual domain shared a cognitive basis with the former domain; however, at this domain, the cognitive abilities considered are associated with complexity, systems thinking and future-oriented mental processes (such as creativity and strategy). The emotional domain stresses awareness towards the leader’s own emotions and towards the emotions of other individuals; as such, it considers the development of self-awareness, empathy, and self-monitoring. Finally, the spiritual domain accentuates the importance of the leader’s deeply-held values and ethical principles; and thus, focuses on level of moral development of the leader. Although each of these domains is described separately, they are considered to be interrelated.
Since each domain could be mapped into one or a few of the theoretical perspectives described above (analytical domain in the cognitive perspective; conceptual domain in the systems perspective; emotional domain in the personal growth perspective; and spiritual domain in both the personal growth and the cognitive domains – since Kohlberg’s moral development is considered a cognitive theory of adult development) , the acceptance of this model as a basis for leadership development indicates that some of the perspectives above could – or should – be considered simultaneously within a leadership development initiative.
The theory that hypothesizes an integrative lens for the development of leaders (Day, Harrison & Halpin, 2009) seems to combine both the cognitive, personal and competence-based perspectives. This theory proposes that leadership development is a three level phenomenon. At the most superficial level, leadership development consists of the acquisition of particular competencies, and thus correlates with the competence-base perspective. At the intermediate level, self and identity processes – such as self-regulation, self-awareness, self-efficacy and development of a leader identity – come into play, linking, therefore, with the personal growth perspective. Finally, at the deepest level, leadership development is viewed as one aspect of adult development, and thus can be associated with the cognitive perspective. Since these levels are organized in a hierarchical order, this theory also postulates that the effectiveness of leadership development could be enhanced if one would “focus more on the interior processes of adult development, identity development, and self-regulation, and less on the exterior level of observable competencies” (Ibid: xiii). Hence, contrary to the model previously described, this theory seems to emphasize the use of some theoretical perspectives (such as the cognitive perspective) over others (such as the competence-based perspectives).
In relation to building a holistic view of leadership development considering individual and organizational factors, two models were considered by this review. The first model utilizes the concept of integral leadership, proposed by Wilber, to develop a comprehensive process of leadership development (Locander, Hamilton, Ladik & Stuart, 2002). Wilber has postulated that reality can be mapped into two axes – vertically representing the continuum between the external reality and the internal reality; and, horizontally, the continuum between the individual and the collective reality – that combined produces the four quadrants that represent an integral view of reality (Pauchant, 2005). Wilber utilized this model to propose an integrative theory of leadership, which was then use to build a model of leadership development in which all aspects of the individual, collective, internal and external aspects of reality are considered (Locander et al, 2002). This model suggests that leadership development needs to occur in all four quadrants: the external/individual quadrant emphasizing the development of skills; the external/collective quadrant stressing organizational goals and strategies; the internal/collective quadrant addressing systems and processes within the organization; and, finally, the internal/individual quadrant focusing on the leader’s sense of purpose, self-awareness, and personal development (Ibid). Nonetheless, it is also proposed that development of the internal/individual quadrant prompts development of the other quadrants, and thus development of aspects of this quadrant are emphasized. As this quadrant has been connected with the process of personal growth (Ibid), a correlation with the personal growth perspective of leadership development is warranted. In addition, it is also possible to connect the other quadrants with other theoretical perspectives (the external/individual with the competence-based perspective; the external/collective with the strategic perspective; and the internal/collective with the systems and the cognitive perspective – a connection with the cognitive perspective and this quadrant is based on the development of multiple perspectives by the expert leader). Hence, while the integrative theory mentioned above suggests that aspects proposed by the cognitive perspective should be emphasized, this model implies that the aspects proposed by the personal growth perspective should be the underscored.
The final model considered within this perspective is the “carrying and reading” model, which conceptualizes – using an underpinning of systems psychodynamics – that leaders need to learn how to “read” the organizational system, in particular the emotionality entrenched in it, and needs to be aware of the unconscious issues that they “carry” into their interactions (James & Arroba, 2005). This model, therefore, consider that both the internal, individual aspects (carrying) and the external, organizational aspects (reading) need to be developed in order to promote leadership effectiveness. By doing so, this model connects two of the theoretical perspectives proposed in this study, the psychodynamic and the systems perspectives. Contrary to the previous two examples, however, it does not favor one perspective over another, since it suggests that development of both the internal and external aspects are essential for leadership performance. (Ibid).
The distinct frameworks that compose the consolidative perspective, therefore, seem to combine multiple theoretical foundations into single paradigms to explain leadership development. There is not necessarily a commonality among them in regards to the theoretical underpinning necessary and in regards to the role and importance of each of these foundations for leadership development. Nevertheless, they do suggest that not only different theoretical perspectives can be combined to provide a more comprehensive understanding about the phenomenon, but also that new theories are arising in the field of leadership development.
SELF & IDENTITY IN PERSPECTIVE
“it is because identity is problematic – and yet so crucial to how and what one values, thinks, feels and does in all social domains, including organizations – that the dynamics of identity need to be better understood.” – Alberts, Ashforth & Dutton, 2000:14
The centrality of the leader’s identity and self for leadership development is very apparent in the discussion of the eight theoretical perspectives. Almost all of the perspectives mentioned – to one extent or another – use the concepts of self and identity; and for some, these constructs were in the centre of their rationales and processes of change.
In the personal growth perspective, self seems to be the main focus: the self-actualized, expressing the true self individual who is self-aware of his or her strengths and values, weaknesses and motivations (e.g. Conger, 1993). Self is also the central point of development in the psychodynamic perspective; but, this time the objective seems to be to free the individual from self defense mechanisms, transference issues and unconscious wounds from the past (Kets de Vries & Korotov, 2007). In the cognitive perspective, it is a self-identity as a leader that encourages the individual to seek those essential learning experiences that will allow him or her to practice and develop expertise in leadership; and also it is the leader’s self-identity that will provide the structure in which knowledge and skills can be organized (Lord & Hall, 2005).
In the above discussion on the competence-based perspective, self-awareness – a exceptional competence exhibit by outstanding performers – was the only aspect of self mentioned; however, the perspective originated from a theory of personality that considered the individual’s self-schema and self-image as lurking beneath the surface of observable behaviors (Boyatzis, 2008). For the critical theory perspective, issues of self identity, self regulation and self work are paramount as this perspective views leadership development as either a manipulative process used by organizations to control the identity and identification of their employees (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002) or as an opportunity to encourage new concept of self that free the individual from societal expectations, oppressions and assumptions (Ford & Harding, 2007).
In the systems perspective, a collective focus was emphasized and self or identity aspects were not mentioned; nonetheless, issues of self-organization, self-maintenance, and self-similarity (a characteristic of complex adaptive systems that indicates the elements of the system exhibit the characteristics of the entire entity; Schneider & Somers, 2006) can be applied to self and identity concepts both within the individual or the organization (Boyatzis, 2006; Schneider & Somers, 2006). For instance, the principle of self-similarity is related to the organization’s identity, since this collective identity promotes a degree of similarity in the shared beliefs of the members of the organization.
The strategic perspective is probably the perspective that discusses the least self and identity construct. Self and identity might not seem relevant for the strategic direction of the organization; however, if one considers that organization vision (an important – if not vital – element of the strategy of the organization) “tend to be less concrete, encompass a broader time span, and contain a higher content of idealistic values, beliefs, and purpose, as opposed to business-oriented content” (Quatro et al, 2007:432), then it becomes apparent that the leader’s self-identity might be crucial for becoming an effective strategist. Finally, in the consolidative perspective, the self is mentioned in several of the theories and models that constitute this perspective, since all of them comprise ideas and concepts that can be directly linked to theoretical perspective in which the self is the main central point (personal growth and psychodynamic).
Hence, when analyzing self and identity constructs in the light of different theoretical perspectives, their almost ubiquitous presence advocates the significance of these phenomena for research, theorizing and understanding leadership development. It is possible that self and identity might represent an unifying factor that underlies and connects all of the perspectives.
PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
Personal development seems to be linked with several of the theoretical perspectives considered in this study. Three perspectives (personal growth; psychodynamic; and competence-based) seem to the ones with the strongest connections. The association with the personal growth perspective is the most clear, especially when considering that the idea of personal development originated from the personal growth movement in psychology (Lucas, 1992). The connection with the psychodynamic perspective is also apparent, since both address the attenuation of limiting behaviors, such as the ones promoted by defense mechanisms. The link with the competence-based perspective is also clear, as both emphasize the development of latent skills.
The correlation between personal development and the cognitive perspective seems less straightforward; nevertheless, due to emphasis in the motivational aspect of the individual’s leader identity in seeking learning experiences (Lord & Hall, 2005), it can be argued part of this process involves personal development. Likewise, there is a possible link between personal development and the consolidative perspective when one considers particular aspects, domains or quadrants of the theories and models constituting this perspective.
The relationship between the critical perspective and personal development is complex, since, at first, it seems that the critical perspective, in it true original form, critiques this process. After all, personal development efforts might be seen, according to the critical philosophy, fruitless if ideologies, oppressions, expectations and assumptions are not dealt with first. Yet, after consideration of these repressive forces, the critical perspective seems to endorse personal development as a venue of self-knowledge and liberation.
The only two perspectives that do not seem to have a link – or at least, have a very weak one – are the strategy and the systems perspectives. With the latter, personal development might be seen as disconnected from the system since it only considers one element of the system, the individual, without considering how the individual’s values, motivations, behaviors, skills and attitudes are ingrained into the system. With the former, the relation seems a bit dubious. Perhaps due to the multiple underpinnings of the strategic perspective, it is difficult to determine if the relationship with personal development exists. If one considers the competence influence, then personal development is definitely associated; if one considers the systems influence, then, the link might not exist.
Hence, a relationship between personal development and leadership development will depend on the theoretical perspective from which one conceptualizes leadership development.
CHAPTER V: DESCRIPTIVE FINDINGS
In this chapter, the characteristics of the literature selected for this review are explored and the results of a content analysis of self and identity constructs are described. Firstly, the publications that comprise this study were classified according to the theoretical perspective on leadership development generated in the conceptual analysis (see Chapter IV). Secondly, their features (year of publication, geography, type of source, name and ranking of publication, and selection of methodology) were analyzed both individually and, when possible, in relation to these perspectives. Finally, the results of a content analysis, conducted to determine the utilization of self and identity constructs in this literature, is examined.
Since background cross-reference articles that do not concentrate on the phenomenon of leadership development were included in this review, most analyses were conducted using two different sets of data: one including all 103 articles and one considering only the articles pertaining to leadership development (N=86).
Eight articles of the 103 were not related to a particular theoretical perspective (and therefore do not constitute background cross-reference articles). Six of these articles described a classification scheme for leadership development (see Figure 7), while the remaining two articles focus on self and identity constructs without expressing explicitly their theoretical perspective on leadership development. These six publications are not featured in several of the analyses that examine the relation between the theoretical perspectives and different characteristics of the literature included in this review (e.g. type of publication).
DISTRIBUTION BY PERSPECTIVE
The frequency distribution of the theoretical perspectives, either considering all articles (N=103) or excluding the background cross-reference articles (N=86), is shown in Figure 8. As depicted in the figure, there were some variations in the number of articles per perspective. Considering the analysis with all articles, the perspective with the largest amount of articles (personal growth; N=16) comprised of 15.5% of articles selected for this study, while the perspective with the least amount of publications (psychodynamic; N=7) consisted of 6.8% of total publications analyzed. All other publications varied in percentages ranging from 14.5% to 7.8%. Interestingly, this variation is exacerbated by excluding the cross-referencing articles, with percentages ranging from 5.81% (psychodynamic perspective) to 18.60% (personal growth perspective).
This variation seems to suggest a trend towards an uneven distribution – and consideration – of these perspectives in the literature. However, due to the moderate sample size, it is not possible to determine if these differences are statistically significant. The discrepancy in number of publications between the perspectives with the larger number of publications (cognitive, competence-based, personal growth, and systems) and the perspectives with the smaller number of publications (psychodynamics and consolidative) might be representative of field, or might be the product of biases produced either might the sample size and/or the limitations of this study (see Chapter VI for limitations).
FIGURE 8 – FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTION OF PERSPECTIVES
CRONOLOGICAL DISTRIBUTION OF PAPERS
This review only considered sources that were published after 1980, since this year represents an important partition on the way leadership has been conceptualized (Boal & Hooijberg, 2001; Hunt, 1999. This restriction in the dataset, however, does not seem to have affected the development of a classification scheme based on theoretical perspective since, as depicted in Figure 9, the majority of publications utilized were published in or after 1995. In fact, the first articles in this study depicting a theoretical perspective in relation to leadership development were published in 1992, and the majority of articles analyzed were published after 2001. This trend might indicate a development and a concern in the field about the theoretical perspectives that inform leadership development.
FIGURE 9 – FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTION OF PUBLICATIONS BY YEAR
Even though the graph shows a drastic reduction in the number of articles in 2009, this descent might be due to the fact that the database searchers were conducted in the end of May 2009, and therefore might not be an indicative of a reduced interest about theoretical perspective after 2008. This conclusion, however, need to be corroborated by conducting a new database search with the most recent articles published.
CHRONOLOGICAL DISTRIBUTION OF PERSPECTIVES
An analysis, considering the number of publications per year focusing on different theoretical perspectives (see Table 17), also suggests that there might be a recent tendency in the literature towards considering theoretical perspectives of leadership development. As shown in Table 17, the majority of publications linking a particular perspective to leadership development were published after 2000.
Furthermore, this analysis also indicates that different theoretical perspectives were introduced in the field in different times, as some theoretical perspectives have been applied to leadership development since the 1990s, while others are more contemporary. As the shading area in Table 17 illustrates, the first publication related the strategy perspective to leadership development was published in 1992, while the first publication in this study considering the consolidative perspective was only published in 2002. This analysis seems to be reinforcing the suggestion that there is an uneven consideration among theoretical perspectives in the literature.
TABLE 17 – NUMBER OF PUBLICATIONS OF DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES PER YEAR
GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF PAPERS
Table 18 indicates that the majority of publications considered in this study originated in the United States (65%). If both the United States and the UK are grouped together, they represent more than 80% of the articles utilized in this review (not shown). This indicates a strong hegemony of these two countries, but especially the United States, in the field studied.
Due to the small sample size of most countries, further analysis considering perspective per country was not conducted.
TABLE 18 – NUMBER AND PERCENTAGE OF PUBLICATIONS PER COUNTRY
DISTRIBUTION BY TYPE OF SOURCE
Four types of sources were considered in this study: peer-reviewed journal articles, books, book chapters and working papers. As illustrated in Table 19, the majority of publications analyzed in this study comprised of peer-reviewed journal articles. Only a small percentage of publications considered consisted of books, book chapters or working papers (approximately 14%; not shown). In addition, the inclusion of background cross-reference publications that did not approach leadership development did not seem to alter the percentage of type of sources utilized.
TABLE 19 – NUMBER AND PERCENTAGE OF TYPES OF SOURCES
DISTRIBUTION BY TITLE AND RANKING OF PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES
The peer-reviewed articles were further examined in relation to the name of the journal and its ranking. The ranking classification was obtained primarily from the Cranfield University School of Management 2009 rankings; when a publication was not listed in this ranking system, the British Association of Business Schools (ABS) 2009 was utilized. A few publications were not ranked in either ranking scheme, and therefore, were classified as “not ranked”.
As illustrated in Table 20, 37 different peer-reviewed publications were considered in this study. Of these, seven publications (indicated in Table 20 between parenthesis and an asterisk: Academy of Management Journal, European Management Journal, Human Relations, Journal of Applied Management and Entrepreneurship , Journal of International Business Studies, and Journal of Organizational Change Management) were included in this study only as a cross-reference background source, and therefore do not focus on leadership development. These articles, nevertheless, were incorporated into the study because they see to discuss important information about a particular perspective.
TABLE 20 – NUMBER OF ARTICLES PER PUBLICATION TITLE
The ranking of the articles utilized in this study are shown in Figure 10. As illustrated in the graph, there was a fairly even distribution of article quality throughout the ranking spectrum, regardless of whether background papers were included. However, the analysis suggest that a number of the background articles were selected from 4 start journals, and thus, when these were removed from the analysis, the percentage of four start journals in the study was reduced (from 27.78% with all articles to 21.62% without considering background papers). The small sample size, however, does not allow statistical confirmation of this difference.
In spite of this, further analysis seems to indicate that this disparity might not be statistically significant, since the inclusion or exclusion of background articles do not seem to influence the average start ranking for this study. Considering all articles in the study, the average start raking was 2.52, while the average start raking removing background publications was 2.42 (not shown). This suggests that the inclusion or exclusion of background articles did not affect the quality of studies considered in this review.
FIGURE 10 – NUMBER OF ARTICLES PER RANKING
DISTRIBUTION OF PERSPECTIVES BY RANKING
An analysis considering the ranking of publications about different perspectives was also conducted. As portrayed in Figure 11, the quality of articles considering different perspectives seems to vary considerably. For instance, the majority of publications considering the cognitive perspective came from four start journals (N=9; 69.2% of ranked articles about this perspective), while the majority of articles related to the systems perspective originated from one start journals (N=6; 60% of ranked articles about this perspective). This seems to indicate that the support and rigorousness of evidence about these perspectives seem to vary considerably.
FIGURE 11 - NUMBER OF ARTICLES ON DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES PER RANKING
TYPE OF ACADEMIC PUBLICATION & METHODOLOGY APPLIED
Two types of publications were considered: theoretical and empirical. In addition, empirical papers were classified in regards to the type of methodology applied (quantitative methods, qualitative methods and mixed methods. As shown in Table 21, the majority of publications included in this study were theoretical (73.79% for all articles and 76.74% for articles excluding background cross-references). This might suggest that there might be a lack of empirical support for the theoretical perspectives described in this study. Conversely, the reduced number of empirical articles might also be due to the methodology applied in this study. As theoretical perspectives needed to be explicitly stated in the publication, it is possible that several empirical studies analyzing implicitly a theoretical perspective were excluded from this study.
The percentage of different types of publications included in this study did not seem to be affected by the inclusion of background cross-reference papers. Although the small sample size precludes statistical confirmation, the difference between the analysis of all articles or without background articles seems to be minor.
In relation to the methodology utilized in the studies considered in this review, there was a strong bias towards qualitative methods (15.53% of total articles and 59.25% of total empirical articles considered). Only eight articles of all articles analyzed conducted quantitative research, representing just 7.77% of all articles and 29.69% of empirical studies included in this report. This suggests that there might be a bias towards conducting qualitative studies when the theoretical perspective of leadership development is considered. On the other hand, it is possible that the selection criteria used in this review (theoretical perspectives need to be explicitly stated) might have produced this effect.
TABLE 21- NUMBER AND PERCENTAGE OF ARTICLES PER TYPE OF PUBLICATION
DISTRIBUTION OF PERSPECTIVES BY TYPE OF PUBLICATION
The type of publication (theoretical or empirical; subdividing empirical according to the methodology) was considered for the individual perspectives. As illustrated in Figure 12, the majority of articles on theoretical perspectives considered in this review were theoretical. In addition, the graph also indicates that the type of methodology applied in the empirical papers investigating specific theoretical perspectives seem to vary to a large extent. For instance, all empirical papers examining the cognitive perspective utilized a quantitative approach, while all the empirical articles related to the consolidative, critical, psychodynamic and systems perspectives used a qualitative approach. Mixed methods approach was only applied to studies on competence-based and personal growth perspectives, however, while the competence-based perspective also had studies utilizing exclusively quantitative methods, the personal growth had only qualitative studies.
These findings seem to support the assertion made above that there seems to be a bias towards a qualitative research approach. This predisposition, however, is inverted in the cognitive approach, which seems to have a tendency towards quantitative methods.
FIGURE 12 – NUMBER OF ARTICLES ON PERSPECTIVES PER TYPE OF PUBLICATION AND METHODOLOGY
CONTENT ANALYSIS
A content analysis of the citation of self and identity terms was performed to establish quantitatively the magnitude of these constructs for the leadership development in general, and for the theoretical perspectives in particular.
A subset of the publications considered in this study was utilized in the content analysis, as books (N=6) were not included in the content analysis since it was considered cumbersome to perform a detail analysis of the text due to the volume of the books, whose page number range from 234 to 432, with timeframe available to conduct this review.
Content analyses were performed by evaluation the presence of the terms of interest. Thus, the first incidence of a term of interest (a particular self/identity construct) was recorded, but further occurrences of the same term in the same publication were not registered. The number of times a particular concept appears in a publication was not calculated, since it was believed that several extraneous factors might determine the frequency of use of a term (e.g. writing style of authors).
In addition, instances in which the word “self” was utilized but did not constitute a self-construct, such as self-fulfilling prophecies (i.e., prophecies that fulfill themselves), self-generated values (i.e., values generated by the self or the individual), self-created beliefs (i.e., beliefs created by the self) were not included in the analysis. However, self-belief by itself was considered since, in this case, it does not characterize a type of belief but it constitutes an opinion the individual holds about him or herself. Thus, occasions in which the self was associated with an adjective (e.g., self-fulfilling, self-generated and self-created) that was characterizing a particular entity (e.g. prophecies, values, beliefs) that was not the individual leader, it was not considered. However, if the self was associated with an adjective that was describing the leader, for instance, the leader or individual is self-aware or self-reflective, than this instance of self would be included in the analysis. At the same token, self-constructs that do not pertain to the individual were also not considered. For instance, one of the properties of a complex system is that it is self-organizing. This instance of self was not included in the word content analysis as it does not pertain to the individual leader.
PRESENCE OF SELF & IDENTITY CONSTRUCTS
Self and identity constructs were included in almost all of the articles considered in this analysis. Of the 97 articles analyzed, only 12 (12.37%) did not mentioned self and identity (with the restrictions of analysis mentioned above). Of the 12 papers, four were from the strategy perspective, three from the cognitive perspective, 2 from the systems perspective, and one from the competence, the consolidative, and the critical perspectives.
There were 197 different constructs of self and identity cited in the 85 articles (see Table 22 and Table 23). Since some of them might represent the same construct (for instance, actual self, current self and real self), this number does not represent the number of different ways in which self and identity were conceptualized in the field. In addition, perhaps due to this confounding nature of several of these constructs, 93 of them (47.2%) were only cited one in all the articles considered and 34 (17.26%) of them were only cited twice.
Figure 13 illustrates the distribution of the 10 most frequently cited self/ identity constructs. Each column represents the number of articles that cited these particular constructs. For instance, self-awareness was featured in 42 (43.3%) of the articles analyzed.
FIGURE 13 – DISTRIBUTION OF SELF CONSTRUCTS
SELF & IDENTITY PER PERSPECTIVE
The distribution of frequency per perspective was considered (see Figure 14). To calculate the percentages in this chart, the total number of articles per perspective mentioning self and identity constructs were calculated. This value was then divided by the total number of articles in each perspective to create, for each perspective, a ratio of frequency of self/identity constructs that accounted for the number of articles. Subsequently, these values were normalized (divided by the total number of articles considered in the study). This mathematical operation was done to account for the variation in the number of articles different perspectives have.
The results of this analysis, represented in Figure 14, suggest that self and identity constructs are more central to some perspectives than other. For instance, the personal growth and psychodynamic perspectives were the ones with the largest percentage of self and identity construct citings (26% and 22%, respectively), which corroborates the conceptual findings (see Chapter IV). Thus, the argument proposed in the conceptual findings seem to be validated by this analysis, indicating that self and identity constructs seem to be important, to one extend or another, to several of the theoretical perspectives categorized by this study. Nevertheless, it is important to consider that there are some limitations to this analysis, since the results might have been confounded by the number of different self and identity constructs that are embedded in the language of each perspective. In other words, some perspectives, such as the personal growth perspectives, might utilized a variety of constructs to talk about self and identity, while other perspectives might use the same term but give a centrality to it that is not perceive by the analysis. On the other hand, the presence of several constructs to express self and identity might also indicate a richness in the treatment of self and identity aspects, suggesting their importance.
FIGURE 14 – FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTION OF SELF & IDENTITY CONSTRUCTS PER PERSPECTIVES
STRUCTURES AND PROCESSES
A necessary analysis to distill some of the issues mentioned above would be to categorize the self and identity constructs found in this analysis. However, this was considered to be outside the scope of this study since it would require investigating how each of the different theoretical perspectives have defined each one of these terms to compile an accurate classification. Nevertheless, a dichotomous categorization was considered to dividing the self and identity constructs into those that convey processes from those that express structures.
The clustering was performed using common sense. For instance, structures were related to self and identity construct that are part of the individual’s schema (e.g. self-concept, true self, authentic identity; see Table 22), while processes were related to particular actions, such as a change (e.g. identity development) or a behavior (self-monitoring; see Table 23). After the clustering, the ratio of process-based and structure-based constructs identified in the literature was calculated. As shown in Figure 15, there were a fairly equal distribution of structures and processes in the studies.
TABLE 22 – SELF & IDENTITY STRUCTURES
TABLE 23 – SELF & IDENTITY PROCESSES
FIGURE 15 – PERCENTAGE OF SELF & IDENTITY PROCESSES AND STRUCTURES
An analysis was also conducted to determine if structures and processes were represented fairly within each perspective (see Figure 16). This analysis consisted of calculating the number of articles per perspective that contained (a) structure constructs, (b) process constructs, and (c) neither (the 12 articles mentioned in the beginning of this section). Articles that cited both process and structure constructs were counted twice, since they were included both in (a) and (b). As the purpose of this analysis is to determine if particular perspectives considered more self/identity structures or processes, it was deemed unnecessary to produce a fourth category, separating the articles that included both process and structures.
As illustrated in Figure 16, some perspectives considered more structure constructs, other more process constructs and others had an equal consideration for both. The personal growth, psychodynamics and critical perspectives had the same number of articles considering both processes and structures. Interestingly, these are also the three perspectives that mentioned self and identity constructs the most (see Figure 14).
FIGURE 16 – DISTRIBUTION OF PROCESS AND STRUCTURE BY PERSPECTIVE
CHAPTER VI: DISCUSSION
In order to understand the meaning and contributions of organizing the leadership development literature into these eight theoretical perspectives, this chapter will examine, contrast and compare these theoretical perspectives: (1) with one another and with previous classification schemes on leadership development; and (2) with different levels of analysis and ontological/epistemological approaches to leadership. With this analysis in place, we will then be in a position to consider the role of self and identity in these constructs and to explore the contributions and implications to practice, theory, and also to my own future research. Finally, limitations of this study and personal learning are also discussed.
COMPARING & CONTRASTING PERSPECTIVES
In order to compare and contrast the eight categories of theoretical perspectives described in this study, their classification scheme was mapped into the classification schemes that have been previously been used on leadership development (see Figure 17). As illustrated by Figure 17, the different theoretical perspectives suggested by this review can be associated with categories suggested by other authors by their vertical placement. As explained in the description of Figure 7 (see Chapter IV) when the classification schemes of leadership development were first introduced, the vertical lines in these two illustrations separate categories regarding their focus on the development of leadership.
The thick line separates categories that focus on the individual from categories that focus on the organization. Only one classification scheme, proposed by Day (2001), makes a dichotomous distinction between an individual and an organizational focus, which were designated as leader development and leadership development. Thus, leader development would entail an emphasis on the individual in order to, for instance, promote intrapersonal competences and knowledge, improve an individual’s self-understanding, and help them structure their identities (Day, 2001). Leadership development, on contrast, would entail a focus on the social system in order to build interpersonal competences, such as social awareness, team orientation, commitment, cooperation, respect, and network bonds among members of the organization. Since Day’s (2001) leadership development description does not include strategic concerns, this category was not considered to involve the complete spectrum of organizational issues that can be addressed by leadership development in general.
Up to this point of the discussion, I have purposely ignored Day’s distinction between leader and leadership development, even though this classification scheme seems to be the most prominent in the literature. This omission was done in order to avoid any influence on the theoretical perspectives so that they could emerge from the articles analyzed. However, it is important now to analyze which of the theoretical perspectives are associated with leader development and which ones focus on leadership development. As can be observed in Figure 17, the majority of the theoretical perspectives address leader development (personal growth, psychodynamic, critical, cognitive, competence and consolidative). Only two categories (consolidative and systems) emphasize leadership development, and one category (strategy) cannot, as explained above, be linked to any of Day’s categories. The mapping of the theoretical perspectives into Day’s classification seems to follow a trend in the field; namely, most perspectives and approaches deal with the individual, with only a few addressing organizational issues. This trend might, indeed, have a historical cause: as mentioned previously, the personal growth perspective derived from leadership training programs in the 1960s and 1970s (Conger, 1993), which suggests that the whole concept of developing leadership started with the individual. Furthermore, as illustrated in Figure 2 (Chapter II), the concept of leadership itself was originally conceived as an individual phenomenon. Thus, it seems that, regardless of the multitude of theories and levels of analysis from which we can consider leadership, the main focus of developmental initiatives continues to be the individual.
FIGURE 17 – CLASSIFICATION SCHEMES OF LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT (INCLUDING FINDINGS OF THIS STUDY)
There are, nonetheless, several ways in which the individual can be developed. Figure 17 divides individual aspects in three columns. The first column represents categories of leadership development that address the inner-most characteristics of the individual, such as his or her emotions, values, motives, attitudes, desires, identity and self-concept. For this reason, this column might be best represented by the concept of personal development. Even though it is difficult to determine, from the definitions of personal development, if the other two columns considering the individual also could be regarded as personal development, it is in the first column that the definition of personal development mostly concentrates.
The second column of individual aspects involves development of cognitive knowledge (Conger, 1992). However, the approach differs significant from the development of cognitive structures, as suggested in the discussion of the cognitive perspective. In this column, what is considered is the accumulation of knowledge and not the changes in cognitive processes, which are considered in the third column. This knowledge-gathering approach is associated with traditional lecture-based university leadership programs, in which leaders usually participate to gain new cognitive content, such as conceptual tools, theories and models in topics such as finance and marketing (Kets de Vries & Korotov, 2007). This type of approach to leadership development seems to be, in some sense, disappearing as new trends in leadership development seem to focus more on initiatives in which the participant is no longer a passive absorber of information, but an active contributor to his or her development (Fulmer, 1997). From the theoretical perspectives suggested here, only the competence-based perspective seems to address this aspect of the individual (as illustrated by the K of the acronym KSAOs). Theories and models from the consolidative perspective do not seem to address directly this issue; however, this perspective was graphically represented as incorporating this aspect of the individual as well since it is possible that by considering the individual holistically, cognitive contents might be of interest.
The third column of individual aspects also considers cognitive knowledge; however, in this case, cognition is seen as a skill. Indeed, this column represents an array of skills the individual might develop in order to effectively fulfill his or her role as a leader. For this reason, several skills, such as cognitive skills, task-relevant skills, interpersonal skills and communicative skills have been placed in this column. These skills, however, also occupy the first column of organizational issues since although leadership skills are performed and acquired by the individual, they seem to impact the organization. For instance, the development of creativity (a cognitive skill; Mumford, Zaccaro et al, 2000) might affect the organization as it can lead to the creation of a new product. Nevertheless, the cognitive perspective was classified within the constraints of the third column, since this perspective seems to involve only those issues of leadership skills that apply exclusively to the individual, such as the process of acquisition and development of thought processes.
Interestingly, from all the perspectives analyzed, only two encompasses all three aspects of the individual: the competence-based perspective and the consolidative perspective. The consolidative perspective, despite its possibilities, seems to be composed of relatively new developments in the field and therefore it does not seem to have been amply applied to practice. The competence-based perspective, on contrast, has been extensively applied to practice; indeed, there is evidence that a large number of organizations utilize leadership competencies as the basis of their developmental activities (Hernez-Broome & Hughes, 2004). This widespread utilization of the competence-based perspective by practice might be related to the encompassing nature of this perspective on all individual aspects considered for leadership development.
In relation to the categories focusing on the organization, two main aspects have been identified. The first column refers the aspects identified by Day (2001) in his leadership development terminology. Day (2001) connects leadership development (as opposed to leader development) with the social capital, which has been defined as “the sum of the actual and potential resources embedded within, available through, and derived from the network of relationships possessed by an individual or social unit” (Nahapiel & Ghoshal, 1998: 243). Thus, this aspect of the organization relates with a relational and/or interpersonal approach to leadership and entails issues, for instance, of building networked relationships and increasing cooperation (Day, 2001). The link between a leadership development approach, as defined by Day (2001), and the systems perspective seems warranted since, as described previously, systems theories addresses the relationships and intricacies of a complex system, such as an organization.
The last column of the diagram refers to the strategy of the organization. Even though the strategic role of leadership development has been stressed by several authors (e.g. Conger & Xin, 2000; Fulmer, 1997), it is interesting that not only a strategic perspective have not been emphasized in the categories on leadership development proposed by other others (as indicated by its direct address by only one classification scheme and indirect address by a second one; see Figure 17) but also that a strategic perspective do not seen to have a strong underpinning of, for instance, the strategic management.
ONTOLOGY & LEVELS OF ANALYSIS
“Although there is a relatively rich history of multilevel perspectives in our understanding of leadership theory, the same is not necessarily true in terms of leadership development” – Day & Harrison, 2007:363
As mentioned in Chapter II, conceptualizations of leadership encompass different levels of analysis and different ontological and epistemological stances (see Figure 3 and Table 3). The eight theoretical perspectives suggested by this study also seem to vary along these dimensions. For instance, the critical theory perspective is positioned in a post-modernist perception of the world (e.g. Alvesson & Willmott, 1992).
As illustrated in Figure 18, the theoretical perspectives were placed in an objectivist to subjectivist continuum, divided by two levels of analysis, the individual and the organization. The two intermediate levels of analysis, dyadic and group (see Figure 3 in Chapter II), were not considered in this diagram for two reasons. First, it is not clear how these intermediate levels of analysis have been address in the perspectives, since the focus seems to be dichotomous being the whole (organization – represented by the strategy and by the complex system that constitutes the organization) or by the single (the individual). The dyadic level can be considered to be embedded within the individual level, since interpersonal skills were mapped as a skill to be acquired by the individual leader even though the practice and use of this skill is done in the dyadic level. Likewise, the group levels can be considered to be embedded within the organizational level, since this level might symbolize the relationships that occur in the organization. Second, by considering only two levels of analysis, Day’s typology (2001) could be considered by this framework.
The placement of the theoretical perspectives along an objective-subjective reality was not straightforward. As Figure 18 illustrate, the most perspective considered at the most objectivist position was the cognitive perspective, due to the use exclusively of quantitative methods. However, if one considers that cognitive schemata cannot be observed directly, the placement of this perspective might be moved towards a more subjective positioning. An important conclusion that this portrayal of perspectives indicate is that there seems to be fair distribution of perspectives along the reality continuum. The phenomenon of leadership development has been considered by a variety of ontological stances, from the most objective to the most subjective. In relation to levels of analysis, however, most of the perspectives were placed in the top of the diagram, reinforcing the predominance of individual considerations, as described in the quote in the beginning of this section.
FIGURE 18 – PERSPECTIVES IN RELATION TO LEVELS OF ANALYSIS AND ONTOLOGICAL STANCES
SELF & IDENTITY = UNIFYING CONCEPTS?
This review emphasized both in its conceptual and descriptive findings the importance of self and identity constructs for the theoretical perspectives that underpin leadership (and leader) development. For this reason, this study proposes that self and identity constructs might constitute concepts that allow us to understand the interconnections among seemingly disparate theoretical perspectives. This is an ambitious role for these constructs. And one issue that might be highlighted is that an emphasis on self and identity would reinforce the focus on the individual – so predominant in the field already – in detriment of a focus to the organization. This issue would have merit if one considers only individual levels of identity and self; however, similarly to leadership and leadership development, self and identity have also been conceptualized to be multi-level phenomena (Sedikides & Brewer, 2001). Three levels have been postulated for self and identity: individual, relational and collective. The relational self-identity incorporates not only perspectives about the individual, but also about important others; while the collective self-identity encompasses membership to significant groups, such as the organization (Day & Harrison, 2007).
Interestingly, a change from individual to relational to collective self-identity has been suggested both for adult development (e.g. in Kegan’s constructive-developmental theory) and for leadership development by the cognitive (e.g. Lord & Hall, 2005) and the consolidative (e.g., Day et al, 2009) perspectives. Thus, the centrality of self-identity constructs for leadership development has already been emphasized by other authors. This study, therefore, reinforces this position. In addition, it also brings a new dimension to this discussion – namely, the conceptualization of leadership development within an eight-perspective framework, which might bring a new lens to looking at self and identity in leadership development, since each of these perspectives will theorize about these constructs differently. In addition, while it has been already proposed that self and identity constructs might the focus of change (e.g. Day & Harrison, 2007) or might be the mechanisms of the changes promoted by leadership development initiatives (e.g. Boyatzis, 2006), it is not clear from this analysis that a connection between a structural and functional roles for self and identity have been postulated. Self-identity structures and processes have been mentioned simultaneously by several perspectives (see Figure 16, Chapter V); however, the links between processes and change is not direct. Future research (probably in the literature) is necessary to uncover these connections.
CONTRIBUTION
Two types of contributions to the field of leadership development were made by this study: (1) new ideas and suggestions are proposed, and (2) some propositions have been reinforced. The contributions in each type are described in detail below. In addition, the implications for theory and research and for my own PhD research are also discussed.
ADDING SOMETHING NEW TO THE FIELD OF LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
This review proposes a classification scheme that organizes the theoretical underpinnings of leadership development. Several classification schemes have been postulated in the field (Conger, 1992; Cacioppe, 1998; Conger & Benjamin, 1999; Day, 2001; Kur & Burning, 2002; and Campbell et al, 2003); however, these do not seem to consider the theoretical foundations of their categories, but seem to be informed by the practice of leadership development initiatives to develop their categories (e.g. Conger & Benjamin, 1999).
Furthermore, by looking at disparate theoretical considerations within the field of leadership development and bringing them within a single framework, this review also contributes to this literature by attempting to promote some integration. This review is not as ambitious as to believe that it achieved such lofty goal, but it does believe that the classification of the eight theoretical perspectives is very useful for directing the field towards integration. On one hand, it helps us realize the implicit biases and assumptions that have originated from these underpinning influences. On the other hand, it produces awareness of the ontological, epistemological and levels of analysis frameworks that have been applied in the field.
Finally, this study also suggests that, if leadership development is to fulfill its promised strategic role, more attention is needed theoretically and empirically to this perspective. Even though its distinctiveness as a single category is debatable, the importance of connecting leadership development with strategic development seems unquestionable. Nevertheless, this study suggests that the approaches to this important development is composed by a collage of different perspectives that might or might not bear relevance for the strategic development of leadership.
STRENGTHENING ARGUMENTS WITHIN THE FIELD
“One particular lens through which we believe a multilevel perspective on leadership development can be built is that of the self or identity. Developing more inclusive conceptualizations of self might also be an important pathway to developing broader leadership and leadership capacity in teams and organizations” – Day & Harrison, 2007:362
In relation to reinforcing arguments already present in the literature, this review reiterates the view that leadership development has been hitherto more focus on the individual development of the leader (that is, leader development). By organizing not only the classification scheme proposed here but also the major classification schemes proposed in the literature into a single diagram, this study corroborate this assertion by emphasizing the concentration of categories – in all classification schemes proposed for leadership development – in aspects concerning only the individual. In addition, this study also emphasizes the argument in the literature that states that attention is needed for leadership development in a relational and collective sense.
Finally, it also underlines the important role that self and identity constructs might have for the development of leaders and leadership capacities in the organization. The possible links between the levels of analysis of self and identity (individual, relational and collective) and the levels of analysis proposed for leadership and leadership development might hold the key for integrating the development of the individual with the development of the organization. Also, these constructs might also be fundamental for our understanding of the mechanisms and processes that develop leaders, as some perspectives (such as the cognitive one) suggests.
IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORY AND RESEARCH
The implications of these contributions for theory and research are paramount. First, the distinction of different theoretical underpinnings for leadership development suggests that it is necessary for research to investigate and distinguish the links between initiatives that utilize different perspectives. Studying outcomes and mechanisms from programs that focus on different aspects of the individual or the organization, and that bring different assumptions about leadership and development, might be problematic as we might be comparing “apples with oranges”. It is important the researchers state the positioning of their research within the framework of these theoretical perspectives in order to clarify biases and match intents. Thus, a fruitful area of future research could be comparing and contrasting initiatives that utilize different perspectives.
A second area of research involves the research of the relationship between each of these perspectives and leadership effectiveness. Leadership effectiveness can be as hard to define as leadership itself, since researchers usually utilized parameters that are associated with particular leadership theories (Yukl, 2010). Nevertheless, investigating how each of these perspectives might influence the roles of leaders in the organization is an important area of future research. Likewise, the theoretical association between each of these theoretical perspectives and the different leadership theories is also important. These eight theoretical perspectives might provide an interesting background for the discussion and analysis of the multitude of leadership theories that have been proposed.
Several other areas of future research stem from this study. These further recommendations for the field are listed in the section of “Implications for my future research” as they constitute interests of mine.
IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE
Evidence suggests that the majority of initiatives promoted by organizations are based on the competence-based perspective. As this study emphasizes the assumptions and biases of each perspective, it is important for practitioners to become aware of the prejudice they might unconsciously bring to their own practice. Becoming aware of the different theoretical perspectives that underpin leadership development, practitioners can examine their own – conscious or unconscious – selection of techniques and methods in the design of programs.
In addition, an awareness of theoretical perspectives can also open new possibilities in the design of programs. As the theoretical perspectives are mapped against the aspects of the individual and the organization that they emphasize, providers can select the appropriate framework that fulfills the needs of their clients. Likewise, sponsor organizations can utilize the classification of perspectives to evaluate potential programs and what different provider offer them against their developmental needs.
A final application to practice is related to the evaluation of the effectiveness of programs. The most used technique seems to be the “happy sheets”, which are based on Kirkpatrick’s first level of evaluation criteria (e.g. reaction; Kirkpatrick, 1979). However, when considering the different theoretical perspectives, it becomes clear that different perspectives will generate different outcomes within these evaluation criteria. For instance, initiatives that involve dealing with unconscious wounds, such as psychodynamic perspectives, might generate a bad reaction in the participants, as these programs are dealing with complicated and hurtful issues that the individual has buried in his or her unconscious. Hence, this suggests that practitioners and organizations need to map the evaluation they are making of the program with the type of theoretical underpinning that the program has. (It is considered to be beyond the scope of this study to address the problems of this evaluation model and the issues faced by the evaluation literature).
IMPLICATIONS FOR MY FUTURE RESEARCH
This study generated two types of implications for my future research in the PhD: (1) theoretical and (2) empirical.
In relation to the theoretical implications, this review opens a multitude of questions about the leadership, leadership development and self/identity literatures. First, this review purposely excluded theories related to the “how” element of leadership development (as explained in Chapter IV). A direct follow-up of this study, therefore, is to consider the theoretical underpinnings of the “how” elements. Not only the theories used to explain how leaders develop are relevant in themselves, but it would also be paramount to map these set of theories with the theoretical perspectives described here. Due to the diversity of levels of analysis and ontological aspects of the different theoretical perspectives, this mapping would also require an examination of how each theoretical perspective views and explains the process of change. Thus, a study considering the “how” elements of leadership development would imply: (1) an examination of how change and development is conceptualized by each theoretical perspective, (2) an analysis of the learning and change theories that have been cited exclusively on the leadership development literature (denominated learning approaches theories in Chapter IV); and (3) an integration of the theories and concepts originated from the first and second analysis. A consideration of the “how” elements also instigate an investigation, on the literature, about the different methods and techniques that have been employed in leadership development initiatives and how these correlate with the theories of change, learning and development mentioned in (1) and (2). This multi-faceted analysis might be crucial to help us elucidate the mechanisms and processes of leadership (and leader) development.
Second, this study also highlighted the importance of the different levels of analysis in which self and identity can be investigated (individual, relational and collective) and the role that they might have on leader and leadership development separately and the linkage that they might provide for these two aspects of development. For this reason, a second follow-up of this study is to analyze in more depth the literature that conceptualizes these levels of identity, not only in the individual but also in organizations. In this sense, the literature on organization identity and identification seems pertinent.
Finally, an issue that arises from this study is related to the significance of each of these perspectives in developing leaders and leadership. In other words, what do we need – and should – be developing to increase leadership effectiveness and performance in organizations? The connection between leadership effectiveness and leadership development seems weak; yet, it is only by furbishing this link can we begin to understand the role and value of leadership development initiatives in general, and of each perspective in particular, for organizations. This investigation would help us to determine if leadership development is actually developing those aspects that are relevant for improving leadership in organizations. An analysis of the literature of the aspects that have shown to correlate the most with leadership effectiveness and performance, thus, might be essential for our understanding of leadership development.
This last point connects directly with one of the empirical implications for my PhD study that arouse from this study. It seems that identifying and selecting a single component of the leader’s role – such as building a vision – and analyzing how this component is addressed and changed by leadership development initiatives with different theoretical perspectives might be extremely valuable. Due to the differences in levels of analysis and ontological stances of the different theoretical perspectives, it seems that comparing all the changes that participants undergo in these different types of program seem unfeasible. But the selection of a single factor, that could cross the level and the epistemological continuums, could make this comparison more viable.
A second possible empirical study that can stem from this study related to the role of self and identity. Instead of selecting a component of leadership performance, the changes in different self/identity structures that participants undergo on different types of programs might also be important. In this study, changes in self-identity structure from different levels (individual, relational and collective) could be compared. An addition study, which could spring from this one, related to the association between the individual identity and the organizational identity: how do different types of programs change participants’ views about the organization’s identity and how do these perceptions alter their own views of themselves?
LIMITATIONS
One of the most important limitations of the study refers to the definition of leadership development and management development. The definitions and distinctions between managers and leaders is a grey area. The distinction between management development and leadership development, in consequence, is even greyer. The interchangeable use of management and leadership development might have limit or bias this study. Articles using the term management development that mention in the text about developing leaders or leadership skills were included in the analysis. This might have bias the sample of articles as those that deal with leadership development but did not explicitly mentioned these terms, and instead used interchangeable the term management development were excluded of this analysis. It might be necessary to include the literature on management development to uncover all the theoretical perspectives that underpin leadership development.
Another important limitation related to the need to have a theoretical perspective explicitly stated in the papers in order for the paper to be included in this review. Many studies of leadership development were considered not to have an approach explicitly stated. So it is possible that different perspectives, not mentioned here, are presented in the field but were not included in this review due to the selection criterion.
In addition, this review might have suffered from my own unconscious ontological and epistemological biases. Establishing the quality criteria for articles of different ontological and epistemological perspectives might have been biased by my own unconscious assumptions since I might have inferred the quality of a paper differently depending if their assumptions matched or contrasted with my own. I tried to be conscious of my own biases to eliminate as much as possible this limitation but I cannot be certain that some were not left unconscious, buried and active.
Finally, by not considered the learning approach theories (that were associated with the “how” element of leadership and therefore were considered to be outside the scope of this review), I might have excluded some theoretical perspectives that might be part of underpinning influences that were part of the scope of this study. This limitation can be address by a follow-up study (mentioned in the implications of this study for my PhD).
PERSONAL LEARNING
The most difficulty I had with this study was selecting papers. I deemed most of them important and wanted to include them all. I had to undergo the inclusion/elimination stage of the systematic review several times in order to come up with a final list of articles. Even now, I cannot guarantee that my selection was the most appropriate for this study, as indicated by some of the limitations above and by my own struggle of defining what is important and what is not. This study, therefore, taught me a valuable lesson in learning to be more selective in my reading. I still have a lot to improve in this skill; nonetheless, I can see how much I improved from the beginning of the project to now.
Another struggle that I faced in the systematic review related to the level of thoroughness and detail required by the review. When you tell a former natural scientist, like me, to be systematic and methodical, the level of detail can be painstaking. However, as I have come to realize, the systematic review is (despite the deceiving impressions that the descriptive analysis section might produce) a qualitative project, at least when applied to management research. Most of the process involves subjective decisions and interpretation in part of the researcher. I’ve struggled with that. The criteria selection, although guided me, seemed too flexible, malleable and subjective. I missed the simplicity of counting neurons, measuring whistles or calculating frequencies that was part of my research past. Nonetheless, I also come to realize the richness and understanding that a qualitative analysis provides. As it can be seen in the discussion about self and identity, the content analysis and descriptive only gave me a broad sense of what was there, but it was the qualitative evaluation of the articles that showed me the depth of these constructs in leadership development. Thus, this was an important lesson in valuing and understanding qualitative methods.
Finally, a vital learning that this review produced was my own level of understanding about the phenomenon I want to study in my PhD, namely leadership development. I now perceive the leadership development literature and its issues in a completely new light.
CHAPTER VII: CONCLUSION
In conclusion, this review demonstrates that leadership development, like the phenomenon it wants to improve – leadership – is also multidimensional, as can be observed in the different aspects that different theoretical perspectives emphasize. The study of leadership development with an awareness that there are different lens, backgrounds and assumptions in different leadership development initiatives depending on their theoretical underpinning is vital for the progression of the field.
This study also corroborates the importance of self and identity constructs for the study of leadership. The study of different levels of self and identity construct, namely individual, relational and collective, might be the linkage between leader and leadership development.
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