Leadership Development Practices and Organizational Performance

Mahesh V Subramony,John Dooney,Jesse Segers,Aarti Shyamsunder,Clint Chadwick

doi:10.5465/ambpp.2015.37

Abstract

Leadership development is receiving increasing attention from scholars and practitioners globally. In this study, utilizing a sample of 223 organizations in an emerging economy (India), we discover...

Highlights

Recent theoretical developments suggest that leaders develop over time along two dimensions: intrapersonal which includes their leadership identity (Lord & Hall, 2005) and skills; and interpersonal, i.e., the capacity to build relationships with others, enhancing social capital, and engaging in authentic leadership with followers (e.g., Avolio & Gardner, 2005; Galli& Müller-Stewens, 2012)
Utilizing a strategic resourcebased approach (e.g., Barney, et al, 2011; Shaw, Duffy, Johnson, & Lockhart, 2005), we propose that firm-specific human- and social capital are strategic resources that are accumulated and developed through the actions of leaders, and that organizational investments in developing leaders through LDP’s can help enhance this process by increasing leader’s intrapersonal and interpersonal competencies, which will lead to an increase in organizational performance
While extant studies have demonstrated the efficacy of individual leadership practices, (Douglas & McCauley, 1999), it is common for multiple leadership development practices to be implemented simultaneously

Summary

Introduction

While this body of work provide insights into how and when leaders develop, and the effects of leaders’ personal development on individual-level outcomes (see Day, Fleenor, Atwater, Sturm, & McKee, 2014), there is very little theory to explain why firm-level leadership development practices are related to organizational performance outcomes. Drawing upon strategic human resource management (SHRM) theories, it can be argued that LDP bundles or a set of complementary practices are likely to exert a synergistic effect on the organization’s intangible strategic assets (Huselid, 1995; Delery, 1998; Guest, Conway, & Dewe, 2004) This logic suggests that the bundling of complementary leadership development practices is likely to produce stronger effects on targeted skills or behaviors as opposed to practices that are individually implemented.

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Results

Conclusion