Aligning and locating leadership development in relation to management development

Management development can be defined, for example, as the “expansion of a person’s capacity to be effective in a manager’s roles and processes” (italics added, Suutari et al, 2008). It can also be defined as the “whole, complex process by which individuals learn, grow and improve their abilities to perform professional management tasks” (italics added, Wexley and Baldwin quoted in Cullen et al, 2005). As with definitions of leadership development, reference is made to ‘management’ in the definitions of management development without a clear articulation or definition of what management means. Talbott (1997) argues that there is “little consensus on the scope or nature of what constitutes

“management” and as a consequence little agreement on what skills, knowledge, competences or abilities are needed to be a “good manager”” (italics added, p119). Talbott (1997) adds that the “diverse approaches to management development are not merely different but actually contradictory and even paradoxical [and that] these contradictions are closely tied into different values systems about the nature of management and development” (italics added, p120).

Thus, for Talbott the assumptions and approaches to management and development are “interwoven” (ibid), meaning that certain approaches to management “fit” (ibid) with certain approaches to development or that certain approaches share similar assumptions.

Similarly, Mabey (2002) states that “management development activities will be invested with multiple meanings by the parties [or stakeholders] involved” (italics added, p1141) and can have “conflicting purposes and values” (ibid). Mabey, as with Lees (1992), criticises the functionalist approach to, and definition of, management development where the related development “activities might be conceived [solely] as a strategic response to [or function of] the exposure of [managerial or management] skills deficiencies in the organization” (Mabey, 2002, p1140). This ‘response’ means “[h]ighlighting the capabilities necessary for managers to perform effectively via a set of generic competencies” (italics added, ibid) for example. However, Mabey argues that this “unitarist (sic) approach”

(p1140) to understanding management development in terms of competencies and the attendant functionalist perspective of the organisation is restrictive. They cite the criticisms that “this ‘narrow vocationalism’ [that competency approaches entail] can all too easily crowd out any sustained concern with the ‘social, moral, political and ideological ingredients of managerial work’” (ibid). This requires attending to and unpacking the contestations, dynamics and possible “conflicting purposes and values” (p1141) within the organisation and the management development therein (Cullen et al, 2002; Talbot 1997).

The above criticism of a “functionalist” (Mabey, 2002, p1140) and “unitarist (sic) approach” (ibid) to management development appears to be similar to the criticisms, cited before, of treating and delimiting leadership as unidimensional and homogenous and treating leadership development as a linear direction of causality anchored by leadership competencies. Indeed, Lees (1992) is critical of viewing management development as a simple linear process.

On the “social, moral, political and ideological ingredients of managerial work”

(Mabey, 2002, p1140), Ghoshal (2005), for example, argues for the need to critically examine the “bad management theories” (p75) that inform management practices and learning. This includes the positivist and radical individualism assumptions, liberal economics and agency theory, and the dominant shareholder value perspective of management and organisations. As these management theories and assumptions lead to reductionist, partial and reified conceptualisations of management and organisations (Clegg et al, 2003; Crump &

Costea, 2003). Ghoshal points to stewardship theory as an example of an alternative to agency theory. It means a shift from shareholder value perspective to a stakeholder value perspective (Navarro, 2008).²² Kanter (2005) argues that Ghoshal examines the supply-side of the management development equation

22 This entails “maximising wealth in a sustainable way” (Kakabadse and Kakabadse quoted in Jackson, Farndale & Kakabadse, 2003, p51) “for all stakeholders, including employees and the wider community” (ibid). It means appreciating the corporation’s “multiple responsibilities, needing to balance competing conditions, such as long and short-term notion of gain, profit and sustainability, cash and accounting concepts of value, democracy and authority, power and accountability” (ibid).

(academic ‘producers’) and suggests examination of the demand-side (the

‘consuming’ organisations). This means posing the question of why “has there been such a receptive audience” (p93) within organisations to stakeholder perspective, neo-classical economics and agency theory.

Where leadership development is located within management development or is presented as equivalent, one needs to critically examine how it is located, integrated or instutionalised within the dominant management development practices within organisations. Hartley et al (2003) caution that leadership development can at times be a re-packaging of traditional management development initiatives within the organisation. Mintzberg (2005) and Feldman (2005) argue that the present vogue or currency of leadership within management development is related to the avoidance of the messy, difficult and complex reality of management and managing people. For Mintzberg (2005) it is the continuation of the technicist, analytic and disconnected approach to management that informs, for example, the MBA as well. It also posits the manager as the heroic transformational manager who focuses on grand visions based on the predominance of the transformational and charismatic models of leadership. This may lead to hubris.

Mintzberg suggests that “management is practice … [it] may use science, but it is an art that is combined with science through craft [to] face issues in the full complexity of living, not as compartmentalized packages [as represented in MBA curriculum, and] the capacity to combine knowledge from different sources and use it judiciously” (italics added, p19). It cannot be reduced as the composite of functional specialist knowledge required for the presumed rational organisations, as in Fayol’s classic definition of management as being planning, organising, co-ordinating and controlling.

Mintzberg (2005) and Gosling et al (2003), for example, warn against the danger of separating management and leadership. They argue that management without leadership leads to an uninspired and calculating style of managing, while

leadership without management can result in a disconnected or disorganised style and the danger of management hubris. These differing demands seem to be a dilemma of everyday management, as the authors suggest that managers struggle to negotiate and reconcile conflicting and polar demands. As with these demands, managers grapple with, negotiate and attempt to reconcile their “conceptual luggage” (Mintzberg, 2005, p254) they have assimilated from theories, techniques, publications and consultancy advice. It would seem that they straddle the community of learning (academic context) and community of practice (practice or organisational context) (Cullen et al, 2005).

This conceptual luggage, however, is not a neat orderly set, but beset by the

“paradoxes of management” (Mintzberg, 2005, p224). One could suggest then that management and leadership is one set of juxtapositions of managing and furthermore that the proportion of the two, management and leadership, is dependent on the level of management, present challenges and context, for example. More important is the question of how managers and organisations attempt to reconcile and integrate the juxtaposition of management and leadership. On this note, Mintzberg argues that one needs to also examine the congruency of the traditional positioning and understanding of management at the apex with current depictions of organisations as webs, networks or hubs. For example, in a web or network, management “has to be potentially [“everywhere”]

and everyone [has] authority for making decisions” (italics added, p141). This means that the development of “strategic initiatives has to be distributed [and]

control has to give way to collaboration” (italics added, ibid). Thus it would seem, given the caveats, conflicting demands and juxtapositions, that an organising or coherent theoretical framework to management development within an organisation is as important as Ghoshal et al (1992), Mabey (2002) and Mintzberg (2005) suggest.

This may address Mintzberg’s (2005) observation that the learner-manager experiences difficulties or tensions on re-entry into his or her organisation, where he or she brings in something novel into the organisational context or he or she

has changed but the organisational context has not. Lees (1992) argues, for example, that management development is meant to integrate individual career path, organisational succession and organisational performance. This means a link with the broader organisation development and viewing managers as creating a context for learning and development within the organisation and facilitating the organisation’s performance.

2.5.3.2.2 Aligning and locating leadership development in relation to