Chapter Summary

The views in the literature about leadership learning were reviewed in this chapter. As this process got underway it became clear that a supporting framework or scaffold was necessary to both organize the views in a meaningful way and to also highlight the focus of this research which is on understanding leadership learning in the short-term. To do this, ab initio, a Leadership Learning Matrix was proposed as a novel and intuitive taxonomy that enhances the description of and locus for leadership learning research. This was presented as an additional contribution of this research to scholarship

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in terms of how to describe the different types of leadership learning so that deeper exploration can be more focused and differentiated. Through this leadership learning matrix, scholarship perspectives about formal learning and informal learning were discoursed. Formal learning was found to be both dominant and well explored in the literature. In terms of its contribution to leadership learning, formal learning helps to introduce leaders to the topic of leadership as well as playing a role in acquisition of specific knowledge and skills that can help leaders in being more effective in leadership.

From an outcome perspective, it was suggested that when compared to informal learning, the real contribution that formal learning makes to the development of leadership is marginal. This is due to several factors including relying on the teaching pedagogy for a phenomenon as complex as leadership and learning being decontextualized from the real world activities that circumscribe leadership and provide rich sources for potential learning. The connection between the key shortcomings of formal learning and the interest of this research revolves around answering the questions, first, if, despite its dominance in the literature, formal learning does not contribute a lot to leader’s learning, how can we find out what has the potential to contribute more to leadership development? Second, if leaders operate in an environment that requires quick decision making and action, how can they learn from what they do, and how can they learn it quickly so that learning aligns with the pace of activities that define leaders’ enactment?

Seeking answers to these questions brings to the fore some of what was learnt about informal learning. First, it was found that informal learning contributes much more to leader’s learning than formal learning does. And also that informal learning occurs

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through work and is not separated from leaders’ daily activities. In this way informal learning tries to overcome the decontextualization of learning by recontextualizing it within a leader’s practice. This is important for this research as leaders’ learning will be explored through their experience of restructuring, their practice realm. In a sense learning, the learner, the learning environment and sources of learning are situated within the leaders’ context and practice. It also came forth strongly in the literature that this type of learning, learning from experience either through action, observation, reflection or from others, are natural ways that leaders learn. As contrasted with formal learning, learning naturalistically opens leaders to learn in multiple ways: they can learn by watching, listening, testimony, reflection, amongst others. Through the literature it was understood that this learning tends to occur over time, through leaders’ lifespan, careers or changes in their identity. But over time implied longer periods of time when interpreted temporally. This gave rise to the question, can leaders’ learn in a period that is shorter than the over time implications of learning in the long-term, especially as leaders’ real world is defined by time-pressure and short-term focus and activities? The thinking was that leaders may find it valuable if the pace of learning aligns with the pace of their activities. This then led to exploring the literature on short-term learning as the part of the leadership learning matrix needing the most attention. Because it is not as covered in the literature as formal learning and informal long-term are, understanding the nature and process of short-term learning became the focus of the further review of the literature. Short-term leadership learning is thus surmised to mean the learning that can occur due to time-pressure and within shorter periods of time that tends to manifest

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either through crucibles or through situated practice. It was understood that there is the individual paradigm of short-term leadership learning which tends to occur through crucibles. There is also the relational paradigm that occurs through situated practice.

However, how exactly these processes unfold have not been explored sufficiently in the literature. This is perceived as a gap. Therefore, in chapter five the nature and processes of short-term informal leadership learning will be explored in detail. Before getting there, the next chapter, chapter three, will address the research methodology and how the research was conducted. This will be followed by chapter four which will be the chapter that presents and discusses the research findings before proceeding to chapter five exploring the processes of informal short-term leadership learning.

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Chapter Three: Research Approach, Methodology, Process and Context

3.0 Chapter Introduction

This chapter presents and discusses the philosophical approach, the research method, the research process and the analytical procedures that were used in conducting the research, and how the findings will be presented. The first part of the chapter explains what critical realism is and why it was chosen as the philosophical approach in this study.

It also discusses the context-mechanisms-outcomes framework and the rationale for using it for critical realist causal analysis for this research. The second part introduces the case study research and specifically discusses critical realist case study research and its contributions to current research. Thereafter, the next part of the chapter focuses on how the research was conducted and how the data was coded and analyzed. The final section then focuses on how the research findings will be presented.

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