Walking Our Evidence-Based Talk: The Case of Leadership Development in Business Schools

Academics have lamented that practitioners do not always adopt scientific evidence in practice, yet while academics preach evidence-based management (EBM), they do not always practice it. This paper extends prior literature on difficulties to engage in EBM with insights from behavioral integrity (i.e., the study of what makes individuals and collectives walk their talk). We focus on leader development, widely used but often critiqued for lacking evidence. Analyzing 60 interviews with academic directors of leadership centers at top business schools, we find that the selection of programs does not always align with scientific recommendations nor do schools always engage in high-quality program evaluation. Respondents further indicated a wide variety of challenges that help explain the disconnect between business schools claiming A but practicing B. Behavioral Integrity theory would argue these difficulties are rooted in the lack of an individually owned and collectively endorsed identity, an identity of an evidence-based leader developer (EBLD). A closer inspection of our data confirmed that the lack of a clear and salient EBLD identity makes it difficult for academics to walk their evidence-based leader development talk. We discuss how these findings can help facilitate more evidence-based leader development in an academic context.

Leadership Style and Succession Planning

The main aim of the chapter is to identify the leadership style that promotes succession planning through the existence of leadership development practices within organizations. The middle and top leaders are very important to identify and develop new leaders within the organization. The authors reach three main conclusions: 1) The laissez-faire leadership style is related to the succession planning. Succession planning is positively influenced by leaders that adopt a passive leadership style. 2) There are some practices of leadership development that are related to the existence of succession planning in organizations. 3) The 360º feedback and coaching/executive coaching are related to the succession planning. These practices promote the human capital development, so it is assumed that succession planning may be related to the leader development. Theoretically they concluded that organizations should have a leadership pipeline in order to prepare leaders to assume leadership positions.

Positive Leader Development

Organizations are increasingly investing in human resource development. The positive psychology approach warns of the importance of strengthening the forces. Leveraging the strengths is a way to achieve better results and even minimize the weaknesses of the leader. It is this assumption that positive psychology adds to the human resource development, which includes the leadership development. This chapter aims to propose a theoretical model about positive leader development supported by the positive psychology approach. This model comes from the literature to the evolution of leadership and organizational theories and the positive psychology. Positive leader development model seeks to enhance leadership development within an organization with a positive psychology approach. The literature shows the advantages of strengthening forces in the organizational context. So, it is necessary to systematize a theoretical model that facilitates the positive leader development in organizations. The proposed model is based on the study by Malinga, Stander, and Nell.

Experimental Evaluation of 3D Tortuosity of Long Laboratory Spark Trajectory for Sphere-Sphere and Sphere-Plane Discharges under Lightning and Switching Impulse Voltages

Evaluation of attractive areas of high- and ultra-high voltage power transmission lines to direct lightning strokes is based on modeling of propagating progress of the lightning leader approaching the transmission line. The aim of the modeling is to determine the effectiveness of lightning protection for a given line design. The statistical models are currently being developed to extend the conventional deterministic models by embracing the randomness of the discharge channel in space and hence to reproduce the statistical distribution of the striking points. These models require experimental data for understanding of the lightning leader development process and to validate the model across the measurement data. This paper reports on the measured trajectories of discharge channels of long laboratory sparks in various high voltage laboratory arrangements. The sparks were initiated by switching and lightning impulses with peak values ranging from 1200 kV to 3364 kV of positive and negative polarity for two types of high-voltage electrode systems (sphere-sphere and sphere-plane), arranged at distances of 3.3 m and 5.5 m from each other. Statistical distributions of angles describing trajectory of discharge channels in space are reported for a total number of 540 recorded discharges. The results can serve as reference measurement data to develop and evaluate the accuracy of simulation models incorporating statistical nature of the lightning leader development process.

Holistic Leader(ship) Development: An Integrative Process Model of Leader and Leadership Development

The question of how to efficiently, holistically, and successfully develop leaders has been the focus of scholars and practitioners for several decades. Embedding the process of leader development in organizational contexts allows participants to develop and apply leadership knowledge, skills, and identity awareness. Embeddedness facilitates the holistic integration of the interactive processes of leader development (which focuses on increasing the leadership capacity of an individual) and leadership development (which focuses on increasing the leadership capacity of an organization), which is referred to in this article as leader(ship) development (LD). Two sub-processes involved in LD (i.e., general and situational identity development and knowledge/skill/social capital development) and four mechanisms of embeddedness that facilitate holistic LD (i.e., leader identity integration, opportunities to learn and develop in the organization, organizational support and feedback, and helping relationships) will be described. A discussion on the ways by which management education pedagogy can integrate and facilitate embeddedness and provide guidance for future research will follow.