Leadership Development Within Executive Education: The Elephant in the Room

B-schools have traditionally leveraged their academic expertise to provide content rich course prescriptions saleable and codified for executive audiences, allowing high repeatability and non-dependency on keynote faculty. Trading on academic credit has become a valuable tradition and increasingly important component of B-school income. However, concern is emerging whether what is being sought after by executives is what is really needed by the broader stakeholder community. Leadership to is now best thought of not as a position or a set of competencies but as an activity that generates socially useful outcomes, best learned in a community of practice. Effective leadership development must then be integrated with the changing organizational environment and context; and, must give participants the opportunity to gather and reflect on leading; ensure there is opportunity for interpretation and application of theory; and, take account of organizational, professional and sectoral differences. This research examines the leadership paradigms held by academics involved in the delivery of select executive development programs in New Zealand and Ireland and the impact of the approaches on effective leadership practices by the executives involved. A pilot survey of faculty was used to establish the predominant leadership paradigms employed in the design and delivery of the programs. A content analysis of executive education program prescriptions was also completed. While specific courses have emerged to enhance and develop leadership capacity of participants some courses were found to exclude any reference to leadership at all. B-schools in the two countries are found to have had variable impact on genuine executive leadership development. Those that have managed to create offerings with this target audience in mind, and the challenges they face will be sustainable going forward. But the key question that remains is whether executives engaged in leadership programs developed by B-schools are establishing knowledge about management or knowledge and leadership for management.