In Pursuit of a Common Understanding of Leadership: A Case Study of Business School Faculty and Practitioner Stakeholders

Summary

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Business schools are increasingly being challenged to prepare their students to be leaders - leaders who can effectively meet the demands of the dynamic and global business world. It is therefore tempting for business schools to try to develop a common understanding among their faculty and key business practitioner stakeholders as to the meaning of leadership. A common understanding of leadership, after all, provides a useful foundation upon which leadership development can be carried out. This paper describes one business school's experience in trying to achieve a common understanding of leadership among its faculty and key practitioner stakeholders. Themes reflecting commonalities and disparities are identified.

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In Pursuit of a Common Understanding of Leadership: A Case Study of Business School Faculty and Practitioner Stakeholders

INTRODUCTION

Leadership is a crucial component of organizational success and competitiveness, and this link is well documented (c.f., Tubbs and Schulz, 2006). Business strategists contend that a turbulent business environment demands continuous improvement in operations and offerings; the creation of responsive, innovative networks; and the training and empowering of employees to serve a single, coherent vision (Nirenberg, 2003). These business challenges require leadership. As the introduction to special issue on leadership education in the Journal for Education for Business noted, efforts to gain market share and continuously improve require "change agents - individuals who know how to reorganize existing resources through innovative strategies, make rapid but well-thought-out decisions, and create collaborative work teams to enhance employee productivity" (Morrison, 2003, p4).

Despite the importance of leadership for organizational success, business schools have long been criticized for failing to prepare leaders who can guide organizations in an era of globalization, tumultuous competition, and corporate transformation (Barnett, 1990; Gosling and Mintzberg, 2004). Indeed, a survey of human resource personnel found that "82% of organizations had difficulty finding qualified leaders" (c.f., Nirenberg, 2003, p7). This failure of leadership preparation may result from the simple fact that there is not a consensus on what leadership entails or how business education can develop leaders. Nirenberg (2003) attributes the failure of leadership education to problems such as 1) leadership courses are not widespread, especially at the undergraduate level, and tend to be offered only as electives, and 2) when leadership study is available, it tends to focus on abstract, fragmented theories rather than on the behavioral practice of leadership.

One school of thought questions whether people can learn to be leaders from either traditional coursework or leadership development programs (Economist, 2003). From this perspective, leadership is eit...

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