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Outcomes of Management Development Programmes: JMD Paper Collection

Journal of Management Development

Management and leadership development is pervasive in our contemporary organizational landscape and constitutes an enormous business field. Despite this, studies of the outcomes and results of such initiatives and programmes are relatively rare in academic literature (while shorter, skills-oriented courses are more extensively studied). It is therefore a pleasure to be able to present a collection of studies from the Journal of Management Development that focus precisely on the outcomes of such relatively long programmes aiming to develop managerial and leadership skills. Studying outcomes of management and leadership development programmes naturally presents significant methodological and theoretical challenges. The articles in this collection demonstrate a range of ways to engage with such challenges, including what to observe and measure and how, and how to operationalize and define various dimensions of outcomes. Taken together, the papers demonstrate that these programmes are complex and that the outcomes and consequences also are complex and at times unpredictable. We believe the papers can inspire further studies of this important type of development activity, but also that they can offer helpful advice for practitioners regarding what to focus on and what to try to avoid. These papers will be free to access until Mid-October 2024.

Magnus Larsson - Editor in Chief, Journal of Management Development