Exploring Social Representations of Leadership Development : Designing for Work-Integrated Learning

• This paper explored social representations of leadership and leadership development shaping an organizations leadership development system (LDS). This study is based on the initial phase of a 4-year collaborative research project on LDSs, adopting an interactive research approach to co-produce knowledge through joint meetings and learning workshops (Ellström et al., 2020). The research project involves researchers from different disciplines, and five organizations operating in different business domains. The participating organizations vary in terms of size, strategies, markets, processes, products, and ways of organizing, but they all share a common interest in how to develop sustainable approaches to leadership development. An LDS encompasses all the metho ds and practices in an organization that contribute to developing and producing effective leaders (McCauley et al 2010). The importance of understanding the characteristics of the context the LDS is embedded in has been highlighted in a previous study (Avby et al., 2022), and serve as a point-of-reference in this study. However, less is known of what underlying assumptions an LDS is based upon. This study paid attention to the underlying values, ideas, and perspectives on leadership and leadership development that shape an organizations’ ways of thinking, communicating, and acting in the LDS. We suggest that the potential to develop a more deliberate practice of leadership development was enhanced by exploring and articulating the tacit knowledge and assumpt ions that an LDS rests upon.Aim The aim of this study was to explore how socially and contextually shaped assumptions on leadership and leadership development can be visualized and practically applied to develop the leadership in the organization. The question addressed was how the awareness of underlying assumptions can support the methods and practices applied, and in what way the disclosing of underlying ideas, values and practices may foster work -integrated learning?Design and methods From a social representation theory approach (Moscovici, 2001, Jovchelovitch, 2007, Markova, 2003, BergmoPrvulovic, 2015), underlying assumptions of leadership and leadership development were explored. In the collaborative project an initial mapping of the participating organizations’ LDSs has been co nducted, based on different sources of data. The results of this mapping have been presented through a metaphorical analysis (Avby et al., 2022), in which the participating organizations are described with certain metaphors of their LDS. This study paid specific attention to the organization entitled The Self-Managing Team, and added to the initial stage of mapping LDSs by exploring the underlying assumptions that underpins the expressions and formulations on leadership and leadership development found in the organization’s documents, websites, formulations in meetings and strategies. The exploration of social representations of LDSs was based upon the free association method (Abric, 1995), further developed, and used in studies exploring social representations of similar abstract and complex phenomena, such as career (Bergmo-Prvulovic, 2013: 2015). The method consists of questions, words and series of words given to the respondents who spontaneously write down their immediate associations towards a specific concept and complex phenomenon with a gradual deepening of questions related to specific words, series of words. In this study, a digital enquiry was created in Esmaker. The enquiry was designed to ask for respondents spontaneous, immediate thoughts on words, and series of words related to leadership and leadership development. The gradually deepening of questions, were designed by paying attention to the five dimensions of representations suggested by Jovchelovitch (2007), by exploring who are concerned, why and for what leadership is needed, what is the content 84 of leadership, when it works and doesn’t work, when and how it occurs as well who is responsible, whose engagement and what conditions are needed. This study was based on 19 respondents’ answers a ll member in the Self-Managing Team. They were selected by the organization, as identified having important roles and functions in the company’s LDS. A facilitator in the organization introduced an online enquiry with 12 questions, given one by one to the respondents, providing 1-2 minutes for each. The respondents wrote down their associations to each question, some background data, and questions about leadership identity. The analytical procedure was made according to qualitative content analysis method as the basic procedure of qualitatively exploring social representations (Bergmo-Prvulovic, 2013; 2015). Expressions were numbered with a certain code for each respondent related to each answered question, thereafter each textual units were condensed, meaning units were coded and grouped into constitutive elements that builds up preliminary and primary themes generating a web of social representations of LDS for the group of respondents.Preliminary results The results disclosed a web of underlying social representations shaping the LDS in The Self-Managing Team. The social representations shape a basic, contextually characterized system of values, ideas, and practices, on which the company at present form their LDS. Given the collaborative design of the project, the results were fed back to the organization to validate the analytical procedure, as well as to support the designing for work -integrated learning and further knowledge use in the organization. The results revealed the respondents’ assumptions on leadership, leadership development, and self-leadership. These assumptions are clearly anchored in the organization’s aim to build in self-management, as a collective way of working with leadership. However, the existing knowledge base encloses both commonalities and contradictions that needs to be further highlighted to create a sustainable LDS. Results showed both stable representations, that occur repeatedly throughout the material, and dynamic social rep resentations, that express a negotiating character between different views, or as being antinomies of thoughts. By identifying and raising awareness of ambiguities deriving from the results, a base of designing for reflective work-integrated learning was provided. A joint learning process to discuss how the results could be utilized as a tool for work-integrated learning was initiated. Some challenges were recognized, and the organization especially addressed the need to work with a second step of workplace reflection. A first learning cycle was initiated to be continuously developed by involving the employees in the process. In all, the contribution of the study explains the basis of leadership development practice, which unnoticed might create ambiguity in service delivery. The mapping of social representations of an LDS can be utilized as a tool for a more deliberate leadership development practice and highlight possibilities and challenges that need to be addressed for integrating methods and practices in everyday work.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Lärande (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Learning (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Företagsekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Business Administration (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Leadership development

social representations

work-integrated learning

interactive research

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)