Call for papers
Academy of Management Learning and Education Special Issue: Building Theory on Leadership Development
We are excited to share with you a new call for papers in the Academy of Management Learning & Education focusing on Building Theory on Leadership Development.
Leadership development has been described as the smaller brother/sister to the massive field of leadership theory and research (Leroy et al., 2022). Indeed, whereas the focus on leadership itself is a more established field of study, the sub-field of leadership development is more nascent with a smaller but growing community of scholars and practitioners interested in understanding what constitutes evidence-based development (Day & Dragoni, 2015). In stark contrast to the scant academic attention to leadership development is the fact that many (leadership) scholars find themselves spending a significant portion of their time teaching undergraduate and graduate students, as well as executives about leadership, with very little evidence of the effectiveness of their efforts (Leroy et al., 2022). And more broadly, the leadership development field has become a multi-billion-dollar industry (CCL, 2019; Narayandas & Moldoveanu, 2019), with few established guidelines set by academics for efficient and effective leadership development (Vongswasdi et al., 2023).
As a less-established field of interest, leadership development suffers from two interconnected issues (Klimoski & Amos, 2012). On the one hand, many leadership development efforts lack a scientific base and seem, therefore, rather disconnected from the theoretical and empirical knowledge we have accumulated over the last 100 years about what constitutes effective leadership. On the other hand, it is not clear how useful existing theory on leadership is for developmental efforts; simply understanding what constitutes effective leadership is not the same thing as actually intervening to change and develop leadership.
Thus, the field of leadership development can benefit from greater attention and creation of theories about developing effective leaders. Specifically, we invite submissions that will outline theory on how we "learn" leadership (i.e., management learning perspective), as well as theory on how to develop leaders effectively (i.e., the pedagogy of leadership development, which speaks to management education debates) (Lindebaum, 2023). Such contributions will not only benefit leadership development, but also advance the understanding of leadership effectiveness and management learning more generally.
With this call for papers, we invite scholars to help build more comprehensive theories on leadership development. While we have established theories of leaders(hip) and we have clear theories of (adult) development, there is an important gap in the literature when it comes to addressing leadership development in particular. We aim to set a new agenda for future work on leadership development, which will be instrumental in significantly advancing theory, research and curricula in business schools and organizations alike for the coming decades.
Your can find the full call here.
Guest editors are Hannes Leroy (Erasmus University Rotterdam), Moran Anisman-Razin (University of Limerick), Bruce Avolio (University of Washington), Lisa Dragoni (Wake Forest University), Steffen Giessner (Erasmus University Rotterdam), and Niels Van Quaquebeke (Kühne Logistics University).
Deadline for Submissions: 15 December 2024
If you have any questions or would like to discuss a possible submission, please contact Hannes Leroy (leroy@rsm.nl) or Moran Anisman-Razin (moran.anismanrazin@ul.ie).
------------------------------
Moran Anisman-Razin
Kemmy Business School
University of Limerick, Ireland
------------------------------