The Development of Management and Leadership Capability and its ...

2: Introduction
The proposition that the economic and social wellbeing of society, and those in it, is
substantially dependent on the effective and efficient performance of organisations of all
kinds, that this in turn depends on adequate or excellent management and leadership
capability, and that this in turn can be learnt and developed, would be accepted by many as
likely to be true in common sense and everyday observation.
It is also the case that organisations of all kinds, Government and Government agencies, and
individuals investing in their own development, in the UK and internationally, behave on the
basis of this belief, through the very substantial investments that they make in management
and leadership education, training and development, and initiatives to support this. Boyatzis
et al (1996) estimate the global investment as $37 billion.
However Porter (2003) in his recent influential report on the British economy is cautious in
being confident that management is a decisive factor in organisational and national
performance. From his largely macro-economic perspective and on the basis of international
comparative economic data he places a lot of emphasis on the business environment of the
company: infrastructure, liberality of economic and regulatory policies, investment traditions
and practices. He positions management capability, and particularly the willingness and
ability to adopt ‘modern management techniques’ as much or more as a consequence of
investment alongside advanced technology and highly skilled labour, than as a likely cause of
making increased investment, up-rating technology, strategic positioning in high added value
trading networks and developing workforce skill levels. This debate has the potential for
being a purely theoretical and philosophical ‘chicken and egg’ debate. However the
empirical contribution to this debate from this study is to assess the evidence that developed
management and leadership capability drives, rather than is driven by, investment,
innovation, lifting workforces skills, and taking advantage of circumstances external to the
firm. This part of the debate is couched largely in terms of the private sector, but similar
principles can be considered to apply to the public and not-for-profit sector in terms of the
efficiency and effectiveness with which they achieve their purposes in the large sector of the
economy that they occupy.
The aims of the investigation reported here are several. The first is to be clear what we might
mean by management and leadership capability (and the place of entrepreneurship in this),
and what we can say about its state, quantitatively and qualitatively, in the UK at least
(Ch.3). The second is to see how confident we can be, on the basis of evidence, that
management and leadership development creates management and leadership capability,
which in turn contributes to the achievement of economic and social performance (Ch.4).
This question is therefore about whether management and leadership development does or
can produce economic and social benefit. The third question is, if so: how management and
leadership development contributes (Ch.5). It is known that management and leadership
operates in a very wide range of contexts: public, private and not-for-profit sectors,
organisations of very different sizes, different industrial sectors. It is known that
management and leadership is, or could be, carried out by many different kinds of people in
terms of diversity categories like age, ethnicity and gender. It is also known that people are
involved in management and leadership at different career stages and come to it from
differing occupational and educational backgrounds. An extension of the how question
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