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

4: Does Management and Leadership Development Enhance
Performance?
This chapter examines the evidence for a positive effect of management and leadership
development on national, organisational or individual performance. It seeks to address the
following broad questions:
• Does management and leadership capability make a difference to national
performance? (4.1)
• Does management and leadership development increase organisational performance?
(4.2)
• Does management and leadership development increase individual management and
leadership capability and individual performance? (4.3)
• Does higher education, especially higher education in business and management,
increase individual management and leadership capability, individual management
and leadership performance, or organisational performance? (4.4)
The issues of how management and leadership development affects performance in different
contexts is dealt with in Chapter 5.
Chapter overview:
Management and leadership capability and national performance
• The UK has tended to ascribe its relatively low productivity to poor quality
management, although there is evidence that other factors may be more critical to
national economic performance.
• Fewer UK managers have had high-level qualifications (especially degree level) than
those in some other developed countries. This has been a function of the generally
low historic rate of participation in higher education in the UK - now no longer the
case.
• There is really no reliable evidence of the relative quality of managers in different
countries. Qualifications are not a reliable indicator of management and leadership
capability, especially when comparing between countries.
• Other occupations show more serious skill shortages than management, but there is
evidence of a 'skills gap' in the quality of UK managers as perceived by employers
and by the staff they lead.
Management and leadership capability, management and leadership development and
organisational performance
• We have relatively small numbers of studies that provide direct empirical evidence of
an effect link between management and leadership development activity and
organisational performance. Those we do have are, however, positive about this link,
but suggest that it is the coherence of the management and leadership development
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