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The purpose of this paper is to explore managers’ learning-oriented leadership, and what conditions managers face when working with the promotion of employees’ learning.

Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with managers in three manufacturing firms. Verbatim expressions of the interview participants were analysed using stepwise analytical procedures.

The managers used many kinds of activities to promote learning. Most common were activities related to learning opportunities that arose during daily work. The identified activities ranged from being planned to occurring more spontaneously. Depending on the situation or the learning activity, the managers used different behaviours to promote learning. They supported, educated and confronted employees, and they acted as role models. Factors constraining the implementation of learning-oriented leadership included limited resources, and a lack of commitment from top management, employees or the managers themselves.

Future research should study learning-oriented leadership from the employees’ perspective.

Managers’ notions about learning and development constitute an important condition for learning-oriented leadership. Therefore, managers need to be trained in how to promote their employees’ learning at work.

This study adds to the limited knowledge of how managers carry out a learning-oriented leadership in their daily work. The findings contribute knowledge regarding managerial practices of promoting employees’ workplace learning by identifying different activities and behaviours that managers could incorporate into their leadership.

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between total quality leadership, social capital development and organizational innovativeness in the school environment. While there are research studies focused on the impact of leadership on implementing quality management practices, innovation and organizational performance, the mediating effect of social capital development has not been explored on the influence of the school leaders.

To achieve the purpose of this study, data collected from 158 principals, who participated in the Teaching and Learning International Survey 2018, were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

This study found that total quality learning-oriented school leaders are supportive of developing social capital in their schools, and such social capital development is very useful to improve organizational innovativeness. Interestingly, social capital development has been found to mediate the relationship between total quality learning-oriented school leadership and organizational innovativeness.

This study submits evidence for two major activities that school leaders perform: learning- and control-oriented activities, both being important for improving and measuring quality in the educational sector. This study clearly shows that control-oriented activities lean toward negatively on social capital while learning-oriented activities strongly and positively influence social capital development. From this study, practitioners can be aware and consciously promote social capital development in schools and that social capital development mediates the influence of total quality leadership and innovation in schools.

Schools can be visualized as guarded communities for creating a secure environment for students in support of learning. This research study shows that the combined cognitive capital, structural capital and relational capital mediate the impacts of total quality leadership on innovativeness in schools. Thus, school leaders should first establish a mechanism to develop social capital among their employees to bring up innovative initiatives.

The study aims to propose and test how leadership styles (learning-oriented, transformational and transactional leadership) and a new construct, psychological equality, help overcome the typically negative effect of rank disparity on team learning.

Militaries have a rigid hierarchy, and rank disparity (hierarchy) inhibits team learning. However, little (quantitative) attention has been paid to understanding the factors that might help overcome the inhibiting effect of hierarchy on military team learning. This study evaluates how learning-oriented leadership helps military teams to learn by improving a sense of psychological equality.

Learning-oriented leadership supported greater psychological equality and team learning than either transformational or transactional leadership. Additionally, psychological equality significantly improved team learning. Together, learning-oriented leadership and psychological equality were found to support team learning within hierarchical teams. The findings show that team rank disparity does not inevitably stifle team learning.

Cross-sectional archival and self-report data limits drawing causal conclusions; further, longitudinal studies should be undertaken to extend and test the proposed causal relationship modeled in this study.

Generating team learning within the military does not require dismantling traditional military command, communication and control structures; instead, specific leadership behaviors (e.g., sharing information, coaching and avoiding blame or shame) can support psychological equality and increased team learning within military’s established command and control structures.

This study answered recent calls to identify the contingencies shaping team learning; improving psychological equality enhances team learning while maintaining the benefits of a clear hierarchical structure (e.g. military command and control).

Learning organizations are often theorized at a team level, yet there is a lack of team-level studies. This study aims to evaluate if team-level dimensions of a learning organizational questionnaire (DLOQ) measures are reliable and reflect real team properties and if both individual-level and team-level DLOQ leadership mediates the effect of rank on other DLOQ measures.

An empirical analysis evaluated if team-level DLOQ measures are reliable and reflected real team properties and if DLOQ learning-oriented leadership mediates the effect of rank or team hierarchy on all other DLOQ measures. A novel approach (random group resampling) was used to evaluate if team level measures reflected either a real team property or a statistical artifact. Next, a series of mediation models evaluated if learning-oriented leadership was isomorphic, namely, displays a similar pattern at both individual and team levels.

The analysis found team-level DLOQ measures reflected real properties of the teams and were reliable and learning-oriented leadership mediates between rank and team hierarchy and the other six dimensions at both individual and team-levels (i.e. DLOQ team and individual level were isomorphic).

The results show that hierarchical teams’ learning capacities can be improved by focusing on the learning-oriented leadership, which overcomes the typically negative effect of hierarchical differences within teams.

This study provides a significant step forward by applying an innovative analysis that shows that the DLOQ team level measures reflect real team properties and DLOQ leadership displays isomorphic characteristics.

The purpose of this study was to explore what learning-oriented leadership could mean in practice and to identify possible sources of variability in this leadership between first-line managers (FLMs). The empirical basis of the study comprised FLMs in nursing homes for elderly care.

The study was carried out using a sequential mixed-method design based on interviews, observations and documentary analysis.

The study contributes an in-depth analysis of two modes of learning-oriented leadership: development-oriented and production-oriented. The two orientations represent an open and enabling pattern versus a constraining and controlling pattern of leading and organizing employee learning and development. The observed differences in learning-oriented leadership between the FLMs were interpreted in terms of the demands–constraints–choices model proposed by Stewart (1982; 1989).

Future research should include data from employees to analyze how the mode of learning-oriented leadership shapes the conditions and opportunities for learning at work.

Employee learning and development issues should be clearly linked to business strategies, and it is imperative that senior managers actively support and follow up on FLMs’ work with these issues. Furthermore, there is a strong need for training and development of FLMs – formal and informal – to improve their knowledge of and skills in leading and organizing workplace learning.

The study adds to previous research by elaborating what learning-oriented leadership could mean in practice and how it can be theoretically understood.

The author's interest in learning organisation development leads him to examine large French companies' practices regarding “high potential” executives policies and to question their selection and development processes and their capabilities to develop learning oriented organisations.The author also tries to explain why most large French companies are not yet familiar with this concept.

An analysis of the managerial and leadership characteristics of the French élite, as well as of the way they are trained in French grandes écoles and universities, can help to understand the kind of dominant style of leadership that features in the so called “high potential” executives in most large French companies.

The criteria against which these French “high potential” executives are discriminated explains largely their still very traditional hierarchical and centralised leadership styles, that are not favourable to build the more learning oriented organisations of the future. In addition most of the management development programmes for these executives stem from the traditional hierarchical leadership models that do not foster the necessary changes.

This article is based on the results of several studies performed in France by organisational sociologists about the corporate élite and the “high potential” executives of large companies and their development policies. The author relies on his participation in field researches but also draws from his extensive professional experience and in‐depth knowledge of these large organisations as consultant, trainer and speaker.

This article provides a critical approach of the mainstream “high potential” model based on the learning organisation philosophy. It proposes another vision of the “high potential” executive concept that the author believes to be more adequate in facing up to the challenge of the HR management and leadership changes that most large French organisations will likely have to face in the future. It also raises the issue of the adequacy of the present leadership development offer of the higher management education system. Although slightly political it aims at generating a debate about the very concept of the “high potential” executive, which is a major key to the necessary changes in the people management and leadership practices for the organisations of the future.

This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of learning-oriented leadership as being integrated in managers’ daily work. The particular focus is on managers’ efforts to change how work is carried out through indirect acts of influence. In their daily work, managers influence the organisation’s learning conditions in ways that go beyond face-to-face interaction. Neither the influencer nor those influenced are necessarily aware that they are engaged in learning processes.

The research was part of a larger case study. The data set comprised interviews with nine middle managers about ways of working during a period of organisational change. A learning-theoretical analysis model was used to categorise managerial acts of influence. The key concept concerned pedagogic interventions.

Two qualitatively different routes for indirect influence were identified concerning social and organisational structures: one aligning, that narrows organisational members’ discretion, and one freeing, that widens discretion. Alignment is built on fixed views of objectives and on control of their interpretation. The freeing of structures is built on confidence in emerging competence and involvement of others.

The study was limited to managers’ descriptions in a specific context. An issue for future research is to see whether the identified categories of learning-oriented leadership are found in other organisations.

The learning-oriented leadership categories cover a repertoire of acts of influence that create different learning conditions. These may be significant for the creation of a learning-conducive environment.

Managerial work that creates conducive conditions for learning does not need to be a specific task. Learning-oriented elements are inherent in aspects of managerial work, and managers’ daily tasks can be understood as expressions of different kinds of pedagogic intervention.

The purpose of this article is to revisit data from a previous study of leadership in an industrial company that was in the process of implementing a process‐oriented, team‐based form of organisation. Based on these data, it aims to explore the assumption that process‐orientation implies “new” leadership behaviours and relationships with co‐workers. More specifically, it aims to focus on analysing how the managers and co‐workers understood and practised the ideas about leadership for learning and development that were introduced in connection with the new production organisation. The purpose is also to determine what factors constrained and facilitated these leadership practises.

The study was conducted with a large industrial company using case study methodology. The empirical material consists of 35 qualitative interviews with production managers (n=4), first‐line managers (n=14), and operators (n=17).

The results indicate that performance‐oriented leadership with a focus on facilitating adaptive learning is emphasised more than development‐oriented leadership, which facilitates critical reflection and innovative learning. Furthermore, the study suggests that the administrative workload greatly limits the potential for development‐oriented leadership. Overall, first‐line managers appear to have more in common with system administrators than leaders.

This study highlights the need to find a balance between performance and development in organisations. Specifically, there is a need for leaders to create opportunities and support for increased developmental learning at work. It is also necessary to emphasise critical reflection both in connection with daily operations and in the formal education of co‐workers and leaders.

This study demonstrates the gap between the rhetoric of new leadership and the organisational realities that leaders experience in their daily work. At the same time, the study points to the dual nature of leadership for learning and the constraints on its realisations in practise.

The purpose of this paper is to test the effects of nine district characteristics on student achievement, explored the conditions that mediated the effects of such characteristics and contributed to understandings about the role school-level leaders play in district efforts to improve achievement.

Data for the study were provided by the responses of 2,324 school and district leaders in 45 school districts to two surveys. Student achievement evidence was provided by multi-grade provincial measures of math and language achievement. The analysis of these data included calculation of descriptive statistics, confirmatory factor analysis and regression mediation analysis.

Seven of nine district characteristics contributed significantly to student achievement and three conditions served as especially powerful mediators of such district effects. The same three conditions, as well as others, acted as significant mediators of school-level leader effects on achievement, as well.

District characteristics tested in the study provide a powerful framework for guiding the district improvement work of senior educational leaders. The organizational improvement efforts of both district and school leaders would be substantially enhanced by a better understanding of how to diagnose and improve the status of those conditions acting as significant mediators of the effects of both district and school leadership on student achievement.

This is one of a very few large-scale quantitative studies examining the extent to which characteristics frequently identified by district effectiveness research explain variation in student learning. It is also one of the very few studies identifying classroom, school and family variables that mediate district effects on such learning. The study also adds to a growing body of evidence about variables which mediate school leaders’ effects on such learning.