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Whatever else, Organization Development and Change (henceforth, ODC) is preeminently an integrative area of concentration. Thus, ODC encompasses a broad range of arts and sciences; it blends values, as well as empirical research and theory in applications; and those applications in diverse settings include the cross‐national and the cross‐cultural.

The insights of T. H. Marshall and Pierre Bourdieu are drawn upon, integrated and extended to show how social spending policies have been key sites for historical struggles over the boundaries and rights of American citizenship. In the 19th century, paupers forfeited their civil and political rights in exchange for relief. Rather than break definitively with this legacy, major policy innovations in the United States that expanded state involvement in social provision generated struggles over whether to model the new policies on or distinguish them from traditional poor relief. At stake in these struggles were the citizenship status and rights of the policies’ clients. Both the emergence of such citizenship struggles and their outcomes are explained. These struggles emerged when policy innovations created new groups of clients, the new policy treated clients in contradictory ways and policy elites formed ties to social movements with stakes in the status and rights of the policy's clients. The outcomes of the struggles have been shaped by the institutional structure of the policy and the manner and extent to which the policy became entangled in racial politics. Historical evidence for these claims is provided by a case study of the Works Progress Administration, an important but understudied component of the New Deal welfare state.

The purpose of this research is to report on research that explores the use of structured self‐reflection to nurture moral consciousness as a means of enhancing the moral leadership capacity of existing school principals.

Given that this research focuses on each participant's subjective reality, the epistemology of pragmatic constructivism was chosen to guide this qualitative study supported by the theoretical perspective of symbolic interactionism. Furthermore, a case study was chosen as the appropriate orchestrating perspective and an opportunistic sample of six school principals formed the participants in this case study.

Data from this research support the view that the moral consciousness of each of the participating principals in this study was clearly enhanced by their experience of structured self‐reflection.

Due to the demanding nature of structured self‐reflection this approach takes a considerable amount of time. Also, as the reflection process is a very personal experience, the amount of time taken will vary noticeably amongst the participants. In addition, the ethical implications in facilitating structured self‐reflection are an extremely important implication. Participants must be made fully aware of the nature of such an experience so that not only can they voluntarily choose not to participate but also that they avoid reflecting on past experiences that engender sadness or anxiety within them should they choose to participate.

Given the strong moral expectations now demanded of contemporary leaders, which implies that this is not a natural trait, structured self‐reflection affords a clearly achievable means for nurturing a leader's moral consciousness as an essential step in their professional development in moral leadership.

The paper addresses the acknowledged blank spot in moral leadership research by providing a practical and effective way for positively influencing the leader's moral leadership development.