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The purpose of this paper is to report a scoping review of reviews which investigated HLDP evaluations to determine: how the conceptualisation of leadership development programmes (HLDPs), and despite growing calls for robust evaluations of their pedagogic design, delivery and effectiveness, there are concerns regarding the quality of data associated with their evaluation. This scoping review of reviews investigated the reporting of HLDP evaluations to determine: how the conceptualisation of leadership underpinning HLDPs influence their evaluation; how the pedagogical approaches within HLDPs influence their evaluation; and the evaluation designs and measures used to assess HLDPs.

The scoping review was conducted on reviews of HLDPs. Searches were performed on four databases and on the grey literature. Data were extracted and a narrative synthesis was developed.

Thirty-one papers were included in the scoping review of reviews. A great deal of heterogeneity in HLDPs was identified. Evaluations of HLDPs were affected by poor data quality, and there were limitations in the evidence about “what works”. Leadership was conceptualised in different ways across HLDPs, and consequently, there was a lack of consistency as to what is being evaluated and the methods used to assess HLDPs.

This review of reviews summarises the current evidence on the evaluation of HLDPs. Evaluations of HLDPs need to explicitly account for the complexity of health systems, how this complexity impacts on the development and articulation of leadership practice, and how the underlying conceptualisation of leadership and the associated theory of change articulate a set of assumptions about how HLDPs support leaders to affect change within complex systems.

This leadership education evaluation study explored the leadership development outcomes of potential county extension directors and the ways to improve the program. The leadership education program aimed to improve participants’ leadership abilities in understanding self, building relationships and managing resources. The analysis of quantitative and qualitative data confirmed that the leadership training institute was effective in building participants’ leadership skills and improving leadership behavior. The incorporation of participants’ learning needs into the program, use of hands-on experiential learning activities and problem solving activities combined with small group discussions were the contributing factors for the success of this leadership education program. The participants suggested the use of more hands-on and problem solving activities, team building exercises and condensing the time gap between the pre and post sessions as strategies for further improvement of this program.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate ways to gain deeper understanding of the evaluation challenge by reporting on insights about the impact of a leadership development program. It focusses on participants’ reflective post-course analysis of their learning, comparing this to a traditional evaluative analysis. Recently there has been a greater focus on programs to develop leaders who have the requisite cognitive and behavioral complexity to lead in challenging environments. However models for the evaluation of such programs often rely on methodologies that assume learning of specific skills rather than assessment of how well participants are able to cognitively and behaviorally adapt to uncertain and complex environments.

The leadership development program was evaluated in two stages and the findings compared. Stage 1 elicited responses to the program using a traditional evaluation approach. Stage 2 involved 30 semi-structured interviews with the participants exploring the connections made between their development experience, work environment and approach to challenge.

Evaluation approaches which focus on assessing reflection about personal learning provide greater detail on learning experience than traditional approaches to evaluation and can increase our understanding of the broader impact of leadership development programs. Current evaluation practices are mostly traditional despite dissatisfaction with outcomes. There are functional and financial benefits flowing from this practice suggesting collusion with denial between the suppliers and purchasers of leadership development and posing a question of causation.

This study supports the use of qualitative evaluation techniques and in particular a focus on post-learning reflection to increase understanding of the impact of leadership development programs. The increased understanding provided by this type of evaluation can play a significant role in both the design of leader development programs and the creation of strategic alignment between business strategy, the purpose of leadership development interventions, learning objectives, program design and program evaluation.

The intent of this article is to broaden one’s understanding of program evaluation methods that are responsive to disability and take into account various approaches to leadership within a special education context. Program evaluations for special education have often been relegated to compliance reviews and results-driven accountability measures. By promoting approaches to leadership that embrace responsive evaluation approaches and are inclusive of stakeholders from often disenfranchised groups, findings may emerge that otherwise might not be visible with traditional approaches.

A synthesis of the evaluation literature from leading journals, books and edited volumes is used to capture salient concepts necessary for understanding the degree to which evaluation and approaches respond to disability and culture. Additionally, the literature on leadership approaches is summarized and presented for the purpose of demonstrating how situational and transitional approaches to leadership may enhance the selection and use of evaluation approaches that are inclusive of and responsive to disability and culture.

From this analysis emerged four over-arching approaches to evaluation, each varying in degree of responsiveness to disability and culture. Further, when examining how evaluation interfaces with leadership, some approaches were found to be better aligned with particular evaluation processes and differed in responsiveness to disability and culture.

To date, little research has been conducted on the interface between leadership and evaluation approaches or on the degree to which leaders' implementation of responsive evaluation approaches results in improved outcomes for students with disabilities and those from underrepresented backgrounds. This article provides a conceptual framework for future research examining the degree to which one’s assumptions about the interface between leadership and responsive evaluation approaches can be demonstrated empirically.

Four recommendations are provided for leaders: the need to employ multiple evaluation methods that align their purposes, questions and methods; the need to recognize the possibilities and limits of evaluation approaches in light of their responsiveness to disability and culture; the utility of situational and transitional approaches to leadership in the evaluation process; and the critical importance of including stakeholders from diverse backgrounds in the evaluation process.

Varied approaches to evaluation in educational settings have been extensively studied and discussed. However, few articles have examined the responsiveness of evaluations to the unique conditions that disability and cultural differences represent. The contribution of this article offers a situated synthesis of approaches to evaluation, specifically contextualized within a leadership framework, to better understand how evaluation approaches impact those with disabilities and cultural differences and the inclusion of broad groups of stakeholders. As such, this article lays the foundation for a comparative international conversation exploring how evaluation and leadership approaches responsively interface with disability and culture through inclusion and enfranchisement of stakeholders.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of the perceived authentic leadership of supervisors and employees’ core self-evaluations on their organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and to examine the role of psychological empowerment as a partial mediator of those relationships.

A cross-sectional survey was used to obtain individual perceptions from employees working in one of the biggest companies in Korea. Data from 374 samples was analyzed. Construct validity of each measurement model is examined using confirmatory factor analysis and the hypothesized structural model is tested by structural equation modeling.

The authors found that perceived authentic leadership, core self-evaluation, and employees’ psychological empowerment had significant impact on employees’ OCB, accounting for 58 percent of the variance in OCB. In addition, 54 percent of the variance in psychological empowerment was explained by authentic leadership and core self-evaluations, partially mediating the relationship between authentic leadership and OCB and the relationship between core self-evaluations and OCB.

Positivity is instrumental in driving intrinsic motivation for work and voluntary devotion to colleagues and organizations. This study contributed to the emerging research branch of management and organizational psychology such as positive organization scholarship and positive organizational behavior by exploring the relationship among the relevant constructs. More specifically, the authors found that positive contextual factor (i.e. authentic leadership), positive personality factor (i.e. core self-evaluations), and positive work experience (i.e. psychological empowerment) do have positive influence on employees’ extra-role performance (i.e. OCB).

Educational leadership preparation programs are expected to train graduates who change their practice and produce outcomes for teachers and students. However, programs are challenged to produce evidence of their impact while also evaluating for formative purposes. This paper describes collaboration between an educational leadership program director and a program evaluator to construct an evaluation system that incorporated program theory, processes, and outcomes. The leadership preparation program, grounded in ethical leadership practices, had a unique design with core tenets that informed choices about the evaluation design. Decisions about data sources were informed by evaluation foci, the availability of existing data sources, and resource constraints. The complexity of the evaluation design paralleled the complexity of the program itself. Leadership content expertise, evaluation design expertise, and genuine collaboration were all essential to the successful design of this evaluation plan. Several recommendations are offered for others collaborating to design evaluations of their programs.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how elementary school principals adjust their leadership practice in response to Washington’s new teacher evaluation policy.

The authors conducted a modified content analysis of open-ended survey responses collected from elementary school principals in Washington State. In all, the survey included responses from 354 elementary school principals representing 25.0 percent of the state’s elementary school principal population. ATLAS.ti supported data analysis and assisted in the derivation of three key findings.

Elementary school principals changed their instructional leadership practice in response to the new teacher evaluation policy in three significant ways. First, principals adjusted their approach to classroom observation to complete more intentional, in-depth observational activities. Second, principals redistributed non-instructional responsibilities to clerical staff members to allow themselves and other administrators more time for classroom observation. Third, principals adopted a learning stance to the new policy and thus sought external support, especially coaching, to assist them with the implementation of new evaluation practices.

The study faced three limitations. First, the sample of respondents included in this study cannot be generalized to the state as participants were not randomly selected. Second, the survey did not utilize a longitudinal design, and thus its findings only relate to the first year of the policy’s implementation. Third, the study does not include school-based evidence to triangulate principals’ survey responses.

The study contributes to the instructional leadership literature. Specifically, the study offers further insights into the adjustments principals make in their leadership to accommodate expectations found in new teacher evaluation policy.

The present paper is based on a cross‐cultural exploration of middle managers in two diverse cultures and aims to focus on how the leadership styles of managerial women are perceived and evaluated. In particular, female and male peer evaluations of leadership effectiveness in Malaysia and Australia are to be explored.

Surveys from 324 middle managers from Malaysia and Australia were quantitatively analysed. The sample for the study was drawn from organisations in four industry types in both countries.

Findings suggest that evaluations of female managers' leadership styles in general, and within the respondent's own organisations, were strongly culture specific, especially in Malaysia. The results reflected the strongly held values, attitudes and beliefs of each country. While this is not unexpected, it does highlight a need to be cautious when interpreting Western research results and attempting to transplant those into other cultures. In Malaysia, female managers were not seen as effective in the leadership styles they adopted in their roles when compared to the Australian female managers' evaluations. Such an evaluation may have had little to do with an objective appraisal of the female managers' capability, but rather with a strongly held cultural belief about the appropriate role of women in society, and in organisations in particular.

It is suggested that national culture manifests itself in the values, attitudes and behaviours of people. Cultural influences are therefore likely to impact on the way women and men behave in the workplace, particularly when roles of authority and power are evident, and the way in which that behaviour will be evaluated by others. Further research using different samples in different cultures are recommended. In addition, the influence of ethnicity, race or religion in plural countries such as Malaysia and Australia is also worthy of investigation.

This research suggests that values and attitudes are strongly culture‐specific and therefore have the ability to influence evaluations at an organisational level. Such an awareness of cultural influences should guide appropriate human resource practices, particularly within a globalized environment.

The inclusion of a gender comparison in the data analysis in this paper is a significant attempt to add to the extant knowledge of the cross‐cultural research. This is a unique contribution because of the omission of a gender perspective in the previous two seminal studies in culture literature (i.e. Hofstede and House et al.). In addition, the findings suggest that culture‐specific influences are important determinants that impose expectations on the role of women differently from men in society and within organisations hence, making the gender comparison of the findings more significant.

Through the perspectives of a grant director and external evaluator, this chapter explores processes used and lessons learned to design and conduct ongoing evaluation of a multisite university-based principalship program supported in part by a US Department of Education grant. Using frameworks developed by Guskey (2000) and Kirkpatrick (1998), the authors highlight the conceptual context of program evaluation and describe the process used to develop a comprehensive evaluation plan aligned to program goals. The chapter appendix includes a summary of Developing Evaluation Evidence (Orr, Young, & Rorrer, 2010), a free program evaluation planning resource available at ucea.org.

The purpose of this paper is to report the impact of a leadership development initiative in eight organizations and to demonstrate the use of promising evaluation methods.

This study used multiple methods including surveys with quantitative and qualitative data from participants and their supervisors.

Program participants and their supervisors reported improved on-the-job performance of participants. There were statistically significant increases in participant self-efficacy over time.

In this time series design, some changes may be due to factors besides the program. Limitations in self-report data, common in studies such as this, were partially mediated by the use of supervisor ratings. Future research could include more objective measures of performance.

Because this evaluation reported on-the-job performance improvements for participants in a leadership development program, other organizations can adapt the program model and expect similar performance improvements. This study also advances leadership development evaluation methods by addressing on-the-job performance to a much greater extent than in past studies.

This study of a program training leaders in human service organizations can help similar organizations better train their leaders with expectations of improving the quality of life for clients such as families experiencing poverty, unemployment, and child abuse or neglect.

This evaluation makes a unique contribution in terms of measurement of on-the-job performance of program participants in a time series design which includes ratings of supervisors and self-ratings, benefiting organizations designing such programs and evaluations of them.