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The purpose of this paper is to identify the specific practices senior leaders need to engage in to best support their organization’s leadership development initiatives. All organizations invest billions of dollars around the world in leadership development, but there is surprisingly little attention given to the important role that senior leaders play in supporting these efforts. This paper draws upon focus group research with those responsible for designing and implementing leadership development initiatives to identify the strategic role senior leaders play in formal leadership development efforts.

To explore this issue, we conducted structured focus groups with over 250 executives, HR leaders and talent managers from over 30 different global organizations. Participants were responsible for leadership development in their respective organizations, averaged 44 years of age, 18 years of work experience, and were 54 per cent men and 46 per cent women. These focus groups were being used to solicit the input of those responsible for leadership development to identify the specific things senior leaders need to do to best support these leadership development efforts. The participants were asked to answer the following question, “Based on your experience, what specific things do senior leaders in your organization need to do to best support your efforts at developing high performance and strong leadership talent?”

Focus groups identified a series of key senior leader behaviors that are necessary to support an organization’s leadership development efforts. These findings, included the importance of senior leadership commitment to the process, the identification of specific leadership behaviors necessary to support these initiatives, the requirement of clearly understanding the organizations leadership development process, providing appropriate financial, staffing and technology resources to support these efforts, creating a climate of continuous learning and role modeling appropriate behaviors, among other findings.

While the focus groups in this research and the subsequent qualitative and quantitative analysis of the findings were rigorous, the participants were not a randomly selected group and were by definition a convenience sample. At the same time, the implications of this research are significant on this important subject and provide a solid baseline for both practitioners and researchers alike to help explore, identify and build on best practices for senior leaders to support organizational leadership development initiatives.

Leadership is the key to success in any organization. To maintain that success, leadership development and continuous learning is imperative. This paper provides ten specific practices based on the focus group research that can help senior leaders create a more supportive environment for effective leadership development initiatives. The methodology used to identify these factors can be duplicated in other organizations to help them build an appropriate model for senior leader support for leadership development in their enterprise.

The social implications for improving any organizations’ leadership is significant. It is known that effective leaders foster innovation, improve teamwork, create a more positive workplace, drive continuous improvement in quality, reduce turnover and improve the financial performance of most enterprises. With this backdrop, organizations can and must do everything in their power to accelerate leadership development and to engage in activities that do so. This paper will help pinpoint leaders and leadership development researchers and experts in that direction.

This manuscript offers a unique perspective on the role of senior leaders from the perspective of those who design leadership development programming in their organizations. And given both the readership and focus of this journal, this is an important perspective which takes into account the operational demands of leadership development in the strategic role senior leaders play in supporting these efforts.

Leaders' capacity has become mission‐critical in many organizations today. However, this business challenge is a struggle for many. Part of the reason is that current approaches to building leadership capacity are failing to hit the mark, and many senior leaders have little confidence in their organization's leadership development programs. This article aims to examine how organizations can close the leadership gap in their organizations by implementing an integrated approach to leadership development.

The evolution of leadership development is discussed and a framework is presented to examine traditional approaches and consider their limitations.

The integrated‐solution approach to leadership development represents a more strategic, synergistic and sustainable way for organizations to build the leadership capacity they require to gain competitive advantage. The integrated solution is intense. It requires serious commitment on the part of organizations, their senior leaders and from HR. The process also is more complex. In the long‐term though, the integrated‐solution approach delivers greater value to organizations and ensures that their investment in leadership development is optimized.

The article presents practical and proven strategies to overcome the leadership gap in organizations today

In a review of the literature, supported by six case studies, executive development for senior managers in public and private organisations is explored in depth. The study looks at the roles and responsibilities of the chairman, CEO, executive and non‐executive directors, the required capabilities to achieve successful performance, and the related executive development activity implemented to support these. Methods of delivery, development needs analysis and evaluation are explored in case organisations to ascertain current practice. A detailed review of the leadership and governance literatures is included to highlight the breadth of knowledge required at director level. Key findings of the study include the importance of focusing executive development on capability enhancement, to ensure that it is supporting organisational priorities, and on its thorough customisation to the corporate context. Deficiencies in current corporate practice are also identified.

An attempt is made to illustrate the multi‐faceted and multifarious nature of human resource development worldwide, following a definition of it and a description of how it operates in a number of countries throughout the world, including the US, the EEC countries, India, Singapore, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. The roles and functions of HRD practitioners are examined, and the competences required listed. A short history of the International Federation of Training and Development Organisations is offered and a list of conferences described.

The purpose of this paper is to trace the impact that the ecological approach has in international development programs in both the USA and Europe. It discusses the applications of sustainability by international donor agencies among bilateral and multi‐lateral organizations in developing economies. It outlines the influence of sustainability in the US Federal Government agencies to protect and maintain environmentally‐based development programs.

The paper compares industrial ecology and ecological anthropology approaches to sustainability development. It discusses their policy implications for international development assistance programs. It describes how anthropological and sociological approaches to sustainability have impacted the development policies and programs of bilateral and multilateral organizations, as well as those of multi‐national corporations.

There are common sustainability trends among the four competing donor organizations in approaching sustainability development by bilateral and multilateral international development organizations. These organizations – the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the World Bank, the United Nations and its affiliated Organizations, and the US Federal government agencies, for example, the Environmental Protection Agency – have shaped and influenced the policies and programs of sustainability development in business organizations and in developing economies.

Sustainability has been a subject of interest in international development assistance programs in both bilateral and multilateral organizations since the 1970s. Over time, the subject of sustainability received prominence in the developed world. It can be argued that sustainability has its roots in the developing economy and has been adapted/modified to meet the environmental and natural resources conservation and management policies of the developed economies.

Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce – not even, in many cases, describing workers as assets! Describes many studies to back up this claim in theis work based on the 2002 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, in Cardiff, Wales.

The commercial aviation industry is an extremely competitive, safetysensitive high technology service industry. Socio‐technical systems, employees and customers must be the arenas of an organization’s core competencies. The implications are vast and pervasive affecting no less than the organization’s structure, strategy, culture and numerous operational activities. In this article, select findings of a human resource management (HRM) audit are compared to the findings of a review of the literature on diversity, organization development (culture) and training and development. The audit, conducted by 13 executives from their respective organizations, contains extensive data on airlines from nine countries from around the globe. In this article we seek to extend the discussion of excellence in safety and customer service to applied systemic organizational HRM issues and critical success factors. Human resource management (HRM) expertise is required now, more than ever, to spearhead internal marketing strategies in order to gain employee commitment in order to foster excellence in safety and customer service.

This article reports the results of a study on management development practices in US service and manufacturing organizations. Data and statistical analyses from a sample of 433 middle and front‐line managers from 59 different US service and manufacturing organizations are reported which examined: What specific management development practices are most important from a manager’s perspective to improving their performance in rapidly changing organizations; and, are managers actually getting the development experiences they need to be effective in these organizations? Among the top ten important practices identified by managers as improving their performance, focus, feedback, and learning (e.g. problem solving, new communication and leadership) by experience are re‐occurring themes. The results also point to startling differences between the management development experiences they want and what they are actually getting from their organizations. Based on the data a series of lessons for improving the effectiveness of managers is provided.

This study examines factors that influence organizations’ choices of an internal human capital development strategy and an external human capital acquisition strategy. The human resource architecture indicates that organizations will use different human capital acquisition strategies. Following the resource-based view, human capital theory and the human resource architecture, we examine factors that impact the choices of different human capital acquisition strategies.

We examine these important human capital decisions in the context of Major League Soccer. Data to test the hypotheses were collected from a variety of publicly available sources. We tested the hypotheses with regression analyses.

We find that while organizations employ both internal and external human capital strategies, organizations may have one dominant human capital strategy and the other strategy may be used to supplement the human capital needs of organizations. Additionally, our results indicate that organizations with an older workforce tend to use an internal human capital development strategy, while higher performing organizations are less likely to use an internal human capital development strategy.

This study makes contributions by examining the choices between internal and external human capital strategies and factors that influence the choice of an internal or external human capital strategy.

Despite extensive research into psychologically‐based issues in the workplace, in practice there remain a confusion and lack of knowledge about psychology and psychological issues in manager/organisation development. This article explores areas in which psychological processes affect the day‐to‐day lives of people in organisations, such as the use of psychological knowledge to understand and deal with people issues in the workplace, manager development as psychological development, creating a psychologically healthy work environment, and finally, exploration of a psychological process that is associated with personal/professional change and development. It is proposed that the psychodynamic process of mirroring as an essential component in children’s personality development remains essential in the maintenance and development of an adult’s identity. While this process occurs naturally, it can be acknowledged and used by organisations in a conscious way to provide developmental experiences and opportunities for their employees.