Management and Organization

Leadership development program (LDP) practice within organizations is a Human Resources (HR) strategy that seeks to enhance the skills and knowledge of potential leaders. However, organizations are often unaware of the extent to which these forms of intervention actually enhance the leadership skills they are intended for. Although LDP may be implemented by organizations in Finland, its ability to improve effectiveness is still not clear. The main objectives of this thesis are to examine the perceived effectiveness of leadership development programs and determine whether they do actually enhance the effectiveness of potential leaders. The literature for this study is based on general leadership literature, Leadership development and LDP literature. Additionally the literature reviewed has identified key learning theories and their implication on individuals’ learning process. My arguments in this study are presented in a qualitative research method; I also develop similar approach to data collection and analysis. As such, the findings for this study have been analyzed by the use of Kirkpatrick, (1998) framework for evaluating LDPs. The framework consists of four levels (reaction, learning, behavior and result) through which individuals are presumed to go through before, during and after LDP implementation. Findings for this study have identified the factors perceived to affect the effectiveness of LDP at Energix Corp and their relationship to the evaluation framework. The key findings for this thesis are that LDP have the potential to enhance leadership effectiveness to an extent. Results also show that effectiveness of LDPs depends on key individual, training and organizational characteristics that need alignment to achieve the desired goal. On the basis of the results of this research, it can be concluded that LDP interventions are a tool but not the key to leadership effectiveness in organizations.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format