Leadership development in Kuwait : organizational views

The concept of leadership and the adoption of leadership development programs are emerging issues for organizations in Arab societies. This paper reports the ‘organizational view’ of leadership development programs in three Kuwaiti commercial organizations. The aims of the paper are: to shed light on the assumed causal relationship between leadership development programs and manager and organizational performance; identify barriers to effective leadership development in the three organizations; and to understand if these Kuwaiti organizations perceive any tension between the transnational and culture-specific dimensions of leadership characteristics. While there is evidence leadership development in the three Kuwaiti commercial organizations is effective, these organizational perspectives need to be validated by other sources of data to confirm the paper’s tentative findings