Towards Best or Better Practice in Corporate Leadership Development: Operational Issues in Mode 2 and Design Science research
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2005.00468.x |
| Author | Kim Turnbull James,John Burgoyne |
| Published date | 01 December 2006 |
| Date | 01 December 2006 |
Towards Best or Better Practice in
Corporate Leadership Development:
Operational Issues in Mode 2 and Design
Science research
John Burgoyne and Kim Turnbull James
*
Department of Management Learning, Lancaster University Management School, Lancaster LA1 4YX and
*
Cranfield School of Management, Cranfield University, Cranfield, Beds MK43 OAL, UK.
Email: j.burgoyne@lancaster.ac.uk [Burgoyne]; k.james@cranfield.ac.uk [James]
The research reported here was part of a UK government initiative to improve
management and leadership capability. Corporate leadership development was one
element of this initiative. The researchers, also the authors of this paper, were tasked
with developing a best practice guide in leadership development. The aim was to
establish current best UK corporate practice in order to inform similar organizations
striving to improve their approach to leadership development. The aim of this paper is to
present the findings of this inquiry as an example of Mode 2 research, i.e. that which is
co-produced with practitioners in a rigorous yet actionable way. The paper addresses
operational issues by exploring the tensions inherent in Mode 2 research and makes
some additions to previous literature on conducting Mode 2 research. It introduces the
notion of technological rules derived from the concept of management research as
design science, which enables the authors to articulate the way in which output can be
developed in a form readily acceptable to end users of Mode 2 research. Actionable
research products and accompanying dissemination issues are proposed as central
operational concerns for Mode 2 research.
Introduction
The Council for Excellence in Management and
Leadership (CEML) was established by the UK
Government through the Department for Trade
and Industry and the Department for Education
and Skills and their ministers at the time, in the
light of concern with UK productivity and a
belief in the potential contribution of improved
leadership performance, to help the UK improve
its stock of good quality leaders. The CEML
inquiry took place between 2000 and 2002. The
project described in this paper was aimed at the
improvement of leadership development in large
corporations. This paper gives an account of the
researchers’ experience of conducting this project,
which was arguably a good example of Mode 2
(Gibbons et al., 1994) in action. Later in the
paper, the idea of design science, and particularly
the notion of technological rules as research
output (Van Aken, 2004, 2005), published after
the case research, is introduced as a further
analytical framework to aid understanding. Both
the nature of the research product and the
undertaking of a research process ‘in the context
of application’ were a concern from the outset.
Viewing the work from a design science perspec-
tive enabled the authors to understand why and
how the findings were readily accepted by the
recipients of the research – despite the fact that
the research did not produce the simple solutions
that some practitioner collaborators might have
wished for and expected. The paper begins by
discussing issues in Mode 2 research, presents the
British Journal of Management, Vol. 17, 303–316 (2006)
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2005.00468.x
r2005 British Academy of Management
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