What research on learning transfer can teach about improving the impact of leadership-development initiatives.

Abstract

The worldwide effort to improve organizational performance through leadership Development has been impressive, with huge sums of money being devoted to it each year. Unfortunately, the evaluation of the impact of leadership development has not kept pace, resulting in little evidence-based guidance for creating programs and interventions. There is a significant and relevant area of research that can contribute to evaluation but that has often been neglected in the leadership-development field: the work on learning transfer. This article provides a brief practical review of the literature on learning transfer and the conditions that make it possible for people to apply in the workplace what they learn from a development initiative. This is followed by a report on an initial study of how managers in the Danish public sector perceive their organizations in terms of 9 key transfer conditions identified in the review. The article closes with a discussion of the implications of the review and study for current practice and for future research, with the goal of gaining a better understanding of the ways learning-transfer conditions affect the learning outcomes of formal leadership-development activities.

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