Twentieth International Conference on Knowledge, Culture, and Change in Organizations

Abstract

Contemporary leadership development theory and practice point to the value of emergent and generative organizing around complex, adaptive challenges. A growing theoretical and practical emphasis on developing leadership capacity to rationalize complexity through collective aims and actionable collective learning raises important questions for leadership development in rapidly changing organizational conditions. Through an integrative approach, this paper provides a foundation to rationalize complexity associated with adaptive challenges facing leaders in rapidly changing times by drawing on a nested discursive leadership development context to position a framework for dyadic and network knowledge convergence. Synthesizing sensemaking, social constructionism, and social capital frameworks, the paper contributes to leadership development theory and practice by (1) conceptualizing leadership development in the plural through dyadic and network-level paths of knowledge convergence in open systems and (2) operationalizing collective leadership development through practical examples illustrating how collective ways of knowing and learning yield collective adaptive capacity among diverse stakeholders engaged in leadership in open systems. Taken together, these contributions extend the current trajectory of leadership development theory and research and present implications for management education and development practice.