Executive Summary This article analyzes 54 studies on leadership development research from 1984 — 2000 and determines the extent to which the intended outcomes of those leadership development programs focus on organizational performance, taking Burke and Day's (1986) meta-analysis as its starting point. Burke and Day's analysis, commonly regarded as the principle empirical support for the evaluation of the effectiveness of managerial training, found mixed results on the effectiveness of programs with only 2 out of 70 studies having organizational performance as the explicit outcome. This research confirms that from a sample of available studies organizations have begun to take a more systemic approach to leadership development, as 16 of the studies analyzed focus on organizational performance as the outcome of the leadership development experience. However, results on evaluations of effectiveness of the leadership development programs continue to be mixed.
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