A Meta-Analysis of the Effectiveness of Leadership Development Courses in the Korean Corporations

This study is a meta-analysis, which is for verifying the effectiveness about research results of leadership development courses analyzed in Korean corporations. In other words, it is to verify how effective it is practically, not statistically. Therefore, it includes the purpose of figuring out which moderating variables should be strengthened. In pursuits of this purpose, 24 studies were collected from theses, dissertations and published articles from 2000 to 2014. According to the results of meta-analysis, actual effectiveness influencing the effectiveness of leadership development programs was .39, which means a medium size of Hedges g effect size criteria. After figuring out moderating variables, which influence these effects, the results analyzed from the effect size are the followings below. First, the results of intervention relative to the education variables demonstrate that individual practices produced larger effects than organizational practices. Also, individual practices related studies retain about 4 times higher number of pre-studies than organizational practices related studies. In addition, related to the operation period, the shorter the period is, the higher the effect is. It can be divided into off-line learning and blended-learning relating to educational environment, and both effects are similarly high despite there being 5 times more pre-studies about off-line learning than blended-learning. Second, as for the results relating to measurement methods, there were plenty of the pre-studies more relevant to self-reporting than others-reporting and 360-degree feedback, and the effects were also significantly high. In conclusion, this meta-analysis acquires theoretical or practical meaning by contributing to figuring out standards and perspectives of studies for theorists and HRD researchers with examination of strength and weakness of pre-studies critically.