ABSTRACT
Leadership is the point of origin of meaning, structure and activity, the core of agency, and works in, on and through organised systems on the boundary between order and chaos/complexity. Herb Simon makes the distinction between programmed and unprogrammed decisions, the former gravitating to technical specialisms, the latter to management. The role of human resource management (HRM) is better thought of as setting up the systems and facilitating the processes through which leaders and leadership functions conduct leadership development. The normal elements of the utilisation strand of a leadership development strategy are performance management, career development and hard organisation development the restructuring of organisations to pursue new strategies, creating new leadership roles to be filled. Leadership development works in tandem, from an organisational point of view, with the acquisition of leadership capability or the potential for it, and the utilisation of leadership capability.
