Enacting leadership professional development and the impediments to organizational and industry change in rural and regional Australia

This article considers the potential for leadership development programmes (LDPs) that focus on individual leaders as change agents to facilitate change in rural and regional industries and organizations over time. The large-scale study found that graduates returned to their workplaces following programme completion with a heightened sense of purpose and commitment to change. However, many female graduates in particular also found they were unable to lead change in the ways anticipated. The article draws on feminist organizational theory that sees organizations and industries as both gendered and gendering in terms of the production of particular leadership identities. The research confirms that gender change will not happen without executive leadership that removes structural and cultural impediments whilst proactively promoting inclusivity, but that even when all of those factors are present, change will not necessarily occur in gendered industries and organizations. The article concludes by identifying some factors that might potentially enable LDPs to better contribute to gender change in the future.