Developing apprentice leaders - complexities of recruitment and identity building Doris Schedlitzki, Sarah Mackie and Jenni Wilkinson (Faculty of Business and Law)

Context – work-based programmes Within the Faculty of Business and Law (FBL) we have substantial experience in developing students’ leadership and management knowledge and skills at UG and PG levels. At UG level, this has largely been on full-time degree programmes (outside workplace practice), whereas those in employment or experienced managers have sought further studies at PG level (FT, PT, CPD). PG leadership and management courses are often rooted in a work-based learning pedagogy that encourages students to integrate theory and practice through both interactive teaching sessions, independent study and embedded in work-based assessment strategies. At UG level work-based pedagogies have been infused in modules such as Organisational Development and through placements

Context – the opportunity of degree apprenticeships The introduction of the new Degree Apprenticeships was welcomed as a potential means to enhance social mobility by expanding this work-based, part-time leadership and management provision more holistically to UG level and review its delivery at PG level. Degree apprenticeships are made up of… a standard that defines an occupational role (including specific knowledge, skills and behaviours) is delivered through a degree programme (knowledge qualification) 20% off-the-job and completed through a synoptic end-point assessment (defined in the asessment plan). The first standard available in the area of business and Management was the L6 Chartered manager degree apprenticeship (CMDA) standard. FBL developed a new work-based UG programme that delivers the knowledge content of the CMDA standard.

Issues The Chartered Management Institute (CMI) was confident that CMDA programmes would be facing immediate high recruitment numbers as it encourages organisations to proactively develop future leaders and managers through undergraduate study. But…. Recruitment onto the CMDA programme has significantly fallen short of the predicted numbers. We have had much interest from local and regional levy-paying employers but as for many other HEIs and private providers, this has not turned into applications and contracts signed. Our lack of access to SMEs – which dominate the region as employers – up until December 2017, has also been detrimental for our recruitment. Since gaining access to SMEs it has shown organisations lack of knowledge about their access to apprenticeships at degree level Feedback from employers has indicated that they do not want to use the levy to employ school leavers as apprentice leaders but prefer to use the levy to fund further development of experienced employees. FBL’s long-term response: development of a top-up route to capture the emerging market of experienced, accidental managers

Issues We continue to experience reluctance by organisations to… Recognise anything above L5 as an apprenticeship See the value of a leadership and management UG degree for their workforce Going forward we would like to explore and discuss the following questions: Why are organisations reluctant to invest in junior employees to become leader apprentices? How will practicing managers feel about signing up for a UG leadership apprenticeship? What complexities will this bring for managing practicing managers’ identity at work and university?

Thoughts on issues with the leader apprentice identity Dominant leadership discourse focussed on the heroic individual leader setting the strategic direction and having ‘all the answers’ (Schedlitzki et al., 2017) Lack of traction of the perspective on leader becoming as an ongoing, never finished process within organisations (Kempster and Stewart, 2010) Practising managers being caught up in the discourse of having to be the superior Master in order to be effective – otherwise they are followers (Harding, 2014) How can you be both, an apprentice leader and a practising manager asked to lead in the workplace? Critical reflection potentially being seen in the workplace as hesitance and a weakness?

Opportunities to be realised… Through the language of apprenticeships we may be able to change the dominant image of leaders and leadership development Seeing leadership learning as a situated practice (Kempster and Stewart, 2010) Seeing leadership as a situated process that is fundamentally relational (Cunliffe and Eriksen, 2011) Becoming more noticeable of who we are as individuals in relation to others and context – how these shape our assumptions of leaders and managers Going beyond the urge of quick decision-making by embedding leadership learning in work-based practices and embracing Critical reflection and self-reflection as part of everyday practice and key to sustainable decision-making Uncertainty and wickedness of problems (Grint, 2005)

Discussion Objectives To explore the hesitance of employers to invest in junior apprentice leaders and the complexities of developing apprentice leader identities amongst practising managers. To explore the opportunities of the learning portfolio as a vehicle for reflective practice within situated leadership learning. Will it enable an identity change towards seeing leadership as a lifelong apprenticeship? To explore implications for recruitment onto a degree apprenticeship UG programme.

Questions, Comments, Thoughts….

References Cunliffe, A.L. and Eriksen, M. (2011) Relational leadership. Human Relations, 64(11): 1425–1449. Grint, K. (2005) Problems, problems, problems: The social construction of leadership. Human Relations, 58 (11): 1467–1494. Harding, N. (2014) Reading leadership through Hegel’s master/slave dialectic: Towards a theory of the powerlessness of the powerful. Leadership, Vol. 10(4), pp. 391-411. Kempster, S. and Stewart, J. (2010) Becoming a leader: a co-produced autoethnigraphic exploration of situated learning of leadership practice, Management Learning, Vol. 41(2), pp. 205-219 Schedlitzki, D., Edwards, G. and Kempster, S. (2017) The absent follower: Identity construction within organisationally assigned leader–follower relations, Leadership, published online first.