Luminous Power—The ROI of the General Management Program

Abstract

Luminous Power Technologies, a leading Indian player in power storage solutions, had seen rapid growth in a span of 5 years. The acquisition by Schneider Electric, infusion of talent both from parent organization and external market revealed capability gaps within the incumbent workforce. A higher management education program was envisaged to serve the dual need to bridge the capability gap and build a strong internal talent pipeline for a leadership role. It was expected to build capable leaders to take up higher up roles and feed the organization’s succession pipeline within the Luminous and Schneider entity. The L&D function piloted a year-long General Management Program (GMP) for 20 of its executives at the middle management level at a prestigious business school to enhance general management skills and broaden understanding of the different functional areas of business. The program consisted of several modules on Leadership, Business Communication, Business Strategy, and essentials of Finance, operations & marketing management. The L&D function had incurred a disproportionate spend on its overall budget to roll out this program. Participants for this prestigious course included a diverse audience of middle managers, all identified as high performing and having high potential for future growth.

While the program was widely appreciated, it constrained the resources of the L&D function to deliver a wide variety of programs catering to a large workforce, especially the dominant millennial cohort. Challenged to continue the program, the organization's dilemma was demonstrating the ROI of the GMP program and ensuring optimum use of L&D resources and budget to get wider coverage of the employee base.

The case discusses the influence and ability of L&D function to build the organizational capability, institutionalize culture change and understand resource allocation for larger capability building. Students will appreciate the avenues and challenges of ROI measurement in L&D. The case also provokes the systematic analysis around investing in capability building for the present or the future.

The case can be used in multiple ways to take valuable insights into the L&D and Talent Management domain in a multi-cultural, multi-generational heterogeneous capability environment. The purpose of the case is for students to debate the various approaches to building organizational capability and assess the effectiveness of multiple interventions that cater to different talent segments. The case also presents popular frameworks of training ROI, helps students apply it to the given context, and evaluates if desired outcomes were obtained. While the expectation from L&D is to demonstrate the ROI of its investments, the function also faces the dilemma of optimum resource allocation to ensure a socialistic approach to training. The specific learning objectives are as follows:

• Understand the four levels of training evaluation of the Kirkpatrick model.

• To develop a suitable framework for evaluating and calculating the ROI of leadership development programs such as the General Management Program.

• How should resource allocation in L&D be aligned with business strategy in a cross-cultural environment represented by a multi-generational workforce with a broad spectrum of capabilities?

• Should the L&D function focus on short-term skill development or long-term capability building?

• Given the increased representation of the millennial workforce, what learning methodologies are appropriate for this cohort?

Appendices

Appendix: Teaching Note

1.1 Case Synopsis

Luminous Power Technologies, a leading Indian player in power storage solutions, had seen rapid growth in a span of 5 years. The acquisition by Schneider Electric, infusion of talent both from parent organization and external market revealed capability gaps within the incumbent workforce. A higher management education program was envisaged to serve the dual need to bridge the capability gap and build a strong internal talent pipeline for a leadership role. It was expected to build capable leaders to take up higher up roles and feed the organization’s succession pipeline within the Luminous and Schneider entity. The L&D function piloted a year-long General Management Program (GMP) for 20 of its executives at the middle management level at a prestigious business school to enhance general management skills and broaden understanding of the different functional areas of business. The program consisted of several modules on leadership, business communication, business strategy, and essentials of finance, operations and marketing management. The L&D function had incurred a disproportionate spend on its overall budget to roll out this program. Participants for this prestigious course included a diverse audience of middle managers, all identified as high performing and having high potential for future growth.

While the program was widely appreciated, it constrained the resources of the L&D function to deliver a wide variety of programs catering to a large workforce, especially the dominant millennial cohort. Challenged to continue the program, the organization's dilemma was demonstrating the ROI of the GMP program and ensuring optimum use of L&D resources and budget to get wider coverage of the employee base.

1.2 Learning Objectives

The case can be used in multiple ways to take valuable insights into the L&D and talent management domain in a multi-cultural, multi-generational heterogeneous capability environment. The purpose of the case is for students to debate the various approaches to building organizational capability and assess the effectiveness of multiple interventions that cater to different talent segments. The case also presents popular frameworks of training ROI, helps students apply them to the given context, and evaluates if desired outcomes were obtained. While the expectation from L&D is to demonstrate the ROI of its investments, the function also faces the dilemma of optimum resource allocation to ensure a socialistic approach to training. The specific learning objectives are as follows:

• Understand the four levels of training evaluation of the Kirkpatrick model.

• To develop a suitable framework for evaluating and calculating the ROI of leadership development programs such as the General Management Program.

• How should resource allocation in L&D be aligned with business strategy in a cross-cultural environment represented by a multi-generational workforce with a broad spectrum of capabilities?

• Should the L&D function focus on short-term skill development or long-term capability building?

• Given the increased representation of the millennial workforce, what learning methodologies are appropriate for this cohort?

1.3 Position in Course

This case has been designed for use in undergraduate/postgraduate or executive education programs in the core areas of human resource management and organizational behavior elective courses in learning and development and talent management. The case discusses the influence and ability of L&D function to build the organizational capability, institutionalize culture change, and understand resource allocation for larger capability building. Students will appreciate the avenues and challenges of ROI measurement in L&D. The case also provokes the systematic analysis around investing in capability building for the present or the future.

1.4 Case Questions and Suggested Time Frame

1.4.1 Assignment Questions

• How should ROI be measured for the General Management Program?

• If Luminous were to run the next GMP, what quantifiable learning objectives would you recommend for ROI calculation?

• Given this context, should the L&D function focus on short-term skill development or long-term capability building?

• What design principles should be considered while strategizing any training intervention for millennials?

The case is appropriate for a 75–90-min class. Pre-reading of the case and analysis by the students is necessary for meaningful discussion. The case can be taught in the following suggested sections which emphasize the key desired learning objectives.

Section One: The antecedents 10 mins.

• What were the context and challenges faced by Luminous Power Technologies?

• What are the multiple approaches for building capability within an organization?

Section Two: Understanding ROI of training 20 min.

• Popular frameworks and challenges in building ROI of training

• Understanding the Kirkpatrick model

Section Three: The GMP Program 30 min.

• Is Capability building being addressed by the program?

• Effective measures of success for the GMP program

• Kirkpatrick framework applied to the GMP program

Section Four: Wrap Up 20 min.

• Should L&D functions be focused on short-term skill development or long-term capability?

• Addressing learning needs for a millennial workforce

• What happened next?

Case-wise Analysis/Responses by Authors Along with Relevant References

What Was the Context and Challenges Faced by Luminous Power Technologies? What are the Multiple Approaches for Building Capability Within Organizations?

Luminous Power Technologies had been a founder-driven organization that had scaled up its business through the talent that lacked education and skill pedigree but high on passion and innovation. The lower educational qualifications allowed the organization to acquire talent at relatively lower costs than professional talent. Subsequent to the organization, the influx of more qualified talent began by acquiring the multinational entity, Schneider Electric. This impacted both increasing manpower costs (Case Exhibit 6) and, more importantly, creating a disparity between legacy talent on compensation and growth opportunities within the maturing organization. The new entrants were found to be more capable of dealing with the growing business’ increasing complexities. The legacy talent’s growth was also found to be limited, with significant gaps in business acumen, executive presence, and other soft skills. An investment in a long-duration higher management education program was deemed necessary to provide equal opportunities and bridge the skill gap. However, this investment was extremely expensive and strained the resources of the L&D function to cater to the training needs of the larger workforce. The tendency in most L&D functions within organizations is to invest disproportionate amounts of the training budget to leadership development.⁶ The debate of large investments for smaller goods and the expected return of this program form the students’ basic decision point. Additionally, students may consider the challenges of sustainability of the expensive program and the larger organization’s impact if these are withdrawn.

Organizational capability, by nature, is not static. Based on practices of relationship management and collaborative communication within the organization, learnings derived from organizational experiences and development investments for skills needed for the future, organizational capability slowly evolves Senge (1993)⁷ introduced the idea of a “learning organization” as a dynamic system that is capable of self-changing based on its ability to develop and achieve organizational goals. Organizations’ common approach is the Innovation Pentathlon framework, which integrates organization strategy, innovation funnel, people capability, and market needs. L&D functions within organizations build key priorities using this framework (Exhibit TN-1). Integrating the skills needed in the short/long term for sustained business performance is a critical requirement from the L&D functions. Most L&D functions determine the training needs within the workforce and basis needs identified by managers for the near-term development of individuals and rarely integrate with the long-term capability needs of the organization.

However, long-term capability building requires the L&D function to start from the market needs, assess capability gaps within the workforce, integrate critical skills/competencies required for the future into the competency framework, and assess workforce readiness for defined critical skills/competencies. Development interventions should then be planned accordingly. Apart from short-term skill development for immediate productivity enhancement, action learning is also evolving as a popular development tool within an organization. By working on active organizational problems, individuals and teams learn on the job, build critical thinking capability, collaborate, and enhance learning results. This addresses a larger part of the 70–20–10 approach⁸ suggested for adult learning, where 70% of learning is job related, 20% is learning from colleagues, and 10% is coursework and training.

Understanding ROI of Training

Return on Investment (ROI) implies evaluating the training intervention in consideration of the interest and benefit of relevant stakeholders and is generally represented in the form of financial metrics. Demonstrated ROI helps reduce uncertainty in investment benefits of learning and development. ROI evaluation is one of the critical issues the training and development department faces to help evaluate the efficacy of training programs. Stakeholders advocating an ROI approach for training argue that this helps build trust and justification for the training activities and demonstrates the business’s impact. However, the debate also exists if the ethical principle of beneficence⁹ gets circumvented if organizations and L&D functions focus on ROI evaluation. L&D functions may also be reluctant to measure ROI due to budget limitations and longtime/effort taken to demonstrate results and fear of the adverse impact on training initiatives if ROI is not demonstrated.

The three normally acceptable methods to calculate the ROI are the total benefit/total cost ratio approach, net program benefits to cost ratio (total benefit less costs/ cost), and the break-even time in months.¹⁰ Training effectiveness is usually linked with tangible business outputs and benefit measures such as increased productivity by either process time reduction or output enhancement, reduced operational costs, or more tangible financial benefits for the organization. Outcome measures can also include fewer tangible measures such as increased quality, reduced employee turnover/absenteeism, and increased employee/customer satisfaction.

The GMP Program

2.1 How Should the General Management Program's Return on Investment (ROI) be Measured?

For General Management Program facilitated by the Luminous L&D team, the challenge of calculating ROI gets pronounced as it included not one but several modules on marketing, finance, accounting, etc., along with skill-building in leadership and interpersonal effectiveness. The wide range of topics makes it difficult as to which specific learning aspect the organization picks up and builds on to calculate the ROI.

Additionally, the program’s learning objectives seem to have been loosely defined, as it was expected to build broad-based capability (see the case, page 3). However, as an emerging technologies-based organization, a curriculum that could enhance organizational efficiency, including innovation technology systems, organizational effectiveness, and change management, seems to have been excluded. The stated objectives were more around the program’s description, and none of these defined desired end outcomes and what the learner would be able to perform as a result of the learning experience, making it difficult to evaluate its effectiveness. In the absence of clearly defined objectives initially, choosing the right metrics for assessment becomes a challenge and hinders the process of ROI calculation.

Additionally, the GMP program was positioned as a leadership and capability development program, which generally implies a long-term objective. Therefore, the ideal period for the evaluation of outcomes also becomes unclear. While the results are expected to accrue over a long time, evaluating tangible outcomes in the short term may be difficult to quantify. As such, leadership training has been found to be effective in improving reactions, learning, transfer, and results¹¹ (Lacerenza et al. 2017).

Despite these challenges, Donald Kirkpatrick’s 4-level model is a widely used framework for evaluating effectiveness of training programs.¹² The systematic approach focuses on training outcomes and brings a bottom-line focus critical in for-profit organizations, allowing the L&D function to be seen as enabling organizational growth and success. However, a disadvantage of this approach is the absence of pre-training evaluation, as it limits the ability to quantify exactly the difference made by the training. Additionally, it does not consider differences due to contextual (learning culture of the organization, work or organizational goals and values, interpersonal support for behavior change and skill acquisition) and individual influences in the evaluation of training. Therefore, inaccurate evaluation of training ROI may result in poor decisions on training investments and dilute training focus.

An attempt can be made to look at the GMP evaluation from the reference of Donald Kirkpatrick’s 4-level model (see Exhibit TN-2). It is evident from the case facts that the organization has not been able to move beyond level 2 for the purpose of this training evaluation.

In addition to Kirkpatrick’s model, the students could be asked to evaluate the GMP program outcomes using the COMA model (Cognitive, Organizational Environment, Motivation, Attitude). This model is argued to be better than the Kirkpatrick model since it augments the typical reaction by incorporating more significant measures if found superior for formative evaluations. This model is also better if the measures are known to be causally related to training success, as it only focuses on factors that impact transfer. Therefore, COMA is better for formative evaluation purposes, while Kirkpatrick is recommended for summative evaluation. However, the COMA model’s limitation is that it does not specify how the evaluations should be conducted. A suggested framework for the Luminous GMP evaluations is shown in Exhibit TN-3.

Additionally, the DBE model (decision-based evaluation model) could be introduced to the students. It may be important for the instructor to qualify that the recent DBE model will need to be tested more fully like the COMA model. The three main targets for evaluation are employee change, organizational payoff, and program improvement. The criteria of evaluation may be determined upfront for employee change and organizational payoff. For employee change, the parameters of evaluation could be performance rating improvement, discretionary behavior and employee participation in action learning projects, and cross-functional project participation. Organizational payoff criteria could be internal mobility and succession plan opportunities materialized. The program improvement evaluation can be obtained from participants on completion of the program. In its present format, the program does not seem to have intermittent assessments during the self-study periods, which may be incorporated to strengthen learning. Additionally, the L&D function can provide curriculum inputs based on the organization's strategic talent needs.

Moreover, all three models require specialized knowledge to complete the evaluation; this can limit their use in organizations without this knowledge.

2.2 If Luminous were to Run the Next GMP, What Quantifiable Learning Objectives would you Recommend for ROI Calculation?

The development of effective leaders is a concern in all types of organizations.¹³ Leadership development involves developing multiple individuals and is recommended to adopt multilevel and longitudinal interventions (Day et al., 2014). The GMP program has mostly focused on the managers’ skill development on dimensions of complex problem-solving, creative thinking skills, solution construction skills, and social judgment skills, which are argued to be essential for growing from junior-level positions to mid- and upper-level positions.

ROI evaluation for the GMP could be attempted using four distinct phases (Exhibit TN-4):

• Specific learning objectives to be articulated.

• Desired benefits to be defined.

• Evaluation method to be determined.

• Timing of evaluation to be fixed.

A. Learning Objectives

Even before the organization works on calculating the ROI, a serious attempt must be made to define the learning objectives. The training objectives must be appropriately defined, keeping the curriculum taught in mind. Efforts should be made to define the learning objectives in terms of what the participants will be able to “do” rather than what the trainer/course tutor teaches (Mager’s performance-based learning objectives¹⁴ could be useful here). Defining specific learning objectives of the program brings the desired objectivity to the process of ROI calculation.

B. Desired Benefits

Luminous could look at the impact of the program from two parameters—Did the training make a difference to the participants; did the training make a difference to the organization?

Did the training make a difference to the participants?

Here attempt should be made to look at observable differences in the participants’ knowledge, skill, or behavioral attributes because of participation in the program. Additionally, if some of the participants belong to functions where performance is number-driven and performance metrics are easy to measure, e.g., sales, then their performance pre/post-program can be assessed and compared with a control group. Such assessment can be loosely used for ROI calculation.

Another metric that can be assessed is the improvement in participant's performance standards, measured in terms of their performance ratings or achievement of their performance goals.

Did the training make a difference to the organization?

Another way of attempting the ROI dilemma could be to look at the impact of the program at the aggregated level, looking at it as management development program, different from manager development. Following could be some of the suggested metrics:

• The number of horizontal and vertical career movements made by participants. Such data could also be compared against the performance of a control group. Case Exhibit 2 indicates an increase in mobility numbers within the organization. Additionally, the succession pipeline strength seems to have increased. However, it may be difficult to build the direct causality linkage between the GMP intervention and these successes.

• In addition to ROI, the organization can also look at whether the GMP helped in achieving any business goal at the aggregate level. The program may not have increased organizational affective or continuance commitment, as seen by the attrition of 29% of GMP participants in 2015 by the end of 2017 (Case Exhibit 2). Additionally, Case Exhibit 6 indicates that no significant increase in organizational performance was seen after the introduction of the GMP program. However, organization performance could be impacted by multiple internal and external factors, due to which direct correlation of the program may be challenging to support.

C. Evaluation Method

The type of data, qualitative or quantitative, and the evaluation method should be decided relevant to the program objective and intended to measure the achievement of desired outcomes.

D. Time Frame

The desired outcomes of any training intervention would take time to become obvious. Here an attempt should be made to define the ideal time, short, medium, or long run, taken to manifest the desired outcome.

Wrap Up

3.1 Given this Context, Should the L&D Function Focus on Short-term Skill Development or Long-term Capability Building?

The two primary perspectives through which employee capabilities are linked with organization performance are the universal approach (best practices) and the contingency approach. Succession planning and management have typically been a “best practice” approach adopted by most HR practitioners. Succession planning and talent bench management have become well-institutionalized practices within organizations’ HR and organization development functions¹⁵ (Morris, et al., 2009; Stahl, et al., 2012). Long-range thinking and a top-down approach have typically been the way learning and development functions have focused on building capability and managed succession planning.¹⁶ However, 34% of organizations have cited insufficient training and the pervasiveness of traditional development as the biggest challenge in their ability to scale. The pipeline approach of grooming a named successor to take particular roles in the organization as and when they become available has not been found to be effective due to four significant reasons¹⁷:

• With 13% of leadership positions eliminated, investment is made to build successors for roles that will not exist in a couple of years.

• The High Potential (HIPO) population does not exceed over 10% of the workforce in more than 40% of the organizations. With a quarter of this talent attriting during the “wait period,” narrow pipelines culminate in insufficient talent to fill future positions.

• The lack of necessary breadth and diversity of experience and network required to succeed in the new work environment is not managed, resulting in “misaligned pipelines.” 64% of leaders face challenges in transitioning between levels.¹⁸

• Underperforming leaders are rarely removed or re-aligned, resulting in “rusty pipelines” and these leaders’ inability to align with the organization’s strategic direction.

The contingency approach of capability building posits that an organization’s strategic posture augments or diminishes HR practice’s impact on performance. The contingency perspective helps look more deeply to derive situationally specific prescriptions and theories. Aligned to the contingency approach is the portfolio management philosophy for succession management. This involves four steps:

• The need-based agile approach of shortening the time frame to have quarterly updates on immediate likely leadership vacancies as against long-term supply-based planning.

• A deeper and broader-based talent identification approach, including early and young talent. Organizations should not restrict the identification and management process to the middle and senior management strata.

• Enable horizontal career movements to develop diversified leadership experience and build talent flexibility across the organization.

• Proactively manage the leader “re-balancing” and constantly re-evaluate the capabilities of the leaders for the changing business and environmental contexts.

Several short-term training programs on personal effectiveness, presentation skills, time management, Excel & PowerPoint skills, and data analytics were conducted by Luminous. In terms of long-term capability building, there were programs like First Time Manager Program for employees migrating from individual contributor to a leadership role, this Management Development Program from IIM Lucknow, Written and Spoken English program, several of the senior executives were also sent to global programs of Ivy League institutes organized by the parent company, Schneider Electric.

As became a melting pot of different cultures and generations, it also faced the challenge of developing home-grown talent. In this context, the contingency approach of capability building could be more relevant. The focus should be on short-term skill development and long-term capability building. While short-term programs address the immediate knowledge/skill/behavior gap, the long-term capability interventions will help scale up overall managerial capability and prepare the organization for the future.

3.2 What Design Principles Should be Considered While Strategizing any Training Intervention for Millennials?

Millennials, also commonly referred to as “Generation Y”, “Nexters”, “Generation Me”, is the generation born between the early1980s and 1994, while Generation X, also called “Gen-X”, refers to the generation born between in the early 1960s and end in late 1970s.¹⁹ The millennials are expected to constitute nearly 50% of the workforce by 2020.²⁰ Managing multiple generations in the workforce is an increasing area of interest for practitioners and researchers due to the challenges posed in meeting their differential needs (see Exhibit TN-5). This challenge is also manifesting in the learning preferences of the millennial generation.

The millennial generation has gathered a lot of attention for their unique characteristics compared with that of previous generations (Exhibit TN-5). Research has focused on the behaviors commonly demonstrated by millennials.²¹ Millennials are described as “digital natives,” i.e., a cohort or generation that has never experienced a world without computers or other handheld electronic devices and the ability to absorb information quickly through technology. The onus on learning and development professionals is recognizing and understanding this new generation of learners and educating, engaging, working, and leading them effectively.

Millennials demonstrate higher levels of self-confidence than the earlier generational cohorts. Often termed as multitaskers, they perform tasks simultaneously and believe their performance excels in this manner. Millennials process new information in a more practical and “hands-on” manner and expect immediate gratification for participating in activities rather than rewards for achievement. They show interest in the allocation of tasks to complete as a team, but the level of commitment among members is very shallow.²² With a low tolerance for delays, millennials expect quick information, feedback, results, team achievements, personal promotions, and ways of fostering intrapersonal and interpersonal relationships in the fastest and easiest way possible.

Adult learning theories argue in favor of the social and experiential methodology of learning.²³ Knowles (1913–1997) defined andragogy as the art and science of adult learning. The five characteristics of adult learners (andragogy) that differ from the mechanisms adopted for child learners are on the self-concept (dependent personality or self-directed human being); learning from prior experience; motivation and readiness to learn (influenced by task/societal orientation); orientation to learning (with maturity time perspective changes from the postponed application of knowledge to immediacy of application). Additionally, learning shifts from one of a subject-centeredness to one of problem-centeredness; motivation to learn (internally focused in adults). Aligned with this approach, millennials’ learning methodologies should demonstrate the synergy of millennial and adult learning behavior (see Exhibit TN-5).

3.3 What Happened Next?

Due to the strong positive experience of the first batch and keeping in mind the overall objective of capability building, another GMP was planned by the L&D team. There was great anticipation among the mid-management workforce, who had been keenly awaiting the program’s opening for applications. Therefore, it was decided to open the program application process to eligible employees and not restrict only through manager nomination. The program was oversubscribed over three times, resulting in the need for stricter selection and screening guidelines. The program’s ROI metrics were loosely defined in terms of performance—both performance ratings and the achievement of participants’ performance goals.

Additionally, seeing the GMP program enthusiasm, a more junior-level, shorter term Management Development Program was started for first-time managers and young talent. The duration of the program was for 6 days. The curriculum included personal effectiveness; leadership; negotiation skills; performance feedback; driving change; and short capsules on finance, marketing; and operations. This program was expected to deepen the capability building initiative and address the aspirations of the younger workforce. However, the shorter duration of the program was designed to manage costs and address a larger population. Over 48 young managers were sent for this program. This program’s key outcomes were increased engagement scores, higher retention of key talent, and mid-level succession planning.

Keeping in mind the shorter attention span of millennials, Luminous started Thought Leader Series sessions on TED Talks lines, where experts in academics and industry were invited to deliver shorter duration talks. These sessions elicited enthusiastic responses and were very much appreciated by the younger workforce.

Luminous also covered around 400 plus employees in the process of talent reviews, where the talent was assessed on a three-by-three matrix of performance and potential. After the assessment, specific Individual Development Plans (IDPs) were prepared for key/critical talent. This initiative also helped in feeding succession planning.

Luminous also started with online and gamified training programs keeping in mind the millennial population and the opportunity to replicate the content on a large scale. Fortnightly mailers apprised the workforce of the best MOOC courses that saw high enrollment level, with 480 employees signed up for 41 courses within 2 months of starting the initiative.

The learning and development team also started an internal trainer academy, which leveraged skills within the workforce. Many millennials volunteered for this and were trained in facilitation skills. Within 2 months of the program’s launch, 8 of the internal trainers had trained 328 employees. Internal trainers were recognized through organization-wide branding of their course appreciation and reward points redeemed through gift vouchers.

The engagement survey conducted within a few months of the launch of all these initiatives saw a 23% increase in engagement scores.

Exhibit TN-1 Integrating innovation pentathlon framework with capability building strategy

Exhibit—TN-2 Measuring outcome of GMP training using Kirkpatrick model

Exhibit TN-3 Suggested outcomes for GMP program using the COMA model

Exhibit TN-4 Steps for calculating ROI of any learning intervention

Exhibit TN-5 Generation classification and typical behaviors associated with the generation

Exhibit TN-6 Training design principles for millennial

Required Pre-read Before the Class

• Avolio, B. J., Avey, J. B., & Quisenberry, D. (2010). Estimating return on leadership development investment. The Leadership Quarterly, 21(4), 633–644. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2010.06.006

• Subramanian, K. S., V. Sinha, and P. D. Gupta, “A Study on Return on Investment of Training Programme in a Government Enterprise in India,” Vikalpa, Jan-Mar 2012, vol. 37.

Suggested Supplementary Readings

• Lacerenza, C. N., Reyes, D. L., Marlow, S. L., Joseph, D. L., & Salas, E. (2017). Leadership training design, delivery, and implementation: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 102(12), 1686–1718. doi:10.1037/apl0000241

• Bates, R. (2004). A critical analysis of evaluation practice: The Kirkpatrick model and the principle of beneficence. Evaluation and Program Planning, Vol.27, 341–347.

• Black Alison, (2010). Gen Y: Who they are and how they learn, Educational Horizons, Vol. 88, No. 2 (Winter 2010), pp. 92–101.

• Benson, J., & Brown, M. (2011). Generational at work: are there differences and do they matter ? The International Journal of Human Resource Management, Vol.22, No.9, 1843–1865.

• Eddy, S. N., Schweitzer, L., & Lyons, S. T. (2010). New Generation, Great Expectation: A Field Study of Millenial Generation. Journal of Business and Psychology, Vol.25, No.2, 281–292.