Reimagining leadership development for BME leaders:Harnessing peer learning to advance an environment–individual leadership development programme

Jun 30, 2026

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Abstract: Past studies of leadership development programmes (LDPs) largely focus on how specific leadership knowledge outcomes can be secured, often treating leadership learning as a linear and environment-independent process. They overlook the longitudinal and situated nature of leadership knowledge construction as participants move through changing organisational, programme, and relational environments. This gap is particularly significant for Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) leaders in higher education institutions (HEIs), whose leadership learning is shaped by how they interpret and are interpreted by their environments over time. With a collective autoethnography, this study examines how five BME women working in UK HEIs construct leadership knowledge before, during, and after participating in a BME-specific LDP. Integrating situated learning theory with research on organisational texts, we conceptualise leadership development as an environmentally endogenous, textually mediated process rather than a linear transfer of skills. The analysis reveals a non-linear, U-shaped trajectory of leadership knowledge construction across three environment–individual nexuses: organisational constraints, LDP dissonance, and peer learning; transitions between nexuses are triggered by embedded agency and belonging paradoxes. The study shows how peer learning enables BME leaders to reframe these paradoxes as dilemmas, supporting exploration and exploitation of leadership knowledge and informing the design of inclusive, BME-specific LDPs.

Author(s): Venugopa Aparna, Carvalho Edzia, Danmole-Ellis Shai, Kareem Nawroz & Obi Lovelin

Date Published: 03 June 2026

Depositing User: Basiratu Kolawole

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/13505076261451141

Keywords: Leadership development, situated learning, organisational texts, peer learning, leadership knowledge, construction & higher education

Page(s): 1-24

Place of publication: London, England

Publication title: Management Learning

Published URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/13505076261451141

Publisher: SAGE Publications

Subject(s): Higher education, Leadership development, Leadership knowledge construction, Organisational texts, Peer learning & Situated learning