At the start of the twenty-first century, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials can look back on nearly thirty years of meaningful accomplishments. Toxic releases are down, the air and water are cleaner, and waste disposal methods are greatly improved. Although this is a record of which EPA officials should be proud, is it sufficient to carry them into the next century? Conventional wisdom among scholars, environmental policy advocates, and even EPA officials indicates that it is not. The new century is bringing complex challenges and, in some cases, the changing conditions are threatening the progress EPA has struggled to achieve. Some of the tools and approaches this agency has relied upon historically, such as notice and comment rulemaking, single stakeholder consultations, and positional leadership, are no longer adequate to address existing environmental challenges and new emerging environmental problems. The Common Sense Initiative (CSI) was launched by EPA in mid-1994 as a fundamentally different approach to environmental protection. Its sector-based, multistakeholder, consensus decision-making process was counter to EPA's traditional command-and-control approach. CSI was created with the intent to heal the growing dysfunctional relationships that exist among government co-regulators (i.e., EPA and state and local agencies), the regulated industry, and non-governmental organizations (i.e., environmentalists and environmental justice organizations). Even though EPA officials realized the limitations of the existing regulatory approach, they had trouble "giving up control." Nonetheless, during the four-year history of the CSI process, EPA personnel had an opportunity to see themselves in a different light and to operate in a new organizational regime. Rather than being just regulators, they were able to become solvers of environmental problems. Rather than being position-oriented, they were able to become person-oriented. Instead of seeking ownership and control, they were able to obtain leverage through partnerships and collaboration. In short, EPA officials were building social capital and a new style of management"facilitative leadership. A facilitative leader leads without controlling, communicates without being condescending, and uses synergism to help groups achieve "win-win" results. This new paradigm has the potential to help EPA better adapt in the next generation system of environmental protection. / Ph. D.

This thesis concerns the leader as a facilitator of learning at work. More specifically, the aim of the study is to increase knowledge about leadership in relation to co-workers’ learning and development at the workplace. The focus is on the leaders’ notions of learning-oriented leadership, their actions in daily work and on the factors that may enable and constrain learning-oriented leadership. The theoretical framework is structured around a review and analysis of three leadership research traditions: studies of effective leadership, studies of managerial work, and critical studies of leadership. The research reported in the thesis is based on an interactive research approach comprising case studies of two industrial firms. The main empirical data have been collected in interviews with leaders. In addition, the empirical material includes observations of leaders and studies of documents. The results indicate that the leaders view learning and the development of their co-workers as important issues and that they use a number of different activities to facilitate learning. Based on the degree of formalization these activities can be characterized as planned, partially planned and spontaneous. When working with the co-workers’ learning the leaders alternate between acting as supporters, educators and confronters. Furthermore, learning-oriented leadership is influenced by factors such as the co-workers’ attitudes and motivation, the leaders’ views of learning and development, the presence of learning issues on the organizational agenda and the design of the organizations’ production systems. To conclude, the leaders in both companies can be seen as facilitators of learning. However, their leadership is mainly performance-oriented and focused on adaptive learning. There are traces of development-oriented leadership as well, but these patterns are not as apparent. For instance, the facilitation of critical reflection associated with developmental learning is not very common for the leaders in either of the cases. / Denna avhandling handlar om hur ledare främjar lärande i dagligt arbete. Mer specifikt är syftet med studien att bidra med ökade kunskaper om ledarskap i relation till medarbetares lärande och utveckling på arbetsplatsen. I avhandlingen studeras vad som karaktäriserar ledarnas arbete och deras syn på sitt ledarskap, vad ledarna gör för att främja medarbetarnas lärande, samt vilka faktorer som hindrar och möjliggör ett ledarskap för lärande. Den teoretiska referensramen är baserad på tidigare forskning om ledarskap och lärande. Mer specifikt granskas och analyseras tre forskningstraditioner: studier av effektivt ledarskap, studier av ledares arbete och kritiska ledarskapsstudier. Studien utgår från en interaktiv forskningsansats och det empiriska materialet består av fallstudier av två svenska industriföretag. Data har huvudsakligen insamlats genom intervjuer med ledare. Därtill omfattar det empiriska underlaget även observationer av ledare och studier av dokument. Resultaten visar att ledarna uppfattar det som mycket viktigt att främja sina medarbetares lärande och utveckling. När de arbetar med dessa frågor använder de sig av en rad olika aktiviteter, vilka skiljer sig åt med avseende på grad av formalisering. Aktiviteterna kan kategoriseras som planerade, delvis planerade och spontana. Vidare visar resultaten att ledarna i interaktionen med medarbetarna agerar stödjande, utbildande och konfronterande. I studien framkommer även faktorer som hindrar och möjliggör ett ledarskap för lärande. Dessa omfattar exempelvis medarbetarnas inställning till lärande, ledarnas syn på lärande, ekonomiska resurser för lärande, samt arbetsorganisationens och produktionssystemets utformning. Avslutningsvis pekar denna studie på att ledarna i företagen uppvisar ett ledarskap för lärande, men att detta i huvudsak orienteras mot lärande för daglig drift och anpassning, snarare än mot lärande för utveckling. Det finns också spår av ett mer utvecklingsstödjande ledarskap, men dessa är inte tydligt framträdande i resultaten. Exempelvis arbetar ledarna i begränsad utsträckning med att främja kritisk reflektion, vilket kan ses som en förutsättning för ett utvecklingsinriktat lärande.