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This exploratory study of a leadership development program at Vancouver Island Health Authority (VIHA) was motivated by the opportunity to conduct in depth evaluation research in one large organization implementing a significant, large scale leadership training effort. In our desire to understand what supports and inhibits transfer of leadership training in that organization we discovered that there is little empirical research specifically about transfer of leadership training to guide managers and HRD professionals even though the practical need is great. North American organizations have traditionally made large investments in training. In 1999, it was estimated that companies in the USA spent US$100 billion on direct formal training costs annually ([13] Elangovan and Karakowsky, 1999). A 2001 Conference Board of Canada Survey reported that Canadian organizations have been spending CDN$800-$850 per employee, per annum on training. A report on adult education and training in Canada also showed that employers generally paid 55 percent of fees and tuition for employees in programs and 85 percent of the expenses for employees who go on a course ([43] Statistics Canada, 2001). In addition to costs incurred by having employees away from work, training budgets overall account for an average of 3 to 5 percent of payroll ([4] Brinkerhoff and Gill, 1994).
Since [30] Mosel (1957) there is a widespread perception that training fails to have significant impact as it either fails to transfer or is lost with time ([5] Broad and Newstrom, 1992; [15] Foxon, 1993; [16] Georges, 1988; [18] Grabrowski, 1983; [24] Kelly, 1982). [45] Tannenbaum and Yukl (1992) (as cited in [4] Brinkerhoff and Gill, 1994) found that sometimes less than 5 percent of trainees self-report applying trained skills at work. [46] Tannenbaum (2002) summarizes findings, which suggest that only 20 percent of dollars spent on training result in on-the-job transfer. In addition, it is commonly cited that only around 10 percent of training translates into job performance ([8] Cheng and Ho, 2001; [4] Brinkerhoff and Gill, 1994; [13] Elangovan and Karakowsky, 1999; [25] Kupritz, 2002). Although there appears to be no empirical evidence supporting this estimate, there is enough evidence to show that transfer of training is generally very low ([25] Kupritz, 2002) and managers attest that even with high quality training, transfer outcomes among employees...