Leadership and Change in Sustainable Regional Development [1 ed.] 9781136260643, 9780415678940

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Leadership and Change in Sustainable Regional Development

This book shows, first of all, that leadership plays a crucial role in reinventing regions and branching out from an old path to something new in order to create more balanced and sustainable regional development. Second, it maintains that leadership is not a solo but a multi-agent and multilevel activity and that it needs to be discussed and studied as such. Third, as the book argues, leadership is shaped differently in various institutional and cultural contexts and on different scales. This book explores the ways leadership plays out in a regional development context, contributing to an economically, socially and ecologically balanced sustainable future. Localities and regions are not narrow economic entities whose performance can be reducible to their firms and the microeconomic environment within which they operate. Consequently, regions face the challenge of anticipating a more sustainable development to prevent too short-sighted competition. All this calls for leaders who have the potential to organize and reorganize social action for sustainable regional development. There are a huge number of books and articles on business and political leadership but the literature on leadership in the context of local and regional development is very sparse indeed. This book shows how emerging forms of leadership contribute to and operate in more networked governance settings. It also shows how leadership is socially embedded and how leaders build social capital through their own actions. Finally, the book reminds us that leadership for sustainable development is a long relay in time; it is distributed both in time and place. Markku Sotarauta is Dean and Professor of Regional Studies at the School of Management, University of Tampere, Finland. Lummina Horlings is in the Rural Sociology Group at Wageningen University, the Netherlands. Joyce Liddle is Professor at Teesside Business School, University of Teesside, UK.

Regions and Cities Series editors: Ron Martin, University of Cambridge, UK; Gernot Grabher, University of Bonn, Germany; Maryann Feldman, University of Georgia, USA; Gillian Bristow, University of Cardiff, UK.

Regions and Cities is an international, interdisciplinary series that provides authoritative analyses of the new significance of regions and cities for economic, social and cultural development, and public policy experimentation. The series seeks to combine theoretical and empirical insights with constructive policy debate and critically engages with formative processes and policies in regional and urban studies.

1. Beyond Green Belts Managing urban growth in the 21st century Edited by John Herrington 2. Retreat from the Regions Corporate change and the closure of factories Stephen Fothergill and Nigel Guy 3. Regional Development in the 1990s The British Isles in transition Edited by Ron Martin and Peter Townroe 4. Spatial Policy in a Divided Nation Edited by Richard T. Harrison and Mark Hart 5. An Enlarged Europe Regions in competition? Edited by Louis Albrechts, Sally Hardy, Mark Hart and Anastasios Katos

6. The Regional Imperative Regional planning and governance in Britain, Europe and the United States Urlan A. Wannop 7. The Determinants of Small Firm Growth An inter-regional study in the United Kingdom, 1986–90 Richard Barkham, Graham Gudgin, Mark Hart and Eric Hanvey 8. The Regional Dimension of Transformation in Central Europe Gorzelak Grzegorz 9. Union Retreat and the Regions The shrinking landscape of organised labour Ron Martin, Peter Sunley and Jane Wills

10. Regional Development Strategies A European perspective Edited by Jeremy Alden and Philip Boland 11. British Regionalism and Devolution The challenges of state reform and European integration Edited by Jonathan Bradbury and John Mawson 12. Innovation Networks and Learning Regions? James Simmie 13. Regional Policy in Europe S. S. Artobolevskiy 14. New Institutional Spaces TECs and the remaking of economic governance Edited by Martin Jones and Jamie Peck 15. The Coherence of EU Regional Policy Contrasting perspectives on the structural funds Edited by John Bachtler and Ivan Turok 16. Multinationals and European Integration Trade, investment and regional development Edited by Nicholas A. Phelps 17. Unemployment and Social Exclusion Landscapes of labour inequality and social exclusion Edited by Sally Hardy, Paul Lawless and Ron Martin

18. Metropolitan Planning in Britain A comparative study Edited by Peter Roberts, Kevin Thomas and Gwyndaf Williams 19. Social Exclusion in European Cities Processes, experiences and responses Edited by Judith Allen, Goran Cars and Ali Madanipour 20. Regional Development Agencies in Europe Edited by Charlotte Damborg, Mike Danson and Henrik Halkier 21. Community Economic Development Edited by Graham Haughton 22. Foreign Direct Investment and the Global Economy Corporate and institutional dynamics of global-localisation Edited by Jeremy Alden and Nicholas F. Phelps 23. Restructuring Industry and Territory The experience of Europe’s regions Edited by Anna Giunta, Arnoud Lagendijk and Andy Pike 24. Out of the Ashes? The social impact of industrial contraction and regeneration on Britain’s mining communities Chas Critcher, Bella Dicks, David Parry and David Waddington

25. Regional Innovation Strategies The challenge for less-favoured regions Edited by Kevin Morgan and Claire Nauwelaers 26. Geographies of Labour Market Inequality Edited by Ron Martin and Philip S. Morrison 27. Sustainable Cities Graham Haughton and Colin Hunter 28. Regions, Spatial Strategies and Sustainable Development David Counsell and Graham Haughton 29. Clusters and Regional Development Critical reflections and explorations Edited by Asheim Bjorn, Philip Cooke and Ron Martin 30. Regional Competitiveness Edited by Ron Martin, Michael Kitson and Peter Tyler 31. Regional Development in the Knowledge Economy Edited by Philip Cooke and Andrea Piccaluga 32. The Rise of the English Regions? Edited by Irene Hardill, Paul Benneworth, Mark Baker and Leslie Budd 33. Geographies of the New Economy Critical reflections Edited by Peter W. Daniels, Andrew Leyshon, Michael J. Bradshaw and Jonathan Beaverstock

34. European Cohesion Policy Willem Molle 35. Creative Regions Technology, culture and knowledge entrepreneurship Edited by Philip Cooke and Dafna Schwartz 36. Devolution, Regionalism and Regional Development The UK experience Edited by Jonathan Bradbury 37. Intelligent Cities and Globalisation of Innovation Networks Nicos Komninos 38. Whither regional studies? Edited by Andy Pike 39. Business Networks in Clusters and Industrial Districts The governance of the global value chain Edited by Fiorenza Belussi and Alessia Sammarra 40. China and Europe The implications of the rise of China as a global economic power for Europe Edited by Klaus Kunzmann, Willy A Schmid and Martina Koll-Schretzenmayr 41. Globalizing Regional Development in East Asia Production networks, clusters, and entrepreneurship Edited by Henry Wai-chung Yeung 42. Manufacturing in the New Urban Economy Willem van Winden, Leo van den Berg, Luis Carvalho and Erwin van Tuiji

43. The Impacts of Automotive Plant Closures A tale of two cities Edited by Andrew Beer and Holli Evans 44. The Futures of the City Region Edited by Michael Neuman and Angela Hull 45. Migration in the 21st Century: Rights, Outcomes, and Policy Kim Korinek and Thomas Maloney 46. Leadership and Place Edited by Chris Collinge, John Gibney and Chris Mabey 47. Beyond Territory Edited by Harald Bathelt, Maryann Feldman and Dieter F. Kogler 48. The Recession and Beyond Local and regional responses to the downturn Edited by David Bailey and Caroline Chapain 49. Cultural Political Economy of Small Cities Edited by Anne Lorentzen and Bas van Heur 50. Just Growth: Inclusion and Prosperity in America’s Metropolitan Regions Chris Benner and Manuel Pastor 51. Industrial Policy Beyond the Crisis Regional, national and international perspectives Edited by David Bailey, Helena Lenihan and Josep-Maria Arauzo-Carod

52. Promoting Silicon Valleys in Latin America Luciano Ciravegna 53. Regional Development in Northern Europe Peripherality, marginality and border issues Edited by Mike Danson and Peter De Souza 54. Creating Knowledge Locations in Cities Innovation and integration challenges Willem van Winden, Luis de Carvalho, Erwin van Tujil, Jeroen van Haaren and Leo van den Berg 55. Complex Adaptive Innovation Systems Relatedness and transversality in the evolving region Philip Cooke 56. Innovation Governance in an Open Economy Shaping regional nodes in a globalized world Edited by Annika Rickne, Staffan Laestadius and Henry Etzkowitz 57. Creative Industries and Innovation in Europe Concepts, measures and comparative case studies Edited by Luciana Lazzeretti 58. Community-based Entrepreneurship and Rural Development Creating favourable conditions for small businesses in Central Europe Matthias Fink, Stephan Loidl and Richard Lang

59. Regional Development Agencies The next generation? Edited by Nicola Bellini, Mike Danson and Henrik Halkier

60. Leadership and Change in Sustainable Regional Development Edited by Markku Sotarauta, Lummina Horlings and Joyce Liddle

Leadership and Change in Sustainable Regional Development

Edited by Markku Sotarauta, Lummina Horlings and Joyce Liddle

First published 2012 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2012 selection and editorial material, Markku Sotarauta, Lummina Horlings and Joyce Liddle; individual chapters, the contributors The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-415-67894-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-10705-8 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Florence Production, Stoodleigh, Devon

Contents

List of figures List of tables List of contributors 1 Leadership and sustainable regional development

xi xiii xiv 1

MARKKU SOTARAUTA, LUMMINA HORLINGS AND JOYCE LIDDLE

2 Leadership of place and the dynamics of knowledge

20

JOHN GIBNEY

3 Sustaining collaborative leadership in city regions: an examination of local enterprise partnerships in England

37

JOYCE LIDDLE

4 Leadership and scale

60

FRANS J. G. PADT

5

Leadership and the voluntary and community sector

80

JOHN DIAMOND

6

Adaptation, adjustment and leadership in Australia’s rural margins

103

ANDREW BEER AND EMMA BAKER

7

The interplay between social capital, leadership and policy arrangements in European rural regions

121

LUMMINA HORLINGS

8

Socially embedded leadership KRISTINE PETERS

145

x

Contents

9

Leadership and institutional change: economic restructuring, sense of place and social capital in Emmaste, Estonia

164

GARRI RAAGMAA, GRETE KINDEL AND MATTI LÜSI

10 Strategic leadership relay: how to keep regional innovation journeys in motion?

190

MARKKU SOTARAUTA AND NINA MUSTIKKAMÄKI

11 Emergence of shared leadership in the Basque Country

212

JAMES KARLSEN AND MIREN LARREA

12 Complexity leadership for sustainable regional innovations

234

CATRIEN J. A. M. TERMEER AND SIBOUT G. NOOTEBOOM

13 Value-oriented leadership in the Netherlands

252

LUMMINA HORLINGS

14 Knowledge leadership for resilient regions: concluding remarks

271

MARKKU SOTARAUTA, LUMMINA HORLINGS AND JOYCE LIDDLE

Index

291

Figures

3.1 LEP early activities 6.1 Location of case regions 7.1 Leadership and social capital nested in the wider domains of rural, regional development 7.2 Social capital as initiator in Laag Holland 7.3 The influence of social capital on competitiveness 7.4 The role of social capital as lubricant in the potato cluster in Tyrnävä 7.5 Social capital as a lubricant for novelty production in Abava Valley 7.6 Social capital as initiator in High Tiber Valley in Italy 8.1 Map showing the city of Onkaparinga 8.2 Comparison value of learning 8.3 Learning new concepts 9.1 Evolutionary approach in governance 9.2 The basic mechanism of institutional change 9.3 The location of Emmaste municipality in Estonia and its division to localities 9.4 Population dynamics in Hiiumaa (average) and Hiiumaa municipalities according to population register, 2000=100% (Estonian Statistics 2011) 9.5 Number of acting enterprises and NGOs in Emmaste by the year of registration 9.6 Personal income tax revenues per capita in Hiiumaa (average) and Hiiumaa municipalities 9.7 Personal income tax revenues of Hiiumaa municipalities 10.1 Strategic leadership as a nexus of strategic intention and emergence 10.2 Disconnected strategic leadership and emergence 10.3 Strategic leadership meets emergence 10.4 Strategic leadership meets emergence by the key processes of a leadership relay 11.1 Regional innovation system as networks 11.2 Different types of situations of consensus and conflict

50 108 126 130 132 133 135 136 149 153 154 168 169 173

173 174 174 175 194 198 203 206 215 222

xii Figures 11.3 Organizational chart initially proposed for EG 11.4 Organizational chart agreed by the management board of EG 14.1 Simplified model of knowledge flows in a regional system without strong local leadership 14.2 Simplified model of knowledge flows in a regional system with strong regional leadership

227 229 279 283

Tables

5.1 Activists – models of organisation, attachment to values and ethical practice 7.1 Domains of rural development 7.2 Social capital in twelve case-study areas 7.3 Types of leadership, nested in social capital and policy arrangements 8.1 Comments regarding importance of good business environmental practices 8.2 Environmental management as cost or benefit 8.3 Learning types by group 8.4 Keyword analysis: good environmental practices = innovation 8.5 Usefulness for environmental knowledge 9.1 Main characteristics of largest enterprises in Emmaste 11.1 Positive and negative effects of consensus and conflicts 12.1 Conceptual framework: leadership functions, network types and key activities 13.1 Dimensions of ‘value-oriented’ leadership for sustainable regional development 13.2 Empirical case studies 13.3 Dimensions and operational criteria for leadership for regional development

97 125 128 141 150 150 155 155 156 175 218 239 256 258 268

Contributors

Emma Baker is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Adelaide. A geographer, her research is focused on the impact of housing and location in urban and regional environments. Andrew Beer is Director of the Centre for Housing, Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Adelaide. Professor Beer’s interests include the role and performance of regional development entities, homelessness, housing policy and adaptation to climate change. John Diamond is Professor in Urban Policy Studies at Edge Hill University (UK) where he is based in the Business School. He is joint editor of the journal Teaching Public Administration (published by Sage) and is co-editor of the annual Emerald series – Critical Perspectives in International Public Sector Management. His current research activity includes understanding the impact of the banking collapse for activists working in the voluntary and community sector and the potential progressive impact of working collaboratively on the organizational culture and practice of public and not-for-profit agencies. John Gibney is a Senior Research Fellow in the Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham (UK). John’s research focus is on local and regional economic development policy; knowledge-based economy policy and area-based regeneration; and leadership and governance in the ‘knowledge era’. He teaches on academic and post-experience programmes around leadership in economic development, planning and regeneration. John has published recently in international journals, including Regional Studies, European Planning Studies, Leadership, Built Environment and Policy Studies. Lummina Horlings is researcher and lecturer at the Rural Sociology Group at Wageningen University. She specializes in ‘the human dimension’ in placebased sustainable development, which encompasses themes like leadership, coalitions, self-organization and people’s motivations and values. James Karlsen is a Senior Researcher at Agderforskning, Norway, Orkestra, Basque Institute of Competiveness, Spain and Finnmark University College, Norway. Karlsen is specialized in innovation systems, institutional entrepreneurship,

Contributors

xv

leadership in regional development and action research as a strategy for territorial development. Grete Kindel is a Masters student at the Department of Geography of the University of Tartu, Estonia. Grete’s main fields of interests are rural development, leadership and segregation. Miren Larrea is a Senior Researcher at Orkestra, Basque Institute of Competitiveness and the University of Deusto, Spain. Larrea is specialized in territorial development, network governance and policy learning and has focused on action research as an approach for constructing collective capabilities for development in regions. Joyce Liddle is Chair of Public Leadership and Strategy and Deputy Director of the Centre for Leadership and Organisational Change at Teesside Business School, University of Teesside. She specializes in local and regional governance, regeneration and leadership, strategy and stakeholder engagement in the public services. Matti Lüsi is a Consultant and Project Manager at the ‘Tuuru’ Foundation in Hiiumaa, Estonia. He is responsible for consulting SMEs with the main focus on startups. Matti has been an active member of working groups developing Hiiu county strategies for energy, education, LEADER and Sustainable Fisheries. He is interested in local and regional development. Nina Mustikkamäki is a Ph.D. student and a researcher at Sente, the Urban and Regional Studies Group at University of Tampere, Finland. Mustikkamäki is specialized in urban and regional economic development and innovation systems and has focused on innovation processes, knowledge creation, learning, knowledge communities and networks. Sibout G. Nooteboom works in the National Government, where he is responsible for the development of internal management systems. He is also associated professor at the department of Public Administration of Erasmus University, Rotterdam. His main interests are the co-evolution between the organization of government and its self-organizing and problem-solving capacities. Frans J. G. Padt is Senior Lecturer at The Pennsylvania State University, USA. His research and teaching interests include the institutional and political aspects of landscape planning and design, the production of knowledge in environmental sciences, and the human dimensions of community and resource development. This chapter was written when he was affiliated with Wageningen University and Research Centre in the Netherlands. He received his Ph.D. in 2007 in the Political Sciences of the Environment at Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Kristine Peters owns a small consultancy firm specializing in regional development, programme design and evaluation, and organizational change. She has a Diploma of Teaching and a Masters of Business Administration and has

xvi

Contributors

recently completed a Ph.D. with Flinders University, examining environmental behaviour change in small business. Garri Raagmaa is Associate Professor of Regional Planning at the Department of Geography of the University of Tartu, Estonia. Dr Raagmaa has published about regional planning and development focusing on planning culture, leadership, regional networking and regional identity studies. He has also practised as a local/regional development consultant since 1991. Markku Sotarauta is Chair of Policymaking Theories and Practices, and Dean of the School of Management at the University of Tampere, Finland. He also serves as a group leader for the Urban and Regional Studies Group. Dr Sotarauta specializes in urban and regional economic development, leadership in urban and regional development, innovation systems and institutional entrepreneurship. Catrien J. A. M. Termeer is Chair of the Public Administration and Policy Group at Wageningen University, the Netherlands. Her research focuses on processes of societal innovation; public leadership; new modes of governance and reflective action research. Her main fields of interests are adaptation to climate change, sustainable agriculture, food security and rural areas. She is especially interested in how governance actors, constrained and enabled by historically grown institutions, make sense of the challenges of these wicked problems and new forms of governance in day-to-day practices.

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Leadership and sustainable regional development Markku Sotarauta, Lummina Horlings and Joyce Liddle

Why study leadership in sustainable regional development? This book proposes that to truly construct sustainable regional development models we need more in-depth investigation into what influential actors, in cooperation with the main stakeholders, actually do to transform and reinvent their regions. First, this book shows that leadership plays a crucial role in reinventing regions, and in enabling regions to branch out onto a new path in order to create more balanced and sustainable regional development. Second, the book argues that leadership is not a solo activity but is multi-agency and multilevel, and that it needs to be discussed and studied as such. Third, the book argues that leadership is present on different scales and is shaped differently according to various institutional and cultural contexts. In this book, we explore the ways in which leadership can be examined in a regional development context, contributing economically, socially and ecologically to a balanced and sustainable future. Regions face the issue of leadership more urgently than ever, as they are increasingly, and simultaneously, confronted with ecological, social and economic difficulties. Important drivers of change are climate change, economic and demographic challenges, unrestrained urbanization and over-exploitation of natural resources. It is now widely recognized that regions should in future anticipate a more balanced and sustainable development in order to address these problems (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005; OECD, 2006). Yet, sustainable regional development is difficult to achieve in practice because of constraining rules and procedures, a short-term perspective and conflicts of interests. State interventions are often insufficient because regional development is a collective process involving networks of public and private actors in which no organization has a primacy in governance (Padt, 2007). To overcome these, and many other potential bottlenecks, the ‘human factor’ needs to be taken into account better than has been the case so far. In the end it is people who make the difference to sustainable development. The central idea underpinning this book is that there is now an urgent need to better understand how regions can adapt to current challenges and deal with the

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wicked issues of sustainability by developing new multi-actor leadership capabilities. This book also provides an insight into the conditions for creating the capacity to take action in the context of regional development processes which often face dead-locked situations caused by procedures, regulations and problems in multi-actor cooperation. In addition, questions about how short-time leadership cycles relate to sustainable development in the long run, and how actions at the regional level are connected to sustainable solutions at the global scale, emerge as crucial issues. By understanding leadership better, and the roles individuals and coalitions play in sustainable regional development, we might better understand the dynamics of endogenous development processes. We also believe that all those people engaged in the betterment of their regions, whoever they might be and on whatever spatial scale they operate, need access to studies related to their own work, action and endeavours; in other words, they need advice on how it is possible to change the course of events. The champions of regional development often understand the importance of clusters (Porter, 1990); they can see the rationale behind enhancing industry– university interaction (Etzkowitz and Leyesdorf, 2000); they have been taught to respect innovation systems (Freeman, 1987; Lundvall, 1992); and how to analytically construct them (Edquist, 2005). For his part, Morgan (1997) shows the roles animateurs play in knowledge transfer and learning within regional innovation clusters. What champions of regional development have not been given much advice on is how to do it all; that is, how to create networks for these purposes, how to direct and maintain them, and how to lead complex multi-actor processes. Leadership in regional sustainable development is not just a black box for practitioners, but also for academics as well. In local and regional development studies, it is always easier to identify the elements of success or failure retrospectively than it is to find new development paths for the future, and new modes of action in the middle of uncertain and open-ended situations. It is always easier to say that sustainability, social capital, networks, innovation systems and clusters are important for regional development than it is to actually build trust, lead networks, develop systems and mobilize actors for sustainable development. Of course, as well as stressing the how questions, leadership is very much about the why. In a fast changing and uncertain world (Bauman, 2005), the urgent need to make the world a better and more sustainable place can be a guiding principle and a driving force for the people involved. Sustainable development is not only about the well-known dimensions of planet, people and profit/prosperity, it is also about passion. Passionate leadership is driven by an inner compass based on values and meaning. We know a great deal about what leaders do. However, how leadership is rooted in the inner motives of people and how it creates change is not yet well understood. Therefore, we ought also to explore the roots of leadership, its motivation and inspiration, as well as the way it operates through networks and leads (or does not lead) to change. The distinction between formal leaders and people who lead is that the latter inspire us because of what they believe and do by themselves. Inspiring

Leadership and sustainable regional development 3 leaders are those who express their dreams instead of their plans. As Otto Scharmer (2008: 52) puts it: We are blind to the source dimension from which effective leadership and social action come into being. Successful leadership depends on the quality of attention and intention that the leader brings to any situation. Two leaders in the same circumstances doing the same thing can bring about completely different outcomes, depending on the inner place from which each operates. The rich, flourishing, well-thought out and constant stream of research, which highlights theories that are important for local and regional development, has greatly informed policymaking and created conceptual frameworks from which to choose. Indeed, as Lagendijk (2006) shows, the stream of this conceptual flow is fast and overwhelming. This raises the following inevitable question: Why write about leadership when the shelves of the world’s libraries and bookshops are filled with regional development, management and leadership literature? The threefold answer is obvious: (1) there is a lack of studies focusing on leadership in the context of local and regional development; while at the same time, (2) the new forms of governance call for leaders to produce results in an evermore more complex institutional context and, consequently, the question of policy formulation and implementation is as relevant as ever (in other words, what happens between policy expectation and perceived policy results); and, (3) there is a mismatch between policy recommendations for sustainability and knowledge of how to deliver change. Next, we take a closer look at these three issues, stressing throughout the need to enhance leadership in the context of regional development. Local and regional development studies call for leadership studies There are a very large number of books and articles on business and political leadership, but the literature on leadership in the context of local and regional development is very sparse indeed, although there are some exceptions (including Sotarauta, 2005, 2009; Gibney et al., 2009; Stimson et al., 2009; Collinge and Gibney, 2010; Horlings, 2010a; Liddle, 2010; Horlings and Padt, 2011). However, in many empirical studies, the significance of key individuals and leadership has already been raised and also elaborated (Judd and Parkinson, 1990; Flyvbjerg, 1998; Linnamaa, 2002; Kostiainen and Sotarauta, 2003; Lehtimäki, 2005; Benneworth, 2007). Earlier studies show that both formal and informal leadership contributions matter and cannot be ignored (Collinge and Gibney, 2010). The leadership provided by those people who function as key figures in regional development processes, and who build bridges between informal initiatives and formal planning regimes, is shown to be especially important (Horlings, 2010a). These people aim to influence other actors and the course of events in the name of regional development; in other words, they feel responsibility for their own environment, develop sustainable goals, and utilize their leadership position to put

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them into place. Leaders are actors who have a greater range of assets than others in the community, and this enables them to overcome the constraints. Leadership is often seen in terms of formally constituted hierarchical power, but in a world characterized by inter-institutional overlaps and distributed power, and many conflicting or mutually supporting aims and policies (i.e. local and regional development), leadership needs to be reconceptualized. In this kind of setting, leaders are not only required to lead within the boundaries of the organizations and communities that authorize them, they also need to consciously work across boundaries in order to reach organizations and communities where their actions and words may have influence, although they have no formal authorization (Sotarauta, 2005). As Liddle (2003) points out, leaders work beyond traditional boundaries in unchartered territories with state, non-state, business and auxiliary organizations (such as universities, trade unions, charities, and the third sector) that are often ill-defined and poorly networked, and with imprecise boundaries and role ambiguities. Hence, it is essential to align discretionary problemsolving skills with the capacities of multi-agency partners for successful outcomes. Indeed, recent research highlights strategic leadership as a fluid, relational, associational, interactive and collaborative process (Gibney et al., 2009). Leach and Wilson (2002) remind us not to create any deterministic relationships between strategically responsive ‘community leaders’ and changes in space and time. Indeed, leadership is a nuanced process; it is about making sense of new situations, processes, personnel and policy shifts. Leaders are thus turned into knowledge brokers (Gibney, 2011) who stimulate stakeholder engagement (Gomes and Liddle, 2010), mix economic, social, environmental and ethical considerations, and innovatively turn external stimuli into internal responses (Bennett and Krebs, 1994). They aim to influence the ways collective interpretations emerge and are shaped. Leadership is thus a multi-tier activity that has the aim of creating ‘capacity to act’ (Horlings, 2010a). As MacNeill and Steiner maintain, leadership in itself is a ‘path-dependent’ process. Therefore, when investigating good leadership practice we have to recognize that managers and leaders are embedded in both the sector and the territory in which their objectives are centred (MacNeill and Steiner, 2010: 445). To be able to take an effective leadership position, regional development champions need to be able to influence the actions of other leaders, and predict how multitudes of stakeholders will be affected by, or can affect decision making. They ought to be able to develop imaginative and innovative scenarios, and adapt and harmonize a myriad of processes, structures, institutions, partnerships and agencies within dynamic global, national and local regulatory frameworks (Liddle, 2010: 4–5). Leaders therefore need to be systems thinkers, boundary spanners, conceptualizers and connectors, since ‘tool kits’ and ‘institutional fixes’ do not suffice in a rapidly changing world. Sustainable development needs leaders who are capable of synthesizing a myriad of contradictory forces, and responding to the politics of situations with a long-term perspective. Adding sustainable value will be achieved through acknowledging diversity and dealing with dilemmas, competing voices and agendas.

Leadership and sustainable regional development 5 It is should be acknowledged at the outset that there are always conflicting reactions to leadership. It is quite easy to underrate its significance and argue that change processes, not to mention sustainable development, are not led, but that they are results of many forces, or that it is impossible to identify the actors who really make a difference. This is, of course, the nature of these processes, but it does not imply that leadership does not play any role. It is also quite easy to overemphasize the role of individuals by giving some visible leader(s) all the credit, thus mystifying leadership and reconstructing the old-fashioned notion of a leader as a ‘talented and visionary person’ who controls and provides his followers with a visionary direction. Moreover, leadership cannot be reduced to an individual feat alone – it takes more than a visionary individual to ‘get things done collectively’. It is a collaborative process, which can be referred to as ‘shared leadership’ (Sotarauta, 2005; Karlsen and Larrea, this book), which has to be understood in the context of the dynamic interplay of relations and linkages at the regional level. At its best, leadership is ‘nested’ in social capital (Horlings, 2010b). To conclude at this point, leaders are people who have the potential to organize and reorganize social action with an ambition to change the institutions in which the factors that affect sustainable regional development are embedded. Like Elcock (2001), we do not subscribe to those commentators who argue that individual leaders and their followers are in reality merely pawns in the hands of the economic or social forces, which really determine the development of peoples and nations. Neither do we subscribe to those elite theorists who argue that ‘the source of the domination of the mass of the people by small groups of leaders is essentially political and not economic’, or who maintain that ‘all political structures will inevitably be dominated by small groups of office holders’ (Elcock, 2001: 3–4). Our position is somewhere in between. New forms of governance calls for leadership The shift from government to governance has profound implications for the exercise of local and regional leadership. As Hambleton (2003: 7) argues: Out goes the old hierarchical model of the city ‘boss’ determining policy for city council services and imposing it on the bureaucracy, and in comes the facilitative leader reaching out to other stakeholders in efforts to influence decisions in other agencies that affect the local quality of life. In our understanding, both leadership and the promotion of regional sustainable development need to respond to the shift from government to governance, and from hierarchies to networks (Powell, 1990). In an era of governance involving a wider range of actors (Peters and Pierre, 1998), simple bureaucratic and hierarchical models of policymaking and implementation are of little explanatory use. It has been increasingly realized that the problem of the policy programmes of a centralized and compartmentalized government lies in the fact that various networks and contemporary wicked issues refuse to be bound by administrative or

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regional limits. Decisions concerning issues are often made in several organizations, both public and private. Different programmes and decisions may be contradictory because they split various networks without perceiving the whole. Each policy arena is one of high-bounded rationality. It is difficult to know what to do, and gaining understanding is usually very demanding, and takes lot of time to achieve. Defining the problem, let alone designing appropriate solutions, is a difficult and daunting task. Governance stresses that a number of agencies ought to be able to exchange resources and align their competencies, if they are to deliver services effectively and promote sustainable development (Stone, 1993; Stoker, 2000: 91–92). Governance also recognizes and acknowledges that many activities have shifted from formal organizing to more informal networking; therefore, network negotiation and coordination can be confounded by the political context in which they are embedded. Networks do not fit easily with being steered by government; instead they develop their own policies and mould their environment. Therefore, governance can also be defined as self-organizing, inter-organizational networks that are characterized by interdependence between organizations. Interactions in these networks are playful, rooted in trust and regulated by rules of the game negotiated and agreed by network participants (Rhodes, 2000: 61). At the simplest level, governance is concerned with cooperation that transcends various borders, takes many goals into consideration, and is based on constantly evolving combinations of teams that develop according to circumstances. Combinations are not determined simply on institutional or regional grounds, but rather on the basis of shared interests and issues, regardless of administrative borders. In this kind of complex and fragmented local/regional world the paradigmatic form of power is that which enables certain interests to blend their capacities to achieve common purposes (Stone, 1993; Stoker 2000: 91–92). The new modes of governance also challenge long-standing notions concerning policy formulation and implementation which, like scholarly activity, take different shapes and forms in different cultures and institutional settings. Scholars from varied disciplines and with different perspectives have attempted to address the question of ‘what happens between policy expectation and perceived policy results’ (De Leon, 1999: 311), and thus understand the process involved in the formulation and execution of policy (Liddle, 2003). It is difficult to provide a logical evaluation of a policy cycle, owing to the complexities of governance, and the fact that we cannot always know who formulated the policies, how they are implemented and by whom. Moreover, it is difficult to tease out how policies arise on the agenda, how they reach the statute books and how, in turn, they are implemented ‘lower down the chain’. We may never know who has the power or legitimacy to instigate a particular policy, and who was involved at certain stages of the process. Numerous individuals including ministers, civil servants and those charged with implementing a reform programme will be intimately involved at the formulation and implementation stages, and in some countries the academic and business communities are also actively involved. Classical rational and statist writers on implementation, such as Hogwood and Gunn (1984) and Dror (2002) have elucidated some of the difficulties in trying to

Leadership and sustainable regional development 7 separate policy from implementation, but no single theory captures the complexities and webs of decision makers involved. Policy is being administered as it is being made, and made as it is being administered. Furthermore the content of policy and its impacts are always subject to modification, elaboration and negotiation during the different phases of implementation; the major policy shifts are often negotiated in multi-actor arenas and related networks (Kuhlmann, 2001). Consequently, multi-actor forms of sustainable regional development policy challenge the straightforward definitions of policymaking as the boundaries between policymakers and other actors become more blurred. This is a true challenge as any policy includes problems to be addressed, objectives to be pursued, and the structure by which implementation is to be carried out. In addition, policy outputs need to be legitimized and compliance arrangements agreed by the target groups potentially affected by a specific policy, and policies are usually subject to bargaining and revision as they are put into practice. So, as well as a ‘top-down’ classical view of how policy is formulated, we need also to be aware of the ‘bottomup’ processes of negotiation and bargaining, as well as the interactions between policy actors at all stages of the policy process. Therefore, governance stresses the need to look beyond formal policy processes to truly understand how change is pursued and what roles policies actually play. Governance suggests that side by side with such policy implementation issues, one of the core issues is the way network membership and relationships adapt to changing circumstances. The challenge then, is not only to learn new facts, issues or methods, but also to learn different thinking patterns, behavioural patterns and values. It is not enough, to learn new policy content and ways of implementation, we also need to learn about each other. Consequently, we need approaches to governance and leadership where the point of departure is not necessarily the search for the right answers; instead, it is about how people contending with wicked issues from different standpoints and perspectives can join forces in the search for new questions and new answers. Governance presupposes striving towards a common understanding in situations that are characterized by differences of opinion, different objectives, and different views of the future, as well as ignorance and lack of information. Leadership ability, in the context of governance, implies that the tensions between conflict and order and between self-organization and institutionalization are put to good use. However, the adoption of new, more communicative and interactive ways of problem solving and designing policy is not just a technical issue. It is also very much a matter of mental models and the culture of policymaking and leadership. There is a shift towards more responsive and integrated governance systems, and this is turning into a ‘new conventional wisdom’ associated with the balancing of regional economic competitiveness with ecological and social cohesion issues. Yet, while much of the attention on governance remains normative, our approach recognizes that the dimensions of leadership will be highly contingent, variable and differentiated, both in terms of process and outcome in different governance settings.

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It can be expected that emerging governance settings will be more territorially based in the near future. The EU agenda for 2020 favours resilient places, which use the potential of their social, ecological and economic local assets as the basis for development. OECD’s reviews show that human capital and innovation positively influence regional growth and are in fact the most robust factors influencing growth. Place-based leadership can in this sense play an important role in strengthening human capital, capacity-building and social cohesion. However, we also need to acknowledge that in spite of the great efforts to construct new forms of governance in many countries, recent policies continue to create fragmentation and uncertainty instead of coherence and integration. Lack of central direction has created vacuums for leaders to ‘join up the dots’. (Liddle, 2010: 3) The new forms of governance direct our attention towards self-reflexive individuals, or as Amin (2001: 1240) puts it, towards individuals who act on the basis of ‘the process of organizing/instituting as it unfolds, and on the influences and implications of such organizing/instituting’. For their part, Philo and Parr (2000: 514) suggest that it might be worthwhile investigating particular institutional geographies as ‘a spidery network of dispersed intentions, knowledges, resources and powers’. Indeed, as Cumbers et al. (2003) note, such issues as power and politics have remained in the shadows in this flourishing field of enquiry. By taking these suggestions seriously, as they should be, and by raising unfolding policy processes, power and leadership among the debated issues, a fresh view on regional sustainable development can be gained. This kind of approach might provide us with a more realistic and sensitive view of the complexities of regional development. Therefore, we seek a more profound understanding of ways in which various incidents, people, institutions and policies influence not only the course of development but also the ways various actors learn together or do not. Our approach explores the role of leadership in the creation of different modes of governance, while at the same time being alive to the complex ways in which the differing forms of governance impact upon leadership itself. The particular nature of the ensemble of relations to be found in a place ‘makes a difference’ to the possibilities for sustainable regional development, but, as is argued here, the complexity of modern governance calls for new forms of leadership. Local and regional leadership occurs in particular places and in the context of local power structures that have been built up over a long period. There is a need for actors who can manoeuvre and navigate in the midst of increasingly complex governance networks, and at multi-spatial levels of governance that are stretched from local/regional to national and global webs of influence. The challenge of sustainable development calls for leadership Regions across the globe are facing simultaneously severe ecological, social and economic challenges and difficulties. For many regions an obvious choice would

Leadership and sustainable regional development 9 be to set forth on the economic growth path and to compete with other regions for global, mobile capital and labour (Harvey, 1996). Such competitive regional development has historically been dominated by economic concerns such as growth, income and employment (Armstrong and Taylor, 2000). In Europe such an economic view is the key reference point for economic development strategies at all levels (Armstrong and Taylor, 2000: 886). Also, mainstream scholarly concepts of regional development (e.g. regional growth disparities and growth poles) are dominated by neoclassical economics (Pike et al., 2006). However, economic development and competition are increasingly considered too narrow an approach to regional development as they not only create ‘winners’ but also ‘losers’. Winners are often found in wealthy regions and valorize natural resources and local assets. Losers tend to be concentrated in vulnerable regions suffering from the depletion of their natural resources and a lack of local assets. In addition, negative social consequences (which include environmental injustice, social polarization and social exclusion) can occur both in winning and losing regions (Meynen and Doornbos, 2004). Localities and regions are not narrow economic entities whose performance can be reducible to their firms and the microeconomic environment within which they operate. To do so is to create a narrow discourse about routes to local and regional well-being where, to survive in a globalizing world, places become locked into an ever more intense round of competitive behaviour in narrowly defined fields of activity (Wells and Bristow, 2007: 207). Consequently, regions face the challenge of anticipating a more sustainable approach to development in order to prevent a too short-sighted approach to competition. Since the World Commission on Environment and Development’s presentation of ‘Our Common Future’ (WCED, 1987), sustainable development has become a leading concept in policies related to the environment. An ever-increasing body of literature is devoted to sustainable development but, as Vallance et al. (2011) show, with a blurred focus. According to them, ‘we now have urban sustainability, sustainable management, environmental sustainability, weak and strong sustainability, or just “sustainability”, with debates occurring within and between each’. Indeed, sustainability has emerged as one of the most demanding issues facing the world and is the lead concept in many policies with the key question being: How would it be possible to bring about such a profound change in the way things are organized that we would be able to meet fundamental human needs and ecological requirements at the same time? Sustainability is above all about an obligation to future generations. It shifts our attention away from conservation of specific resources and the need to leave the world a better place than it was. In a way, the broadness of the Brundtland Commission’s notion of sustainable development allows us to even examine sustainability independently of environmental concerns (Clark and Dickson, 2003). Of course, as Norgaard (1988) provocatively maintains, promotion of sustainable development is not a joyride: Environmentalists want environmental systems sustained. Consumers want consumption sustained. Workers want jobs sustained. Capitalists and socialists

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Markku Sotarauta, Lummina Horlings and Joyce Liddle have their ‘isms’ while aristocrats, autocrats, bureaucrats and technocrats have their ‘cracies’. All are threatened. Thus sustainability calls to and is being called by many, from tribal peoples to the most erudite academics, from Levi-clad eco-activists to pinstripe-suited bankers. With the term meaning something different to everyone, the quest for sustainable development is off to a cacophonous start. (Norgaard, 1998: 607)

Sustainable development no longer only applies to pollution control, the availability of natural resources, and to the protection of species and their ecosystems, but also to human and social development, which includes human rights, good governance and solidarity (Quental et al., 2011). As Horlings says in her chapter in this book, the core of the European Lisbon and Gothenburg agenda is the call for integrated solutions in regions that lead towards economic prosperity, social cohesion and environmental sustainability. Indeed, sustainable development is commonly perceived as a ‘balancing act’ between planet, people and profit. Examples are local, sustainable food production (a balance between profit and planet), cooperatives that maintain landscape quality (a balance between people and planet), and ‘green businesses’ (a balance between profit and people). In practice, the balancing act is difficult to perform. Sustainable development – being a normative concept – refers to the responsibility to make short-term decisions from a long-term perspective on sustainability. It aims to make us all more aware of the need to take into account the effects of today’s decisions on future generations. The difficulty is that social and environmental goals are often seen as obstacles to economic development, and vice versa. The social element in this approach reflects attempts to harness human potential so as to generate improved environmental outcomes or, as Chiu (2003: 26) has described it, to identify ‘the social conditions necessary to support ecological sustainability’ (Vallance et al., 2011). It has been noted that social sustainability has largely been neglected in policy and research (Cuthill, 2010) and economic sustainability is often uncritically linked to ‘global capitalist’ economies, thereby underestimating the importance of local and regional community-based economies (GibsonGraham, 2008). To cope with the conceptual challenge raised here, a shift from a mechanical to a co-evolutionary understanding of systems is required. This might help us to understand why development has been unsustainable, and what ought to be done to achieve sustainability (Norgaard, 1988: 606). Overall, we maintain that nations and regions across the world do not disagree with the need to find new solutions for the sustainable integration of economic, ecological and social development but they are not always putting sufficient emphasis on this issue. In addition, it is becoming much clearer that any effective adaptations to environmental and resource vulnerabilities need to be not only localized but also locally generated, and that the diversity of localities and regions should be taken into account in the search for sustainable solutions. Indeed, this book stems from a conviction that this requires profound changes at the local and regional levels, and that regional

Leadership and sustainable regional development 11 leadership is needed to boost sustainable development in all its complexity. Today’s post-industrial society challenges regions to invest in sustainability and to develop ‘eco-economic innovations’ based on regional qualities and local and regional assets. By strengthening the uniqueness of each region, regions will become less vulnerable to over-exploitation and the effects of competition between regions. The recent global ‘credit crunch’ and the accompanying increase in livelihood insecurity has highlighted the advantages of regions that are less dependent upon global competition. These economies show economic diversity and are determined to bring about significant structural change to become more resilient (Larkin and Cooper, 2009; Ashby et al., 2009). Sustainable development requires appropriate institutions, governance and planning. In European regions, an increasingly complex assembly of actors are involved in today’s development agendas, ranging from private firms and labour organizations to government and non-governmental institutions. For current policy institutions, the complexity of issues and actors is difficult to manage (Horlings, 2010a). A complicating factor is that what constitutes an adequate area for regional development is quite variable, and depends on the geographical environment, natural resources, amenities, skills and infrastructure (OECD, 2006: 114). Furthermore, European programmes for regional development often express the vested interests of elite groups, and people seeking sustainable alternatives are often excluded from powerful networks and decision-making processes (Padt, 2007; Padt et al., 2008). Partnerships in various European countries face a number of potential obstacles, such as the complex, rigid and fragmented national and supranational policies that affect development (OECD, 2006: 114, 127). This book argues, to repeat the main message, that leadership is becoming more important. In the end it is the ‘human factor’ that plays an important role. Leadership capacity is a quality that can alleviate the negative consequences of economic regional development and reinforce the positive ones (Bridger and Alter, 2008). Sustainability requires a move beyond current scientific barriers. This includes applying a multitude of theoretical perspectives and cross-scale dynamics and approaches, which incorporate a range of non-linear interactions and irreducible uncertainty systems. Marsden (2011) argues that there is a disjuncture in the current literature of regional and governance studies and sociology, between sustainability transitions (Geels, 2004) and ecological modernization (Spaargaren and Mol, 1992) on the one hand, and the resurgence of place and space on the other. Marsden pleads for sustainability research rooted in the concrete contexts of space and place: Dealing with sustainable spaces and places becomes more of a priority as part of a broader movement towards sustainability science, not least because it is becoming much clearer that any effective adaptations to environmental and resource vulnerabilities will need to be inherently ‘place based’. That is they will have to accommodate the particular heterogeneity and diversity of place. This is so even if those places are both relational and bounded entities and contain a range of diverse communities of place and of interest. Hence, it

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Markku Sotarauta, Lummina Horlings and Joyce Liddle would seem that we need to recognise both the fluidity and relationality of place and space on the one hand, at the same time as also recognising that sustainable ‘transitions’ in themselves will indeed need to be rooted in real spaces and real time frames if they are to indeed become transitions.

Sustainable development requires the transition of society which implies not ‘doing things better’ or more environmentally soundly but ‘doing better things’. It starts with a much needed change in awareness that can then lead to social and cultural changes. It is here where leadership again comes in. Leadership is about making individual sustainable and value-based choices, which can function as a guide and inspiration for others to follow the road of sustainable development. And in making steps we create the path. As Hay (2010) puts it: Without attention to how we view ourselves and the world (philosophy), what forms of improvement appear to be most appropriate (development) and how to motivate and help direct us to get there (leadership), any program to address sustainability is only superficial. (Hay 2010: 163)

The chapters The sustainable development debate originally included a clear social mandate, but for some time now the human dimension has been neglected and the focus has mainly been on bio-physical environmental issues. Alternatively, the human dimension has been subsumed within a discourse that conflates ‘development’ and ‘economic growth’ (Vallance et al., 2011). In line with Vallance et al. (2011) we stress here the need to include human agency, as well as a clear social mandate, in the efforts to promote sustainable development. A better understanding of the leadership required for sustainable regional development calls for reconciliation of the often competing demands in the tripartite relationship of society, environment and economy (Vallance et al., 2011). Bearing these three terms in mind, the chapters, which put flesh on the bones of leadership, are grouped into three main categories: • • •

new modes of governance call for new leadership approaches; social capital calls for leadership; where collective and individual leadership meets, new understanding on leadership dynamics is needed.

The first part comprises chapters that highlight the need to study new and emerging forms of leadership. The discussion is initiated in Chapter 2 by John Gibney who argues that ‘there is a renewed and growing interest in the role that leadership plays in the continuing shaping and re-shaping of competitive and yet fair and sustainable places’ (Gibney, 2011). From this premise, he sets out to discuss the leadership of place from a dynamics of knowledge point of view. Gibney explores the key

Leadership and sustainable regional development 13 features and dynamics of knowledge in the context of the shaping and re-shaping of cities and regions. The chapter highlights the significance of incorporating the broad knowledge discourse into the argument for a more progressive leadership of cities and regions. Gibney concludes by setting out some thoughts on a new research agenda around the relationship between knowledge, sustainable places and leadership. Gibney’s chapter is followed by Joyce Liddle (Chapter 3) who, by examining the recent changes in the British governance structures for city regions, shows how multi-agency elites seek strategies for turning external stimuli into internal responses. As she maintains, the capacity to harmonize social, economic and environmental objectives lies at the heart of any transformation process. Liddle’s in-depth analysis of thirty-nine established British Local Enterprise Partnerships reveals that the idea of having heroic leaders who act on behalf of citizens is no longer appropriate in the fast-changing world of new public governance, where the need to break out from the old government silos is palpable. All this requires a deeper understanding of the linkages between formal, hierarchical and statutory frameworks, and informal interactions and interconnections. To these ends, we need to enhance our understanding of the models and theory of collective leadership. In Chapter 4, Frans J. G. Padt starts by maintaining that a Machiavellian type of regional leadership creates tension with sustainable development objectives. He seeks for a leadership that calls for sustainability on different scales, even though leadership is being deployed at a regional scale. Padt puts forward a strong argument that the Managerial State tends to consider regional policy as a tool for national policy delivery, and that this kind of reductionist view of regional development may result in regional leaders ‘becoming governmentalized, thereby encouraging “exit” of the citizenry and frustrating sustainable development’. Consequently, Padt proposes a normative approach to leadership so that these bottlenecks might be prevented. He concludes that, by favouring short-term efficiency and consensus on achievable solutions, managerial leaders do no good to sustainable development. Chapter 5, by John Diamond, begins with the notion that there has been a significant increase in the direct funding of ‘leadership’ initiatives for the voluntary and community sector across the UK. He shows that there is an important shift taking place in the activities and actions of a new layer of professional managers and administrators. Diamond argues that the growth in the voluntary and community sector has created a new layer of managerialists in the field of governance in the UK. Through reflections on practice, Diamond seeks to sketch out the potential to support innovative ways of working and thinking among a key group of activists and managers. In Chapter 6, Andrew Beer and Emma Baker expand the discussion beyond social sustainability, and they explicitly incorporate ecological sustainability into the analysis. This chapter considers the role of leadership in responding to the formidable environmental challenges in non-metropolitan Australia. Beer and Baker draw on their empirical study of two South Australian regions: the area in

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and around Orroroo in the Mid North; and the Riverland, focused on the town of Waikerie. They scrutinize the role of ‘slack resources’ in enabling leadership to find an effective voice, and the implicit and explicit articulation of power relations in leadership groups. Beer and Baker conclude their chapter by maintaining that policies that seek to advance the leadership capacities of regions, through education, training, better provision of information to existing leaders, the provision of additional resources to support initiatives and the devolution of some responsibilities, provide a dividend to both society and the environment. The second part of this book presents studies that focus on the relationship between leadership and social capital. Chapter 7, by Lummina Horlings, considers such questions as ‘What is the role of social capital and leadership in the transition of rural European regions?’ and ‘How is this influenced by policy arrangements?’ Her chapter is based on a large European study on environmentally sound rural development, a research project in which twelve case studies were carried out across Europe. By drawing especially on the Dutch, British, Finnish, Latvian and Italian case studies, Horlings shows how social capital functions as a lubricant in sustainable rural development. This chapter concludes that leadership, institutional arrangements, and endogeneity underlie the emergence of social capital. In Chapter 8, Kristine Peters takes the discussion back to Australia by placing socially embedded leadership under scrutiny. She sets out by making an observation that reliance on arbitrary leadership is unpredictable and may deliver unexpected and unwanted results. As she further maintains, charismatic leadership, without underpinning social and institutional structures, produces variable and largely uncontrollable outcomes. Consequently she asks, ‘How can governments work together with regional leaders to achieve policy outcomes?’ Peters’ chapter compares three separate South Australian groups: (a) socially connected businesses; (b) businesses with connections based mainly on brokerage of information; and, (c) disengaged businesses. The results show that intentional leaders, who purposely use their social capital networks to develop and maintain strong group norms, are more likely to produce sustained behavioural change in their member businesses than leaders who use an arbitrary approach to networks and information exchange. In Chapter 9, Garri Raagmaa, Grete Kindel and Matti Lüsi, analyse retrospectively whether the factors that produced a positive economic performance in the 1990s are still functional in a situation that is characterized by severe financial crises. They discuss the mechanism of institutional change, in other words how leaders accomplish changes in a society, and the qualities that leaders need to possess. Raagmaa, Kindel and Lusi show how leadership can build social capital that enhances sustainable regional development and also, how leadership requires individual level social capital to truly influence the course of events. They also maintain that leadership plays a crucial role in building and maintaining the human capacity to act. Their study is based on a case study that focuses on Emmaste, a rural municipality in Estonia.

Leadership and sustainable regional development 15 The third group of articles moves the discussion onto encounters of collective and individual leadership, and especially onto a scrutiny of leadership dynamics. Markku Sotarauta and Nina Mustikkamäki initiate the discussion in Chapter 10 by arguing that, (a) regional development is embedded in the interplay of intention and emergence in time; (b) the regional innovation journey is a way to conceptualize regional development efforts from a temporal perspective; and, (c) leadership can be conceptualized as a relay in time. They use the emergence of regenerative medicine in Tampere, Finland as an illustrative empirical case study; hence, this chapter links mainly with the discussion of economic and social sustainability. Sotarauta and Mustikkamäki show how a leadership relay takes place in the middle of open-ended and fuzzy situations which constantly crosses various policy spheres. Their case study reveals that, to produce results, the leadership relay crossed innovation, science, local and regional economic development, and healthcare policy boundaries. In Chapter 11, Miren Larrea and James Karlsen continue the discussion initiated by the previous chapter by analysing shared leadership as a bottom-up process. They ask how shared leadership emerges and evolves in the context of policy networks. Larrea and Karlsen emphasize that it is a daunting endeavour to keep networks alive and functional, and thus they maintain that leadership ought to be approached as a cyclical process evolving from consensus to conflict and back again. Their main emphasis is on the question of how conflict and consensus can be made explicit by shared leadership. They draw upon an empirical analysis of the local development network in Ezagutza Gunea in the Basque Country, and focus on the ways shared leadership makes tacit conflict visible and thus possible to deal with. In Chapter 12, Catrien J. A. M. Termeer and Sibout G. Nooteboom argue that sustainable regional development requires innovations that exceed the jurisdictions of organizations and command and control bureaucracies. According to them, these innovations raise specific leadership challenges as they are not controlled by anyone, but need to be enabled by many. In tackling this issue, Termeer and Nooteboom discuss how Complexity Leadership Theory (CLT) and, most notably, the concepts of administrative, enabling and adaptive leadership may enhance our understanding of the role of leadership in generating sustainable innovations in regional systems. This chapter demonstrates the utility of these concepts by analysing how people are achieving sustainable innovations in Greenport Venlo, the Netherlands. Chapter 13, by Lummina Horlings, discusses value-oriented leadership in the Netherlands. Horlings analyses the roles of private leaders in sustainable regional development. She uses a ‘value-based leadership model’, which means taking the subjective motives, values and opinions of leaders into account. She integrates into this model the individual versus the collective dimension, and the inner subjective versus the outer objective dimension of leadership. Horlings concludes that sustainable regional development benefits from shared leadership where collective values, feelings, trust, commitment and energy form the basis for mobilizing private and public actors around a joint agenda. The empirical analysis shows that leaders

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help to raise awareness in the region and play a sense-making role. They tell stories and aim to align people around sustainability issues. Leaders contribute to the formation of new vital coalitions that create the capacity to act within the institutional context. Chapter 14, by Markku Sotarauta, Lummina Horlings and Joyce Liddle, brings together the main observations of the previous chapters and suggests themes to be explored in future studies on leadership in local and regional development. They suggest that knowledge leadership for resilient regions might offer an integrative framework for proceeding. Drawing upon all the chapters and reflecting their core message, Sotarauta, Horlings and Liddle, aim to pose questions for future endeavours, rather than searching for answers.

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Lehtimäki, M. (2005) Strategy Configuration of a Technology Center as an Innovation System – Historical perspective on the story of Hermia, Tampere: Tampere University of Technology. Leach, S. and Wilson, D. (2002) ‘Rethinking local political leadership’, Public Administration, 80:4 665–689. Liddle, J. (2003) ‘A regional regime’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Warwick, Coventry. Liddle, J. (2010) ‘The new public leadership challenge’, International Journal of Public Sector Management, 24:1 97–98. Linnamaa, R. (2002) ‘Development process of the ICT cluster in the Jyväskylä urban region’, in: M. Sotarauta and H. Bruun (eds) Nordic Perspectives on Process-Based Regional Development Policy, 29–78, Stockholm: Nordregio. Lundvall, B-Å. (1992) National Systems of Innovation: Towards a theory of innovation and interactive learning, London: Pinter. MacNeill, S. and Steiner, M. (2010) ‘Leadership of cluster policy: Lessons from the Austrian province of Styria’, Policy Studies, 31:4 441–455. Marsden, M. (2011) ‘Sustainability science and a new spatial imagination: Exploring some analytical and methodological considerations’, in: A. Franklin and P. Blyton (eds) Researching Sustainability: A guide to social science methods, practice and engagement, 299–300, London: Earthscan. Meynen, W. L. and Doornbos, M. R. (2004) ‘Decentralizing environmental resource management: A recipe for equity and sustainability?’ European Journal of Development Research, 16:1 235–254. Millenium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Synthesis, Washington, DC: Island Press. Morgan, K. (1997) ‘The learning region: Institutions, innovation and regional renewal’, Regional Studies, 31:5 491–503. Norgaard, R. B. (1988) ‘Sustainable development: A co-evolutionary view’, Futures, 20:6 606–620. OECD (2006) The New Rural Paradigm: Policies and governance, Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Padt, F. J. G. (2007) Green Planning: An institutional analysis of regional environmental planning in the Netherlands, Delft: Eburon. Padt, F. J. G., Boonstra, F. G. and Reudink, M. A. (2008) De betekenis van duurzaamheid in gebiedsgericht beleid, Wageningen: Alterra, part of Wageningen University and Research Institute. Peters, B. G. and Pierre, J. (1998) ‘Governance without government? Rethinking public administration’, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 8:2 223–243. Philo, C. and Parr, H. (2000) ‘Institutional geographies: Introductory remarks’, Geoforum, 31:4 513–521. Pike, A., Tomaney, J. and Rodriguez-Pose, A. (2006) Local and Regional Development, London: Routledge. Porter, M. E. (1990) The Competitive Advantage of Nations, London: Macmillan. Powell, W. W. (1990) ‘Neither market nor hierarchy: Network forms of organization’, Research in Organizational Behavior, 12:1 295–336. Quental, N., Lourenço, J. M. and Nunes da Silva, F. (2011) ‘Sustainable development policy: Goals, targets and political cycles’, Sustainable Development, 19:1 15–29. Rhodes, R. A. W. (2000) ‘Governance and public administration’, in: J. Pierre (ed.) Debating Governance: Authority, steering and democracy, 54–90, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Leadership and sustainable regional development 19 Scharmer, O. (2008) ‘Uncovering the blind spot of leadership’, Leader to Leader, 47 52–59, Online. Available http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ltl.269/pdf. Sotarauta, M. (2005) ‘Shared leadership and dynamic capabilities in regional development’, in: I. Sagan and H. Halkier (eds) Regionalism Contested: Institution, society and governance, 53–72, Urban and Regional Planning and Development Series, Cornwall: Ashgate. Sotarauta, M. (2009) ‘Power and influence tactics in the promotion of regional development: An empirical analysis of the work of Finnish regional development officer’, Geoforum, 40:5 895–905. Spaargaren, G. and Mol, A. P. J. (1992) ‘Sociology, environment, and modernity: Ecological modernization as a theory of social change’, Society & Natural Resources, 5:4 323–344. Stimson, R., Stough, R. R. and Salazar, M. (2009) Leadership and Institutions in Regional Endogenous Development, Northampton: Edward Elgar. Stoker, G. (2000) ‘Urban political science and the challenge of urban governance’, in: J. Pierre (ed.) Debating Governance: Authority, steering and democracy, 91–109, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stone, C. N. (1993) ‘Urban regimes and the capacity to govern: A political economy approach’, Journal of Urban Affairs, 15:1 1–28. Vallance, S., Perkins, H. C. and Dixon, J. E. (2011) ‘What is social sustainability? A clarification of concepts’, Geoforum, 42:3 342–348. WCED (1987) Our Common Future. World Commission on Environment and Development, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wells, P. and Bristow, G. (2007) ‘Embedding eco-industrialism into local economies: The search for sustainable business and policy paradigms’, Progress in Industrial EcologyAn International Journal, 4:3/4 205–218.

2

Leadership of place and the dynamics of knowledge John Gibney

Introduction Over the last two decades, a wide body of research literature across a number of academic disciplines, including geography, economics, business and organizational studies as well as in education and public policy, has emphasized that knowledge is an important explanatory feature in the story of social and economic progress – and has been so since our deep history. At the same time, there is a renewed and growing interest in the role that leadership plays in the continuing shaping and re-shaping of competitive and yet fair and sustainable places. In attempting to better conceptualize and explain the contribution of (formal) leadership in the transformation of cities and regions – and particularly in the context of the contemporary circumstances of cities and regions experiencing complex social, economic and technological transition – this chapter contributes to the discussion around the so-called leadership of place by incorporating an account of the dynamics of knowledge. The chapter begins by reflecting on the current state of the leadership and place agenda – and considers the relationship between leadership and knowledge. It moves on to draw on recent contributions across the leadership literature and economic geography to explore the key features and dynamics of knowledge in the context of the shaping and re-shaping of cities and regions. The chapter does not presume to offer a full explanation but looks to highlight the significance of incorporating the broad knowledge discourse into the argument for a more progressive leadership of cities and regions. The discussion concludes by setting out some thoughts on a new ‘combining’ research agenda going forward around the relationship between knowledge, sustainable places and leadership.

Leadership and sustainable places Local and regional leadership in Europe is currently concerned about the need to better accommodate social cohesion and economic sustainability agendas, stimulated in part by strong policy signals from national capitals and the EC (see CEC 2010a (Europe 2020); CEC 2010b (the EC’s 5th Cohesion Report); ESPON, 2010), The challenges that Europe’s sub-national territories face in a rapidly

Leadership of place and the dynamics of knowledge 21 changing world, point to the need for local and regional leadership to respond to external competitive shocks while at the same time exploiting new development opportunities around environmental challenges, demographic change and technology shift. We live, however, in a shared and interdependent world – where the transformation of modern economy and society associated with globalization, climate change, shifting patterns of demography, and the pace and scale of scientific and technological progress is taking us far beyond previous ‘wisdoms’ that sought to explain the developmental dynamics of cities and regions in earlier eras (Buck et al., 2005; Crosby and Bryson, 2005a; Daniels et al., 2007; Musterd and Murie, 2010). While it is important to avoid an obsession with bounded locale – identified by some researchers as ‘spatial fetishization’ from the analytical perspective (Lewis et al., 2002; Hess, 2004, 174) – we nevertheless still remain profoundly attached to place in economic, social, cultural and emotional terms (Beatley and Manning, 1997; Cresswell, 2004; Healey, 2010). At the same time, it is important when attempting to reframe the leadership debate so that it accommodates the new and emerging developmental conditions that prevail in early twenty-first century cities and regions, to recognize that ‘conventional’ leadership research and subsequent practice prescriptions need ultimately to incorporate a broader (geographical) understanding of the dynamics of ‘space’ and ‘place’ (see debates, for example, in Cresswell, 2004; Meusburger et al., 2008). And yet, while ‘place’ differs from the organizational locus for research, and is in many ways a unique setting for leadership (Collinge et al., 2010), the danger in seeking to uncover the contribution of leadership within the particular (even if highly differentiated) context of bounded territories such as cities and regions is that we are led to offer ‘place constrained’ insights. Clearly, leadership is also observed (and is performed) in spatially unbounded and highly mobile forms in the context, for example, of global or virtual knowledge networking. However, for the purpose of making a workable contribution to reframed theory and practice, it is sensible to pin down leadership somewhere, even if only briefly – and cities and regions seem a reasonable place to start. The ‘leadership of place’ question is currently being addressed through a reenergized interest in the urban and regional studies research literature in the role that leadership plays in the continuing shaping and reshaping of neighbourhoods, towns, cities, subregions and regions (Stough, 2003; Sotarauta, 2005; Gibney et al., 2009a; Stimson et al., 2009; Collinge et al., 2010). While there are many factors that need to be taken into account when analysing the development of place(s) – this recent work confirms that the leadership contribution matters and cannot be ignored. At the most general level, it recognizes that effective leadership is one of the factors that (partly) explains how and why some places are able to adapt to and exploit the opportunities afforded by the complex and rapidly changing social and economic circumstances of the modern world – and also (partly) explains why some places seem better able than others to minimize the disruption that change brings. The behavioural tradition(s) in human geography and

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economics suggest that economic and social outcomes are influenced in a variety of ways and sometimes ‘irrationally’ by individual(s) or group behaviours(s) and motivations(s) – and hence urban and regional systems cannot be considered as ‘people-free zones’. This wider debate is ongoing but the implication here is that the human dimension in urban and regional development cannot be ignored – and leadership in some sense can be understood as a feature of the context-specific behavioural and process features of the relational phenomenon that is place (see discussions in Collinge and Gibney, 2010). In terms of addressing economic and social disparity at sub-national level, late twentieth-century policy approaches in local and regional development have proved problematic across the board in terms of their outcomes. The academic and policy literatures point up the various ‘deficits’ and unintended consequences that have occurred and that continue to occur. There is now a heightening concern, for example, that the development of the knowledge-based economy (KBE) across Europe is leaving ‘gaps’ – in essence, some industries, places and communities are in danger of being left behind as they struggle to engage with the process of economic change (Hutton, 2004; Burfitt and Ferrari, 2008; Chapain et al., 2009; Gibney et al., 2009a). The continuing shift in policy towards public/private sector partnerships and joint ventures, changes in the nature and emphasis of national and local KBE policies across Europe (high technology corridors, competitiveness poles, Science Cities, Digital Cities, creative-knowledge regions and so on) and in approaches to participation, citizenship and accountability have also radically altered the environment for knowledge creation and its exploitation in Europe. At the city and regional level, there is evidence of a generalized misalignment between the ‘new’ economy employment being generated and the capacity of local communities to exploit these new opportunities (Amin et al., 2000; Marcuse and Van Kempen, 2002; Perrons, 2004, 2007; Burfitt and Ferrari, 2008; Musterd and Murie, 2010). And in the UK, for example, a body of recent work across the social sciences suggests that there is a question mark hanging over whether the last decade or more of so-called ‘Third Way’ political leadership has had any sustainable impact upon the levels of social and economic disadvantage that are still found across UK cities and regions – in terms, for example, of whether it has managed to effectively address worklessness and poverty, limited social mobility, the longstanding issues around poor levels of secondary level educational attainment and access to Higher Education in some parts of the UK and the broader question of the economic (dis)empowerment of some communities (Buck et al., 2005; Jackson et al., 2007; Brewer et al., 2008; Gibney et al., 2009b; Haddad and Bance, 2009). The effectiveness of leadership approaches are of course only a partial explanation for any of this – but these inconsistencies with regard to policy impacts over the last decade, combined with the 2008/2009 international credit crisis (Parkinson, 2009), have served to put formal political and executive leadership and informal leadership at all levels under the spotlight. Moving on from the generalized leadership experience of economic development, planning and regeneration of the late twentieth century, recent contributions in the academic literature (see, for example, Stough, 2003; Gains et al., 2009;

Leadership of place and the dynamics of knowledge 23 Gibney et al., 2009a; Stimson et al., 2009) and recent policy-oriented research and reflection around local and regional leadership in the UK (Benneworth 2007; CEL, 2007; Thomson, 2007; Gibney and Murie, 2008; Trickett et al., 2008) have begun to develop a perspective on sub-national leadership that differs from traditional organizational or firm leadership. This has been termed a ‘new’ leadership of place associated with debates about economic, social and political change in the UK and other advanced economies. It connects with government agendas about cross-boundary working in public services (Huxham and Vangen, 2000; Sullivan and Skelcher, 2002; Vangen and Huxham, 2003; Sullivan et al., 2012, the debate around the criticality (or otherwise) of relational interdependencies where place meets economy (Cooke and Morgan, 1998; Healey, 2007, 2010) and the ‘new’ place-shaping role of local government and the European Commission (Lyons, 2007; CEC, 2009a). While the academic and policy debates continue, formal leaders operating ‘on the ground’ in this new context are reporting through the recent research literature that they are faced with a range of unfamiliar challenges. It seems to be generally agreed that something new is occurring in the wider leadership environment; and while, at one level, differences in leadership style, tone and approach are observable across European cities and regions (and may be different again across Asia, the USA and so on), leaders in many places appear increasingly stretched in terms of their capabilities across a variety of sub-national settings (Trickett et al., 2008; Collinge et al., 2010). This recent research literature further suggests that there are modern complexities being encountered by leaders outside the single organizational context; formal leaders find themselves representing places as well as/rather than organizations; there are more uncertainties to be accommodated as outcomes are difficult to pin down and there are more unknowns (for example, around the medium term environmental, social and economic impacts of climate change); leaders are increasingly required to stimulate and lead change agendas without formal power but with responsibility; they must accommodate the views of organizations, groups and communities historically excluded or marginalized from the city and regional development debate (consider for example, the role of the National Health Service in the UK in medical technology innovation and in generating improved local public health outcomes; or the engagement of social enterprises with science and technology investment agendas). To illustrate through the lens of the knowledgebased economy, formal leaders dealing with local and regional policy agendas report that they are now faced with, among other factors, a range of challenges including increased organizational complexity (new mixes of new global and new national and new local players); increased technical complexity (working across value chains, supply chains and differentiated innovation models); and involving knowledge that is dispersed and disparate across partners and rivals; scientific and non-scientific actors; customers and non-customers; individuals and organizations (Collinge and Staines, 2009; Gibney et al., 2009a; MacNeill and Steiner, 2010). This degree of complexity also seems to echo with the experience of ‘emergent’ or ‘developmental’ public policy challenges that Crosby and Bryson (2005a,

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2005b) (drawing on Drath, 2001 among others) identify within the context of a ‘shared-power’ world-view. While acknowledging that this is only one view of leadership and that it may be highly context-specific, here, the suggestion is that the interrelatedness of complex public policy tasks in a globalized world questions rational heirarchical planning models and requires ‘actors acting jointly exercising their capabilities related to a problem in order to further their separate and joint aims’ (Crosby and Bryson, 2005a, 18). Currently, the leadership question is being re-addressed in the urban and regional studies literature that is concerned with explaining the policy ‘deficits’ and ‘missing links’ of the last decade (see overview in Sirak, 2009 among others). This work recognizes that economic development, planning and regeneration activity is not a precise science and that we need to move beyond the ‘dogma of outputs’ and short-term performance-obsessed policy ‘turns’.1 It implies that we need to understand the rationale and effectiveness or otherwise of policy interventions in different terms – and critically through an examination of the role of softer relational interactions in economic development and the power of human agency. And it is here that leadership begins to matter in terms of how some localities appear better able than others to exploit the sometimes chaotic and uncertain processes of social and economic transition and change. Although this discussion is currently somewhat fragmented and is being developed from different perspectives, including around the exploitation of the knowledge-based economy and endogenous growth for competitive advantage (Stough, 2003; Gibney et al., 2009a; Stimson et al., 2009), the relevance of the network paradigm for regional and local leadership (Harmaakorpi and Niukkanen, 2007; Mullins and van Bortel, 2010), or is concerned with how power and influence play through regional leadership (Sotarauta, 2005, 2009) – it is nevertheless building the evidence base and moving the debate forward. The core message is that in the context of economies and societies trying to make sense of new global economic, social and environmental conditions, and adapt to them, local and regional institutions, wider economic processes, regimes and systems are ultimately conceived of, adapted to, transformed and driven by people and so leadership at all levels – both formal and informal leadership – is part of the story going forward. For, as van Winden observes, although bundles of physical assets are important in explaining uneven spatial economic outcomes in the knowledge economy, for example, ‘Cities are not passive “receivers” of global trends: they can take action to make themselves “fit” . . . through the initiatives of local leaders or coalitions’ (van Winden, 2008, 198).

Leadership and knowledge in urban and regional development There is an ongoing scholarly interest in the nature of leadership. The leadership literature is vast and the definition(s) of leadership and the observations on what constitutes ‘good’ leadership are myriad (see reviews in Northouse, 2010; Storey, 2011). A discussion of competing and overlapping leadership theory, analyses and

Leadership of place and the dynamics of knowledge 25 practice prescriptions offered (transactional, transformational, situational, charismatic and so on) is not the concern of this chapter. Suffice to say at this point that to understand leadership is to situate its practice at all levels within a particular context; to consider how it is influenced by the contingencies that pervade a given context – and to note that those in leadership roles (both formal and informal) bring their world-views and personal and professional biographies (and perhaps in some extreme cases, their biochemistry) to bear on the jobs that they do; and this mix informs their analysis of, and their approach to, the type of change they wish to effect, why and for whom. Although the measurable addedvalue of this ‘human touch’ can be difficult to pin down, there are undeniable effects nevertheless. From the everyday anecdotal experience of leadership, as well as the deeper insights that are provided in the literature, it is possible to generalize and suggest that in the ‘right’ place at the ‘right’ time and given the ‘right’ conditions, all of this mixture comes together to explain at least in part how ideas, projects and programmes as well as progressive policy agendas are conceived of, shaped and moved forward – albeit with variable and divergent outcomes (Grint, 2000; Storey, 2004; Mabey and Finch-Lees, 2008; Northouse, 2010). From the urban and regional development perspective, none of this is (nor should it be) value-free, of course. Critically, for the purpose of the discussion presented in this paper, and from the perspective of offering up a proposition concerning future research that can inform leadership in and for urban and regional development, the philosophical ‘front-line’ is most easily identifiable at the frontier between the ‘shared world’ turn in leadership studies (Crosby and Bryson, 2005a, 2005b; Waddock, 2007)2 – and the performance-oriented approach to organizational leadership underpinned by what some have characterized as ‘“under-”socialized’ pseudo-Darwinian arguments that are too heavily focused on ‘efficient’ technoeconomic outputs, the competitiveness of the firm and the pursuit of returns to shareholders (see, for example, the insights provided in Mangham, 2011).3 At this point, it is helpful to consider briefly how leadership, knowledge, and urban and regional development discourses come together before returning to the question of what all of this might mean for the future leadership of cities and regions. For cities and regions, leadership approaches are required that can think and move beyond the ‘them versus us’ or ‘me versus them’ leitmotifs that are embedded in competitively oriented leadership prescriptions. This ‘new’ argument emphasizes the importance of place and the importance of outcomes in terms of the sustainability of neighbourhoods, cities or subregions. It has given rise to the idea that the development of economically viable, sustainable and inclusive places needs to be underpinned by, for example, forms of cross-boundary relational leadership. In summary, this ‘new’ leadership of place is concerned with: facilitating interdisciplinary working across institutional boundaries, technology themes, sub-territories and professional cultures to promote the development of sustainable local economies; and ensuring the comprehensive engagement of local communities so that they can both contribute to, and benefit more fully from, the outcomes (avoiding the danger of exacerbating social polarization). In the challenging development context for cities and regions, this means that leaders

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across various public organizations are now faced with a dual task of leading their own organization in achieving service delivery and effective performance while ensuring that good organizational performance translates into effective outcomes for places. Living and working in shared places in an interdependent world is not easy. To effectively navigate the social and economic complexities and interdependencies that shape place(s) (Massey, 1993; Cresswell, 2004; Healey, 2007, 2010) lends itself to a wider, more socially responsible and more integrated view of the leadership mission that favours development for the many and not the few (Amin et al., 2000). It suggests a leadership that is able to think and operate beyond selfaggrandisement, the pursuit of personal reward or allows itself to be distracted by the various other privileges that come with (alongside and after) formal office. This is not to idealize the leadership role – but to suggest that we need (re)introduce a ‘bigger’ sense of generational endeavour for the common good that has perhaps been lacking or forgotten in some quarters of public service leadership (see also Morrell, 2009). Given that leaders and policymakers involved in economic development, planning and regeneration activity in cities and regions are faced with mediating and adapting to the complex interplay of power, resources and people within a globalized market place for goods, services and ideas – it becomes increasingly difficult to sidestep the ‘What kind of local and regional development, why and for whom?’ questions (see discussions in Pike et al., 2006). In the search for a way forward the role of knowledge (how and why it emerges; and how it can be developed, combined and spread) is firmly on the policymakers’ agenda in the sense that at the most accessible level of analysis, it is knowledge that fuels economic and social change and we are required to reframe both theory, contemporary ideas about the shaping and reshaping of place(s) and the practice of leadership itself at all levels to accommodate the transformative power of knowledge ‘writ large’. Here, for some, the core assumption is that where leadership can harness the dynamics of knowledge then more sustainable and much fairer places will somehow ensue (Burrage, 2009). While there are a number of obvious problems with any over-generalized notions of harmonious coexistence across cities and regions facilitated via the sharing of the benefits of knowledge ‘writ large’, this is an interesting working proposition and one that requires some further examination.

Harnessing the power of knowledge for progressive change ‘Knowledge’ is at the centre of the debate about the future competitiveness and sustainability of cities and regions in Europe – ‘This is a time of deep transformation for Europe’ (CEC, 2009b, 2). However, for the World Bank (1999), the power of knowledge to transform economy and society extends far beyond the purely capitalistic concerns of promoting economic growth through business innovation, technology and market efficiencies – but in a much broader developmental sense has the potential when deployed generously to improve

Leadership of place and the dynamics of knowledge 27 health, education, environmental well-being and wealth spread more generally across communities and (global) society. Moreover, for Abel, ‘Different forms of knowledge play an important role in people’s lives. This is the case with everyday habits, customs, competencies, and practices as well as in science, technology, and institutions of the modern civilized world’ (2008, 11). Across a number of academic disciplines, there is a longstanding focus on understanding the role of knowledge as a driver of economic and social change. In particular, recent advances in the understanding of economic knowledge systems and their governance are providing a more complete analysis of knowledge for the purpose of the design and implementation of science and technology policy (see, for example, Antonelli, 2005, 2006; Foray, 2006). These accounts remain largely limited to explaining the role of knowledge in economic performance and read across into policy for improving the effectiveness of science and technology investment – as opposed to being concerned with the dynamics of knowledge ‘writ large’ and for wider social improvement (see further Hearn and Rooney, 2008; Meusburger et al., 2008; Collinge and Staines, 2009). Nevertheless, they provide important and informative accounts of the dynamics of knowledge. In seeking to move the debate on to include a wider heterogeneous conception of knowledge that can inform leadership approaches across cities and regions, Abel (2008), in developing the idea of a broader ‘knowledge matrix’, offers a view of knowledge that takes inquiry beyond a focus on science and technology. Knowledge, Abel suggests, can take many forms as between everyday knowledge (knowing where things are); theoretical knowledge (the principles of geometry, for example); action knowledge (knowing how to do things) and moral or orientational knowledge (knowing what ought to be done) (Abel, 2008, 13). Moreover, across these fields of knowledge, other distinctions are to be made between codified and tacit knowledge; verbal and non-verbal knowledge; propositional and non-propositional knowledge; knowledge based on skills and abilities (Abel, 2008, 13). Here then knowledge is more broadly conceived of and its source(s) as well as its potential are spread much more widely across society (Hearn and Rooney, 2008). In terms of ‘actioning’ this broader sense of knowledge, Waddock’s (2007, 544) synthesis provides a number of insights regarding the role and nature of knowledge in economy and society by considering knowledge as information and ideas combined in meaningful ways – and so in this sense, knowledge becomes a ‘foundational resource’ in the economy; a fluid resource (a form of ‘currency’ for Burrage (2009) writing on regeneration policy) that does not act in the same way that physical resources such as land, capital and labour act. Drawing on Brown and Duguid (2000), Waddock argues that knowledge assets expand when they are shared; that the generative and transforming potential of knowledge works best when it is shared rather than hoarded – so collaborative approaches are key; a great deal of knowledge about how, why, when and with whom to do things resides in people (tacit knowledge) as much as in codified form or physical assets; this type of experiential knowledge is globalized, boundary-less and consequently difficult at times to control; it responds well to inclusivity (many knowledge(s) need to be combined from many sources in order to achieve a greater integrated effect); and

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it moves rapidly around the world. Echoing the theoretical work of Abel (2008) and Meusburger (2008), for Burrage, it is knowledge beyond ‘big science’ that is equally important to uncover when thinking through regeneration policy options. This knowledge (what to do, why, where and how) can be found (say) where local communities interact with local professionals – in doctors’ surgeries, children’s centres, schools, across regeneration projects and so on – and it has the potential to transform the lives of local people where it can be harnessed and exploited (Burrage, 2009, 124–125). The idea of harnessing the transformative power of knowledge is not new in the leadership discourse. The business leadership literature, however, has previously displayed a tendency to address the question of knowledge from the techno-economic perspective and essentially in terms of how it can be accessed, exploited and channelled as a ‘heavy weapon of competition’ for firms and organizations (see for example, the perspective of Zand, 1997, 14). For some observers, the knowledge as a ‘heavy weapon of competition’ thesis has been associated with an overemphasis on science and technological knowledge and how this can be exploited by business and industry (Collinge and Staines, 2009). While the insights around the dynamics and benefits of knowledge sharing (for example, in technology transfer and innovation), for securing cost-efficiencies and performance gains across the management and organizational literature are helpful (Bryant, 2003; Srivastava et al., 2006) and can read across into the continuing debate around how knowledge and place interrelate – it is important to move beyond these accounts and frame the ongoing leadership conversations in cities and regions within a more balanced understanding of the way in which knowledge can contribute to broader socio-economic improvements beyond the firm and the shareholder. More recent contributions in the leadership literature have begun to consider the dynamics of leadership in and for complex and adaptive challenges such as those that are faced in the knowledge era. Here, what has been termed Complexity Leadership Theory, explored through study of the dynamic interplay between knowledge, learning and innovation, presents leadership approaches for the current era as informed by ‘adaptive challenges that are not amenable to authoritative flat or standard operating procedures, but rather require exploration, new discoveries, and adjustments’ (Uhl-Bien et al., 2007, 300; see also Lichtenstein and Plowman 2009). Again, though insightful for those interested in exploring place-leadership, these approaches remain largely constrained by their focus on knowledge-producing organization(s) as the setting for leadership inquiry – and do not easily align (at least as yet) with the more chaotic nature of place as a wider and perhaps more dynamic and problematic setting for leadership. Although not without its critics, the ‘new’ economic geography has also produced a number of insights into how knowledge flows within and through the economies of cities and regions and these have implications for the contribution of formal leadership in this setting (see Cooke et al., 2007; Fu, 2007). Here, the role of knowledge is regarded as the most important competitive resource for cities and regions (Lundvall and Johnson, 1994). Based on a number of empirical studies of ‘effective’ places and couched essentially in the thesis of economic

Leadership of place and the dynamics of knowledge 29 competitiveness (Harris, 2001; Moulaert and Sekia, 2003; Cooke and Leydesdorff, 2006; Benneworth, 2007), knowledge dynamics in the urban and regional setting are characterized as interactive rather than linear processes where tacit knowledge, in particular, can combine to reinforce innovation and learning so that the outcomes of new and ground-breaking economic synergies appear in the form of the production of new goods and services that can be sold around the world. There is also a strong emphasis, however, in the analyses of ‘successful’ cities and regions on the significance and value of extensive and deep relational or ‘untraded interdependencies’ between firms, institutions and individuals that serve to act as the glue that underpins and enables trust and facilitates collaborative learning (Storper, 1995) (see also reviews in Mackinnon et al., 2002; Mackinnon and Cumbers, 2007). Moreover, investment in the ‘softer’ relational dynamics inherent in the creative process, in ingenuity and inventiveness and so on is considered as an essential complement to investment in the built environment (but see critique in Chapain et al., 2009). In this sense, the power of knowledge – and how it is created, combined and deployed for developmental purposes – is framed as heavily dependent on messy social and relational interactions – rather than determined by economic imperatives alone (Musterd and Murie, 2010). While the debate around the relative weight that should be accorded to the ‘hard’ economic and ‘soft’ social features of knowledge creation and as it plays in and through cities and regions continues, this literature suggests that a virtuous and reinforcing cycle of beneficial development can be engendered where leadership is able to facilitate wider knowledge processes. Arguably, this puts a refreshed ‘mission’ at the heart of leadership; one that can better inform approaches to the leadership task itself as well as influence policy design and implementation and help to take formal leadership (across cities and regions at least) beyond the focus on outputs to a focus on generational and generative outcomes for people and places. However, the policy literature on cities and regions pursuing formal knowledge-based economy policies suggests that the overall approach (and in spite of the best of individual intentions on the ground) still remains highly focused on the achievement of scientific or techno-economic objectives and does not yet pay sufficient attention (in terms of policy emphasis, time or resources allocated) to the broader social gains that can be engendered (Perrons, 2004; Hearn and Rooney, 2008; Gibney et al., 2009b). Clearly, knowledge cannot be thought of as either value- or power-free – how freely knowledge flows in and around cities and regions and ultimately how significant its impact is in terms of ensuring wealth spread, social inclusion and empowerment – is influenced by the interplay of a variety of factors, including deeper power and resource dynamics. Meusburger (2008, 35) underlines that it is unwise to ignore the spatial disparities that pervade knowledge, and the disparities that knowledge itself might generate or reinforce; as in its various forms (as described by Abel above) how it is accessed, by whom and for what end is governed by ‘power relations, and the ways in which social systems and networks are coordinated and governed in space’. To summarize, before offering up thoughts on models, ‘templates’ or approaches to the leadership of cities and regions, we should ask ourselves at the outset some

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fundamental questions. ‘For what purpose knowledge?’ And ‘For whose purpose knowledge and why?’ Leadership for localized knowledge creation and spread cannot be considered as a value-free activity and it becomes therefore important to counter overly simplistic propositions around the idea that leadership is leadership is leadership . . . irrespective of (say) a humanistic world-view of social and economic progress for the many. Neither, in the more pragmatic sense, can we divorce local knowledge agendas from changing national or global conditions that can derail the best of intentions if leadership thinking is constrained by short-term concerns alone, is unable to challenge knowledge policy orthodoxies or is unguided by any thought for the wider and longer term wealth spread effects at the local level.

Discussion: implications for leadership in and for early twenty-first century cities and regions An improved understanding of the broader relevance of knowledge is already beginning to change the way in which city and regional leaders think about how they stimulate and engage with agendas locally across economic development, planning and regeneration. Knowledge is no longer conceived as a linear, exclusive or wholly controllable asset that is the realm of traditional hierarchical CEO leadership or public service-led project management or centralized policy leadership alone. Moreover, to consider knowledge as ‘the’ resource that fuels progressive change in the ‘shared and interdependent world’ context of cities and regions obliges formal leaders to acknowledge the importance of more fluid relational processes that favour the inclusion of all knowledge(s) – and this means a non-prejudicial championing and ‘operationalizing’ of mutually beneficial association, interaction and collaboration between individuals, institutions, firms, groups and communities. From the practice perspective, there are a number of key features to be drawn from the broad knowledge discourse that can inform leadership in/for urban and regional development going forward. First, opportunities for social and economic change and improvement will come via the exploitation of new interdependencies between science, technology, place and community; second, all knowledge(s) in the broadest sense across the private and public domain (and also present in a given place) should be considered as a potential asset that can enable progressive change; third, and consequently, knowledge needs to be shared and not hoarded, and this will involve facilitating more extensive and deeper forms of collaborative working; fourth, there should be an emphasis on combining the ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ relational dimensions of knowledge generation and spread across policy agendas; fifth, knowledge that is seen to be deployed for the purposes of more generalized wealth spread across cities and regions will reinforce motivation, inclusion and engagement by more groups; and finally, it is important to move beyond the purely scientific and techno-economic conceptions of knowledge to consider the dynamics of knowledge ‘writ large’ (for example, latent knowledge embedded in the experience of everyday living across neighbourhoods and communities around the

Leadership of place and the dynamics of knowledge 31 localized experience of health, education, jobs, housing, environment, crime, security and so on) as valuable and worthy of attention and inclusion. The discussion above further suggests that as a starting point in the context of cities and regions in change and transition, leaders at all levels, in formal and informal roles, might usefully address four basic questions: What (latent) knowledge currently exist in this place that can be made something for both social and economic improvement? What new knowledge do we need to create, develop or attract in order to move beyond the present economic development model? How do we best release and combine all of the knowledge that we have across all social groups in ways that allow us to adapt effectively to changing circumstances and on a continuing basis? How do we ensure that any unintended consequences of policy initiatives are minimized and the benefits of a more generalized exploitation of the collective knowledge embedded and developing in a given place are spread as fairly and widely as possible? What then, to begin with, might an idealized leadership type look like going forward for cities and regions that are seeking to engender progressive social and economic change? We might reasonably expect this type of leadership to: promote the creation and application of knowledge beyond the scientific and technoeconomic domain – looking to harness the learning from new socio-economic synergies where, for example, localized knowledge-based economy policy is integrated with the local education, health or regeneration sectors; challenge the legitimacy of knowledge hoarding, local knowledge ‘cabals’ and secrecy – and promote activities that ensure knowledge sharing; focus on rewarding leadership ‘behaviours’ and approaches (wherever they are expressed, irrespective of formal role, hierarchical level or constituency power) that seek out and stimulate combinatorial knowledge breakthroughs within and across the public and private domain; demonstrate/evidence a commitment to securing a much wider (and motivating) spread of the social and economic gains that accrue.

Conclusion That there are challenging times ahead for cities and regions is not debatable. There is now an urgent need for leadership approaches that will minimize distress in these places and improve the odds of our progressing towards sustainable and equitable solutions to the new and emerging dilemmas of uneven development. Periodic economic and social disruption seem an unavoidable evolutionary feature of the human condition – but all of this will take on added significance in the coming decades when the new interdependencies and unintended consequences of rapid scientific and technological advancement, changing demographic patterns, the impact of migration, climate change and the subsequent effects of global food, water and energy ‘stresses’ begin to kick-in. In recent times, the economic and social impact of uneven development in and between cities and regions around the world has been well-evidenced across the social sciences. The coal, steel, shipbuilding and textiles (heavy) industry closures of the 1950s and 1960s in Europe; the demise of the UK machine tool industry through the 1970s and 1980s;

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the European car industry crises of the late 1990s and early 2000s, and the most recent ‘meltdown’ of the global financial services industries – have all impacted (and continue to impact) on the well-being of localities (see also Vaitilingam, 2009). For a variety of reasons, the public policy responses to these previous events have achieved only patchy success. Some places have made good recoveries – but at the time of writing, other places and communities are struggling with managing ongoing disinvestment and decline. Given all of this evolutionary stress, through good times and bad, what is the guiding leadership ‘narrative’ that can be held on to and that might allow people and places to think beyond the classic short-term public policy responses – and address the more challenging medium- to longerterm dilemmas to come? At the most basic level, it is a question of what we know, and can come to know, across cities and regions and what we manage to do with this knowledge ‘writ large’. Given this, in terms of a possible forward research and development agenda around the theme of leadership for early twenty-first century cities and regions, it is important to improve our understanding of how knowledge, place and leadership can come together to improve economic and social outcomes for ‘the many’ rather than ‘the few’. In the context of progressive policies for cities and regions, it is the foundational questions that leadership asks of itself at the outset – and reminds itself of on occasion throughout the leadership journey – that become more important than any advanced mastery of the ‘tricks’ and ‘turns’ of the leadership trade.

Acknowledgements A previous version of this paper has been published in European Planning Studies 19: 4, 613–627. We thank the publisher Routledge for their approval to re-publish a slightly amended version of the paper again in this book. The author is grateful to an anonymous referee for helpful suggestions on an earlier draft of this paper. The author also thanks Kevin Morrell and Chris Mabey for discussions as well as a number of colleagues at the University of Birmingham who contributed to the EC FP6 EURODITE and ACRE research projects.

Notes 1 2 3

The author submits that the highly imaginative policy rhetoric of the last decade across the European urban and regional economic development scene offers up a seam of research material worthy of some critical socio-linguistic inquiry. Crosby and Bryson (2005a: xix) in their practical guidance for leadership define leadership for a ‘shared-power world’ as concerned with ‘inspiring and mobilizing others to undertake collective action in pursuit of the common good’. Mangham’s (2011, 52–53) characterization of business leaders is insightful: The picture of a late twentieth-century business leader . . . is one of a personality: someone who is paid a great deal of money to advance the interests of a limited number of major shareholders, including himself or herself. He or she operates in a multinational structure and a culture nexus that emphasizes individualism, aggression, ruthless behaviour, risk taking, competitiveness and the importance of short-term results, while paying lip service to the moral dimension of business.

Leadership of place and the dynamics of knowledge 33

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Sustaining collaborative leadership in city regions An examination of local enterprise partnerships in England Joyce Liddle

Introduction This chapter uses the city region to examine the importance of collaborative leadership, as multi-agency elites seek strategies for turning external stimuli into internal responses. It illustrates that the capacity to harmonise social, economic, environmental objectives lies at the heart of any transformation process. Furthermore, it shows how leaders need to have an awareness of the various competing pressures as they align multiple priorities for the regions and subregions. Many of the pressures on a city region lie beyond specific spatial boundaries, such as global or national government pressures or those from lower jurisdictions. Most problems facing city regions are multifaceted and cannot be solved by leaders isolated in their own professional and organisational ‘silos’ but instead must be dealt with more holistically by collaborative leadership. Moreover, to do so requires a deeper understanding of the linkages between formal, hierarchical and statutory frameworks and informal interactions and interconnections. There is a complex interplay between agencies, individuals and communities, so collective leadership of ‘place’ is imperative to seek effective transformation. The idea of having heroic leaders who act on behalf of citizens is no longer appropriate in the fast-changing world of new public governance, as citizens become more demanding and are increasingly drawn in as co-producers and comeasurers of solutions to regional and local problems. Multi-agency leaders from state and non-state agencies must be vigilant of rapid policy shifts, changing situations, new trends, and of fragmentation and uncertainty. There are no ‘right’ answers to the problems facing city regions, merely agreed and appropriate strategies for action. In developing strong relational connections, based on trust and reciprocity, leaders are expected to create the vital strategic coherence and coordination. What was missing from earlier analyses of leadership were hitherto softer and invisible dimensions that facilitate trust and collaboration between leaders. Moving beyond the competitive aspects of regional change allows a further understanding of informal and voluntaristic linkages, and shows how leaders create and co-produce commitment to building up social capital and institutional

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infrastructures. By drawing together tangible and intangible resources within an interactive learning process between the different spatial ‘clusters of knowledge’, dialogue between diverse stakeholders in a ‘whole system’ is facilitated. Illuminating how knowledge is co-produced and effectively used beyond existing frames of reference facilitates experimentation and exploration of innovative, networked approaches to collaborative social and economic development. The chapter argues that in the future, leaders must continually move beyond their own organisational boundaries into ‘collaborative leadership spaces’ and act on behalf of the city region for the public interest. As seismic changes to social, economic and environmental problems face leaders in city regions, they must attempt to create sustainable city regions, by identifying clear resource priorities, achieve commonly agreed objectives, but all within a shrinking pot of state funding. To do so requires trust and the ability to gain legitimacy for their actions, within complex horizontal and vertical supply chains. New forms of collaborative leadership need to develop a symbiotic interpretation of translating local knowledge into national–global policy language, and, vice versa, global knowledge into local contexts. Local policy imperatives must be linked into other spatial governance levels and initiatives to experiment and enhance what is in existence. Leaders must recognise contextual, temporal policy and practice embeddedness, and the path dependency of linkages between preexisting relationships and networks of the past, present and future agendas. Therefore entrepreneurial leaders move beyond existing frames of reference to innovate and transform co-produced and experimental new angles on traditional problems. It is, however, questionable just how sustainable new governance arrangements at the city region level can be, given that new forms of leadership in England, thirty-nine Local Enterprise Partnerships, exemplify yet other examples of abrupt and confusing policy shifts from earlier institutional frameworks. Regardless of political party in power at national level, each administration over the past thirty years has tinkered with policy delivery arrangements and institutional frameworks, leaving regional elites having to ‘fill in the blanks’ or ‘join up the dots’ to work together and ‘sense make’ the policy arena. Under the 1997–2010 Labour administrations, public sector agencies took the lead in transforming ‘places’ by drawing in non-state, private and third sector actors, but since the Conservative– Liberal Coalition came into office in 2010, an enterprise agenda has thrust the private sector to the forefront of leading ‘places’ with an expectation that this sector will draw in state and third sector actors to ‘strategise’ for (in the main) city regions.

The city region The concept of a city region dates back many decades, but more recently it has emerged as a response to those strategic tasks associated with managing across, and beyond major urban areas. This is especially pertinent in an English context, as the Coalition government since May 2010 has pursued a (still nationally orientated) ‘regional’ policy, which is an uneasy concoction of national aspirations,

Sustaining collaborative leadership in city regions 39 centralised powers and fragmented localism (Pike et al., 2011). Many New Labour ideas embodied in a 2007 Sub National Review of Economic Development and Regeneration (HMT, 2007) were replaced, and civil servants discouraged from using the term ‘region’. Legislation gave local authorities a ‘general power of competence’, more freedoms and flexibilities, and communities’ rights and powers to challenge decisions (DCLG, 2010). However, in managing city regions, it is far from clear how communities will challenge decisions. Localism is designed to invigorate local communities, ‘disperse power, adapt decisions to local circumstances, deliver service innovatively at lower cost’ (Greg Clark, Minister for Decentralisation, 2010), but in tandem with Localism and Decentralisation the Coalition government unveiled plans to abolish Regional Development Agencies and Government Offices and replace them with thirty-nine Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs); voluntaristic governance arrangements at subregional level (some at city level and some cross-boundary city LEPs). Despite the businessdriven logic underpinning LEPs, there is still evidence, albeit rhetorical, that the Coalition is attempting to develop New Labour’s agenda on communitarianism and citizen empowerment, in a Local Growth White Paper (2010) and Localism Bill (2011), to embody ideas of the ‘Big Society’. These exemplify Prime Minister Cameron’s core elements of a long term radical reform of public services design, delivery and measurement (Liddle, 2010). LEPs are important elements of the new city region leadership landscape for localism in England, and attention will now focus on debates surrounding the ‘city region’ concept. The functional relationships between cities and surrounding regions and hinterlands adapted to new strategic and spatial imperatives (Hersschel and Newman, 2002) enable us to examine the capacity for creativity, innovation, development, and competition within a global economy (Jonas and Ward, 2007). Regions and cities have been theorized as architectural, social, cultural and spatial building blocks of the global economy, drawing down regulatory authority and territorial control from sovereign nation-states (Scott, 2001); however, it is important to be cautious in assuming common understandings of what constitutes a ‘region’, ‘subregion’ (Allen et al., 1998), or indeed ‘city region’ (Liddle, 2009). A 2007 debate in International Journal of Urban and Regional Research showed different spatial levels and ‘regionalisms’ can either work together or not, so broader scalar reworkings of power, knowledge, resources and money were vital to understanding (Allen et al., 1998; Paasi, 2001). Theoretically, ideas such as cooperation and collaboration had long been aspects of regional change, but the day-to-day realities of partisan interests, localist agendas and personal ambition present challenges in aligning theory and practice. It is within this backdrop that it is argued that theory rarely matches day-to-day realities of regional change, and in the English case, LEPs allow researchers to investigate subtle formal and informal linkages located at the level of ‘place’ to facilitate greater understanding. Earlier analyses of leadership failed to acknowledge hitherto softer and invisible dimensions that facilitate trust and collaboration between leaders to move beyond competitive aspects and understand informal and voluntaristic linkages. Existing knowledge on city regions emphasised competition rather than collaboration and

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co-produced commitment as leaders attempt to build up social capital and institutions with sometimes limited success. They also develop interactive learning process between the different spatial ‘clusters of knowledge’, to facilitate dialogue between diverse stakeholders into a ‘whole system’, and if successful all can aid development. More recent research on regional and local leadership used ‘place’ as the unit of analysis (Benneworth et al., 2007; Gibney and Murie, 2008; Gibney et al., 2009) and connected with other research on cross-boundary working in public services (Huxham and Vangen, 2000; Sullivan and Skelcher, 2002; Vangen and Huxham, 2003). The image of a city, its surrounding region and adjacent regions from the perspective of the people who live and work there, and how the space is externally perceived impacts on the way in which the territory is, over time, socially and politically constructed. Lefebvre’s (1991) idea of space as a social product is useful, as it is vital to understand how social relations and struggles have shaped the terrain lest we forget that, as spaces of governance, city regions are political, as well as those administrative and managerial constructs embodied in existing crossboundary and partnership research on public services (Sullivan et al., 2009). Nowadays, the concept of city region is taken to mean a range of regional and local governance institutions and agencies for economic development and strategic formulation and implementation of policies on a broader metropolitan scale (Tewdwr-Jones and McNeil, 2000). Allmendinger (2003) and Haughton and Counsell (2004) argue that emerging systems for planning spatial strategies represented a highly contested policy terrain over which battles were continually negotiated. Earlier analyses of city regions assigned the central state a largely passive role, and reified city regions as creators of wealth creation and distribution, but in doing so they ignored deeper knowledge on the interests and motivations of socio-political actors, those leaders responsible for turning external stimuli into internal responses and opportunities. Moreover, as problems facing city regions are multifaceted and cannot be solved by leaders isolated in their own professional and organisational ‘silos’ they must be solved holistically by collaborative leadership. It is debatable whether cities, city regions or other spatial networks ever have autonomous agency in the face of national and global changes as policies are mostly predetermined at national state and EU levels. It is, therefore, important to understand how leaders in cities and city regions work together collaboratively, their hinterlands and other multi-scalar levels of governance work, and the inherent tensions within them. At all levels of governance, leaders form associational networks of connections, with interdependence between the various spatial levels. To appreciate a deeper understanding of formal, hierarchical and statutory frameworks and informal interactions and interconnections requires an understanding of the complex and continual interplay between agencies, individuals and communities, as collective leadership of ‘place’ becomes an imperative to effect change (Sotarauta, 2005, Collinge et al., 2010).

Sustaining collaborative leadership in city regions 41 A city region, as part of ‘territorial consolidation reforms’ is the official recognition that a municipality’s economic, cultural and demographic reach can extend beyond the political boundaries of the city and NLGN (2005: 3–5) called for the building powerful of city regions, with variable geometry of autonomous authorities across urban England to construct coalitions of local, regional and national authorities (NGLN, 2005: 5). City regions, it was argued, needed clear lines of leadership and active involvement of civil society to fulfil their objectives. The first wave of European territorial consolidation reforms had taken place during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, and were rooted in the economy of scale paradigm for better quality local services to be delivered more cheaply in larger local government units (Swianiewicz, 2010: 183–204). However, since the early 1990s the pace of territorial reform and consolidation have quickened with much experimentation, and in response to external forces, such as the break-up of Communism in Eastern Europe (Wollmann, 2010: 251–270), international competition (Hlepas, 2010: 223–250), conditions imposed by donors or the EU (Swianiewicz and Mielczarek, 2010: 291–311), or demands from levels below the nation-state (Vrangbaek, 2010: 205–222). Regardless of the stimulus for territorial consolidation, the most frequent motive, with the exception of England, had been an attempt to strengthen the role of local government to efficiently and effectively deliver a broader scope of public functions (Swianiewicz, 2010: 183–204). In many states the attempts at territorial reform have led to territorial fragmentation and a trade-off between functional efficiency and democracy (Mouritzen, 1989: 661–688). In England, Copus argued that territorial reforms have been introduced too easily, and the technocratic discourse of service provision entirely dominated democratic arguments to such an extent that the government had consistently ignored the will of the local community expressed in public consultations (Copus, 2010: 97–128). Opponents of territorial consolidation claimed that some of the problems of small scale can be overcome by voluntary cooperation, as in the case of Local Enterprise Partnerships, the main English focus of this chapter. Voluntary cooperation requires compromise on the particular interests of agencies involved, local leaders need to agree to cooperation that will sometimes affect their personal ambitions, and trust is a necessary precondition for voluntary arrangements to function successfully (Swianiewicz, 2010: 183–204). Good examples of cooperation are supported by strong incentives from either national or EU levels for partners to work together, but there is much variation across the EU states on how effective voluntary arrangements across regions, city regions and other multi-spatial levels have been. The first element of EU Cohesion Policy 2007–2013 was to speed up convergence of less and well developed regions, and for Europe to become the most competitive dynamic and knowledge-based economy, capable of sustainable economic growth and greater social cohesion, urban–rural differences must be bridged (Schucksmith et al., 2009: 1275–1289). In measuring Quality of Life indicators, cities are seen as the key economic drivers of growth, but a document ‘EU: The CAP towards 2020’ included the importance of improving the quality

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of life in rural areas and sustainable development, so that intangible and soft factors such as human capital, institutions and governance structures lay the foundation for developing hubs for service delivery (European Commission, 2003). Multilevel regional policies now include strategies to develop regional and rural areas and policy at EU and national levels, and the traditional redistributive approach of subsidy has been replaced by an investment approach aimed at improving the asset base and capacities of local communities (Ward and Brown, 2009: 1237–1244). Clearly leadership capacity is of central importance to the future of all ‘places’ across Europe. Entrepreneurial leaders, or ‘animateurs’ ‘bring to life, enliven, spark, create and produce’, and also have a strong commitment to building up social capital and institutional infrastructures. They have been identified in numerous and diverse international policy domains of health and education (Innotech, 2011), prisons (Animarts, 2003), homelessness (Communities Scotland, 2007), or economic development (Morgan, 1996; Indiana and California, 2011). As Putnam suggested, the informal dimension of innovation is where vital physical and human social capital facilitates trusting relationships and collaboration for effective social and economic development (1993). These softer elements are referred to as important ‘invisible factors’ (OECD, 1993) and facilitate ‘localised innovation clusters systems’ of leaders, animateurs and entrepreneurs (Liddle et al., 2012). The role of knowledge transfer and learning within regional innovation clusters has been comprehensively researched by Morgan (1996, 1997), and the availability of tangible and intangible resources and a localised processes involving animateurs who stimulate and organise for change, were found in Cumbria (Kalantardis and Bika, 2006). Innovation is defined by Lundvall (1992) as an interactive learning process as ‘animateurs’ create new knowledge and share tacit knowledge, and enterprise and innovation is in evidence at any spatial level (Liddle et al., 2012). As already shown, the informal and softer dimensions of innovation where vital physical and human social capital, or ‘invisible’ factors facilitate trusting relationships and collaboration lead to effective social and economic development (OECD, 1993). These localized innovation cluster systems (Liddle et al., 2012) harness informal, softer and invisible dimensions to facilitate trusting and collaborative leadership to overcome some of the more traditional, competitive aspects of social and economic development. Leaders need to be aware of the contextual and temporal embeddedness of policy and practice, and moreover recognize path dependency for linking pre-existing relationships and networks linked to past, present and future policy agendas. Within interactive learning processes between spatial levels or ‘clusters of knowledge’, leaders create new knowledge, but importantly share and draw together other tacit knowledge across the levels, between institutional, disciplinary and sectoral boundaries, and facilitate dialogue between diverse stakeholders. In this sense they not only ‘strategise’, in a formal sense to achieve transformation, but they informally broker different formal and voluntaristic relationships within, and between the institutional and individual milieux, and draw

Sustaining collaborative leadership in city regions 43 knowledge sets into a coherent and collaborative ‘whole system’. In doing so, they aim to engage diverse stakeholders in co-producing knowledge, draw on appropriate innovative policy and practice, and go beyond existing frames of reference to facilitate experimentation and exploration of innovative, networked approaches to collaborative social and economic development. Nowhere is this experimentation and exploration of innovation and collaboration more prevalent than in multi-spatial England, with LEPs as the latest manifestation. LEPs, like all voluntary partnerships need legitimisation, as they do not have an underpinning legislative basis. Moreover, voluntarism can slow down decision making as every input needs due consideration, and accountability to citizens is a perennial problem, as the direct link from elected members within a local authority setting is not so visible or apparent, and the links are unclear. A democratic deficit can increase the probability of corruption (Wollmann, 2007). Moreover, many LEP leaders do not have a democratic mandate from the constituents they represent. There are issues of potential overlap of activities between LEPs and the constituent agencies that members represent. These partnerships have led researchers to suggest that we are witnessing the demise of the ‘region’ and the re-reification of the ‘city region’ (Pike et al., 2011).

Regenerating city regions in England: demise of the region and rise of ‘city region’ local enterprise partnerships England, the focus of this chapter, is not alone among states seeking to regenerate depressed areas through a wide range of policy initiatives, as government interventions are aimed at overcoming market failure. Interventions typically included discretionary funding programmes that complemented mainstream public services but these programmes have not really been evaluated in any meaningful way (Tyler et al., 2011). During the period between 2007 (under a New Labour government) and the establishment of the Coalition government in 2010, Pike et al. suggested that the situation had been characterised by ‘ faltering regionalisation, and a period marked by a vacuum into which an array of spatial imaginaries had flowed – including pan-region, city regions and localisms’ (Pike et al., 2011). Furthermore, it was against a backdrop of the Coalition project for public deficit reduction and shrinking the state. There was a rationalisation of central government departments responsible for regional and local policy and a wholesale dismantling of New Labour’s ‘New Regional Policy’ institutional architecture, including the abolition of regional spatial strategies, winding up of RDAs and closure of Government Offices in nine regions. This had led to an emergent national strategy to rebalance development from the public to private sector, and to privilege local ‘places’ as sites for private sector growth to be fostered through LEPs. The introduction of LEPs led authors to suggest that sub-national policy in England is in a state of flux, especially when taken from an EU perspective, considering that regions are the bedrock of the EU’s territorial cohesion policy of ERDF. For Townsend and Pugalis (2011), LEPs are doomed to fail in providing a territorial–governance fix for the wicked issues that they have been conceived

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to address, mainly owing to the potential mismatch between a desire to govern ‘functional economic space’ and the conflicting politics behind the boundaries. Current understandings of how city regions stretch beyond local authority boundaries to join more than one city together in terms of strategic planning governance arrangements, are not only evident in LEPs, but have expanded to include the principles of more than the subregional city as ‘space’, by means of existing local strategic partnerships working together voluntarily, and aligning their activities to other partnerships. In England, immediately after the November 2006 UK Local Government White Paper1 Multi Area Agreements (MAAs) were first mentioned, and Local Area Agreements (LAAs) were introduced as part of the wider New Labour modernisation agenda for UK public services as agreements setting out priorities for a local area between central government, local authorities and other partners. Local Strategic Partnerships produced a Sustainable Community Strategy after engaging all partners in agreeing overall needs and priorities. MAAs and LAAs were examples of cross-boundary local/subregional and regional working aimed at establishing the best ‘spatial level’ to govern and develop areas with accountable, strong leadership and devolved powers. Many MAAs became part of transformed LEP bids, and some were successfully created after September 2010, but LAAs, and their successors CAA (Comprehensive Area Agreements), on the other hand, were abolished. A National Performance Framework (NPF) introduced by New Labour, was abolished by the Coalition government and many of the outcomes frameworks scrapped. However, propositions for place-based budgets and a successor framework to a Total Place (TP) initiative confirmed that place-based approaches to regeneration were at the heart of the establishment of LEPs across England, as the following detailed analysis reveals.

Leading LEPs LEPs are a new spatial fix, situated sub-nationally between national and local level, and created to enable local leaders to drive economic prosperity (Cable and Pickles, 2010; HM Treasury, 2010). They are expected to be private sector led, demonstrate firm local political support and deliver ‘added value’. The exact role of the thirty-nine successful LEPs is open to local determination, and as yet they have no direct funding or legislative basis, but they are being seen as the primary governance arrangement for economic and social development at sub-national level. They are encouraged to bid for funds from the £1.5 bn regional growth fund but bids did not receive any preference over bids received from other agencies or constellation of agencies. Leaders therefore developed LEP strategies within a context of shrinking public finances and a global economic downturn, with an expectation to lever in private finance to achieve these. A regional architecture that had been put into place by previous UK national governments is to be dismantled after April 2012, on the basis of three core policy narratives (i) Accountability, (ii) Geographical scope (size) and (iii) Efficiency and effectiveness (Pugalis, 2011). Regional Development Agencies, Government Offices, Regional Leaders’ Boards, and Integrated Regional Strategies were

Sustaining collaborative leadership in city regions 45 dismantled, and some, but not all, of their functions and responsibilities handed over to thirty-nine Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs). Some of the responsibilities formally carried out by RDAs and Government Offices such as inward investment, skills and European funding were not transferred in their entirety to LEPs; instead, they are clawed back to central government, whereas decision making on housing and planning is being taken back to local level, with Open Source Planning in Neighbourhoods. The ‘Big Society’, another Coalition policy gave communities greater rights to buy out assets and run their own neighbourhoods. Social and voluntary enterprises are emerging as potential deliverers of public services and facilitators of civic activism, community capacity and cohesion. LEPs (in competition with other bidders) applied for specific funding from a Regional Growth Fund, Growing Places Fund or lever in private/ commercial funds to finance activities. Furthermore, and to add to already complex sub-national governance arrangements, the Coalition recently announced the setting up of twelve Enterprise Zones in some LEP areas. These new arrangements present challenges to existing territorial settlements and processes of government, notably because thirty-nine non-elected LEPs must have 50 per cent of Board membership and Chair from private/commercial sectors. The remaining 50 per cent of the Board is made up of local authority, and constellations of other public service and wider interests (service class), though in reality most have a majority of private and local authority individuals. Hardly any LEPs have individuals representing societal sectors (third and community/ voluntary), but a few have ‘auxiliary’ agency involvement such as agricultural, university or utility interests (Harding, 1991). Some include elected local authority representatives, public officials, but by and large business representatives are self-appointed individuals; some with dominant business interests in an area and others encouraged by national government. There is no uniformity at all in either private, public or wider interests (auxiliary/third societal) and involvement on LEPs. A recent report showed that despite ‘nearly nine out of ten voluntary and community groups interested in being part of LEPs, only 15% had been approached’ (Townsend, 2010: 1–19). LEPs are part of a radical reform of public services, and a declaration by the UK Coalition government of decentralised decision making to enable local partners to identify their own social and economic development needs and produce appropriate strategies for their locality (the first tranche are a mix of regional or subregional level). Researchers at IPPR North, a Think Tank, suggest that LEPs should empower the sub-national level, further social justice, be an important element in a ‘functional economic area’, as well as being accountable to the locality (Johnson and Schmuecker, 2010). Rather than creating policy uniformity, and an administrative or policy logic, LEPs have the potential to increase diversity and fragmentation of English governance as they have such a strong inbuilt ‘enterprise’ or ‘business’ logic, which is rather different from previous structural reforms. National policymakers, in their attempts to respond to fiscal pressures and changing environmental factors such as maintaining economic competitiveness of ‘functional economic areas’ have become obsessed with the logic and language of enterprise

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to solve economic ills. The Prime Minister and senior Cabinet Ministers are also driving a Localism agenda, which may turn out to be quite at odds with the subregional arrangements in which LEPs are a central feature. LEPs as part of a structural reform and a drive towards subregional and more localist solutions have, at the time of writing, no mandatory/legal basis so are still part of the existing mechanisms of partnership, inter-municipal agreements and informal cooperation. As such, they have an in-built expectation on consensus building. In most of the LEP areas, former public–private partnerships (dominated by public leaders) have been re-engineered to match central government’s expectations on business-driven, multi-agency partnerships, and some have residual and inherent tensions, still unresolved. Undoubtedly LEPs capture the flavour of ‘the highly fragmented, networked shape of sub-national power structures’ (Pike, 1997: 3), and exemplify a poorly institutional context , increased non-democratic input, and a patchwork of governmental and non-governmental elites trying to regulate space (Mawson, 1997). They also confirm earlier views of the significance of business input (Davies, 1995). Task forces became a preferred and emergent model of adaptable and entrepreneurial organisation, and they thrived in uncertain conditions, as they developed, dissolved and reconstituted as new needs arose (Pike, 2000: 3). The LEP, businessdriven model of sub-national governance, with local authority and other state involvement takes much of its philosophy and structure from a mixture of the cityregion model and the flexible ‘Task Force’ model based on a ‘trouble shooting’ role for elites to tackle sub-national economic/social decline. Previous studies in the UK had suggested that business interests were assuming a greater role in growth coalitions, but were still less influential than in the US (Harloe et al., 1990; Harding, 1991: 295–317; Lawless, 1994: 1303–1324). This weakness of business was seen as a result of a more tenuous tradition of involvement, the leading role of local government, party politicisation of local issues, dominance of professional hierarchies, and limited local tax revenues to fund partnerships (Bassett, 1996: 539–555). However, in the 1980s, business interest became prevalent in urban development, and since 2010 LEPs have been afforded a more privileged role. Historically, from a UK perspective, it was not inevitable that business would achieve a privileged position, but the early evidence from LEPs and the Coalition’s drive for enterprise and business growth indicates that business interests are now taking centre stage in sub-national growth. LEPs include business, local authorities and a variety of auxiliary actors, but boundaries are less well defined and motivations more varied. Some display a high degree of congruence, a very strong sense of identity, with a common interest in a growth agenda. However a lack of formal mechanisms or institutional frameworks may create difficulties in holding LEPs together, but the strength of multi-agency leadership, the informal interactions and longevity of relationships provide a historical cohesion. Cooperation and morality are underlying principles in leadership, because multidimensional cooperation is not a natural act (Barnard, 1938), so social purpose as well as material gain and individual interests are crucial. LEPs have broad agendas, a

Sustaining collaborative leadership in city regions 47 shared vision that location is more than profit/investment-based activities, and non business elements of community governance are equally important. Cooperation does not necessarily depend on altruism, personal honour, common purpose, internalised norms or shared beliefs but in a set of values embodied in an existing culture. Where there is a long history of harmonious multi-agency engagement, LEPs have had some early successes, in particular those that were designated as Enterprise Zones, among those capable of successfully bidding from the RGF, Capacity Funds and Growing Places Funds. Informal networking is a socially embedded feature of political and cultural life, and LEPs assume that business, state and non-state leaders will put their differences to one side in the interests of ‘place’. The need to harmonise social, economic and environmental objectives remains at the core of city-wide objectives. We cannot assume that LEPs have strong political congruence, because members are drawn from different local authorities with different political persuasions, and a fragmented business class representing the interests of varied business organisations. Not all share the same party political allegiances, but they are still able to articulate locality interests. In some English LEP areas, there are perennial and intractable problems, but the overriding objective is to regenerate their locality, and choose appropriate projects to facilitate this. Leaders need to cooperate on the basis of relational contracts, based on trust, mutuality and collaboration, dependent on a series of repeated transactions over the long term (Kay, 1993). Despite all contributing to a LEP proposal and set of strategies, in the early stages there were no explicit rules, regulations or formality, because commitment and flexible responses were critical, and achieved by free flows of information. There was also an implicit, rather than explicit understanding that the partners must continue to cooperate in a series of repeated transactions for mutual benefit (Kay, 1993). Thus far, and after over twelve months in operation, there is little evidence to show that a large percentage of LEPs have moved beyond getting relevant partners to come together, set strategic ambitions and bid for funding. Indeed many commentators in the press point to the fact that national government hastily introduced LEPs without any clarity on what they would be expected to do, and how they would be able to achieve objectives. Moreover, the limited funding available at first frustrated their activities. All LEP leaders have agreed to improve local social, economic and environmental sustainability, and put the altruistic interests of ‘place’ above their own personal or sectoral interests, but there is patchy evidence that this has been achieved. LEPs were created to provide strategic leadership by setting out local priorities, and to help to rebalance the economy towards the private sector, as well as creating the right environment for business and enterprise. Their primary purpose is to develop a clear vision to drive sustainable private-sector led growth and job creation, and to help foster an integrated approach to transport, housing and planning. In doing so they are expected to work with central government to set out key investment priorities, including transport infrastructure and supporting or coordinating project delivery in their LEP functional area. LEP Boards were also coordinating proposals or bidding directly for the Regional Growth Fund,

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a Capacity Fund to build up research capacity, and a recently announced Growing Places Fund. They are expected to support high growth businesses, for example through involvement in bringing together and supporting consortia to run new growth hubs. In areas with a dominance of public sector activity, LEPs are expected to re-balance local economies with a mixed approach to investment and job growth. This is a highly contentious issue, given that some former industrial areas have limited private investment and many ‘wicked problems’ to deal with. Strategic housing delivery is a key task, including pooling and aligning funding steams to support this activity, but the capacity to coordinate and leverage funding from the private sector is an imperative. LEPs must also explore opportunities for developing financial and non-financial incentives on renewable energy projects and deliver other national priorities such as digital infrastructure. A Cables–Pickles Ministerial letter set an ambitious deadline of September 2010 for potential joint public–private proposals, which meant that partners had just seventy days to negotiate territorial alliances between stakeholders with a backdrop of local politics, histories of cross-boundary and multi-sector collaboration, business views and the logic of ‘functional economic geographies’ (Pugalis, 2011: 7). LEPs are by and large sub-national and subregional but there are regional LEPs. The different spatial levels are expected to work together in the interests of the functional area but it is up to elites to deal with cross-boundary conflicts and work across territorial units. One major problem is the link between Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs) at district and county levels and the exact nature of that linkage. LSPs brought together all key state, non-state and societal agencies in a given locality to allocate Neighbourhood Renewal Funds, Working Neighbourhood, Total Place and other funding streams, but apart from the latter, the others are being phased out. The ‘Big Society’ and ‘Localism’ agendas are taking over the agenda (contentious as they both are) and the role of LSPs in developing Sustainable Community Strategies is still hanging on by a thread, though without the vital funding streams to maintain their activities, and in the light of public sector cuts, many LSPs are being slimmed down and reconfigured to become either commissioning bodies, productivity panels or whole systems forums for achieving efficiency gains and ‘lean’ management approaches. LEPs are expected to act voluntarily to gain wider private investment leverage (Bassett, 1996: 539–555), and choose an appropriate action repertoire to focus on the critical factors for success, develop frames of reference, mobilise collective support, and broaden appeal beyond the business class (Lipsky, 1968: 1144–1158). LEPs also involve state and non-state actors so they occupy political space created by democratic gaps in governance, and pragmatism is expected to overcome ideology. Leadership is a crucial element in sub-national fortunes, and it is generally agreed that entrepreneurialism in all sectors is beneficial. The need to turn external stimuli into internal responses, and secure collective goals is central to explanation (Bennett and Krebs, 1994: 119–140), but we currently lack a proper understanding of the ways in which business or other leaders develop a ‘civic consciousness’ or what the diverse motives are that drive people to become involved. Existing

Sustaining collaborative leadership in city regions 49 research failed to recognise the complex interplays between state and non-state actors, added to confusion in ‘places’, by describing partnerships, some with similar objectives, operations and personnel, others with quite different compositions and objectives but increasingly overlapping (Wood et al., 1998: 10–27). The uncertainties and ambiguity in the internal and external environments means that business and other sectoral leaders need to adapt policies to local needs. As the context and space for collective action becomes enlarged, leaders need to seek to increase their autonomy, and although a business logic is driving the LEP agenda, and business has been granted privileged access to decision making, much business still gets done through a grapevine, informality and voluntaristic, loosely coupled networks and other partnerships to which LEP members belong (Kanter, 1994: 96–112). The governance and formation of LEPs was not predetermined by central government, except that they were expected to exemplify collaboration between business and civic leaders, normally including equal representation on the Board, and there was a strong steer towards working closely with universities and further education colleges. Central government made it clear that they had no intention of defining LEPs in legislation, instead they would be ‘loosely coupled’ and collaborative arrangements, with constitutional and legal status a matter for the partnership. The Board was required to have a prominent business person as Chair and ‘sufficiently robust governance’ structures and proper ‘accountability’ mechanisms in place for delivery. The key criterion for governance was that each LEP would be structured to meet local circumstances and opportunities. Despite the fact that each LEP Board submitted a LEP proposal outlining their proposed strategies for growth, many leaders continue to pursue very different and innovative approaches. Indeed the uncertainties and ambiguous mandatory guidance has left a vacuum for entrepreneurial action to fill. Flexibility had been crucial in formulating and elaboration of strategic agendas, drawing on organisational resources and information to implement chosen strategies. However, it is unclear as yet as to how successful LEP Boards have been in drawing on citywide or regional resources and capabilities. This is because few LEPs possess the information-sharing capacities that public agencies have and, without trusting relationships and legitimacy, it remains problematic as to how they will obtain the necessary resource base. At the same time, LEP boards need to manipulate symbols and images of growth to foster an ideology of transformation. They are all pursuing a growth-led strategy, as expected in the agreement from BIS/CLG to establish the LEP. No agreed definition on strategy in either private or public sectors has been established, and differences exist between the sectors despite strategic planning being used successfully in the public sector (Dodge and Eadie, cited in Bloom, 1986: 235–259). The fact that each LEP is chaired by a business representative and the emphasis is on economic growth ensures that commercial and enterprise agendas will be followed. The demise of the regional architecture and the sub-national, city region, ‘economic functional’ focus leaves LEPs as the ‘strategic’ unit for determining local needs.

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Lever in funds (FDI-RGF-EZCapacity Fund)

Strategic intelligence Environmental scanning Benchmarking with LEPs BIS-CLG lobbying

Pool agency resources

LEP Leadership and Network Development

Linking – Economy/social – Culture/sports/arts – Urban/rural – Spatial levels of governance

Research capacity building, project identification

Conflict resolution

Figure 3.1 LEP early activities.

The Coalition is expecting LEPs to carry out wide-ranging activities to improve their localities, and many are at the early stages of identifying and developing new projects and programmes. In the first few year of operation, most LEP Boards concerned themselves with establishing Board membership, allocating roles, creating structural and governance arrangements, drawing in relevant personnel, assessing resource allocations, bidding for Regional Growth Funds, Capacity Funds, and Growing Places Funds as well as applying for Enterprise Zone status. They are also expected to develop suitable and robust accountability mechanisms, and some are relying on the help and assistance of newly formed Local BIS teams and what remains of personnel from RDA and GO teams in this transitional phase. That being said, there is evidence as shown in Figure 3.1 of early activities being carried out (and these will grow as LEPs evolve, develop research capacity and lever in resources/assets). LEPs’ predecessors, the RDAs, were an expensive policy intervention. Between 1999/2000 and 2006/07 they spent £15.1 bn, and in the 2010 financial year they were due to spend £1.7 bn according to BIS, and this was reduced by £270 m as part of the Coalition’s £6 bn in-year efficiency savings and the pessimistic view is that they will not be getting much, if any money to spend in addition to existing local authority budgets (Larkin, 2010). There is no anticipation that LEPs will have RDA assets transferred to them, and existing RDA property and land may be sold off. LEPs are expected to leverage in private sector investment, and all had the opportunity to bid for pots of money from the £1.5 m Regional Growth Fund, a LEP Capacity Fund and Growing Places Funds. No central government funding was available for day-to-day running cost, but the LEP must be legally incorporated to take on any assets or deliver contracts. Some pre-existing Whitehall contracts may be handed to LEPs on a ‘case by case’ basis, but this will be dependent on having the necessary governance and legal structure to enable them to do this.

Sustaining collaborative leadership in city regions 51 They have limited funds and a remit, but are not yet intended to provide a set of Statutory Planning Authorities as substitutes for Regional Spatial Strategies, which are needed if the entire planning system is to continue (Townsend, 2010) and there are considerable uncertainties and potential risks as the Coalition plans to recalibrate sub-national responsibilities (Pearce, 2010). This is the main area where there is considerable ambiguity and confusion about how LEPs will operate. Thus far, limited information has been released from central government regarding management, monitoring and measurement of the performance of LEP activities, apart from some vague instructions that they must have robust governance and accountability mechanisms in place. We are promised that these issues will be contained in forthcoming legislation, but it is still far from clear who or which body will carry out internal or external inspection of activities. Local Authorities are still ‘responsible bodies’ for allocating what were formerly regeneration and other monies emanating under previous LSP regimes (Neighbourhood Renewal and Working Neighbourhood Funds), but there are very tenuous links between LSPs and LEPs, and without clarity embodied in legislation, the lines of accountability between local citizens–Local Authorities–LSPs–LEPs are confused. The potential demise of the Audit Commission, the dismantling of the National Performance Framework and the ‘unknowns’ on LEP accountability mechanisms and performance measurement mean that we can only speculate on the future. The ideas embodied in the ‘Big Society’ and ‘Localism’ agenda might also be applied to LEPs, and the Coalition may suggest that they develop their own ‘outcomes frameworks’ and that they could be accountable to any number of bodies or citizen forums. Without the necessary guidance and legislation, conjecture is the order of the day. Legislation is promised, so this may clarify a very confused governance picture. In the absence of legislation, it is clear that LEP Board members have no ‘real’ legitimacy to act on behalf of either civic society or the ‘locality’ or ‘place’, as their activities are relational rather than contractual, and the level of direct and indirect involvement varies between programmes/projects. For some activities LEPs will act as the commissioning rather than the delivery body so they may exert influence rather than power. This will rather depend on the governance and accountability mechanisms put into place. It will also depend on how their performance is measured, and by whom? From a moral basis, which guides behaviour, elites on LEPs (in theory, at least) are acting on behalf of the locality, and claim to have a social rather than financial gain as their main motive. Regularity of participation in decision making, the profile of actors and the ability to harness resources depends on many variables, not least legislative/mandatory or other obligations. Financial risk will be a consideration because, although resources committed to LEP activities are not of a personal nature, the lack of real funds means that they must harness tangible (private and public funds, staff, premises) and intangible (knowledge, information, stakeholder management, capacity for lobbying) resources to achieve their strategies. They must also seek legitimacy for their actions.

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The balance of direct and indirect power/interest will change over time, as specific projects/programmes are identified. Some leaders will remain powerful in some circumstances but become less powerful at other times. The unity, diversity, alliance or rifts between leaders will change in line with circumstances, and the level, nature and frequency of communication will impact on strategic direction. The LEP regimes will be sustained by their exclusionary nature, but they do have to maintain unity of purpose and frequent contact between leaders if survival is to be guaranteed. In the short life of LEPs key critical incidences and formal/informal interconnections have galvanised leadership support for strategic aims. Rhetoric and symbolism are used to remove obstacles to change and to convince detractors that a particular course of action is not only necessary, but vital. These activities legitimise activities and each LEP is developing symbolic projects appropriate to local needs. The power to limit the actions of leaders on any LEPs is in the hands of the Coalition government, and the Ministers of BIS and CLG, as they were responsible for determining whether or not a LEP should be created. Moreover, until (and whether) LEPs are able to lever in private finance they are dependent on Regional Growth Fund, Enterprise Zone, Capacity Fund and Growing Places monies, if successful, and any asset transfer from RDAs. There is an expectation that each LEP Board will seek to draw on other agency resources (state and non-state) but there is no guarantee that these funds will be available. This rather depends on how well the relationships between agencies develop and how easy the leaders find it to coordinate a variety of different funding streams. So far, LEP leaders seem, by and large, to have established good working relationships, but this is not to say that they are ‘conflict free’ as there are examples of high profile turf wars. Until specific legislation is forthcoming, and the Coalition has expressly argued that legislation is not required to regulate LEP activities, there is ambiguity on how LEPs will be measured or indeed how, and who will bring leaders to account for their actions (Acar and Robertson, 2004). In line with the Coalition government’s expectation, business is afforded a privileged role on LEPs and the business growth and enterprise agenda has been firmly set, though there is an expectation that business will work harmoniously with local authorities and other public/service and auxiliary agencies. In terms of legitimising their activities, most leaders on LEPs are self-appointed, and not elected by anyone. LEPs therefore sit outside the democratic system of electoral politics, and as such are not subject to the same democratic control as elected politicians. Strategies and agendas have been set by the Board of LEPs, and of course the composition of LEPs varies between different sub-national localities across England. In some cases the business voice dominates; others display more harmonious state and non-state relationships and strategies have been agreed by consensus; and in some, auxiliary elites/service elites have been allowed to influence the agendas/strategies. Nearly all LEPs are served by officers from the collaborating local authorities or chambers of commerce, who are able to draw on relevant skills, expertise and technical know-how from across the partnership. Most LEP proposals

Sustaining collaborative leadership in city regions 53 indicate that the Boards will commission delivery agencies to carry out specific projects, although until there is some clarity on funding, they may have to draw on the partnership agencies for delivery of existing or proposed programmes.

Conclusion: are LEPs a new form of collaborative leadership? Leadership of ‘places’ is not new in the English system, and all manner of institutional ‘fixes’ have been attempted over the past thirty years. LEPs do allow us to examine the complex interplays between spatial levels and between agencies, individuals and communities, and demonstrate that collective leadership is an imperative. However, leaders need also to negotiate their way through formal, hierarchical and statutory frameworks and informal interactions and interconnections. An analysis of leadership of LEPs allows us to uncover some of the hitherto invisible and softer elements of the change processes. LEPs are privileging the business community but are expected to draw in other agency elites to determine strategic direction. They are therefore dissimilar to partnerships preceding them in the English system. These partnerships are at an early stage of evolution in England, but a major difference between LEPs and more established partnerships is a decidedly business and market logic, whereas other partnerships were more welfarist in nature. This shift in focus will add to potential conflicts between the economic and social/voluntary objectives and make it even more important that leaders seek legitimacy and build trust for their actions, taken, on behalf of ‘places’. It will be difficult for communities to challenge decisions made on their behalf if they have no involvement in those decisions. Moreover, LSPs have been starved of public finance, so the ideas of ‘localism’ may ring hollow, and it is questionable how effective LEPs can be in co-producing solutions to perceived problems if other voices have no direct involvement in decisions that will have impacts on their ‘places’. The Coalition has declared that there will be no legislation to frame the activities of LEPs, relying instead on market solutions and collaboration on objectives to frame their work. However, without the necessary accountability or conflict resolution mechanisms in place, there will be tensions between economic and social objectives. Legitimacy for actions and building trust are the keys to bringing about ‘place-based’ changes. LEPs are voluntaristic, pragmatic arrangements that encourage locally contingent solutions for localised problems, and this new localism is an attempt to devolve power and resources from the central state to sub-national partnerships and structures to deliver what works (Coaffee and Headlam, 2007) However, they are deficient in democratic terms, as well as lacking real power and capacity to exercise any serious influence on the state apparatus (Geddes, 2006), but rhetorically at least they are an espousal by the Coalition government of bringing state and non-state actors together in localities to identify priorities and effect economic/social and cultural transformation. The lack of explicit funding and the expectation that private capital can make up the shortfall in state funding of

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services restricts their capacity to be effective. LEPs, as regimes of ‘autonomous, self-organising governance networks’, part of the mix of market, hierarchy and network of contemporary governance, are deeply problematic and flawed arrangements, because they need to harness a host of tangible (private and public funds, staff, premises) and intangible (knowledge, information, stakeholder management, capacity for lobbying) resources to achieve their strategies. There is limited evidence so far that they have done any of these. They must, above all else, seek the necessary legitimacy for their actions. Leadership of ‘place’ presents challenges across policy and spatial boundaries, not least the lengthy and complex supply chains, vertically between different tiers of governance, but also horizontally as spheres of influence across and between policy arenas. Seeking legitimacy for actions and drawing together various policy agendas should be aimed at building confidence in ‘places’. Any escalation in social problems has the potential for greater conflict/unrest, so leaders’ decisions need support from those people affected by decisions. Building trust is perhaps the greatest challenge faced by leaders, with so many groups still excluded from political processes (Liddle, 2010: 657–664). In a rapidly changing twenty-first century, as policy shifts, situations change and fragmentation and uncertainty escalate, it will become even more difficult for leaders to seek answers to seemingly intractable problems, so maintaining a strategic overview will be essential. An integrated approach and place-based thinking are crucial for managing city regions. Creative leadership spaces such as those exemplified by LEPs will be ever more important to drive transformation but identifying clearly agreed objectives and effective deployment of shrinking resources will challenge all those occupying ‘places’. No longer can the traditional heroic leaders of the past choose from a range of solutions to ‘place-based’ ills, because a different type of ‘leadership of place’ will be necessary. Leadership is much more visible, and communities have greater access and are less tolerant of leaders’ mistakes. Building confidence in leaders, through collective/distributed leadership of ‘places’ could rebuild trust and democratic engagement. LEPs have the capacity to bring together voluntaristic and collaborative leadership to move beyond a traditional competitive agenda of city regions and establish sustainable ‘places’ but there is a danger that they remain as ‘spatial imaginaries’ as defined by Pike et al. (2011) without the necessary resource base, information, democratic legitimacy and trust to solve some of the very real ‘wicked issues’ in the English governance system. As primarily self-appointed and central government nominated leadership boards, LEPs have not yet established either their credibility or had time to implement any of their strategic aims and objectives. They are frustrated by, on the one hand a national rhetoric of growth, enterprise and investment but on the other hand, an overarching economic and political context of doom, decline and despondency. Furthermore as a recent report suggested: A handful of LEPs are doing well, but many are struggling. Some are too small, some too big, and without the necessary empowerment, resources, powers and

Sustaining collaborative leadership in city regions 55 freedoms; they are unable to overcome local politics and sensitivities to work in partnership for a wider area. (Bolton and Coupar, 2011: 2) So, despite all their best efforts to revive the fortunes of their city regions, it might be argued that sustainable leadership of places cannot be achieved within a continuing policy tension of continuity versus discontinuity, or more importantly within shifting sands of sustainability versus unsustainability. Governments around the world, including England, are facing unprecedented fiscal pressures; many problems remain intractable, so future collaborative leadership may have to face ‘steady state’ rather than growth and expansion. One critical question remains: Are business-driven LEPs the correct institutional fix as England, and Western Europe, enters an escalation in austerity and retrenchment, with the inevitable retreat of the state? Surely the answer to this problem will point some way towards the success or otherwise of LEPs in bringing about any sustainable change. If entrepreneurial leaders can move beyond existing frames of reference, and develop co-produced innovative and experimental new angles on traditional problems, then perhaps their worth might be significantly enhanced.

Note 1

The Government’s White Paper for local government in England – Strong and Prosperous Communities – provided the broader context for LAA development.

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4

Leadership and scale Frans J. G. Padt

This is the new politics. Personal responsibility. Not leaving it to others. I am my planet’s keeper. (Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, July 2007)

Introduction The common portrayal of a leader is that of the ‘Machiavellian’ type. For Niccolò Machiavelli (1468–1527), the city-state of the Florentine Republic (centred on Florence) represented the common good and he considered this city worth fighting for. In his eyes courage, devotion to public service, military discipline and statecraft were necessary leadership qualities. Likewise, regional leaders might feel they have to ‘fight’ for their region. In this chapter I demonstrate that a Machiavellian type of regional leadership creates tension with sustainable development that is multi-scalar by its very nature. I seek for a leadership that calls for sustainability at different scales, even if that leadership is deployed at a regional scale. Sources of inspiration have been literature on ecological citizenship, ecofeminism and the politics of scale as well as a few regional case studies. The layout of the chapter is as follows. First, I demonstrate how Machiavellian interpretations of regional leadership are deeply embedded and taken for granted in a forceful ‘managerial’ discourse of the state and how this is problematic for sustainable development. Here I draw upon earlier studies on regional planning in the Netherlands and the USA (Padt and Luloff, 2011). Second, I elaborate on how leaders can take another route by taking personal responsibility for sustainability as a political ideal, not only for the region but in a wider ‘ecological space’. I argue that leaders are not only responsible for ‘their’ region but also for other people further away and of future generations. This makes regional development a means for sustainable development rather than a goal in itself. Two examples illustrate this point. Third, I develop practical research recommendations on such kind of ‘wider’ leadership. The final section is a synthesis and an evaluation.

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The Managerial State, regional development and leadership In the 1980s and 1990s major public sector reforms took place in many OECD countries in response to the neoliberal agenda of reducing the role of central government. Central government delegated its authority into several ‘directions’: downwards to regions, upwards to transnational organizations, and outwards to public organizations (March and Olson, 1989; Pierre and Peters, 2000). This new strategy indicated adaptation of the state to structural changes on the long term and a reinforcement of state power (Clarke and Newman, 1997: 30; Pierre and Peters, 2000: 94). Clarke and Newman (1997) give a detailed account of how this strategy has led to a ‘Managerial State’ which they define as ‘a state that delegates – through a variety of means – its authority to subaltern organizations that are thus empowered to act on its behalf’ (Clarke and Newman, 1997: 25, original italics). This dispersal of duties, responsibilities and power has the effect of empowering different agents to ensure policy delivery. At the same time, they subject these agents to a range of direct government controls such as audit, inspection, funding regimes and the threat of removal of powers for ‘failing’ organizations (see also Newman, 2005). ‘The capacity of these agents to act or to make choices is not their intrinsic property but an effect of their relationship with the state in which they are both empowered and disciplined’ (Clarke and Newman, 1997: 29). The problem here is that the state tends to treat public management in isolation from politics and the legislature (Bovaird and Löffler, 2003: 13, 46). This takes its toll on democratic values and processes (Dawson and Dargie, 2003). To better understand the effects the Managerial State has on regional sustainable development I will now briefly explain the intellectual sources it rests upon. Public choice theory is by far the most influential source. Like neoliberalism, public choice theory is based on neoclassical economy, but now applied to the public sector (Frederickson and Smith, 2003). Both neoliberals and public choice theorists sing the same tune in opposing the active Keynesian state. The underlying anthropology of public choice is the homo economicus, the economic man who makes rational choices and is driven by a desire to maximize personal gains, whether it be citizens, politicians or civil servants. Scholars developed public choice in the 1970s, mainly in principal–agent theory and transaction cost economics. Principal–agent theory is derived from private sector practices and deals with the question how a principal can monitor an agent’s behaviour by creating incentives. The agent undertakes various tasks on behalf of the principal, and in exchange, the principal agrees to reward the agent in a mutually acceptable way (Kamensky, 1996). The classical examples of principal–agent relationships include the doctor–patient, the lawyer–defendant and the employer–employee. In public policy public agencies are viewed as a means of allocating decision-making capabilities in order to provide public goods and services responsive to the preferences of individuals. In turn, government will become more sensitive towards the preferences of the citizens–consumers. This is more than a bureaucratic government ever would be able to achieve, according to the theory (Denhardt and Denhardt, 2003: 10, 20).

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A notorious application of principal–agent theory is that the agent’s actions must be controlled by contracts and incentives. Transaction cost economics (the second strand in public-choice theory) recognizes the importance of authority relations. It sees markets and hierarchies as efficient arrangements for the production of goods and services. For example, if transaction costs within governmental organizations for public services are high, it is preferable to contract them out. Public-choice theory has inspired the Managerial State in its ambitions to devolve power from central government to semi-public administrative bodies outside the public service (the so-called quangos, quasi governmental organizations). These smaller units (the agents) have relative freedom to manage with support from senior appointments made by the government (the principal). The Managerial State has been inspired by other intellectual sources as well (see Padt, 2007 for an extensive explanation). Among them is the communitarian movement. The communitarian movement favours small units of governing over large-scale society and government, whereas individuals need to have their selfinterest modulated by less selfish commitment to the community (Pierre and Peters, 2000). This view is evident in modest applications of the communitarian logic in governance practices such as interactive policymaking and self-governance. The Managerial State appreciates communitarian ideas as an efficient way of governing. A third source is the private sector. It was said that ‘government should be run like a business’. On the one hand the Managerial State took over rational and mechanistic management styles by using techniques such as management by objectives, performance measurement and accounting, public sector marketing and rational–strategic management. On the other hand it took over a more humanistic management style, including the motivation of personnel, quality management, cutting the ‘red tape’ and public leadership. In colloquial terms the steering approach of the Managerial State has been called ‘steering, not rowing’ (Osborne and Gaebler, 1992). The Managerial State (as a principal) steers society (using business-like techniques) and empowers communities (the agents, using incentives) to ensure policy delivery. This new steering approach has been highly influential in regional development, but also problematic. Two examples in the USA and the Netherlands (Padt and Luloff, 2011) illustrate this. Regional development In the USA, federal government launched the so-called RC&D programme in 1962. Programme objectives address: improvements to the quality of life, including social, economic and environmental concerns; continuing prudent use of natural resources; and strengthening local citizens’ ability to utilize available sources of assistance through the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and other federal agency partnerships (USDA, 2006: 23). As of today there are 375 RC&D areas serving more than 85 per cent (2,696) of US counties and over 77 per cent of the population (RC&D website). Each has a RC&D Council consisting of local governmental officials, farmers, ranchers, civic leaders and business leaders to

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make plans and realize projects. Evaluations reveal programme participants were positive about it (NCRS, 2006). They appreciated its flexibility for addressing local issues, establishing projects and meeting local community needs. Padt and Luloff (2009) examined the Southern Alleghenies RC&D area in detail. This study showed that the RC&D Council works with community groups, individuals, local governments, businesses, and industry; it has more than fifty partners and sponsors for projects throughout the Southern Alleghenies, exceeding several million dollars. At the same time, federal government has increasingly exercised managerial control of the programme. It mandates compliance with specific RC&D programme requirements and the NRCS Strategic Plans 2005–2010. It encourages collaboration in the RC&D areas by giving a higher rank when multiple organizations apply for a grant. Furthermore, it allocates budgets to RC&D areas on the basis of performance, using a nationwide information and management system containing specific project information. Finally, federal government increasingly considers RC&D an implementation ‘tool’ for delivering federal policies because of RC&D’s expertise and decentralized organizational structure. This leads to the federal government’s common practice of establishing constraints and parameters local communities could not change; that is, it foisted unfunded mandates upon them. In the Netherlands, national government launched the so-called Reconstruction Programme in 2005. Several reconstruction areas were established to cope with the high concentrations of livestock farming, the risk of veterinary diseases and environmental pollution in these areas. As with RC&Ds, a reconstruction area has a Reconstruction Council consisting of local governmental officials, farmers, ranchers, civic leaders and business leaders. Over the years these councils have engaged local organizations and local people in developing plans and projects. The Gemert-Bakel reconstruction area was studied in detail (Padt, 2006 and 2007). Dutch central government has increasingly exercised managerial control on the programme by using a ‘performance contract’. This contract contains a set of detailed goals for nature, agriculture, recreation, agriculture, soil management, and water management that the reconstruction areas have to comply with. These goals followed from national strategic plans and were difficult to change. Furthermore, provincial authorities are the formal contract partners in the contract and in charge of executing the contract. As a result, these authorities dominate local coalitions in the reconstruction areas. Also, like in RC&D areas, budgets are allocated on the basis of performance, namely, provincial goal attainment. Doing this makes it easy for the national government to stop money flow without considering local circumstances. Finally the contract acts as a set of rules that, together with supportive legislative acts, limits the room to manoeuvre at a regional level. In both cases we observed increasingly managerial control of regional development. This managerial control is, however, not simply imposed on these regions. Rather, an elite of local politicians, local entrepreneurs, professionals, local media and environmental groups appeared to be partners for central government in both

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the USA and the Netherlands case. In our study we compared this with the ‘local growth machines’ that drive real estate development in urban areas (Logan and Molotch, 1987). Leadership How does all this relate to leadership? At this stage I want to make three observations. First, sustainable development is a political enterprise by its very nature, a ‘wicked’ problem that requires enduring political dialogue and deliberation on facts and values (Hisschemöller and Hoppe, 1996; Bell, 2005). The Managerial State, on the contrary, seeks to avoid political dialogue and instead turns to better management as the universal solution (Frederickson, 1996: 268). This offers a problematic situation for regional leaders because they are mangled between ‘complex dialogue’ and ‘easy management solutions’. Second, the Managerial State shifts the burden of sustainable development to regions and their leaders (see also Smith, 2008: 30). The quote at the beginning of this chapter might suspiciously be interpreted in this way: the state calls for personal responsibility to avoid making tough policy choices itself (Frederickson, 1996: 268; Bell, 2005: 36). For regional leaders this is also problematic because sustainable development by definition requires a multi-scale effort by a multitude of actors. Third, managerial practices have increasingly displaced professional practices. The professionals, the handicraft leaders in the region, have lost influence and their position in the Managerial State because of changes in language and values (Newman, 2001; Dawson and Dargie, 2003). Instead, the managerial leader is celebrated as a hero having the courage and qualities to arrange public choices and making ‘good deals’ despite complex and often failing administration. This is the typical image of the ‘Machiavellian’ leader: that of the charismatic, antitraditional, innovative, aggressive, powerful and coercive (Terry, 1995, from Behn, 1998). In short, regional leaders run the risk of being ‘governmentalized’ when (and in order to be) successful. This can lead to exactly the opposite of what these leaders want to achieve. Rather than giving ‘voice’ to the citizenry they encourage ‘exit’ (Hirschman, 1970). This is fatal for achieving sustainability. This was a situation the regional leaders in the Southern Alleghenies and Gemert-Bakel were very aware of. They told of a constant struggle to keep their status and image as an independent organization to retain trust from the local people. They balanced between the government’s and the region’s interpretation of regional development. Newman (2005) called this the ‘micro-politics of modernization’. This process refers to ‘small, everyday acts of generating meanings, appropriating and reworking governmental discourses and selectively coupling them to other frameworks of meaning’ (Newman, 2005: 731). In our RC&D study we correspondingly concluded that ‘[. . .] leaders must be viewed as active and creative subjects capable [. . .] to address the higher-order needs of a community within the managerial project’ (Newman, 2005: 455).

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In a follow-up study (Horlings and Padt, 2011) we explored this aspect in more detail. We concluded that the personal characteristics of a leader are a resource for stimulating positive behaviour towards sustainable development, for building ‘green’ networks and to bring about institutional change. These personal characteristics do not just relate to charisma (a commonly alleged feature of successful leadership) but go ‘deeper’. They include inner motives and values, the inner desire to make the world a better and more sustainable place. In the next section I explore this specific value-dimension of leadership (because it is relevant to scale as I will demonstrate).

The right, the good and the virtuous So far I hope to have shown that managerial leaders how to both empower and discipline citizens at the same time to ensure policy delivery. Government has shaped and legitimized such leadership under the banner of neoliberalism and has used principal–agent theory, communitarianism and managerialism as its main intellectual sources. An alternative form of leadership was identified, characterized by inner motives and values, that transcends the typical managerial approach. Hay (2010: 167) states such leaders have a value system that provides an ‘internal compass’ that helps to convert followers in the quest for sustainability. This is a nice way to put it but the question arises: how does this internal compass work? Or more precisely: how can ‘value-based’ leadership contribute to sustainable development? For a reflection on this question I will briefly enter into the theory of normative ethics. Normative ethics Normative ethics is concerned with moral norms. A major question in normative ethics is: What is the right or wrong thing to do? How should one act ‘here and now’? There are two main approaches to an answer. One emphasizes rules (deontology, is this action right?) and the other, consequences of action (consequentialism, will it do good?). Both seek to identify universal principles that can be applied in any moral situation. Sustainable regional development can be considered such a moral situation in which leaders have to make (among others) moral decisions. Deontology is the study of the nature of duty and obligation. The most wellknown duty theories emphasize moral duty (Kant’s categorical imperative) and the duty to respect one’s other rights. Rights are commonly discerned in substantial rights and procedural rights such as listed in Boxes 1 and 2 (from Greiber, 2009: 13, 15). Box 1 List of substantive rights: • Non-discrimination and equal protection of the law • Right to life • Prohibition of force and child labour

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Freedom of movement and residence Right to privacy and home life Right to property Freedom of religion Right to an adequate standard of living (food, medicine, clothing, housing, water) Cultural rights Minority rights Right to safe and healthy working conditions Freedom of assembly and expression/opinion Right to health Right to privacy Right to self-determination of peoples (controversial) Right to a certain quality of environment (controversial; certain aspects of this right have a global consensus, such as safe drinking water, and nutritious food).

Box 2 List of procedural rights: • Access to information • Participation in decision making • Access to justice/judicial review • Due process/fair hearing • Substantive redress • Non-interference with international petitions (where applicable). These rights are also very relevant for regional development, but are often only superficially addressed (Quental et al., 2011: 21–22) and come off worst in the Managerial State with its short-term emphasis on ‘efficiency’. Controlling the political process and building consensus between stakeholders is more important for managerial leaders than a public and political debate about rights, even to the extent of animosity towards democratic institutions (Christensen and Lægreid, 2002; Denhardt and Denhardt, 2003). Moreover, quick promises to citizens and stakeholders can mislead them and increase distrust against the state. Tonkens (2003) illustrates this point very wittily: Does the neighborhood want a seesaw? It’ll be there within the week. Does the neighborhood want a slide? It can be arranged. No problem. Everyone in the area is happy. Somebody’s listening to us at last! Does the neighborhood demand more safety measures? Well folks, that’s very important, of course and you’re quite right. We’ll get to work on it, but it is a long drawn out thing and of course you’ll all have to pull your weight too. Which comes across to the neighborhood as: ‘nobody ever listens to us anyway!’. (Tonkens, 2006: 26, translation FP)

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The most common form of consequentialism is utilitarianism. This theory considers actions right if they are useful or for the benefit of a majority. More specifically, the theory says that the aim of action should be the largest possible balance of pleasure over pain or the greatest happiness of the greatest number (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). Utilitarianism has been highly influential in classical economics and public choice theory (see above). Applied to regional planning utilitarianism aggregates individual preferences, for example by using cost– benefit analysis (Alexander, 2002). The Managerial State considers such an aggregation adequate for making decisions, thereby making the ‘public interest’ almost redundant (Alexander, 2002: 234–235). Arranging public choices, making good deals, is the best a public manager can do. Denhardt (2004) critically states: Underlying the market model of government is an article of faith, a belief that the free play of market forces will bring the self-interested participants – individuals, social groups, agencies, firms – into an equilibrium that represents in some way the maximum achievable social good. (Denhardt, 2004: 41) To conclude on this, the Managerial State with its emphasis on consensus on achievable solutions, short-term efficiency and making deals is not supportive of sustainable development for two reasons. First, sustainable development is a global enterprise and second it is a moral enterprise. The challenge for regional leadership is to take people at other places and of future generations and perhaps even the non-human world into account. Moreover, the private sphere needs to be included because actions in the private domain (e.g. lifestyle decisions) have consequences for sustainable development. However, just because of this ‘scale problem’ the deontic and utilitarian approaches are more difficult to apply. As for the utilitarian approach, it becomes more difficult to mark out the ‘majority’ and what ‘benefits’ this majority. As for the deontic approach, conflict arises when it comes to defining and implementing rights. And precisely these rights are becoming more and more important in the sustainability debate. Quental et al. (2009) observe that ‘Sustainability concerns shifted from an emphasis on pollution and availability of natural resources to a more balanced position that puts human and social development – particularly freedom and the expansion of individual capacities – at the center’ (p. 27). At an abstract level people may agree on such rights (as many international declarations indicate) but conflict arises between cultures (Appiah, 2006) and between citizens (Bell, 2005) regarding their interpretation in concrete day-to-day life. Dobson makes an even more fundamental point (see also Smith and Pangsapa, 2008: 27): environmental rights and duties towards the environment do exist and should be followed but their relationship is not reciprocal. Regional leaders can accomplish things for the global environment without direct benefits for the region (e.g. promoting zero-net energy buildings or fair trade). The quote at the beginning of this chapter might be interpreted in such an optimistic way (although in managerial terms this would not be considered ‘efficient’).

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A brief example from the Netherlands illustrates this (Horlings, 1996; Padt et al., 2008). In 1983, a group of young idealistic dairy farmers in the Alblasserwaard (a traditional polder in West Netherlands) started a local Sustainable Agriculture Initiative. They wanted to show solidarity with farmers in the developing world and they took personal responsibility for them by making their farm more sustainable. The farmers started with improvements of the mineral and water flows and the use of energy and pesticides. Later they shifted to local cheese production (a forgotten tradition in the area) and landscape management. Through doing this they wanted to lower their ecological footprint. In 1994, the farmers’ initiative was formalized in the cooperative society Den Hâneker. After that, things began to change. Under the leadership of Den Hâneker, twenty-six regional partners entered into a contract to realize a series of regional nature and landscape goals and to strengthen the regional economy. As a result, local development became more important and the original solidarity with the developing world was pushed into the background. The contract was extremely successful and was celebrated nationally and in Europe as a model for regional development. Ten years later the contract was discontinued and the local municipalities took over the initiative. This example teaches us how the original ideas about global sustainability and personal responsibility were killed by a managerial approach (the contract). The subject of personal responsibility brings us to the field of virtue ethics, a third strand in normative ethics. Virtue ethics places less emphasis on learning rules (the deontic strand) or the costs and benefits of action (utilitarianism) but instead stresses the importance of virtue, i.e. developing good habits of character and practical wisdom (phronesis) that will respond to the needs of others in an appropriate way. Smith and Pangsapa (2008) observed a reappraisal of virtues in the literature to address the many difficulties created by environmental problems: The return to virtues in ethical and political discussions on the environment [. . .] offers interesting ways of rethinking the meaning of obligation. where the cultivation of the character of the self acts as a route for the regard of others. (Smith and Pangsapa, 2008: 62, original italics) I will now elaborate on two concepts that address virtue in an environmental context. One is ‘ecological citizenship’ (Dobson, 2003) and the other the ‘politics of care’ (MacGregor, 2006). Ecological citizenship Dobson’s ideas depart from the idea that in the quest for sustainable development rights and duties are no longer reciprocal (see above). Such a notion undermines classic notions of citizenship that implies just that: the citizen has rights in respect of the state, but these rights entail reciprocal obligations (Dobson, 2003: 45). In this manner citizenship is perceived as a bargain or a ‘contract’ between the citizen and the political community, the nation-state (ibid.) and, applied to

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regional development, the regional leader is assigned to mediate in this contract. Dobson introduces the concept of ‘ecological citizenship’ as an alternative that is ‘explicitly non-contractual and has nothing to do with bargains between citizens and the political community’ (ibid.) and rather takes personal responsibility as guidance. An ecological citizen is a ‘citizen of an environment’ (Bell, 2005: 24, 30) rather than of the nation-state. Dobson also opposes the classic idea of citizenship that is territorial and limited to the public sphere and excludes the private sphere. Territoriality is important for classic citizenship because citizen’s membership, rights and duties usually apply to a defined, usually contiguous, political space, most often the nation-state (or in Machiavelli’s time the city-state). However, civic space may have no determinate size but be produced by the activities of individuals and groups. Furthermore, Dobson remarks that the division between public (arena) and private (household) goes back to Aristotle (polis/oikos) but that this distinction excludes private activities that may also encompass citizenship such as lifestyle decisions and raising children. For this reason Dobson includes ‘feminine’ values such as care and compassion explicitly in his ecological citizenship concept (see also below). Dobson’s ecological citizenship thus is non-reciprocal, non-territorial and encompasses public and private spheres and feminine values. Dobson asks the question: What are the moral standards for an ecological citizen that regulate right and wrong conduct towards sustainability? For Dobson the first virtue of ecological citizenship is justice, or more specifically, the just distribution of ecological space (Dobson, 2003: 132). Dobson argues that Western societies have gained wealth but left behind a huge ecological footprint across the world, which is unjust. It extends into the future and across territories. It is our duty to pay back to address other people’s rights. Lowering our footprint should be part of ecological citizenship. It is our duty as citizens to lessen our ecological footprint. Dobson thus does not reject the idea of rights and duties but only the idea that these are reciprocal or ‘contractual’, the very idea of doing something and demanding something in return. For him justice is a universal principle that should guide one’s actions. He considers it important for ecological citizens (and we can add leaders here) to develop a moral character aimed at doing justice (virtue ethics) but hastens to add that this should lead to political action. Sustainable development requires political leadership (‘green politics’) and just developing a moral character is a too voluntaristic interpretation of leadership. Dobson illustrates this point by making a difference between the Good Samaritan and the Good Citizen: ‘We must, if you will, distinguish between the Good Samaritan and the Good Citizen, or between the obligations that it would be benevolent to fulfill and those that it would be wrong not to fulfill’ (Dobson, 2003: 47). What Dobson means here is that being obliged to do justice is a political rather than a moral obligation (Smith and Pangsapa, 2008: 71). This echoes John Rawls’ principles of justice which include a statement that respect for nature is one of the great ‘political virtues’ that make a constitutional democratic regime possible. Consequently, concerns about the environment are based on recognition of obligations of other (including future and further away) citizens (Hailwood, 2005: 48).

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The politics of care Dobson draws upon ecofeminist literature to make another point. He explores care and compassion as other candidates for virtue (care ethics is a variant in virtue ethics). The idea is that these are feminine virtues that are predominantly manifested in the private sphere. Examples include lifestyle decisions, raising children and environment-friendly house-holding which are all relevant for sustainable development. For this reason Dobson considers care and compassion important ‘political virtues’ for ecological citizenship. MacGregor, in her book Beyond Mothering Earth (2008) considers this a ‘dangerous’ approach. Taking care and compassion as feminine virtues can lead to injustice in itself according to the author. Three examples may illustrate this point. First, there is the risk of shifting the burden of ecological citizenship to the household, and in most cases, women who traditionally run the household. To prevent this from happening a more equal distribution of tasks is needed according to MacGregor. Second, women who get politically active are taken seriously as ‘early warners’ but less so as they want to get politically active in the man-dominated public arena. They are referred to as grassroots women, housewife activists and ‘re/sisters’ who work voluntarily to fight against the powers that jeopardize life (MacGregor, 2006: 57). These women often start local protest movements and they are celebrated for that but most often (white) men take over the initiative when it gets more formal. Third, keeping women at home deprives them of political awareness and political learning. For these reasons, ecofeminists have redefined citizenship as a political project that contributes to women’s ‘liberation’ and political agency (Lister, 1997; from MacGregor, 2008: 97). MacGregor advocates the use of care as a ‘practice and ethic’ in addressing social and environmental justice (MacGregor, 2008: 125) but critically states that it requires tremendous cultural, social and economic change to make it work in practice. Now, caring is often just a metaphor and a feel-good buzzword, particularly popular in public relation campaigns rather than a political–ethical principle for sustainable development (Barry, 1996; from McGregor, 2008). For this reason the author wants to replace the discourse of ‘mothering’ with a ‘politics of care’ that is de-gendered and political. MacGregor states it very clearly: In practice, this might mean that feminist ecological citizens can demand public recognition of care as a political ideal for which society as a whole must be collectively responsible and, recognizing that the association of women/mothers and care is dangerous, refuse to be the only ones responsible for putting it into practice. (MacGregor, 2008: 221) Here leadership comes in because regional leaders can make it possible to bring an ethics of care from the household level to the forefront of the public political debate on sustainability. This brings us to the next section.

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Phronesis For Dobson, justice takes precedence over care and compassion as a virtue of ecological citizenship (Dobson, 2003: 133). But Smith and Pangsapa (2008) argues there are many other virtues and that ‘we should not treat one kind of virtue – compassion or justice – as the basis of all other virtues’ (Smith and Pangsapa, 2008: 62). Examples of other virtues include simplicity, benevolence, commitment, integrity, empathy, excellence, helpfulness, humour, and wonder (among many others). The key point is that notions of virtue are not simply imposed (like justice or care, FP), they are cultivated as deliberate attempts to live up to regard for others (whether they are our adversaries or our friends). Fulfilling obligations is also an honourable act of self-regard, completing one’s side of an agreement, living up to a mission, feeling good about one’s reputation, being a ‘good human being’ or leading a flourishing life. (Smith and Pangsapa, 2008: 85) Here we are at the heart of virtue ethics, explained above as developing good habits of character and practical wisdom (phronesis) that will respond to the needs of others in an appropriate way. Phronesis seems highly relevant to leadership, so let me give a more extended definition from Halverson (2001): Phronesis, or practical wisdom, refers to an individual’s capacity to discern what is worth doing together with the ability to get it done [. . .]. Practical wisdom differs from theoretical wisdom (scientia) by an conclusion in human action. Whereas theoretical wisdom is often abstracted from action, practical wisdom is the kind of knowledge and capacity that guides action. Phronesis is an umbrella cognitive capacity that coordinates judgment, understanding, and insight to result in effective action. A capacity acquired through experience, phronesis helps practitioners to ask penetrating questions, provide insight into the implications of actions and events, and to advise appropriate courses of action. Phronesis involves the ability to understand how complex and messy situations hang together, and to discern the affordances (all possible actions, FP) whereby appropriate actions might be founded. Phronesis is the ability to walk the talk. (Halverson, 2001: 31–32) Yet before celebrating phronesis too quickly as the clue to leadership two issues have to be resolved. One is the question whether phronesis is politically ‘enough’. Both Dobson and MacGregor pick justice and care as key virtues because they can be utilized as political virtues needed for sustainable development (which does not necessarily hold for the other examples given above). Smith goes one step further by linking phronesis (the ‘virtuous’) to the two other strands in normative ethics: deontology (the ‘right’) and utilitarianism (the ‘good’). Smith and Pangsapa (2008) are quite clear in this when discussing citizenship (we can read leadership instead):

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Frans J. G. Padt Rather than treating citizenship as an abstract conceptual device, we argue that it is better understood as an ethico-political space where the right, the good and the virtuous are acknowledged as provisional, open to contestation and subject to deliberation. (Smith and Pangsapa, 2008: 62, original italics)

So, only in conjunction can leaders make normative decisions. In a similar fashion leaders should not confine themselves to normative guidance for their acting. Also, epistemological and aesthetic judgements count. The other issue is how phronesis (in conjunction with moral and other guidances) can be applied to regional sustainable development. Because sustainable development is a multiscale enterprise, the questions arises: What is the proper scale of action? This is the subject of the next section.

The proper scale of action For the deontic and utilitarian approach, the scale argument was already made: they cannot simply be applied to sustainable development in a multi-scale setting: it cannot clearly be assessed what are the needs for what majority; different interpretations of rights exist in different cultures and contexts; and rights and duties are non-reciprocal. Phronesis was then explored as an alternative for regional leadership. But, even if we take phronesis as a starting point for leadership scale, issues arise. Phronesis means that leaders respond to the needs of others in an appropriate way (see the definition above). This can obviously not be achieved at a regional scale alone. First, the ‘others’ are located at different scales: further away and of future generations. Things become even more complicated when taking the nonhuman world into account. Second, the ‘needs’ are of different scales. Clean air, healthy food and personal well-being stretch from the global to the individual level. Third, the ‘responses’ can be organized at different scales. Decisions at a regional scale are obviously related to decisions at other scales such as the household, the municipal scale and national, continental and global scales. Fourth, there is no one ‘appropriate way’. What is appropriate at one scale may not be appropriate at another scale. For example domestic stimulus of biofuel can disrupt global food production. So, then how to deal with scale in normative ethics and regional development? I go back to Dobson’s ‘ecological space’ and Smith and Pangsapa’s ‘ethicopolitical space’ to answer this question. Dobson refers to the space were justice can be practised. For Dobson this space has a global connotation. Smith and Pangsapa refer to the space where normative decisions are deliberated. This is a highly political act because demarcating space inevitably means the inclusion and exclusion of humans and non-humans. Whom do we care for and for whom not and how much? To whom do we want to do justice and to whom not? The Alblasserwaard study described above is again an example here. Originally, the ecological space extended into the developing world but has gradually shrunk

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to the Alblasserwaard itself. Another example is the Hague Region in West Netherlands (Van der Jagt and Padt, 2010; Padt and Westerink, 2012). The Hague Region is one of the most urbanized regions in the Netherlands. Nearly one million people live on a 410-square kilometre area. Characteristic of the region are the green open spaces. These spaces have a long history, going back to the ninth and tenth centuries when the area was reclaimed and cultivated. In the centuries that followed, the cities of Delft (the residence of the Prince of Orange in the sixteenth century), Rotterdam (with its famous harbour) and The Hague (the seat of government) expanded gradually. During the nineteenth century the farmlands between the cities were celebrated as ‘green open spaces’ and used for the marketing of the region. Paintings from the so-called The Hague School witness how these spaces were associated with beauty and prosperity. During the 1950s, national government expressed concerns that the ongoing urbanization would lead to a ‘sea of houses’ and hence disappearance of the green open spaces and the identity of the surrounding cities. It decided to give the green open spaces a lawful protection status. This policy was highly successful, especially in the area between Rotterdam, The Hague and Delft, because the green open spaces still exist today. Just like in the nineteenth century, the green open spaces are used for marketing the region to attract international businesses and organizations. These spaces are declared ‘holy ground’ by municipalities, local farmers and environmental organizations and each is doing their bit to keep the area open. Yet, there is a normative problem. The urbanization pressure in the region is high and forces the cities to build new houses. These cannot be built in the green open spaces but only in the cities themselves. This is at the cost of the city parks, allotment gardens and other urban green spaces. Low-income groups and ethnic groups that like to use these places are thus deprived of their green. This example illustrates that the ecological space – the green open spaces – is too limited to do justice to all residents in the region. What can be learned here is that the ecological space ‘in and around the region’ is not pre-given but can actively be constructed. We can argue that it is part of the job in regional sustainable development to define and redefine the ecological space in scalar terms, that is, spatially and temporally. Doing this will also change the notion of leadership itself as it is practised in that region. Analogous to Parker (2002) this can be called ‘postmodern leadership’: leadership that is constructed though active engagement ‘with political processes at different scales and in different spheres’ (Parker, 2002: 189). In the next section I will develop research suggestions for such a ‘postmodern’ (and ‘phronetic’, see above) approach to leadership for regional sustainable development. Research challenges Considering the importance of phronesis in leadership, a logical step is to develop some kind of ‘phronetic research’ as well. I take the seminal work of Flyvbjerg (2001 and 2002) as a starting point. Flyvbjerg states that the strength of social

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sciences is to conduct case studies and field research that produce intimate knowledge of normal everyday life in contextualized settings. This is different from natural sciences that produce universal, invariable and context-independent models and theories of social life. Flyvbjerg argues that social sciences should not try to emulate natural sciences but instead seek to act as a form of phronesis for society, emerging out of practice. Such phronetic social science can help people in ongoing political struggles to gain insight into their situation and to produce change. Flyvbjerg argues that planning research should ask and answer questions about which social actions are good or bad for humans. He famously formulated four ‘phronetic questions’ (Flyvbjerg, 2001: 60): 1 2 3 4

Where are we going? (Are we moving towards sustainable development, FP?) Who gains and who loses, by which mechanisms of power? Is this development desirable? What should be done?

To address scale I add a scalar counterpart to each of these questions: 1 2 3 4

What scales are involved in the quest for sustainable development? Who defines the scale of the ecological space ? How and which devices and other means do they use? Who is in and who is out? What is the proper ecological space and scale of action?

I will now briefly discuss methods that can be used to address these questions and I will also show that each method has its own scientific ‘home base’. For both questions 1, a regional sustainability assessment seems appropriate. An example is the so-called ‘sustainability balance sheet’ (Telos, 2006: 15). This method divides the three capitals of sustainability (socio-cultural, ecological, economic) into a number of stocks as follows: • • •

socio-cultural (‘people’): citizenship, health, education, living conditions, art & cultural heritage, solidarity, identity and diversity; ecological (‘planet’): nature, soil, groundwater, air, surface water, minerals, landscape; economic (‘profit’): labour, capital, knowledge, raw and auxiliary materials, spatial location conditions, economic structure.

According to the method, requirements and indicators are formulated per stock for measuring the stocks (Telos, 2006). Then the effects of measures on these stocks are assessed as well as unforeseen consequences (Dagevos and Lamoen, 2008). The method has been successfully applied to regions and a close examination of the results for a particular region can reveal what scales are involved.

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Such a sustainability assessment typically belongs to the field of the environmental sciences. Both questions 2 relate to the ‘politics of scale’. In this research field (within human geography and political ecology) scale is not taken as an ontological reality ‘out there’ but as a social and political construction (see for example Smith, 1984; Levebvre, 1991; Rangan and Kull, 2009; Sayre, 2009). The idea is that scales are negotiated and a result of power struggles for scale hegemony. For example, people bring forward different scales (administrative, geographic, agricultural, temporal) and specific levels to make their point. They mix scales to build their argument and to obscure interests at stake. They frame scales to include and exclude arguments and other actors and to shift responsibilities (Van Lieshout et al., 2011). The politics of scale for a region can be inquired through discourse analysis, that is, an analysis of ‘scalar narratives’ (Gonzales, 2006). A scalar narrative is a shared, structured way of speaking, thinking, interpreting, and representing the region in terms of scale. These narratives serve as a ‘device for political persuasion in the public realm, and plays a much larger role than rationality in the politics of governance’ (Rangan and Kull, 2008: 40). Regional actors tell scalar narratives to promote specific policies. Actors in The Hague Region for example (see above) told about their city as ‘The International City’ and the ‘World Legal Capital’ and they referred to the green open spaces as the ‘gold of the area’ and ‘breathing space’. Aided by such narratives the actors in the region have successfully created the ‘ecological space’ for their region, namely, the green spaces. In more general terms, can an analysis of scalar narratives for a region reveal who creates the ecological space for that region, how and for what reasons? This is typically the field of political geography. Both the following questions 3 are obviously normative questions. Of the three normative approaches discussed earlier, deontology and utilitarianism were considered less applicable than phronesis for making normative decisions in the dynamic multi-scale setting of sustainable development. This means that the current situation (both questions 3) needs a phronetic judgement. This is doable since phronesis means (in short) the ‘ability to understand how complex and messy situations hang together’ and the ‘cognitive capacity that coordinates judgment, understanding, and insight to result in effective action’ (Halverson, 2001: 32; see above for the full quote). How such phronetic judgments are made is typically a question for environmental psychologists. Finally the two questions 4 ask the question ‘what should be done at what scale’? This is typically a planning and design question. Phronetic leaders can help deliberations about the scale of the ecological space in and around their region (up to the global level) and appropriate measures. They can help create ‘spaces of the possible’ by telling new scalar narratives about their region and ‘wider’ sustainability. Hermans and Knippenberg (2006) have proposed a ‘principle based approach’ to sustainable development that might be applied here. The authors take justice (like in this chapter) as a starting point for deliberation with stakeholders on sustainability and they also outline some methods for such deliberation.2

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A phronetic approach can ‘liberate’ regional leaders from any scale hierarchy or tyranny (Fairtlough, 2005). This is all the more relevant when we recall the tendency in the Managerial State to deploy regional development as an implementation tool for national and global policies. In a way, sustainable development provides ‘phronetic’ regional leaders an escape route from managerial control and a reductionist approach to regional development.

Conclusions In this chapter it was argued that the Managerial State tends to consider regional policy as a tool for national policy delivery. This is a reductionistic view on regional development. Concomitantly, regional leaders run the risk of becoming governmentalized, thereby encouraging ‘exit’ of the citizenry and frustrating sustainable development. To prevent this from happening a normative approach to leadership is proposed. Again the Managerial State is, however, light-hearted (to put it modestly) towards rights and normative consequences of actions. It rather favours short-term efficiency, consensus on achievable solutions and making deals. This is what a managerial leader in the Management State is praised for, but it does no good to sustainable development. In this chapter phronetic leadership was identified as a new form of leadership that transcends the typical managerial approach. The main characteristic of phronetic leadership is practical wisdom that will respond to the needs of others in an appropriate way. Justice and care for the environment (among others) are important values because they call for political action. Phronetic leaders can mediate the ecological space in which these actions are to be deployed. The ecological space can run from the household to the global level and everything in between. Because of the multi-scale nature of sustainable development, more classical deontic and utilitarian normative approaches are less suited as a basis for regional leadership. Much empirical work has still to be done to assess phronetic leadership against success criteria. I have indicated that phronetic research as outlined here encompasses different research fields, including environmental sciences, political geography, environmental psychology, and planning and design. Also several methods were suggested: a sustainability assessment, discourse analysis of regional development, phronetic judgment making and deliberating (the scale of) actions. To make this work in practice, phronetic (or ‘action’) research is proposed in a multicultural and comparative setting.

Bibliography Alexander, E. R. (2002) ‘The general interest in planning: From legitimation to substantive plan evaluation’, Planning Theory, 1:3 226–249. Appiah, K. A. (2006) Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a world of strangers, New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Barry, J. (1996) ‘Sustainability, political judgement and citizenship: Connecting green politics and democracy’, in: B. Doherty and M. De Geus (eds) Democracy and Green Political Thought, 115–131, New York: Routledge.

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Behn, R. D. (1998) ‘The new public management paradigm and the search for democratic accountability’, International Public Management Journal, 1:2 131–164. Bell, D. R. (2005) ‘Liberal environmental citizenship’, in: A. Dobson and Á.V. Sáiz (eds) Citizenship, Environment, Economy, 23–38, London, New York: Routledge. Bovaird, T. and Löffler, E. (2003) ‘The changing context of public policy’, in: T. Bovaird and E. Löffler (eds) Public Management and Governance, 13–23, London and New York: Routledge. Christensen, T. and Lægreid, P. (2002) ‘New public management: Puzzles of democracy and the influence of citizens’, The Journal of Political Philosophy, 10:3 267–295. Clarke, J. and Newman, J. (1997) The Managerial State, London: Sage. Dagevos, J. and Lamoen, F. (2008) Handboek Toetsingskader Duurzame Ontwikkeling, Tilburg: Telos. Dawson, S. and Dargie, C. (2003) ‘New Public Management. A discussion with special reference to UK health’, in: K. McLaughlin, S. P. Osborne and E. Ferlie (eds) New Public Management: Current trends and future prospects, 34–56, London, New York: Routledge. Denhardt, J. V. and Denhardt, R. B. (2003) The New Public Service: Serving, not steering, New York: M. E. Sharpe. Denhardt, R. B. (2004) Theories of Public Organization, Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth. Dobson, A. (2003) Citizenship and the Environment, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fairtlough, G. (2005) The Three Ways of Getting Things Done: Hierarchy, heterarchy and responsible autonomy in organizations, Greenways, UK: Triarchy Press. Flyvbjerg, B. (2001) Making Social Science Matter: Why social inquiry fails and how it can succeed again, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Flyvbjerg, B. (2002) ‘Bringing power to planning research: One researcher’s praxis story’, Journal of Planning Education and Research, 21:4 353–366. Frederickson, H. G. (1996) ‘Comparing the reinventing government movement with the new public administration’, Public Administration Review, 56:3 263–270. Frederickson, H. G. and Smith, K. B. (2003) The Public Administration Theory Primer, Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Gonzáles, S. (2006) ‘Scalar narratives in Bilbao: A cultural politics of scales approach to the study of urban policy’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 30:4 836–857. Greiber, T. (ed.) (2009) Conservation with Justice: A rights-based approach, Gland, Switzerland: International Union for Nature Conservation. Hailwood, S. (2005) ‘Environmental citizenship as reasonable citizenship’, in: A. Dobson and Á.V. Sáiz (eds) Citizenship, Environment, Economy, 39–54, London and New York: Routledge. Halverson, R. (2001) ‘Representing phronesis: Documenting instructional leadership practice in schools’, unpublished dissertation, Northwestern University. Hay, R. (2010) ‘The relevance of ecocentrism, personal development and transformational leadership to sustainability and identity’, Sustainable Development, 18:3 163–171. Hermans, F. and Knippenberg, L. (2006) ‘A principle based approach for the evaluation of sustainable development’, Journal of Environmental Assessment Policy and Management, 8:3 299–319. Hirschman, A. O. (1970) Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to decline in firms, organizations, and states, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Hisschemöller, M. and Hoppe, R. (1996) ‘Coping with intractable controversies, the case for problem structuring in policy design and analysis’, Knowledge Policy: The International Journal of Knowledge Transfer and Utilization, 8:4 40–60. Horlings, I. and Padt, F. J. G. (2011) ‘Leadership for sustainable regional development in rural areas: Bridging personal and institutional aspects’, Sustainable Development. Online. Available http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/sd.526/abstract (accessed 1 August 2011). Horlings, L. G. (1996) ‘Duurzaam boeren met beleid: Innovatiegroepen in de Nederlandse landbouw’, dissertation, Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen. Kamensky, J. M. (1996) ‘The role of the “reinventing government” movement in federal management reform’, Public Administration Review, 56:3 247–255. Lefebvre, H. (1991) The Production of Space, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Lieshout, M. van, Dewulf, A., Aarts, N. and Termeer, C. (2011) ‘Do scale frames matter? Scale frame mismatches in the decision making process of a “mega farm” in a small Dutch village’, Ecology & Society, 16:1 38–53. Lister, R. (1997) Citizenship: Feminist perspectives, New York: New York University Press. Logan, J. R. and Molotch, H. L. (1987) Urban Fortunes: The political economy of place, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. MacGregor, S. (2006) Beyond Mothering Earth: Ecological citizenship and the politics of care, Vancouver: UBC Press. March, J. G. and Olson, J. P. (1989) Rediscovering institutions: The organizational basis of politics, New York: The Free Press. Newman, J. (2001) Modernising Governance: New Labour, policy and society, London: Sage. Newman, J. (2005) ‘Network governance, transformational leadership and the micro politics of public service change’, Sociology, 39:4 717–734. NRCS (2006) ‘Report to Congress on the Resource Conservation and Development (RC&D) Program’, Washington, DC: US Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service. Osborne, D. and Gaebler, T. (1992) Reinventing Government: How the entrepreneurial spirit is transforming the public sector, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Padt, F. J. G. (2006) ‘Regional environmental planning in the Netherlands: An unstable settlement of policy arrangements’, in: B. Arts and P. Leroy (eds) Institutional Dynamics in Environmental Governance: Environment & Policy, 203–223, Heidelberg: Springer. Padt, F. J. G. (2007) Green Planning: An institutional analysis of regional environmental planning in the Netherlands, Delft: Eburon. Padt, F. J. G. (2009) ‘An institutional analysis of rural policy in the United States. Community Development’, Journal of the Community Development Society, 40:3 232–246. Padt, F. J. G. and Luloff, A. E. (2011) ‘A critical review of a managerial approach to “green” community planning in the USA and the Netherlands’, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 54:4 445–456. Padt, F. J. G and Westerink, J. (2012) ‘Addressing scale in open space preservation: learning from The Hague region in the Netherlands’, Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie. Online. Available http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9663. 2012.00718.x/abstract (accessed 10 May 2012). Padt, F. J. G., Boonstra, F. and Reudink, M. (2008) De betekenis van duurzaamheid in gebiedsgericht beleid, Wageningen: Alterra, part of Wageningen University and Research Institute.

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Parker, G. (2002) Citizenships, Contingency and the Countryside: Rights, culture, land and the environment, London and New York: Routledge. Pierre, J. and Peters, B. G. (2000) Governance, Politics and the State, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Quental, N., Lourenço, J. M. and Nunes da Silva, F. (2011) ‘Sustainable development policy: Goals, targets and political cycles’, Sustainable Development, 19:1 15–29. Rangan, H. and Kull, C. A. (2009) ‘What makes ecology “political”? Rethinking “scale” in political ecology’, Progress in Human Geography, 33:1 28–45. Sayre, N. F. (2009) ‘Scale’, in: N. Castree, D. Demeritt, D. Liverman and B. Rhoads (eds) A Companion to Environmental Geography, 95–108. Wiley-Blackwell. Smith, M. J. and Pangsapa, P. (2008) Environment and Citizenship: Integrating justice, responsibility and civic engagement, London and New York: Zed Books. Smith, N. (1984) Uneven Development, Bath, UK: The Pitman Press. Telos (2006) De Duurzaamheidbalans van Brabant 2006, Tilburg: Telos. Tonkens, E. (2003) Mondige burgers, getemde professionals: Marktwerking, vraagsturing en professionaliteit in de publieke sector, Utrecht: Nederlands Instituut voor Zorg en Welzijn. USDA (2006) 2007 Farm Bill Theme Paper on Conservation and the Environment, Washington, DC: US Department of Agriculture. Van der Jagt, P. and Padt, F. J. G (2010) ‘Conservation with justice: A rights-based approach applied to The Hague Region, the Netherlands’, case study for the IUCN Right-Based Approach Portal.

5

Leadership and the voluntary and community sector John Diamond

Introduction The UK has seen a significant increase in the voluntary and community sector over the past thirty years. Since 1997 there has been an increase in the direct funding of ‘leadership’ initiatives for the voluntary and community sector (VCS) across the UK (Balloch and Taylor, 2001; Birch and Whittam, 2008; Craig and Taylor, 2002; Diamond, 2008; Purdue, 2007). The New Labour government commissioned and funded a number of programmes to directly enhance the managerial and technical skills and capacities of individuals working in the sector. According to the latest data on the VCS in the UK (Clark et al., 2011), the full-time equivalent workforce is 617,000 of whom 43,000 are managers. More than 37 per cent of the workforce have a degree or higher and senior staff are the ones who are most likely to receive training. Since 2001 the work force has increased by 40 per cent. We can observe over the past decade how the direct investment in these infrastructure organisations has often resulted in merging of identities between City Hall decision makers and Third Sector professionals. As a consequence, at a local or neighbourhood level we can see a growing distance or separation from streetor community-based groups and these VCS infrastructure agencies. Alongside these subregional or city-based agencies there has been an investment in regional organisations too. In a number of ways we can see a similar merging of identities between policymakers at the regional level and “leaders” from the VCS at the regional level too. This paper draws upon empirical work undertaken in the northwest of England with leaders and managers from the VCS to look at the ways in which individuals seek to balance competing needs and pressures (Diamond and Pearce, 2010; Martikke and Tramonti, 2005; Peck and Ward, 2002). In particular, it is possible to see how individuals with very clear and embedded roots in community politics and activism react to these competing pressures to conform and meet the demands and needs of regional policymakers/practitioners/funders. Their role and contribution of the academy to these processes is reflected in the chapter too. The author is part of a team developing and providing post-graduate education in leadership and management for VCS managers/decision makers/

Leadership and the voluntary and community sector 81 activists. Through reflections on practice, the chapter seeks to sketch out the potential to support innovative ways of working and thinking among a key group of activists/managers. This chapter will attempt to show the relationship between neoliberalism and the different ways in which leadership is valued, promoted and understood across the sector; it is important too to locate the particular debates in their sectional, historical, political (and often times geographical) settings. In other words, while there is an overarching ideological framework within which the different experiences and models of leadership across the VCS are located, there will be different (and sometimes contradictory) narratives and interpretations. It is possible to observe two different sets of relationships being formed and developed – alliances of convenience or networks of politically active individuals. In this chapter we trace the changes in governmental policy over the past twentyfive years; examine the contradictions and tensions present within these policy initiatives; identify different strategies and approaches; and reflect upon the changes adopted.

Categorising activists/leaders in the voluntary and community sector The following categories are offered as a way of conceptualising the different ways in which ‘leadership’ is valued and understood. They are drawn from over twentyfive years of working in and with the Voluntary and Community Sector in Manchester and across the north-west of England. In part, they illustrate the growth (over time) of the significance that has been attached to ideas of ‘leadership’ and how the concept (or definition) of ‘manager’ has changed too, as the chapter attempts to demonstrate how these changes in definition reflect important political and economic changes within the VCS and society. In arriving at the categorisations below, I am aware that they offer a ‘snapshot’ of the roles, political ideologies and functions that individuals and agencies have identified as representing the priorities of the sector over time. They are offered here as a way of drawing together separate discussions on ideology, function and values, which are discussed below. •

•

Political/Social/Community Activist – working with local groups in opposition to the local state: Developed through the 1960s to mid 1980s – highly politicised with an explicit commitment to social and political change; working with local groups influenced by community development practice and seeking to enable local/neighbourhood groups to influence change locally – in the late 1980s possible move into local government or local state-run agencies; Single Issue Activist – working with specific groups (environmental/social justice/housing/equalities) or Faith groups with an explicit commitment to social change and a commitment to ethical or social justice questions; sought to link local and global especially through environmental pressure groups or through international aid organisations (OXFAM) – active in mid to late 1980s and through late 1990s in aftermath of World Trade discussions and the

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•

•

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John Diamond development of opposition to globalisation – providing an important network to support the Occupy Now movement; Social Enterprise/Social Entrepreneurs – developed and supported by Labourrun local authorities in the 1980s and funded through the 1990s by both Labour and Conservative governments – seen now to represent alternative social and welfare providers and represent a market dominated by former single-issue charities (involved in housing/homelessness/children); promoting different social and economic responses to needs of communities – likely to be more pragmatic than political; Brokers and Fixers – development of organisations that trade upon their knowledge and understanding of the finances available and the priorities set by government – use networks with the European Union – bring together different partners or agencies to meet the requirements of available funding; Networks and Partnership facilitators and managers – growth in ‘independent’ agencies that emerged out of the subregional and city-based bodies established to support the VCS; largely aimed at working within a geographical patch and attempting to support agencies through a membership and subscription basis – likely successor to those national agencies that the current UK government are cutting back on – likely to represent the dominant form of VCS support over the next 5–10 years; Independent and loose networks and alliances campaigning to oppose the current government’s cuts and austerity package – membership drawn from across the categories above but practice suggests a diverse pattern of membership with newer and young members plus older ones drawn from the generation of political and community activists of the late 1960s/early 1970s.

Setting the context For nearly twenty-five years in the UK successive governments have attempted to promote the role of voluntary and community-based organisations as part of the network of local leaders who are expected to work cooperatively with political and business leaders but whose legitimacy and status is dependent upon their sponsorship and goodwill (Banks and Shenton, 2001; Blakely and Evans, 2008; Blunkett and Jackson, 1987; Craig et al., 1999; Mayo, 1997). As this chapter attempts to illustrate, there are a number of inherent tensions within the relationships between those in a leadership role in the voluntary and community sector and those in the political, administrative and business elites (at either a local or national level). The particular form these tensions take will vary over time as well as reflecting the nature of the tensions and the specific material conditions in each locality and place. But, they will involve clashes over resources or the values of sponsoring agencies when these are in conflict with VCS organisations. They are, therefore, a way of understanding the nature and form of the power dynamics present at the local, regional or national level. We can locate the emergence across political parties and civic institutions in the idea of supporting and promoting a voluntary sector leadership as part of a

Leadership and the voluntary and community sector 83 broader neoliberal restructuring of the state. At a very simple level this discovery and promotion of the voluntary and community sector by political parties and civic institutions coincided with the social and economic restructuring of the late 1980s onwards (Chesters, 2010; Davies, 2007; Diamond, 2001; Harvey, 2000, 2010; Wainwright, 2003). As is suggested below, the voluntary and community sector in the UK were seen as an important part of the restructuring of the relationships between the political institutions of the state and those social and welfare agencies that provided education, health, housing, welfare benefits and social services from the mid 1970s onwards. As part of this process, voluntary and community-based organisations received limited state funding to provide some elements of locally based social and welfare services. The period after 1997 can be seen as marking a step change in these processes. A key part of the New Labour reform agenda was the ‘modernisation’ of local government. The changes introduced here can be understood as representing an attempt to restructure the political and institutional arrangements at the local level. An explicit aspect of these changes was the role and future of the voluntary and community sector at the local level. Since 1997 the form this promotion took changed qualitatively. There were a number of deliberate policy and political choices taken by the New Labour government that were aimed at supporting those in a leadership role in voluntary and community-based organisations (Byrne, 2001; Dale, 2002; HMSO, 1998; Pierson, 2008). At the same time a number of key charities in the UK established their own initiatives aimed at supporting individuals who might be regarded as future leaders. Both of these approaches demonstrated a commitment to identify, support (sponsor) and ensure investment in the capacities and skills of future or potential leaders within the sector. The significance of these decisions and ways of working is examined below but, in essence, it represented a deliberate move away from the collective or collaborative models of leadership that were present in the sector to a highly individualised conventional and personalised model of leadership.

Changes in governmental policy There have been a number of important changes in UK governmental policy over the past twenty-five to thirty years in the ways in which the relationship(s) between the state and the voluntary and community sector have been defined and constructed. Specifically, the VCS is seen as a necessary component part of those agencies – commissioned by the state to provide social and welfare services – working with a range of service users in neighbourhoods where state-funded agencies were seen to have ‘failed’. (Burgess et al., 2001; Boddy and Fudge, 1984; Craig et al., 1999; Diamond, 1991; Diamond and Nelson, 1993; Leach and Wilson, 1998; Wainwright, 1987). These developments are important and can be seen as illustrating a broader set of social and political changes taking place in the UK over this past twenty-five to thirty years. They can be seen both as a consequence of significant shifts in

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social and economic policy and as part of the process of political change to create a new discourse on the role of the state. In other words, these changes to the role and relationships of the VCS with the state reflect both a reaction to and a consequence of the changes, as well as representing a potential catalyst for a longerterm impact. The changes in UK government policy in respect of welfare and public agencies date back to the late 1970s. The (then) Labour government began to cut public and welfare spending. The primary areas of concern were education (especially higher education), health and social welfare. While these cuts did meet with some resistance, the election in 1979 of the Conservative government led by Margaret Thatcher saw a continuation of these policies with a much more deliberate and focused attempt to recast the relationship between the state, the individual and the market. The reaction to and role of the VCS in this period is important to reflect upon because (as I argue below) it is during this period that we can observe the emergence of a new thinking on the role and place of ‘leadership’ within the VCS. There is a clear recognition within the VCS and between those engaged in working with the VCS that simple and straightforward categorisations of the VCS are difficult to arrive at. There are a number of working definitions that practitioners/researchers can draw upon and they usually reflect the following: • • • •

the geographical location within which the organisation operates (from local to national); the size of the organisation, including staff numbers as well as turnover; the remit/rationale/identity of the organisation from faith based to issue based; the values and focus of the organisation.

In addition, there are other variables or factors that can be included involving the management structure of the organisation and the extent to which it is registered as a charity or not for profit organisation. Over the past fifteen years years the criteria for registration have changed and as a result there are many more agencies described as being part of the VCS. These variables are clearly important if you are seeking to develop a shared language of both practice and analysis or if you are wishing to develop a way of understanding how concepts of leadership are understood within the sector. In essence, the model of leadership present in the VCS mirrored that in the wider society. Those VCS organisations that sought to develop collective or participatory practices were seen as marginal. The whole central government investment programme focused upon valuing and developing single ‘leaders’ rather than collective approaches. In the UK there are a number of VCS organisations that have a long history of providing social and welfare services to the most vulnerable. Many of these organisations are faith based – some are attached to particular religious groups, while a number are not. But they share a history in the sense that they were established to provide something the state did not. Over time, they have become

Leadership and the voluntary and community sector 85 part of the mix of state-funded or state-coordinated welfare provision. But their formation, development and continued existence did not (and does not in and of itself) reflect a broader critique of society and the politics of decision making at the local level. It is here that we can begin to understand more fully the nature of the relationships between local VCS organisations and the state. Through the 1960s/early 1970s in the UK we can observe the development of small, locally based and locally run (often through volunteers) organisations that were established in opposition to the decisions of the local state. This idea of being ‘in opposition to’ the local state and/or local decision makers is important. Those defined as local decision makers included heads of schools or town planners or heads of public housing departments, as well as political representatives – councillors or senior local politicians. There is a very rich tradition of community activism in the UK and activist-led initiatives within neighbourhoods that challenged the authority and power of either local political elites or those who managed social and welfare agencies. While some of these initiatives may have developed into national organisations over time it is important to locate their origins within this framework of ‘opposition to’ the state rather than how we can describe many of the other models as being ‘compliant with’ or ‘conforming to’ the needs and values of the state (Birch and Whittam, 2008; Craig and Mayo, 1995; De Filippis et al., 2010; Evans, 2007; Purdue et al., 2000). This political and historical framework is important too because it provides the basis for a chronology that reflects the politics and the politicisation of the VCS in the UK as well as attempting to locate this discussion within a framework of state and civil society relationships. The key theoretical and political concepts that are important here are those that relate to the ideas of neoliberalism. The significance of neoliberalism is explored below. But, it is helpful to make the point that the success of neoliberalism in shaping the remaking of social and welfare policies in the UK (in particular), as well as economic policy has itself influenced concepts of ‘leadership’ and governance across the public realm. It is here too that we can observe the relationship between both neoliberalism and the VCS and between neoliberalism and those who ‘lead’ the sector. What is significant (for this writer) is how the language and ideas of those associated with progressive social change: empowerment, civil and political rights, politics of identity, participation and accountability, as well as partnership and collaboration have themselves been colonised and appropriated by the New Right. In addition, the language and ideology of neoliberalism provides a counternarrative of personal and individualised stories as a counterpoint to those that are rooted in a class or collective interpretation of society and the struggles within and between the powerful and the disenfranchised (De Filippis et al., 2010; Harvey, 2011, see 253–259). The discussions and explorations of the ways in which the concept and practice of ‘leadership’ of the VCS in the UK developed draws upon different and often contradictory traditions. These traditions, which are examined below, reflect quite

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different sets of values and motivations; they also reflect (or illustrate) different ways of constructing and understanding concepts of accountability and representativeness, and the different ways in which the social relationships between those who are the organisers are constructed with the organised. Indeed, the critical dynamic present within the VCS is how the relationship with the state is framed and understood.

New professionalism and the voluntary and community sector Within this broad ideological framework of neoliberalism we can see too how it has shaped ideas of professionalism and professional practice stretching from and including: ideas of communities of practice to being critical reflective practitioners. The notion of professionalising the VCS is a key political concept, as well as being offered as a neutral or strategic goal for those who manage VCS organisations. The concept of ‘new professionalism’ in the UK has its roots in the 1980s as part of the welfare and social policy changes introduced by the New Right in the Thatcher/Major Conservative governments. Following the election of the New Labour government in 1997 it formed an important element in their justification for and promotion of the reorganisation of those agencies and professionals working with children and young people. But, it had been present – as an organising concept – prior to the election of a New Right government in 1979. It is this development that might now be seen prefiguring the contemporary debates on leadership within the VCS that the chapter examines. These approaches, shaped as they are by the ways in which the ‘world-view’ of the organisation has been framed, often stand in opposition to those groups that have constructed a quite different ‘world-view’, one that might be based on the needs of specific groups of individuals or a specific locality or place. Many community-based organisations are established to meet the needs of individuals defined by their sense of place or locality. Here the idea of ‘community’ is much more about a sense of place or neighbourhood – it has an explicitly spatial or physical dimension to it (Chesters, 2010; Filkin et al., 2000; Foley and Martin, 2000; Hay, 2008; Jowitt and Chapman, 2001; Kohler and Wissen, 2003). Through these two quite separate senses of what the geography of the VCS means and its scale we can see how different models of leadership and decision making emerged and became part of the organisational culture and practice. In these two examples one can imagine the organisation influenced by faith and religious groups seeking to develop a decision-making structure that is focused on the external (and the global) and that the ethos of the organisation is to be found in its work with individuals at risk and vulnerable. We might anticipate an explicitly ethical framework for their campaigning and lobbying. In the localised and small-scale context we might anticipate seeing evidence of models of decision making and leadership that reflect the small-scale and potentially insular nature of community-based organisations.

Leadership and the voluntary and community sector 87 The intellectual, social, ethical and political roots of the VCS in the UK are diverse but they do offer a way of understanding their broader contribution to the idea of ‘civil society’ and the ways in which their presence represents an important counterweight to political institutions, as well as those of the state. In a sense, they represent a tradition of independent action and separation from the state. From their relative independence of the state and civil society institutions they can offer critical support or critical opposition to public policy decisions or practice. In a way these competing positions (support and opposition) illustrate one of the many challenges for VCS organisations, their membership and their leaders: how to maintain distance and independence and at the same time seek to both represent their members and influence governmental policy? From the late 1960s onwards we can see how different patterns of relationships emerged and developed over time. This chapter argues that , in the UK, this is the primary period of change and transformation within the Sector in terms of an emerging leadership. As we show below the secondary phase took place under New Labour from 1997 – 2010 and the tertiary phase with the Coalition government represents another shift in the relationship between the Sector and the state. The 1960s in the UK mark the development of a response by the state to urban deprivation and a perceived weakness of the postwar settlement with regard to the Welfare State. The introduction by the then Labour government of the Urban Programme can be seen as a direct response to a number of urban ‘problems’. They included: migration and a response to the conflict and disaffection in urban white working-class areas; a recognition that the welfare state had not ‘solved’ poor attainment in schools; bad housing and its links to ill health ; and a persistence in levels of poverty too. These ‘urban’ or city issues also highlighted the apparent failure of those statefunded agencies to provide the required intervention into deprived neighbourhoods to work with individuals and families. In a very real sense the crisis of the late 1960s, which gave rise to the Urban Programme, pre-figured the crises of the next forty years as urban areas underwent profound change as a consequence of the economic, industrial and spatial restructuring of the more mature advanced industrial capitalist economies of northern Europe. These crises included not just a reaction to rising levels of unemployment or the shift (over time) from an industrial economy to a banking and service economy to yet another period of disruption from 2007 onwards, but also a political crisis as well. The form this crisis took revealed the relative weakness of the existing layer of VCS leadership as they too had to respond to these crises. We can place the Urban Programme in the UK as part of a generalised response to the restructuring of industrial areas and of a need to address gaps in social and welfare provision. It was not about developing a sustainable response to the crisis. It was inevitably reactive. The state did not regard the VCS as offering local leadership over the long term. The VCS were marginal to the needs of the state. It is the impact of neoliberalism that repositions certain elements of the VCS into occupying key roles in the management of the crisis. As a consequence, there is

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a need to develop a longer-term strategy for some VCS agencies. The Urban Programme (together with funding to support local government in meeting the needs of a more racially diverse set of communities introduced in 1966) funded a number of initiatives and projects designed to respond to the needs of those communities affected by the social and economic changes. Over time, the Urban Programme shifted its focus in response to different priorities set by government but a core part of its activities was the funding of information and advice agencies, legal aid units, resident and tenant associations, and activities or projects designed to meet the needs of children and their lone parents. In the USA the War on Poverty programme was established with very similar aims and remit. There was a shared expectation that these programmes would encourage the participation of users and residents too. In the context of the resistance to the war in Vietnam and the Civil Rights campaign and the Feminist Movement – the impact and legacies of which stretched across the Atlantic – we can see how these developments impacted upon the VCS in the UK (Beauregard, 2003; Medoff and Sklar, 1994; Munro et al., 2008; Yin and Yates, 1975). The scale, capacity and politicisation of the VCS were all directly affected by these changes. The Urban Programme felt the consequences of both drawing the local VCS leadership into the sphere of influence of the state and of facilitating directly the politicisation of activists within the VCS or of individuals who became involved in the VCS. The Urban Programme was one of many regeneration initiatives funded, managed and led by successive political administrations from 1969 to the present in the UK. While the priorities and funding levels were set at the centre and approved by ministers, it was at the local (city) level that responsibility for their administration and delivery were delegated. One consequence of these developments was the emergence of a cadre of VCS activists who became expert in understanding government funding requirements and policy initiatives, and over time were able to anticipate new areas for development. Many of these individuals were active in the new pressure groups and campaigning bodies set up in response to the welfare crisis itself of the 1960s. They reflected concerns over housing and child poverty, as well as the growing campaigns against racism and for equal pay. Some of these activists had been involved in faith and church groups and a number were active in the trade union movement too. Another layer came from the students’ movement of the late 1960s, politicised as a result of opposition to the war in Vietnam or through the wave of occupations in higher education institutions from 1968 onwards. What is fascinating to reflect upon, over forty years later, is the strong emphasis there was on social responsibility and ethical practice across these different pathways into the more radicalised model of the VCS. Such an approach is in direct conflict with the needs and values of neoliberalism. This shared sense of practice and the values that shaped it were critical factors in influencing the leadership models that emerged over the next decade. It is important to note that the diverse VCS in the UK with its well established welfare institutions (for children and the most vulnerable) rooted in the previous century

Leadership and the voluntary and community sector 89 and funded via the Church, or through the charities established philanthropic industrialists, continued. At different times over the next thirty years they occupied a different political ‘space’ from those drawn from the activist movements of the 1960s. At times they were to find themselves supportive of the more radicalised elements in the VCS and oftentimes they drew back. As we will see, their social, ethical and faith-based practice has proved to be a significant factor in how they are positioned today. It is important to reflect upon the extent to which the radicalisation of these activists was significant in relation to their membership of the VCS and the leadership roles they took on. The traditions they came from and the environment within which they were active suggested that they were much more likely to adopt a conflictual model of relationships with the local state than a consensual or cooperative model. Indeed, we could assume that those who came from the trade union movement were more likely to look for consensus and agreement (after negotiation) than those who came from an activist or campaigning background. One of the key differences between these two traditions was the extent to which there was a shared analysis of the state and how power is exercised through institutions of the state. A parallel development to this period of change in the late 1960s in the UK was the growth of higher education and the increase in provision for those involved in youth work, social work and education. These programmes were, themselves, open to influence from professionals who were also practitioners or activists. The intellectual and political context to these programmes of study were places where the idea of the state being a neutral agent in the distribution of resources was challenged and deconstructed to develop possible alternatives to the social relations within society. The curriculum, teaching and learning, and assessment strategies of these courses were, in many instances, influenced by a range of critical thinkers, radical academics and practitioners. From the late 1960s to the mid 1980s these programmes provided a practical as well as intellectual ‘space’ within which to reflect upon power, inequalities and social change through collective action. In addition to these influences, these programmes reflected the concerns of international charitable organisations that sought through their work in the Third World to model an alternative to that offered by the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund. In particular, these organisations were often very explicit about the ethical values that underpinned their work and their wish to work with local groups and communities rather than impose an externally set agenda. There were, of course, many tensions and difficulties to negotiate in these contexts. A key part of the tension was the impact of the Cold War and the way in which the Third World became an extension of the political, military and economic conflict between East and West. The Vietnam War and the many other national liberation struggles in Africa and Latin America were significant political events and they exercised an important degree of influence over at least one generation of practitioners working at home and abroad (Gaynor, 2010).

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Towards an alternative social and economic policy The development of the VCS from the mid 1970s to the mid 1980s marks an important point of transition for those individuals and organisations who defined themselves as oppositional to the state and who were seeking to develop a more radical neo-Marxist critique of power and politics. The transition was not a single event – rather, it was a process. The decade from 1975 to 1985 in the UK was a highly political period. It started with the Labour government introducing cuts in social and welfare spending which was met with opposition from the trade union movement as well as community-based organisations and groups. The election of the Thatcher government in 1979 saw a continuation of the cuts programme. This period, also, saw significant rises in unemployment and a global recession too. It also saw a major confrontation between the Thatcher government and the Miners Union which lasted for a year and ended with the defeat of the miners and, perhaps, marked a high point for neoliberalism in the UK (Burns et al., 1994; Diamond, 2002; Diamond and Nelson, 1993; Harvey, 2005; Stoker, 1994, 1996). These events are important and, indeed, this decade is perhaps one of the most important in UK postwar history. As well as these changes, developments, and social and political unrest there was another important political project underway at local authority level. The cuts introduced by Labour in the mid 1970s were seen to contribute to their defeat in 1979. In an attempt to revive the Party nationally there was a serious attempt by different groups on the Left to revive and reform local government. This period of change – sometimes described as ‘going local’ – brought together a broad left alliance of trade union activists, community activists, elected politicians and single issue campaigners. Their story – of how they attempted to transform local politics – is an important part of the development of the VCS in the UK. While they were mainly concentrated in the urban centres of the UK and the big cities (hence their descriptor as the New Urban Left) they drew upon many of the practices and politics of the VCS. In many important ways, this was the 1968 generation of community and political activists and while they looked to public sector trade unions for support they were not of the trade union movement. To the extent that they had a shared philosophy or political programme, they focused their activity on a limited number of very important areas: equalities and anti-discriminatory practice – especially with regard to gender, race and sexuality; tenant and resident participation – through devolved budgets and decision making at neighbourhood level; an alternative economic policy – to counter the New Right marketisation of the public sector that was emerging under Thatcher; and a commitment to more inclusive politics and participation at the neighbourhood level. This move to decentralised decision making and also to create a more pluralistic form of politics was highly significant. It was an attempt – so it was argued – to demonstrate that Labour was a left-of-centre party who could govern well (at the local level) and so deserved the voters trust. This period of developing an alternative to the New Right did not last beyond the mid 1980s. The defeat of the Miners Strike marked a profoundly important

Leadership and the voluntary and community sector 91 moment for the organised Left in the UK. But, there were significant consequences too for the VCS. The broad alliance of individuals, single issue campaigns and community activists who had become part of this alternative to the New Right had started to move (physically and intellectually) across to posts and roles in local government. The individuals who took up the jobs and roles most associated with the New Urban Left reform programme often had a shared background in community activism or were leading members of the Women’s Movement or antiracist campaigns. A number of them too came from working overseas as part of social, political and faith-based initiatives. There is an interesting and important discussion here in terms of the extent to which we understand the concept of ‘leadership’ and leadership roles to be separate from the aims and values of the organisation within which individuals operate. Those individuals who had come from a VCS background or had worked on development initiatives overseas or were political activists were likely to be much more politically aware than conventional local government officers. In urban authorities in the early 1980s the promotion of equality and social justice projects were often led by individuals who came with a set of highly developed political and organisational skills, formed by their work in these areas. Their presence in local government was seen as representing a disturbance or dislocation to the status quo. The traditional model of ‘detached’ local government officer/administrator was being replaced (or at least challenged) by an activist/advocate model of manager/officer. Thus, while there was an idea of a commitment to the concept of ‘public service’ in UK local and central government administration, the influx of VCS activists and members changed both the tone and the content of this concept. There was an important theoretical and conceptual debate taking place between those involved in the education and training of social, health and youth work practitioners and professionals and the user or service groups they were working with. While a key element in that intellectual debate focused on critical and reflective practice it was itself informed by ideas of decision making, leadership styles and management roles. More significantly, for this author, these debates were informed by the experience of participants as activists and managers working in the field. There were, however, two separate but interrelated developments during the 1980s that changed the context within which these debates were taking place. First, the political period after the defeat of the Miners from 1985 to 1992 is marked by the Conservatives winning two more general elections and second, the scale, size and activity of the VCS continues to grow. While the former sets the national political tone, the latter has a much more direct impact upon the way the sector is led. By the end of the 1990s the VCS is seen as a key partner and provider across a number of welfare and public services. This represents an important shift in the status of the sector but also leads to an important change in the way the leadership of the VCS is seen and how they believe they should be seen. One important consequence of both the growth of the sector and the move by individuals across from the VCS into local authorities is that increasingly VCS

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organisations look to City Hall for advice, guidance and strategic leadership. There is a symbiotic relationship between City Hall managers and politicians and a number of key VCS organisations or coordinating bodies during this period. The members of VCS management boards or trustees are often key political leaders or managers from City Hall. As central government funding during this period required VCS participation (often in a passive way) it was important for City Hall officials to maintain good lines of communication with local VCS leaders and vice versa (Bassett, 1996; Bennington et al., 2006; CSC, 2010; DeFilippis et al., 2010; Hoggett et al., 2009; James and Cox, 2007; Leach and Wilson, 2000; Pearce, 2010; Peck and Tickell, 1995). The overlapping membership of political groupings as well as of single issue campaigns by VCS leaders and activists and City Hall officers meant that there was a blurring of roles and boundaries. In a quite important way we can see that by the late 1990s in the run up to the election of New Labour these different groups of professionalised activists and managers operated as one large group with interlocking and overlapping membership. We can see (as Harvey 2011 argues) that these relationships form a very important part of maintaining (and sustaining) the values and needs of the neoliberal project: these individuals had become an important reference group for each other; through their roles and functions they share similar values and assumptions. They have become detached from their constituencies as they have become increasingly professionalised and de-radicalised and they have/had become over-dependent on state funding. It is important to note that while this process has taken place over time it mirrors the experiences of the trade union movement. Within the trade unions it is possible to observe how the growth of the unions and the increase in the number of full-time officials has been attributable to a decline in radicalism and independent action. There is no real equivalent in the VCS of the shop stewards’ movement, which has oftentimes been the site of unauthorised activity (by full-time officials). Arguably, the nearest equivalent would be the local infrastructure organisations that have developed over time as places of expertise and knowledge on funding and policy matters. By the end of the 1990s the VCS in the UK had become an important part in the mixed provision of social and welfare services and they were increasingly being used by the state to act as referral agencies for a range of educational and welfare initiatives aimed at working with the ‘hard to reach’. In a sense, significant parts of the VCS had moved from campaigning and political reform/lobbying to providing necessary support for the most vulnerable. In effect, they had become part of the mixed economy of welfare provision and, from the state’s point of view, a necessary part of their social and economic policies. In addition, as a consequence of these developments and changes but also as part of the broader pattern of interconnecting networks and social/political relationships between community activists, welfare-state professionals and leftof-centre political activists, as well as social democrats, there was an emerging literature and practice that highlighted leadership within the VCS as a priority for

Leadership and the voluntary and community sector 93 development. As is discussed below, these developments sit within the neoliberal traditions: individualistic, detached and consensual but within a particular narrative.

From New Labour and the third sector to the Big Society and the age of austerity The election of New Labour in 1997 marked the beginning of an important shift in the relationship between the VCS and the state. It is this shift that is so evident in reviewing the various leadership initiatives that the Labour government promoted and sponsored. The ‘shift’ can be understood by reference to the social, economic and political context within which New Labour framed their priorities. While New Labour claimed to be supporting the idea of a ‘sustainable’ approach for VCS leadership, in practice this did not happen, as is discussed below. The place and role of the VCS moved from being a peripheral part of the state’s activity – direct funding through central government grants to local and specific projects or initiatives aimed at particular vulnerable groups – to being part of the state’s core activity. This change, which New Labour accelerated, represented part of a more general restructuring of the state’s relationships with civil society institutions and organisations. It is this restructuring that has resulted in new ways of identifying, supporting, promoting and sustaining the leadership of the VCS. These processes of restructuring included the ‘buying’ of the leadership of the VCS into the structures, agencies and organisations that New Labour introduced as part of their modernisation reform agenda. A significant part of this process involved a number of significant social and welfare policy initiatives in which the VCS were seen as a strategic partner. These reforms and programmes were important in a number of respects, and they included a key set of changes to the ways in which services for children and young people were organised. As a shorthand descriptor, the ‘Every Child Matters’ initiative illustrates the scale and dimensions of the reforms introduced. Every Child Matters represented a fundamental reassessment of the way children and young people’s services were organised, programmed, managed, developed and funded. VCS organisations were encouraged to offer services before schools opened and after they closed for the day as part of a holistic provision for parents, carers and their children. Alongside the preschool initiative – Sure Start – this programme challenged the ways in which service professionals were trained, recruited, developed and rewarded. In addition, New Labour introduced its National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal (NRS). The NRS together with two separate but interrelated initiatives – the creation of Community Empowerment Networks and Local Strategic Partnerships in the eighty-eight most deprived authorities in England – were seen to be evidence of their commitment to change. The expectation was that leaders from the VCS would sit on the LSPs alongside political leaders, heads of public agencies (including the police) and the private sector. In both developments the VCS were seen as key agents in these change processes and initiatives. The new

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government also put resources into a number of projects aimed at developing, enhancing and sustaining the leadership capacity and potential of the sector. These changes need to be seen in context. Before 1997 the sector had been essentially a lobbying and campaigning sector. There were a number of health, housing and welfare services that the VCS or the charitable sector provided. The expectation by the New Right was that this proportion of activity funded by the state but delivered by the VCS would grow. As a consequence (and over time) it was likely that the critical voice offered by some elements of the VCS to the activities of the state would diminish or indeed be silenced. As Parkes et al. (2004) suggest, ‘to the extent that state funders were dictating their agendas, the contribution that VCS could make as alternative voices was being increasingly compromised’ (Parkes et al., 2004: 319). This view is shared by DeFilippis et al. (2010) in their reflections on the experiences in the USA, UK and Canada. The regeneration experience provides a really rich source of empirical data from which we can reflect upon these initiatives. The scale of the urban regeneration programmes and the creation of a civil society infrastructure to sit on partnership boards, play a role in contributing to programme assessments, evaluations and capacity-building developments within neighbourhoods required a sub-structure to support these developments. This sub-structure was often made up of residents and community activists and their energies were directed from activist oppositional politics to consensus building and social regeneration. The language of partnership and engagement that New Labour offered as an alternative to the rhetoric of the New Right did not, for some, conceal its continuity with the present. The influence of neoliberalism on the New Labour project was evident in a number of ways. And, for the purpose of this chapter we can see it in the model of leadership promoted within the VCS. The growth of the large charitable sector as a service provider commissioned by the state to provide specific services meant that this sector needed to look to its own reference groups for support and professional development. The VCS, with its origins in grass-roots campaigning, had by the early part of 2001 become drawn into the quite different policy environment of contracts, strategic planning and performance indicators. In this context participants were being asked to adopt consensual and pluralist ways to reach decisions. Over time, I suggest, their capacity to adopt more critical or radical positions became lessened. The tendency was to arrive at ‘joint’ decisions because they were part of the ‘partnership’. The scale of the banking and finance crisis permeates all aspects of contemporary civil society. The impact of the cuts in public expenditure for the VCS are still difficult to quantify precisely. We can speculate on their impact and we can, also, assess the likely consequences for organisations of the severe cut in grant funding and income to the sector over time. We know that there have been significant cuts in the spending by central government on the infrastructure organisations that have developed over the past thirty years to support the VCS. In some cases these organisations have cut more than 50 per cent of their jobs. These organisations worked at a city or regional or national scale. The loss of jobs and funding on such a scale has real implications

Leadership and the voluntary and community sector 95 for their medium-term future. It is possible that by 2015 a whole generation of future leaders of the VCS will have been lost. The posts and individuals going include people working on policy development and analysis; funding and strategic planning; equalities and diversity; capacity building and staff/personal development; and those with a senior or strategic role in the leadership and management of agencies based in the sector. These skills and capacities were considered a necessary part of the web of networks and partnerships that made up the public sector reform agenda of New Labour. It is important to place these initiatives and the priorities that stem from them in the other changes they introduced to the regional administrative and political architecture. New Labour sought to create a national policy and economic model in which, while there was limited devolution to the English regions and the nation-states, there remained a high level of centralisation. In order for the VCS to influence policy decisions, or to seek to claim that they could, they needed to have a presence within these new geographies of place, scale and function. At the level of the English regions, a number of quasi-regional networks seeking to represent the sector emerged. In part, these different agencies reflected different priorities of government or they were the creation of particular funds from central government. An important consequence of the New Labour attempt to re-imagine the boundaries between the public and not-for-profit sector through commissioning services or through multi-agency initiatives or urban regeneration programmes was the institutionalisation of competition between different VCS organisations. This process of competition was evident over who spoke for the sector in public events or through particular consultation exercises. The form that the competition took varied and included competition in terms of democratic legitimacy – whose ‘voice’ was being heard. In these settings the competing groups would argue over the extent to which they had a ‘mandate’ to be heard. A second form whereby this competition could be experienced was through the extent to which different groups could claim expertise and knowledge through direct experience and, as a consequence, that their experience justified their leadership role. Finally, another form that this competition took was when different VCS infrastructure bodies identified with particular places (Manchester vs Liverpool) or when they reacted negatively to those bodies that sought to offer a regional perspective rather than a local or subregional account. In these ways we can see how such infrastructure bodies aligned themselves with the interests and values of a quite narrow set of decision makers. Their reference group became the city or regional public agencies or political elites, not their membership. Such infrastructure bodies became over-dependent upon central state funding and, arguably, became more focused upon securing the next round of funding than looking at a broader – and strategic – framework. We can see through the lens of neoliberalism that the state incorporated or coopted the VCS into their strategic goals and objectives. New Labour represents an important phase in that process of co-option. As they allocated funds to invest in the capacity building of the sector they developed a significant cadre of VCS professionals who occupied key political as well as ideological roles in guarding

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access to the services and funds available. The development of support for those who occupied important leadership roles in the sector can be seen through the categories shown in Table 5.1. In a real sense the investment by New Labour in the skills and capacity of the sector to become an essential part of the partnership and joint working approach to public service reform will be lost. Arguably, the present UK Coalition government does not value many of those skills and capacities identified above. Indeed, there are some really important differences between New Labour and the Coalition. In Table 5.1 the different categorisations are presented alongside a number of policy and practice initiatives that New Labour and the current Coalition government have endorsed. As the table suggests, there is a real dichotomy between those categorisations that reflect an explicit political or ideological stance and those that might be described as managing the relationships between the state, the market and the individual. Over the past thirty years the state, through direct funding or through alliances with the charitable sector, has invested resources to support the capacity building and development of those it considered to be the ‘leaders’ of the VCS. The Clore Social Leadership Programme (Hopkins, 2010: 14) outlines their analysis of the issues facing current and future leaders in the sector: • • • •

Organisational profile of the sector – 33% of organisations have fewer than 10 employees; Workforce is growing and professionalising; Increasing role in providing direct services; Diversity of the Sector adds to its complexity.

These priorities and the way the needs of the sector are framed rule out certain models of leadership. The analysis outlined above throughout this chapter argues that the tension between ‘managing’ the sector or ‘leading’ the sector requires more than an assessment of needs. The tensions explicit in the story of the VCS in the UK over the last thirty years are best understood in terms of the politics of the Sector and the relationship(s) between the state and civil society. Table 5.1 offers one way of capturing the different organisational forms present across the VCS in the north-west of the UK and it seeks to interpret the leadership and decision-making models within the differing categories. An important dimension of the descriptors offered is the distinctions they offer in terms of the ‘political’ nature of the relationships within the individual categories. One of the significant conclusions drawn for this chapter has been the reemergence of a highly politicised and engaged element within the VCS. As Table 5.1 suggests, this development has its roots in the anti-globalisation movement of the latter part of the 1990s and the anti-war movement that developed in response to the invasion of Iraq. In the UK these developments drew together quite different traditions in the VCS. A significant part of this movement is made up of former political activists influenced by the Marxist and Trotskyist movements of the

Leadership and the voluntary and community sector 97 Table 5.1 Activists – models of organisation, attachment to values and ethical practice Category

Models of organisation

Commitment to social values

Political/Social

Systematic; membership based; alliances across political spectrum; oppositional; campaigning; non-hierarchical

Very high

Single Issue

Systematic; membership based; thematic; campaigning for changes in legislation; use of legal processes to promote change

Very high

Social Enterprise

Networked; social media; loose alliances; pluralist; personal relationships and contacts

Moderate

Brokers and Fixers

Highly connected through personal/’professional’ relationships; use of networks to promote role; highly individualistic

Weak

Network

Service led; responsive to government priorities; innovative in terms of anticipating trends; contract focussed; highly personalised relationships

Weak to low

Independent

Re-emerged in post 2001; developed in response to globalisation and war in Iraq; highly politicised and oppositional; networked

Very high

1970s/1980s, active and present with trade unions, anti-cuts initiatives of the 1980s and the anti-Poll Tax generation of the early 1990s. But, they have been joined by an equally significant movement of single-issue activists drawn from the Green movement and those committed to social justice and equalities. Both traditions tend to work outside the Labour Party. A third and important tradition has been those engaged in the education and practice of social work and youth work. Many of these individuals were active in the local government reforms of the 1980s – the going local initiatives described above – and they too were active in the anti-war movement. These individuals are grouped around the National Coalition for Independent Action and together with the National Community Activists Network they provide an important source of information, debate and organisation. In many ways these traditions quite explicitly reject the organisational forms presented by the other categories – those involved in social enterprise and service provision or through providing consultancy and advice services. These developments sit within a much newer set of developments which are much more congruent with the values and aims of neoliberalism. They are the pre-figurative structures and organisational forms for a post-local state welfare and social policy service. They offer, too, a set of social relationships based upon dependent relationships and those who work for such agencies represent a new peripheral workforce – highly dependent on service level agreements and contracts. It is in these relationships and in the relationships between those who commission such services that a new politics of contestation and opposition is becoming

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more evident. In the UK the Coalition’s commitment to cuts and a new settlement between the state, civil society, the market and the individual depends upon an enlarged and sustainable VCS. At the same time the opposition to the cuts nationally and locally is part of a broader and global set of conflicts. The scope to develop a new set of political and social relationships is opening up.

Conclusion The scale and diversity of the VCS in the UK suggests that it will remain an important agency of the state in the provision of health and welfare services. Indeed, the VCS organisational model of service provider might be seen as an ‘ideal’ type promoted by neoliberalism: it is non-state funded, receives funding through contracts and the commissioning of services, competes with state funded agencies and other charitable enterprises for work and so through market mechanisms keeps its costs and overheads low by depressing wages and conditions of work and, crucially, secures the depoliticisation of the VCS in a time of profound crisis. Clearly, this process is imperfect and can only point to emerging (and possibly developing) trends and patterns. But there are three key points for consideration and reflection. First, the scale of the crisis is likely to lead to a major restructuring of the VCS in the UK. It is very likely that within five to ten years a significant number of the agencies now functioning as part of the new social and welfare state promoted by New Labour will be gone – and that we can expect mergers and closures within the sector; second, while there has always been change within the sector – as organisations fail through loss of state funds or through key individuals leaving and moving on – these second tier organisations are seeking to reinvent themselves as social enterprises and we can expect some of them to survive. This is important because they have the potential to provide some of the necessary expertise and social/political ‘memory’ to act as critical networks supporting and holding together much weaker and more fragile organisations. But, there will be a serious loss of jobs and with it a loss of skills, capacities and understanding; finally, there has been a marked politicisation within some key elements of the sector. This process of (perhaps) radicalisation has been informed by (and is informing) a broader alliance of resistance and opposition to the state and to the austerity proposals. Why do these changes and developments matter? They point to the ways in which the concept of ‘leadership’ was understood within the VCS and by New Labour. In a very important sense there was an intended consensus between key New Labour ministers and advisers and leading figures within the VCS, including the large and influential charitable foundations, on what was meant by ‘leadership’ and what the VCS needed. The initiatives introduced and promoted by New Labour and the charitable trusts and foundations were quite consistent with detaching political questions and skills from the social and economic environment within which the VCS was situated.

Leadership and the voluntary and community sector 99 The priorities of the large trusts and foundations were to identify those individuals who were already key figures within the sector or who had the potential to be part of the next generation of leaders in the sector. In some respects this way of working is no different from that favoured by large corporations as they select their ‘brightest and best’ to complete their MBA at Harvard. As this chapter has sought to discuss, the politics and ideology of neoliberalism are central to developing a full understanding of how the concept (and practice) of leadership within the VCS was understood and enacted. A key part of this discussion has been the different organisational forms that developed within the VCS over time and how these required different leadership models and ways of working. But, the primary change that took place over this thirty-year period (or over one generation of practitioners and activists) has been the shift from political activist to social entrepreneur or service provider. It is this journey that illustrates the significant changes in the social and political environment of those who occupy key leadership roles in the VCS. The interesting and exciting changes that are evident in the UK and across the world are the parts played by non-aligned activists and social movements. Harvey (2010: 258–259) offers a rich and detailed set of insights into the nature of these diverse movements and notes their contradictory nature as well as the potential that exists within these movements to offer a different set of social, ethical and political values to those cherished by neoliberalism. In a sense the VCS and its diverse set of members/networks offers a possible alternative to that proffered by the state. In the UK this is not a re-run of the mid 1980s when the Miners Union as well as a large numbers of local authorities and many hundreds of thousands of activists provided an alternative social and economic policy and when the defeat of the miners was necessary in order to protect the needs of capital. The critique offered by DeFilippis et al. (2010: 182) on the future of the sector and the potential offered by community organising – a return to the values and practice of those involved in the War on Poverty in the USA in the 1960s and the Community Development projects here in the UK – put it slightly differently from Harvey. They quote Mary Ellen Lease who, ‘working with American agrarian populists, is said to have challenged her fellow history makers to “raise less corn and more hell” . . . ’. The VCS leadership in the UK need to listen to those from the varied and different networks who are seeking to provide a leadership that brings together an alliance of those resisting the cuts in the tradition of the sector itself – non-aligned, participatory, democratic and independent.

Bibliography Balloch, S. and Taylor, M. (eds) (2001) Partnership Working: Policy and practice, Bristol: Policy Press. Banks, S. and Shenton, F. (2001) ‘Regenerating neighbourhoods: A critical look at the role of community capacity building’, Local Economy, 16:4 286–298. Bassett, K. (1996) ‘Partnerships, business elites and urban politics: New forms of governance in an English city?’, Urban Studies, 33:3 531–555.

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Beauregard, R. (2003) Voices of Decline, London: Routledge. Bennington, J., de Groot, L. and Foot, J. (eds) (2006) Lest We Forget: Democracy, neighbourhoods and government, London: SOLACE Foundation Imprint. Birch, K. and Whittam, G. (2008) ‘The third sector and the regional development of social capital’, Regional Studies, 42:3 437–450. Blakeley, G. and Evans, B. (2008) ‘It’s like maintaining a hedge’, Public Policy and Administration, 23:1 100–113. Blunkett, D. and Jackson, K. (1987) Democracy in Crisis, London: Hogarth Press. Boddy, M. and Fudge, C. (eds) (1984) Local Socialism? London: Macmillan. Burgess, P., Hall, S., Mawson, J. and Pearce, G. (2001) Devolved Approaches to Local Governance, York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Burns, D., Hambleton, R. and Hoggett, P. (1994) The Politics of Decentralisation: Revitalising Local Democracy, London: Macmillan. Byrne, D. (2001) Social Exclusion, Buckingham: Open University Press. Chesters, G. (2010) ‘Social movements and regeneration’, in: J. Diamond, J. Liddle, A. Southern and P. Osei (eds) Urban Regeneration Management: International perspectives, 209–226, London/New York: Routledge. Clark, J., McHugh, J. and McKay, S. (2011) The UK Voluntary Sector Workforce Almanac 2011, London: NCVO. Community Sector Coalition (2010) Unseen, Unequal, Untapped, Unleashed: The potential for community action at the grass roots, London: Community Sector Coalition. Craig, G. and Mayo, M. (1995) ‘Rediscovering Community Development: Some prerequisites for working in and against the state’, Community Development Journal, 30:2 105–109. Craig, G. and Taylor, M. (2002) ‘Dangerous liaisons: Local government and the voluntary and community sectors’, in: C. Glendinning, M. Powell and K. Rummery (eds) Partnerships, New Labour and the Governance of Welfare, 131–148, Bristol: Policy Press. Craig, G., Taylor, M., Szanto, C. and Wilkenson, M. (1999) Developing Local Compacts, York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Dale, P. (2002) At the Starting Blocks: Community involvement in local strategic partnerships, London: CDF. Davies, J. (2007) ‘The limits of partnership: An exit-action strategy for local democratic inclusion’, Political Studies, 55:4 779–800. DeFilippis, J., Fisher, R. and Schragge, E. (2010) Contesting Community: The limits and potential of community organising, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Diamond, J. (1991) ‘Community co-option or Empowerment ? The role of community based work in decentralisation initiatives’, Journal of Community Education, 9:1 10–16. Diamond, J. (2001) ‘Managing change or coping with conflict’, Local Economy, 16:4 272–285. Diamond, J. (2002) ‘Decentralisation: New forms of public participation or new forms of managerialism’, in: P. Mclaverty (ed.) New Forms of Local Governance, 123–140, Aldershot: Ashgate. Diamond, J. (2008) ‘Capacity building in the voluntary and community sectors: Towards relative independence – limits and possibilities’, Public Policy and Administration, 23:2 153–166. Diamond, J. and Nelson, A. (1993) ‘Community work : Post local socialism’, Community Development Journal, 28:1 38–44.

Leadership and the voluntary and community sector 101 Diamond, J. and Pearce, J. (2010) ‘Manchester: Between the grassroots and City Hall participation in the global city’, in: J. Pearce (ed.) Participation and Democracy in the Twenty-First Century City, 154–199, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Evans, B. (2007) ‘The politics of partnership: Urban regeneration in New East Manchester’, Public Policy and Administration, 22:2 201–216. Filkin, G., Stoker, G., Wilkinson, G. and Williams, J. (2000) Towards a New Localism, London: IPPR/NLGN. Foley, P. and Martin, S. (2000) ‘Perceptions of community led regeneration : Community and central government viewpoints’, Regional Studies, 34:8 783–787. Gaynor, N. (2010) Transforming Participation: The politics of development in Malawi and Ireland, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Harvey, D. (2000) Spaces of Hope, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Harvey, D. (2005) A Brief History of Neo Liberalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harvey, D. (2010) The Enigma of Capital, London: Progress Books. Harvey, D. (2011) The Enigma of Capital, London: Profile Books. Hay, S. (2008) Developing Active Networks in Local Communities, York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. HMSO (1998) Bringing Britain Together: A national strategy for neighbourhood renewal, Report by the Social Exclusion Unit Cm4045. Hoggett, P., Mayo, M. and Miller, C. (2009) The Dilemmas of Community Work, Bristol: Policy Press. Hopkins, L. (2010) Mapping the Third Sector: Context for social leadership, London: The Work Foundation. James, S. and Cox, E. (2007) Ward Councillors and Community Leadership: A future perspective, York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Jowitt, A. and Chapman, J. (2001) ‘Community leaders and community regeneration: A pilot project for neighbourhood renewal’, paper presented to the 5th Learning and Skills Research Conference, University of Cambridge, 6–7 December. Kohler, B. and Wissen, M. (2003) ‘Glocalising protest: Urban conflicts and the global social movements’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 27:4 942–951. Leach, S. and Wilson, D. (1998) ‘Voluntary groups and local authorities: Rethinking the relationship’, Local Government Studies, 24:2 1–18. Leach, S. and Wilson, D. (2000) Local Political Leadership, Bristol: Policy Press. Martikke, S. and Tramonti, S. (2005) Spinning the Spiders Web, Manchester: GMCVO. Mayo, M. (1997) ‘Partnerships for regeneration and community development’, Critical Social Policy, 17:52 3–26. Medoff, P. and Sklar, H. (1994) Streets of Hope, Boston, MA: South End Press. Munro, H., Roberts, M. and Skelcher, C. (2008) ‘Partnership governance and democratic effectiveness in community leaders and public managers as dual intermediaries’, Public Policy and Administration, 23:1 61–79. Parkes, T., Taylor, M. and Wilkinson, M. (2004) ‘From protest to partnership? Voluntary and community organisations in the democratic process’, in M. Todd and G. Taylor (eds) Democracy and Participation, 307–325, London: Merlin Books. Pearce, J. (2010) ‘Co-producing knowledge: Critical reflections on researching participation’, in: J. Pearce (ed.) Participation and Democracy in the 21st Century, 34–50, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Peck, J. and Tickell, A. (1995) ‘Business goes local: Dissecting the business agenda in Manchester’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 19:1 55–78.

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Peck, J. and Ward, K. (eds) (2002) City of Revolution: Restructuring Manchester, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Pierson, J. (2008) Going Local: Working in communities and neighbourhoods, London: Routledge. Purdue, D. (ed.) (2007) Civil Societies and Social Movements, London: Routledge. Purdue, D., Razzaque, K., Hambleton, R. and Strewart, M. with Huxham, C. and Vargen, S. (2000) Community Leadership in Area Regeneration, Bristol: Policy Press. Stoker, G. (1994) The Role and Purpose of Local Government, CLD Research Paper 4: London. Stoker, G. (1996) The Reform of the Institutions of Local Representative Democracy: Is there a role for the Mayor-Council Model? CLD Research Paper 18: London. Wainwright, H. (1987) Labour: A tale of two parties, London: Hogarth Press. Wainwright, H. (2003) Reclaim the State, London: Verso. Yin, R. and Yates, D. (1975) Street Level Governments, Boston: Lexington Books.

6

Adaptation, adjustment and leadership in Australia’s rural margins Andrew Beer and Emma Baker

Leadership requires you to define the issues of the future and to get about tackling them. (Julia Gillard, Australia’s 27th Prime Minister, Press Statement, 20 June 2011)

Introduction Australia is a highly urbanised nation with more than 65 per cent of its population living in the major capital cities of Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Darwin, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane and Hobart. In excess of 40 per cent of the nation’s population lives in Sydney and Melbourne alone. While non metropolitan regions occupy a lesser position in the distribution of persons and economic activity, they remain prominent in both the national psyche and the economy. Australia is an important producer of mineral resources – accounting for over 60 per cent of gross national income – and agricultural products, for both domestic and international consumption. Australia’s rural regions have been confronted by significant environmental challenges: first, declining terms of trade for many agricultural commodities has meant farmers have been under increasing pressure to maximise their returns from the land, regardless of the consequences for the environment. Second, Australia’s climate is naturally highly cyclical (Botterill, 2003). As one famous Australian poet noted, it is a ‘land of drought and flooding rains’ (Mackellar, 1982). Extreme climatic conditions place increased pressure on both farmers and the ecosystems that support them. Third, some historical farming practices have been out of step with the host ecosystem, resulting in a range of local challenges, including the loss of top soil from wind or water erosion, uncontrolled pests, rising water tables, salinisation and acidification of the land, and reduced biodiversity. Finally, human-induced climate change has added to the challenges confronting farmers and pastoralists as stewards of the land. Modelling by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) suggests that while some parts of Australia will become wetter over the coming century, other economically important regions will dry out, and across the continent there will be increased temperatures and climatic variability (CSIRO, 2007).

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Historically Australia has not developed substantial and effective local institutions for the management of the environment. While a series of National Parks were established throughout Australia from the nineteenth century onwards, agricultural lands were not recognised for their environmental significance and were subject to a highly commodified agricultural production system that sought to maximise profitability (Gray and Lawrence, 2001). In the 1980s Landcare groups were established across the nation and these organisations brought together farmers – and some community members – and supported them with modest public sector funding. Landcare groups engaged in a range of activities, including ameliorative works such as tree plantings on public and private lands, fencing to protect sensitive areas and so on, as well as encouraging more environmentally sustainable farming practices and trialling new agricultural techniques. The fortunes of community or locally based environmental groups have waxed and waned over recent decades, with some innovation – including the introduction of Coastcare to complement the agricultural focus of Landcare groups, new funding sources such as the National Heritage Trust in the first years of the twenty-first century and the introduction of government sponsored alternatives – including Natural Resource Management Boards. Any discussion of environmental leadership in rural and regional Australia must acknowledge this context and recognise the influence exerted by institutional structures which may both enable and limit leadership capacities. This chapter examines environmental leadership in rural Australia and draws upon the experience of two distinct places – the township of Waikerie in the Riverland of South Australia and the town of Orroroo in the Mid North region of South Australia. The former is an important district for irrigated horticulture and viticulture, while the latter is a region of dryland farming and is situated on the margins of the agriculturally productive lands. The chapter begins with a discussion of the literature on leadership in Australia and the insights it offers into environmental leadership in this nation. It then moves to consider the two case studies and draws upon a series of qualitative interviews with key informants from each region to illuminate the processes, tensions and potential of environmental leadership from both a practical and theoretical perspective. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the implications for both public policy and a wider understanding of the role of local leaders in enhancing environmental stewardship in Australia’s rural landscapes.

Leadership of places and environments in Australia There is a limited literature on place-based leadership in Australia but while non metropolitan Australia is often overlooked in academic research and public discourse, much of the published work on leadership has had a specific focus on rural and regional communities. The Australian literature on leadership in rural and regional communities has continued to explore a number of themes, including the nature of the relationship between power and leadership (Gray, 1991; Gray and Lawrence, 2001); the sources, origin and social constitution of leadership in

Adaptation, adjustment and leadership in Australia 105 these communities (Kroehn et al., 2010); the relationship between formal power structures and leadership at the local scale (Sorenson and Epps, 1996); and, the relationship between community-scale leadership and the State (Herbert-Cheshire, 2003; Gray and Sinclair, 2005; Beer, 2011). Other, applications-focused, research has considered the potential of regional leadership groups to achieve environmental goals (Sobels et al., 2001; Gray et al., 2005). The nature, source and origins of the power of leaders in rural and regional Australia have been an area of enduring interest for researchers. As Kroehn et al. (2010) noted, much of the literature on the leadership of places in Australia has drawn heavily on published research on leadership in business. Much of this research has been concerned with transcending organizational, environmental and human limitations and in dealing with change. These theories highlight the role of motivation, the charisma of leaders (Bycio et al., 1995), the articulation of a vision and the communication of that vision to the wider community. Bass (1985) suggested that there were four dimensions of transformational leadership, consisting of idealized influence (based on respect and admiration for the leader); individualised consideration (extent that the leader cares for the follower’s concerns); intellectual stimulation (degree to which the leader provides followers with interesting and challenging tasks); and inspirational motivation (the communication of expectations and followers’ confidence in the leader) (Kest, 2006: 56). Kirkpatrick and Locke (1996) summarised the four components that they identified as core to transformational leadership as communicating a vision, implementing a vision, charismatic communication style and individualised consideration (Kroehn et al., 2010: 499). There is an important distinction within this literature between ‘transactional leaders’ who are often process focused, and ‘transformational leaders’ who are almost solely concerned to bring about change (Bass, 1985), with the latter often presented as the most effective style of leaders (Gray et al., 2005). Importantly, studies that have focused on the personal qualities of ‘transformational’ leaders have, in large measure, ignored the social, economic and political environment in which they have acted. Gray et al. (2005) noted that studies on leadership have tended to present an uncomplicated view of the relationship between leadership and power, because ‘Leadership is seen as a positive attribute in management where it enables managers to exert legitimate power. Good leader managers have power over the people they manage’ (Gray et al., 2005: 129). They note, however, that the sociological literature has a more ambiguous view on the exercise of authority or influence, as ‘power has often been associated with social control and exploitation’ (Gray et al., 2005: 129). Sociological research has considered both a structuralist interpretation of power – its distribution, impacts and possession – but has also more recently embraced a Foucauldian analysis of power that emphasises the enduring nature of power relations in all social interactions. Gray and Sinclair (2005), for example, noted that local leaders often resist the actions of centralising governments through a combination of processes that deflect the intent of policy. Beer (2011) came to a comparable conclusion in his study of the Riverland of South Australia. Importantly, Gray and Sinclair (2005)

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recognised that the exercise of power, or the attempt to exercise power, often comes at a cost to individuals. One of the informants from their case study in Newfoundland noted that her attempts to develop new, tourism-focused, businesses were resisted locally, largely because of they represented a radical departure from established enterprise models. More broadly, Gray et al. (2005) noted that power relations appear central to leadership in rural and regional communities globally and are especially significant when considering environmental leadership. They noted that community leaders are often drawn from a distinctive, privileged group, within the broader population of residents and that they may use their leadership to sustain their social and economic advantages. Gray et al. (2005) noted the work by Spies et al. (1998) and Ayres and Potter (1989), which found that ‘community leaders tend to be older, better educated, have higher incomes and are male. Community leaders are also disproportionately drawn from the land-based elite’ (Gray et al., 2005: 132). These findings are consistent both with Gray’s (1991) major study of power in a NSW country town, as well as Sorenson and Epps’s (1996) work on power elites within four townships in central Queensland. In both instances, a well established landowning strata dominated political life and leadership positions. Stough (2003) considered the role of leadership in the development of the strategic management of places and policy at a regional scale, especially large urban regions. This work built upon his earlier research in the same vein (Stough, 2001; Stough and Kulkarni, 2001; Stimson et al., 2002). Stough (2003) made three important observations on leadership and regional development: first, he argued that once endogenous factors are controlled for, regional economic performance is dependent upon leadership and resource endowments and, of course, only the former is amenable to action to enhance achievement. Second, he argued that leadership is enhanced when it has access to superior information, both now and into the future. Finally, he noted the importance of ‘slack resources’ in enabling leadership to both develop and find purposeful expression. That is, effective leaders need to have the capacity – available time, fiscal resources and so on – to attend to the community leadership tasks to hand. He noted that ‘it is the availability of slack or discretionary resources that is critical . . . This excess or slack is the source of voluntary contributions to civic activities, or locally based and focussed community efforts’ (Stough, 2003: 183–184). The issue of ‘slack resources’ is important because poorer regions may experience lower quality leadership, as fewer individuals or firms have the time or money to express effective leadership. The critical role of slack resources also helps explain the on-going dominant role of both charismatic entrepreneurs (Kroehn et al., 2010) and established landed elites (Gray, 1991) in leadership positions in regional and rural centres. In short, only those individuals with significant resources can afford to lead their communities. The focus on ‘slack resources’ also provides a fresh perspective on the roles played by professional staff: while conventional accounts of leadership in regional areas have highlighted the role of volunteer leaders (McKinsey & Co., 1994) other analyses of economic development processes have drawn attention to the important role paid

Adaptation, adjustment and leadership in Australia 107 professionals – such as economic development practitioners or local government staff – play in bringing about change at the local or regional scale (Beer et al., 2003). Poorer regions may need to rely upon professional staff for effective leadership, which in turn suggests that public policies that provide additional ‘slack resources’ within a region – in the form of a new organisation – can greatly assist leadership efforts. The discussion of the nature of leadership, its relationship to power dynamics within communities and the role of surplus resources in enabling leadership to emerge is directly relevant to the discussion in this chapter. Its value spans a number of dimensions: first, the review highlights the importance of communication and stakeholder engagement in leadership at the local scale. Leadership demands interaction with a number of interest groups and actors, some of whom have the capacity to bestow legitimacy and continuity on the leaders (Collinge and Gibney, 2011). Leadership comes at a cost to leaders – in terms of time, financial resources and interpersonal politics – and for these reasons, leaders are more likely to be drawn from those groups within society who are wealthier or control considerable resources. Stough (2003) has also highlighted both the importance of information for leaders and the potential role of government agencies in creating the ‘slack resources’ needed to permit leadership to develop. Interactions with government agencies, therefore, may be critical in understanding how leadership groups have evolved and major initiatives commenced. Finally, it is worth reflecting upon the triggers that give rise to leaders and leadership actions. Definitions of leadership tend to focus on the need to identify and address challenges that call for change, and the effective expression of change management processes that allow a community, place or region to transform itself to a better or more sustainable state. This focus on change is both implicit and explicit in Bass’s (1985) model of transformational and transactional leadership (see also Gray et al., 2005). In any analysis of leadership it is important to ask, therefore, what have been the factors that have precipitated the need for change, and how effectively have those challenges been accommodated? The remainder of this chapter addresses these issues by focusing on environmental leadership or stewardship in and around Orroroo and Waikerie in South Australia. Through the two case studies we consider the triggers for change evident in these regions, the nature and composition of the leadership groups that have formed, and the strategies for communication available to, and used by, leaders in dealing with key stakeholders.

Places of local leadership: Orroroo and Waikerie Orroroo and Waikerie both sit in the Wheat–Sheep Belt of South Australia, Orroroo in the mid north of the State, and Waikerie in the east (Figure 6.1). Both have similar low average annual rainfalls (^er RIVERLAND I

NT Old VWL

South Australia NSW

0 km

250

Figure 6.1 Location of case regions.

Bowl', provides water for 40 per cent of Australia's agricultural production (ABS, 2008: 91). Though sited in a zone of Australia known for its marginal rainfall, Waikerie has been a centre of irrigation farming for the last century, focusing particularly on citrus and grape production. Over recent years a prolonged drought in Southern Australia and subsequent substantial government-imposed restrictions to irrigation water allocations (which fell at one point to 2 per cent of pre-drought allocations) has resulted in substantial changes to industry, employment, and farming practices in the area. Decreasing and unreliable water allocations have

Adaptation, adjustment and leadership in Australia 109 been made worse by the structural difficulties of adapting such a highly irrigationdependent economy to other forms of agricultural production, because of the very small comparative block sizes which are ‘only 0.5% to 1% of the area required for dryland operations’ (MDBA, 2010, Irrigation District Regional Profile). While historically irrigation allowed Waikerie to develop an agricultural industry where year-on-year crops were predictable, the location of Orroroo, away from a reliable water source meant that the region developed a very different economy and farming system. Orroroo is a broad-acre and livestock-focused farming region, known for its rainfall variability – in the last twenty years, for example, average annual rainfall has varied from less than 200 ml to more than 600 ml. Reflecting its position on Goyder’s Line, in many years there is insufficient rainfall to produce crops around Orroroo, and some authors (for example Walker, 2008) suggest that Orroroo might be outside the ‘line of reliable rainfall’. Nevertheless, this historically difficult climate has shaped the farming community, such that, as one local farmer said, ‘the only farmers left in the district are efficient ones’ (Walker, 2008). Demographically, Orroroo and Waikerie are comparable small South Australian towns with population characteristics that are distinct from State averages. Both towns have relatively low levels of unemployment compared to the rest of South Australia, slightly older populations, and substantially lower average household incomes (ABS, 2006). In both towns male employment is centred on agriculture, with almost a quarter of all male employees working in agriculture/fishing/forestry (four times the average for the State), and female employment is comparatively over-represented in health and education-related jobs. Importantly, both towns have a long history of active local leadership – from landholders, elected representatives, self-organised agriculture focused groups, and government representatives. In Orroroo the local council, which represents Orroroo and the neighbouring Carrieton region, has a population of less than 1,000 persons distributed across almost 3,500 km2. Waikerie is represented by the Loxton Waikerie Council, and has a population of more than 11,000 people spread over 8,000 km2. Within both local governments, a number of the elected representatives come from the surrounding farming community. Both areas have a history of active Landcare groups. Landcare originated as a community-led movement that saw groups of farmers work together to improve environmental management practices. In the past, the movement attracted substantial Australian government funding, but this support has since been withdrawn. Landcare groups have either disappeared, continued of their own volition or been integrated into more formal environmental management arrangements, including Natural Resource Management Boards. In Waikerie and the remainder of the Riverland, Local Action Plan (LAP) groups now represent the forefront of community-led environmental management. Across South Australia as a whole, Natural Resource Management Boards are State governmentfunded conduits for environmental and sustainability information and resources, and are active in both the Orroroo and Waikerie local areas. In order to understand the role of leadership in local adjustment to a changing environment, this chapter is based on a series of interviews with key local leaders

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in the two case study areas. Interviews were conducted with individuals who were regarded by others in their community as central to environmental and land management decision making. Interviewees included elected representatives of local government, members and organisers of local agricultural groups, long-term residents and landholders, staff of non-government organisations and government employed experts. Most leaders had roles across a number of these domains and many were central figures in their communities.

Adaptation, adjustment and leadership in Orroroo Like many other parts of South Australia, Orroroo has borne the cost of climate variability, extreme weather events and drought in recent years. However, to a significant extent these climate problems are not new to Orroroo, one leader describing each year as a ‘seasonal rollercoaster – we know we’ll get boomer years, but also some awful years’. It is an area long established on the edge of South Australia’s viable agricultural land and as a result its communities and producers have historically led the way in sustainable farming and land management practices. As one leader said: ‘Because of the different climate, people, out of necessity think of clever things to do in response. People living in a kinder climate don’t do those things – because there isn’t necessity pushing them.’ Local leadership around current environmental challenges rests heavily on the structures built in response to earlier challenges. Local leadership is especially important because not only does it provide local knowledge, but it ensures (because most leaders are very long-term residents) continuity. Land managers are conscious of the necessity to improve and protect their soil at the same time as earning a living from it. A number of farming organisations are well established in the area, and these have provided the basis for both the transfer of knowledge between land managers, as well as the capacity to leverage government-funded expert knowledge. The recent response to a major locust plague in Southern Australia provides a clear demonstration of the way in which established leadership structures in Orroroo were used by locals and government agencies. During an earlier locust plague in 1997/8 local land managers had been concerned that the State government response was inappropriate to the conditions around Orroroo. Local leaders therefore formed a delegation to meet with the State government and request a local response. As a result, the State government set up a reference group committee (the Northern Locust Reference Group) chaired by one of the local leaders to work with local people and interact with government agency experts. This reference group was extremely successful, both in capturing additional resources, as well as permitting local capacities’ resources to develop. Importantly, when another locust plague struck in 2000 the structures were already developed, and the response in Orroroo was able to ‘happen quickly and work well’. In the recent locust plague, which was expected to be the largest in 40 years, Orroroo was seen as the natural place to centre an area-wide response, and it was effective in preventing a major outbreak.

Adaptation, adjustment and leadership in Australia 111 Farming-related organisations also provide leadership within the community with regard to farming methods. Importantly, there is a local focus on demonstration and evidence, rather than prescription. Environmental leadership in Orroroo is self-consciously ‘by example’, and by providing examples. Field days and trial areas are used by farming groups, such as the Upper North Farming Systems Group (UNFSG) to ‘help people on the land do things a bit better . . . climate change or not’. Precision farming methods in the area are relatively advanced, and this is likely to be partially attributable to the examples provided by such organisations, which share experience and knowledge, and provide examples of new methods. As one local leader said, ‘No one actively opposes . . . [innovation], but we work from evidence’. It is also important to note that organised farming groups such as the UNFSG additionally enable local landholders to secure additional slack resources to the community, in this case in the form of a paid government agency worker to assist with expert knowledge and information transfer. Local leaders saw groups such as the UNFSG, as having substantially reshaped farming methods in the area, and even though recent years had poor rainfalls, land managers had still continued to improve their soil and maximise their harvests because of the continued uptake of better agricultural methods, such as the ability to effectively manage stubble. Though Orroroo has a small population relative to the majority of other towns in Australia, it has a strong group of vocal leaders who have been organised in securing resources for the local community. Beyond the farming groups discussed above, the local council has planned and acted across social, economic and environmental goals for at least the last two decades. It should be noted that many of the local leaders represented the community in both farming groups and as elected council representatives. Unsurprisingly, in an area of marginal rainfall, the local council has long been focused on ameliorating the effects of climate change, but not solely in the area of agricultural outcomes. It has undertaken projects during the last three decades to sustain the town’s population, and their quality of life, and employment. Three interesting examples of this broad-scale leadership stand out. First, the council has attempted over a twenty-five-year period to obtain national funding to address the substantial water problems in the town. Without access to a major water source, residents use a combination of rainwater and underground bore water; the latter is undrinkable and has consequences for household plumbing. While being unsuccessful in obtaining a federal grant for a desalination plant (three times), the council has self-funded a series of alternate water programmes – a grey water system, a rainwater tank scheme, and a storm water scheme. Second, the council has determinedly obtained road-building funding over a period of years, which has enabled the town to be effectively linked to nearby towns and services, and important employment opportunities. Third, the council, in an effort to address population loss and the ageing of the population, has developed a small ‘lifestyle village’, the aim of which is to encourage older residents to move from their large homes, thereby freeing up dwellings that may be then used by working families.

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Overall, leadership in Orroroo is articulate and determined. Similar to Australia’s Prime Minister, leaders in Orroroo defined leadership most commonly in terms of vision, not ‘just listening and acting, [its] . . . about working towards a plan’. Leaders were mainly drawn from farming families, and the majority had been established in the local area for most (or all) of their lives. Most contributed to the local community from their own time, and also successfully secured substantial external resources, such as funding for additional professional and expert staff. One such case was the employment for a number of years of a charismatic council employee, who worked with the community to ‘make Orroroo a community led attractive place to live’.

Adaptation, adjustment and leadership in Waikerie Waikerie’s economy is dominated by irrigated agriculture, which first appeared in South Australia’s Riverland in the 1890s. Prior to that, pastoral activities – especially wool growing – had been introduced by European colonists and formed the basis for a sparse settlement structure. Irrigated agriculture expanded rapidly after the First and Second World Wars as governments initiated soldier settlement schemes to provide an economic future for demobilised service men. The complexion of the region changed again significantly in the 1960s as large numbers of immigrants from Southern Europe (especially Italy, Greece, and the then Yugoslavia) entered the region and eventually took up horticulture, viticulture and other land holdings (Hugo, 1991). In the 1990s the nature of economic activity in the region changed significantly as traditional horticultural industries and associated processing – stone fruits, citrus – declined in the face of increased global competition, but viticulture rose to a much more prominent position. The rapid escalation of exports from Australia’s wine industry had commenced in the 1980s but gathered pace in the 1990s, resulting in the development of new viticultural estates, and the conversion of many existing fruit ‘blocks’ to wine grape production. By the first years of the twenty-first century, the boom in the wine industry in Waikerie and the wider Riverland had begun to wane as a consequence of a stronger Australian currency reducing the competitiveness of wine exports, shifts in consumer preferences away from wines produced en masse in warmer, irrigated regions, to smaller-scale production from cooler regions, as well as the changing investment strategies of major corporations. Prices for grapes in the region began to fall and by 2006 the once assured supply of water for irrigation began to falter as prolonged drought in the upstream States of New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria reduced environmental flows and resulted in cutbacks in the allocations of water for irrigation. By 2008/09 water allocations in the Riverland had been reduced to 2 per cent of their nominal total and while water was available for use, it needed to be purchased at a far greater cost than irrigators were accustomed to paying. In 2010 the Murray–Darling Basin Authority produced a report on water allocations that recommended a permanent 30 per cent reduction in water

Adaptation, adjustment and leadership in Australia 113 diversions for irrigated agriculture (MDBA, 2010). Such reductions were forecast to have a devastating impact on established irrigation districts and represented a major governance threat to the social and economic sustainability of the Riverland. The history of Waikerie’s development provides an important context for our understanding of the nature, dimensions and current challenges facing environmental leadership in that region. Critically, irrigators in and around Waikerie had not had a history of dealing with uncertain conditions and, unlike the dryland farmers of Orroroo, had not developed strategies to steward environmental resources. Leadership in environmental issues is therefore a much newer phenomenon among irrigators than among the dryland farmers of the Mid North. In addition, some of the key environmental challenges are beyond the control of individual farmers or farmer associations: decisions on water allocations and plans for the management of the River Murray are taken at a national level and there may be no on-farm solutions to these threats to sustainability. In some respects there was a stark contrast between the less well developed processes for leading change in environmental management within irrigated agriculture and the more advanced approaches evident within some sections of the dryland farming community. While the town of Waikerie sits among irrigated agriculture, the irrigation district is in turn surrounded by marginal cropping lands. Since the mid 1990s some dryland farmers in the region have participated in a major initiative called Mallee Sustainable Farming (MSF): a farmer driven organisation servicing the