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Enacting Leadership for Collaborative Advantage: Dilemmas of Ideology and Pragmatism in the Activities of Partnership Managers
Author(s) -
Vangen Siv,
Huxham Chris
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
british journal of management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.407
H-Index - 108
eISSN - 1467-8551
pISSN - 1045-3172
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2003.00393.x
Subject(s) - general partnership , pragmatism , rhetoric , public relations , ideology , element (criminal law) , face (sociological concept) , value (mathematics) , sociology , collaborative leadership , political science , politics , epistemology , social science , philosophy , linguistics , machine learning , computer science , law
Working across organizations has long been recognized as a characteristic of public management, but recent years have seen a worldwide intensification in partnership working. Rhetoric about the benefits is endemic but so are complaints about the difficulty of partnership working in practice. Understanding the way that collaborative approaches may provide value is therefore an essential element of understanding the changing roles of public‐sector organizations. The particular aim of this paper is to contribute to a growing understanding of the way in which individuals enact leadership roles in such situations. The focus is on partnership managers, whose main role is to organize the activities of a collaboration. The way in which partnership managers enact leadership is explored and insight into the kinds of activities that typically occupy them, the types of challenges and dilemmas that they face and typical ways in which they respond to these is provided. We suggest that the main categories of activities split into two opposing perspectives on leadership. We propose an overarching concept which suggests that collaborative leadership involves the management of a tension between ideology and pragmatism.