Exercising Public Leadership From Below: An Empirical Research on a Native American Health Clinic Organization

Abstract

Historically, human beings have shown a tendency to go beyond government‐oriented structures and developed processes of collective organization from below to address particular issues. Overall, studies in public leadership have put too much attention at the top, and to leaders in positions of authority, and work in the field regarding bottom‐up and collective processes of exercising public leadership from excluded social groups is scarce. The current study is a mini‐ethnographic case study that includes observations, artifacts collection, and interviews, and was conducted within a Native American health clinic organization founded in the Northwest of the United States that provides health services to the community. From perspectives of critical interculturality and process philosophy, the current article examines how this organization understands and exercises a collective process of public leadership from below. In particular, the focus of the current study is on how frameworks for sense and meaning‐making of their struggle pursuing the public good are developed and how the organizational structures to adjust to the external challenges of a rapidly changing world from a position of social exclusion are created.