Responsible leadership and transformative cross-sector partnering

Abstract

The demands on business, government, and non-profit leaders to deal with major economic, social, and environmental problems are increasingly exceeding their individual capabilities. This has led to a growing recognition of the imperative of collaborating across sectors to combine complementary resources and capabilities. Such collaboration has been largely neglected in the responsible leadership literature. This chapter presents a framework for analyzing cross-sector collaboration, with special emphasis on transformational collaboration. Cross-sector partnering is a manifestation of transformative leadership, and transformative collaboration is an especially powerful and understudied leadership form. The chapter examines five descriptive parameters of transformative partnering: goal orientation, problem focus, collaboration processes, collaboration configurations, and collaboration mindsets and leadership roles. To document and illustrate the development, characteristics, and leadership of transformative partnering, two case studies of collaborative constellations that achieved institutional and systemic transformations are presented. Both have produced important social and environmental value as well as financial benefits to the collaborators and the larger society. The chapter concludes with leaders’ reflections on transformative collaborative leadership. The chapter strives to enrich the responsible leadership literature, opening the window for exploration of transformative collaboration.