Place-based Leadership Research Articles

Subnational leadership in response to environment and climate change

ABSTRACT This paper explores subnational leadership in collective action, responding to environment and climate change. The research was conducted in the county of Cornwall in the UK to explore why and how people take up local leadership roles, and how personal and shared values influence their activities. The results show four dimensions of place-based leadership: (1) willingness (the individual or I-dimension), (2) mobilisation and framing (the collective or WE-dimension), (3) place-shaping practices and leadership roles (the practical or IT-dimension) and (4) collaboration and responsiveness (the political or THEY-dimension). Our findings illustrate the relevance of (inter)subjective aspects of local leadership and how leaders support different scaling processes.

The uphill battle for reinventing post-industrial regions: The case of Greater Manchester's ‘clean growth’ mission

In this paper we enrich the concept of place-based leadership. Building on social movement theory, our analysis of the clean growth mission development in Greater Manchester (UK) reveals the role of place-based leadership in mobilising and coordinating framing processes that linked the global climate change problem with local challenges, articulated local benefits of its resolution, and provided justification for local change efforts. We draw on theories of the policy process (i.e. Multiple Streams Framework) to shed light on how place-based leaders frame problems and solutions strategically to engender policy change. While framing processes had an impact on local policy agendas, we do not find evidence of accelerated implementation, pointing to the important distinctions between problem ownership and solution ownership in the context of wicked problems. Our findings contribute to the ongoing debate on the role of multi-level governance and localised agency in problem-based policymaking for sustainable regional development.

Place-based leadership development: scaling up collective impact

Place-based leadership development: scaling up collective impact

An agency perspective of regional economic resilience during COVID-19: the role of the local state’s place-based leadership in Kunshan, China

AbstractThrough a case study of Kunshan, China, this paper shows how a local state utilised place-based leadership to enhance regional economic resilience under the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. It unpacks how Kunshan effectively mitigated early economic disturbances induced by the COVID-19 pandemic, by two ways of leadership actions, namely, enacting jurisdictional power (that is formal leadership), and mobilising wide official and interpersonal networks (that is network leadership). Four specific local-state-led adaptive resilience processes or strategies are identified: stabilising labour supply, mitigating supply-chain disruptions, alleviating financial strains and reconfiguring market orientations. Through these proactive endeavours, the local state played an enabling role in aligning diverse stakeholders and resources across places, scales and sectors, thereby allaying economic shocks and enhancing regional economic resilience. This study contributes to the resilience literature by developing an agency-centric perspective to understanding regional economic resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Multi-level agency and transformative capacity for environmental risk reduction in the Norwegian salmon farming industry

This article analyzes the role of agency in reducing environmental risk in the Norwegian salmon farming industry. The theoretical starting point is recent literature on change agency which focuses on the different ways in which actors purposely act to renew existing and create new regional industry growth paths, and reproductive agency which focuses on how actors, explicitly and implicitly, maintain existing structures to uphold status quo. Departing from a current risk society ambiguity in the industry and an explorative multi-scalar study of industrial innovation processes, we analysis how change agency combined with reproductive agency play out. The analysis shows that change agency affecting transformative agency capacity reducing environmental risk is connected to institutional entrepreneurship in terms of a Development Licenses Program on the national level and to Schumpeterian innovative entrepreneurship in terms of Development Licenses Projects on firm level. Moreover, the study shows how reproductive agency also affects the capacity to cope with environmental risks in terms of risk reducing place-based leadership illustrated by cooperation and bottom-up, self-organized area cooperation on the regional level, and in terms of risk creation illustrated by a global growth logic across geographical levels. On this ground, it is argued that the theoretical contribution of the study is that the transformative capacity to reduce environmental risks of an industry rests on multi-scalar change- and reproductive agency and how these are combined.

City politics under austerity in Greece: Place-based leadership for a resilient Thessaloniki, 2011-2021

The 2008 global financial crisis intensified our focus on the role of local governments as strategic actors, within current cycles of economic, political and governance change. This paper highlights the significance of Greece's second-largest city, Thessaloniki, becoming a resilient local authority, with the capacity to respond to perturbations, and the ability to self-organise and learn. Existing models of resilience were insufficient for explaining how a strong mayor's team was able to turn around the fortunes of the city. The paper uses a synthetic theoretical model combining the templates ‘behavioural resilience’ and ‘Place-based leadership’. The findings reveal that Thessaloniki's administration was able to respond to a unique set of problems, including the modernization of local services, balancing a problematic budget, opening the city to the world using some of its historic monuments and drafting an emergency plan for future shocks. The mayor's team was capable of galvanizing a network of key actors from the city's government, public, private and civic bodies to adapt and generate new ways of thinking and functioning in the context of change and uncertainty, so Thessaloniki appeared to offer a role model on how local government in Greece could develop strategies for overcoming austerity and stress.

Universities as strategic agents in regional path development? A European comparison

ABSTRACT This paper contributes to the discussion on the role of universities in regional path development, emphasizing the different agency types adapted. Accordingly, literature on ‘new path development’ is combined with the three agency types of innovative entrepreneurship, institutional entrepreneurship and place-based leadership. This paper applies a long-term qualitative empirical approach with three case studies – Aalborg (Denmark), Kaiserslautern (Germany) and Twente (Netherlands). Results reveal that different types of agency are closely interwoven and complement each other in their effects on regional (industrial) path development. Additionally, the agency types are strongly influenced by (a) highly motivated individuals/frontrunners, (b) support and openness from the university leadership and (c) regional structures that facilitate university-region collaboration and joint governance.

Just Southern: Navigating the Social Construction of a Rural Community in the Press for Educational Equity

Rural communities in the Southern US are shaped by a legacy of racial oppression carried out through educational systems, in tandem with contemporary policies that perpetuate the marginalization of minoritized students. In this qualitative, revelatory case study, we examine the experiences of rural, southern school leaders who are tasked with ensuring educational equity. Using critical place-based leadership and bonding/bridging theory, we examine the social construction of belonging in a rural southern community, and the implications for equity-centered educational leadership. We find the community maintains tight-knit bonding capital that is rooted in land ownership and racial exclusion, which is conceptualized as southernness. Educational leaders who develop bridging capital were best positioned to shift community perceptions necessary to enact educational equity.

Paying-it-forward: Indigenous leadership in American higher education

ABSTRACT This study focuses on Native American experiences of senior leadership in higher education, presenting a paradigm of Indigenous leadership based on the principle of paying-it-forward. The qualitative study, underpinned by Indigenist methodology, centers the responses of four Native American senior leaders in mainland America and Hawai´i who have strategically designed community-building policies and practices to counter ongoing isolation in higher education. Findings detail place-based leadership paradigms and practical strategies derived from Native American leadership rationales, showing the power of Native American leadership to challenge systemically biased perceptions, policies and practices that endeavor to isolate Indigenous peoples from each other, culture, language, and ways of being knowing and doing. The study is part of the international phase of an Australian-based project not only gives insight into higher education internationally, but also creates opportunity for consideration of what we can learn to our advantage in other colonized contexts.

Beyond the School Walls: Collective Impact in Micropolitan School-Community Partnerships

ABSTRACT Research suggests that the time students spend outside of school, as well as the communities in which they spend it, impact educational outcomes. Inequitable educational outcomes are the result of complex, interdependent problems in the public and private sector, suggesting the need for approaches that bring together schools with other organizations to address problems in the ecological and developmental systems of family, school, out-of-school programs, and communities. Collective impact has gained prominence as a strategy for such cross-sector partnerships. This qualitative study uses a comparative approach to extend knowledge of collective impact into rural and micropolitan communities using civic capacity as a framework. It identifies limitations in mobilization of members and issue framing which suggest a need to reconceptualize collective impact as a political arrangement, rather than an organizational one. The findings suggest the need to engage in community organizing activities to build political capital by confronting social isolation and exclusion among groups, examining power and privilege among community members and developing critical place-based leadership for intergenerational capacity building.

The relationship between the professional, social, and political experience and leadership style of mayors and organisational culture in local government. Empirical evidence from Poland.

This paper aims to identify the organisational culture profiles of Polish municipalities and examine the influence of the professional, social and political experience and place-based leadership style of mayors on municipalities’ organisational culture profiles. The Organisational Culture Assessment Instrument was selected due to its suitability in assessing the organisation’s underlying culture. In the study, 917 mayors of municipalities in Poland, completing an on-line questionnaire. It was found that most of the Polish municipalities’ organisational culture is characterised by a clan type which is reflected in how employees are managed, how the organisation is held together, and how the organisation’s strategy is defined. The leadership style and the organisation’s success are hierarchy-focused, while the dominant characteristic is market type. The ANOVA and UNIANOVA analysis results suggest that the type of organisational culture depends on the type of municipality. The clan culture is dominant in rural municipalities. In urban municipalities, market culture and adhocracy are stronger than in rural municipalities, while clan culture is weaker. There is also an association between the dominant type of organisational culture and the mayors’ work experience in local administration and their membership in an NGO. The length of the mayor’s seniority in local government administration differentiates the importance of hierarchy culture, while his experience in the NGO sector strengthens the clan characteristics of the organisational culture of the office he heads. These findings provide important implications for the initiation and implementation of cultural change in local government administration and cooperation projects and local experiments. A cultural change is difficult to implement, and a change of mayor is not enough to initiate it. It requires planning and management. Cultural change may contribute to the increase of municipalities’ activity in cooperation’s projects and experiments. There is a need for more research on this topic to determine to what extent the organisational culture supports local cooperation projects.

An agent of change against all odds? The case of Ledger in Vierzon, France

The literature in economic geography is increasingly interested in the role of human agency in local and regional development. The understanding of the role of agents of change on path development is especially critical for small- and medium-sized towns (SMSTs), which tend to be less diversified and to have fewer localised capabilities. The town of Vierzon in the Centre-Val-de-Loire region in France is a medium-sized old industrial town in a structural crisis. It is suffering from deindustrialisation, population decline, unemployment and poverty. This article takes a micro-perspective with a case study approach to explore the creation and growth of Ledger – a frontier blockchain start-up that designs, produces and commercialises hardware wallets for cryptocurrencies – against all odds in Vierzon, France. It underlines the role of a Window of Locational Opportunity, agency, chance, the broader institutional context in the location of Ledger in an unlikely place and subsequent unrelated diversification and path creation. It contributes to the debate on the interplay between agency and structure by linking agents of change in SMSTs to the broader institutional context and to the understanding of the emergence of place-based leadership.

New path creation in the artificial intelligence industry: regional preconditions, new actors and their collective actions, and policies

ABSTRACT This article contributes to the growing literature on a broader understanding of new industry path creation shaped by regional preconditions as well as multi-actor and multi-scale interventions. Using the case of Montreal’s artificial intelligence (AI) industry as its testing ground, the findings point to the significance of pre-existing industrial structures and knowledge base, as well as the importance of new innovative entrepreneurship, institutional entrepreneurship and coordinated multilevel policy initiatives directed at nurturing the new industries, and collective place-based leadership.

From smart cities to wise cities

Much of the literature on so-called ‘smart cities’ is self-congratulatory in tone. Digital enthusiasts claim that the current revolution in communication technologies will transform cities in the 21st Century in the way electricity changed them in the last. This paper offers a critique of this perspective. It notes that the evidence suggesting that digital technologies can refresh and enhance the quality of democracy in cities is decidedly underwhelming. While international research shows that E-government can enhance citizen access to public services, the evidence that information and communication technologies are enhancing the quality of E-democracy verges on the non-existent. It follows that urban scholars and city leaders who wish to advance purposeful change in the modern city will need to move beyond the limiting confines of the ‘smart cities’ debate. The paper highlights findings from international research set out in a new book - Leading the Inclusive City (Policy Press). This research, which has examined bold place-based leadership in seventeen innovative cities in fourteen countries, suggests that the judgements exercised by civic leaders, not technological advances in and of themselves, are the key drivers of progressive change and urban governance improvement. The paper argues that academic analysis can serve a useful purpose by offering more penetrating assessments of who gains and who loses from ‘digital disruptions’.

Creating social innovation in urban development through collaborative processes

Uncertainty is a major factor in urban development as a consequence of a changing society. Major theoretical approaches to urban development, such as place-based leadership or coproduction, emphasize the importance of the public sector. This study aims to enhance the understanding of urban development processes as a collaborative and participatory concept through social innovation. We apply the concept of socially creative milieus to analyze the emergence of social innovation under the constraint of uncertainty. The criteria ‘agents of innovation’, ‘adopters’, ‘diffusion channels’, ‘constraints’, ‘inertia’, and ‘impacts’ are analyzed using a holistic case study in the field of urban development. Our results show that the presence of high social capital supersedes the coercive power of the public sector. By applying the creative milieus approach, environments like the density of networks and contacts in the governance of urban places make innovative development possible.

Place leadership and the role of the third sector and civil society

Only relatively recently, place leadership has become an important debate in the leadership studies and public administration literatures. From a place leadership perspective, there is clearly a potential role for third sector organisations and the voluntary engagement that citizens can play for places through different activities, such as for example social innovation, public services provision, volunteering, civic engagement, advocacy, enhancement of the quality of life, strengthening of social bonds and social cohesion. However, the topic of civil society and third sector organisations is still neglected in research and public policy debates on place-based leadership. Our special issue aims at filling this gap.

Bristol's smart city agenda: vision, strategy, challenges and implementation

This case study explores Bristol's goal to create a smart city, anchored by a 30-year city vision and the vital role digital connectivity and smart city technologies play. It describes Bristol's 2050 One City Plan, where city partners are collaboratively shaping the city through place-based leadership, community involvement and co-production, and Bristol City Council's complementary smart city strategy – Connecting Bristol. This digital agenda supports by developing the ‘foundations’ required to become a data-enabled city with world-class connectivity and inclusive public services; elements which enable many One City goals. It examines the importance of a challenge-led, people-focused approach with responsible innovation practices that ensure digital initiatives align with the One City Plan's equitable goals and values. Implementation strategies, including an ‘innovation ambition’ matrix used to manage a portfolio of smart city initiatives, and challenges are described along with the need for inclusive infrastructure and ethical data practices. The emerging role for local government in shaping a trusted smart city is explored. This study ends by discussing Covid-19 and economic recovery, in response to which the Council seeks to become a more agile, streamlined organisation, and concludes by highlighting the need to keep people at the heart of ‘smart’ city development.

Place leadership: developing a model to guide regional partnerships

ABSTRACT Models of subnational governance have grown in popularity across Europe, but the notion of place-based leadership remains an ideological phenomenon. This paper explores the development of subnational partnerships in England and considers the lack of formal guidance available to local leaders that limits their ability to develop transformational strategies. Drawing on extensive qualitative analysis of England’s local enterprise partnerships, the paper develops an original conceptual model of place-based partnerships. The model provides a tool for partnerships to assess themselves and consider tactics to develop a stronger set of shared local values, contributing to both academic and policy debates.

The many roles of change agency in the game of green path development in the North

The rapidly expanding stream of path development studies recognises that translating observations from past paths to conscious path creation requires conceptually linking agency to path development frameworks. Actors frame issues about and for the future, coordinate their actions in the present and make sense of what may have transpired in the past. The main objective of the paper is to explore the roles that actors play in green path development by answering the following main research questions: (a) Who are the core actors in green path development in the Nordic regions, ie. in industrial development around products, solutions or technologies that make regional economies more sustainable? (b) What are their main roles in relation to other actors? (c) What are the differences and similarities between the regions in terms of agency? The paper explores whether similar actors take on different roles in different regions and whether different actors may assume similar roles. For the empirical analysis, we identified seven roles in change agency. The empirical results showed that institutional entrepreneurship was the core of change agency in conjunction with innovative entrepreneurship and place-based leadership. The other four roles supported path development efforts. The results also show that institutional entrepreneurship is not a solo activity but a collective form of agency and that well-functioning shared institutional entrepreneurship may have a chance to change institutions for green path development.

Essential, complex and multi-form: the local leadership of civil society from an Anglo-Italian perspective

Individuals and organisations within civil society play a crucial role in our cities, but little direct research has been carried out on their leadership role. By employing a place-based leadership approach, this article aims to identify the leaders of civil society in two cities, one in Italy (Padua) and one in the UK (Peterborough). We draw our results from 34 interviews with city leaders. Our findings highlight important similarities between the two cities, such as the fundamental function of umbrella organisations and the influence of faith leaders. We discuss the multi-form character of the leaders of civil society as acting within three main spheres of city leadership – the third/voluntary sector, community and faith – as highlighted by the participants in this study. We also find that civil society exercises the key leadership role of intermediary between citizens and government in public services delivery and in enabling community voice from different publics.