Transformative Leadership and Contextual Change

Abstract

Abstract:Transitions to deal with the grand challenges of contemporary societies require novel kinds of leadership, which can both stimulate novel organizational practices and changes in practices and structures in the organization's context. This article seeks to understand how (changes in) the external structural context may influence organizational-internal transformative leadership and vice versa, and what kind of work is implied in leadership to transform current business models. It uses notions from literature on relational leadership and transformative leadership as sensitizing concepts. It then explores the leadership work in two case studies, on fishing in Portugal and care farming in the Netherlands. We find a dialectic interplay of the interactions between leaders and others on the one hand, and contextual changes on the other. Using a system-building perspective from innovation system literature, that interaction is driven by the quest to establish legitimacy and market formation and acceptance, knowledge and other resources for innovations.

What Transformative Leaders do: Emerging Perspectives in the 21st Century

“…Regier uses the term interchangeably with transformational leadership and highlights "the need for leaders that transform" (Regier, 2017: 90). Grin et al put forward transformative leadership as a novel kind of leadership stimulating organization change using Burns (1978) model of transformational leadership and relational leadership (Grin et al, 2018). Based on Burns (1978) and Bass (1985) theory of transformational leadership Tatlah and Aslam argue transformative leadership is positively related to emotional intelligence (Goleman, 1995) indicating that "skill in the area of human relations, decision-making, control of subordinates and conflict resolution are indicators of transformative leadership traits and behaviours".…”

Developing the Transformative Capacity of Social Innovation through Learning: A Conceptual Framework and Research Agenda for the Roles of Network Leadership

“…While certain key individuals are often important, network leadership is usually very different from traditional top-down leadership and involves a more distributed, emergent, collective leadership among various actors at different levels of the network [3,8,58,59]. Network leadership may thus be seen as a distributed practice of actors including: members of local SI initiatives (e.g., a Transition Town in a particular city), actors in network organizations at national and transnational levels (e.g., Transition Network and its national coordination hubs), as well as meta-networks that foster exchanges and collaborations across networks (e.g., The European network for community-led initiatives on climate change and sustainability (ECOLISE), which includes Transition Network, Global Ecovillage Network, the Permaculture movement and many others) [60].…”

“…However, very little research exists on the role of learning in the context of transformative social innovation [3], and current TSI theory only offers some starting points for understanding transformative capacity [4] as a result of learning processes. Secondly, the role of networks as a mechanism for supporting those learning processes, deserves much more in-depth understanding [5,6], in particular, the aspect of network leadership: how various actors in social innovation networks can purposefully shape and support learning processes to strengthen transformative capacity [7,8]. This would significantly enhance the practical value of TSI theory to social innovation practitioners engaging in network leadership.…”

A Methodological Framework to Initiate and Design Transition Governance Processes

“…The intra-context analysis examines intervention points that can be implemented within social units and thus requires leadership at the individual level (e.g., self-leadership, see References [44,45]), group level (e.g., emergent leadership in group processes, see References [46,47]), organizational level (e.g., leadership in organizations, e.g., References [48,49]) and policy level (e.g., distributed leadership in policy formulation, e.g., Reference [50]). The inter-context analysis examines intervention points that require cooperation between social units, such as an organization that actively relates and reshapes its context [51,52], consisting of other organizations, civil society and policy-makers, amongst others. As other examples serve group initiatives, which actively network with group-external actors to receive support (e.g., References [53,54]).…”