Chapter 10: Integrative Leadership And Policy Change: A Hybrid Relational View

We have long been interested in how leaders and followers (or constituents, citizens, collaborators) successfully work together to tackle complex public problems, needs, and opportunities (Bryson & Crosby, 1992; Crosby, 1999; Crosby & Bryson, 2005). Along the way, we came to define leadership as the inspiration and mobilization of others to undertake collective action in pursuit of the common good. Over the last three decades, we have researched numerous cases of policy change efforts in order to ground our theory building and offer practical advice and tools for aspiring leaders.

Our research reinforces the view that many determined leaders (in formal and informal roles), along with numerous committed followers, are required if complex problems like AIDS, environmental degradation, or poverty are to be remedied effectively and if new institutions or promising technologies like computer-assisted social networking are to be developed for the benefit of all. We follow in the tradition of scholars like James MacGregor Burns (1978) and Joseph Rost (1991) who saw leadership as a relationship between leaders and followers or constituents, focusing on their shared purposes. We also see leader and follower roles as shifting over the course of an effort to reform or transform existing policy regimes—for example, an individual may move in and out of a role as team leader as her team takes on different tasks or enters a new phase.