ظرفیت مدنی: تکیه بر رهبری تحول گرا برای توضیح موفقیت آمیز رهبری عمومی یکپارچه

An emerging stream of work has been investigating the leadership processes necessary to guide public multi-sector collaborations. This stream of work argues that new leadership theory about integrative public leadership is needed because the context is different from that traditionally investigated by leadership researchers. In this paper, we advance the study of integrative public leadership by arguing that transformational leadership theory does apply to multi-sector collaborations, but needs to be augmented with an additional construct called “civic capacity.” We elaborate on this construct and suggest that it consists of three components: civic drive, civic connections, and civic pragmatism.

How relevant is civic capacity for today's leaders? We contend that it is necessary for leaders within public-sector organizations. But we also believe it is increasingly becoming important for many business leaders. Business organizations today are facing institutional pressures from both industry and society. Societal norms are changing, and businesses are expected to function as responsible citizens within their communities. The recent natural disasters that happened in New Zealand and Japan, with enormous loss of life and property, have highlighted the need for multi-sector collaborations in order to recover from such tragedies. Not-for-profit organizations, businesses, and governmental agencies are jointly responsible for the welfare of their communities. The recent financial crisis and the BP oil disaster have put corporate executives in the spotlight, and with many observers attributing these crises to the moral failure of corporate leaders to care for their communities. These new societal pressures require leadership styles that are motivational rather than autocratic, and value-based than purely transactional. Transformational leadership has been suggested as the most appropriate style to address such challenges (Angus-Leppan, Metcalf, & Benn, 2010), but we argue that it must be augmented with civic capacity. Strategic business leaders today need to embrace both an economic as well as public (or social) agenda. This growing trend demands a new leadership orientation and skills. It requires a new form of ambidexterity which is the ability to balance shareholder value with social/public value. Such ambidexterity goes against the traditional view that public leadership is necessarily different from business leadership (Denhardt, 1984 and Hooijberg and Choi, 2001), but will be needed more and more as the distinction between public and business becomes increasingly blurred.