Sending the Right Signals: A Theoretical Model to Understand How Interpretative Leadership Capacity Advances Cross-Sector Collaboration

Authors

  • Brandon Kliewer Staley School of Leadership, Kansas State University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18666/JNEL-2024-12046

Keywords:

cross-sector, interpretative leadership, Leadership-as-Practice, cross-sector collaboration

Abstract

Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) are increasingly asked to facilitate cross-sector collaboration between state, private industry, and nonprofit actors and organizations. Growing evidence indicates certain contexts and conditions support cross-sector collaboration more than others. However, there is still limited understanding of how, specifically, process and practice produce leadership activity necessary to advance cross-sector collaboration. The purpose of this study is to examine illustrations of how the leadership practice of interpretative signaling emerges in facilitated committees working to enable cross-sector collaboration. Relying on a Leadership-as-Practice (LAP) frame, this video ethnography of Collaborative Leadership Learning Group (CLLG) sessions establishes a theoretical model helpful to capturing how everyday dialogic, relational, and socio-material interactions emerge leadership between committee members attempting to enable cross-sector collaboration. Leadership practice was primarily connected to informal authority that was dispersed through networks of people and community systems. Four forms of interpretative signaling are illustrated as a general practice in the theoretical model.

References

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Published

2024-07-08

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Section

Articles