Leadership in the Shaping and Implementation of Collaboration Agendas: How Things Happen in a (Not Quite) Joined-Up World.

Leadership, Service Reform, and Public-Service Networks: The Case of Cancer-Genetics Pilots in the English NHS

“…Rather, there was complementarity between the collegiate, ‗quiet' leadership embodied by the pilot team and the slightly more directive leadership deployed by the network manager, who recognized the synergy between the aims of the network and those of the pilot. Here we echo the findings of various authors about the diversity of skills needed by leaders in networked settings (Riccucci 1995;Huxham and Vangen 2000;Vangen and Huxham 2003), the importance of influential champions to innovation diffusion (Rogers 2003), and indeed the need for leaders with different skills and organizational positions in relation to different leadership tasks (Shortell et al 2000;Crosby and Bryson 2005). Furthermore, we highlight that publicservice networks in particular, with diffuse objectives and loci of power, may require this combination of leadership styles, and all the more so if they are professional bureaucracies with the extant complexities of power and accountability that these entail.…”

“…A breast-care nurse specialist in one of the cancer units, who had previously taken on much of the local risk-assessment work, explained how her colleagues had had concerns that the new care pathway was -just a way of getting people out of the system.‖ Following her own discussions with the lead nurse on the pilot, she was now convinced of its worth, and had been instrumental in persuading other nurses in the unit, acting as a -link‖ between the pilot and her colleagues. In this way, the initial visionary work of the pilot team members as leaders gave rise to a more diffuse leadership, in Huxham and Vangen's (2000) terms enacted through the structures and processes of the network as well as embodied in the wider participants beyond the core leaders from the pilot team.…”

“…Evident in Derton was the way in which the structure of the network facilitated effective leadership through formal and informal forums which provided pilot members with the opportunity to foster a collective vision with other actors, mirroring closely the role for visionary leadership articulated by Crosby and Bryson (2005). Through the work of the pilot team in engaging with others through these forums, and the directive leadership of the network manager, they were able to make effective use of the three ‗leadership media' identified by Huxham and Vangen (2000): the structure of the network provided a normative tool that could be used to bring ‗deviant' practitioners into line; the processes of the network offered the opportunity for the development of a shared vision; and, crucially, through other participants in the network, the vision was spread further and became established across diverse stakeholders. Central to this, then, was not just the quiet, distributed leadership within the pilot, but also the quiet, dispersed leadership (Buchanan et al 2007b;cf.…”

“…What is suggested in particular is the need for an enactment of leadership that seeks to engage a multiplicity of stakeholders, facilitating and consolidating change by concentrating on processes and outcomes together (Huxham and Vangen 2000;Vangen and Huxham 2003). Even as this suggests a distribution of leadership, it also implies personal investment by those charged with network leadership tasks: as Vangen (2000, 1171) have it, -it is paradoxical that the single-mindedness of leaders appears to be central to collaborative success.‖ At the same time, though, in a professional bureaucracy characterized by looseness of accountability and practitioner autonomy, there is a need to engage professionals for organizational change to be achieved and consolidated (Shortell et al 2000;Riccucci 2005).…”

“…In particular, there is the well documented tension between hierarchies, markets and networks. The collaborative network, as an organizing principle for public-service provision which might bridge gaps between state agencies and assist in addressing social problems that defy the efforts of a single agency (Jennings and Ewalt 1998;Provan and Sebastien 1998;Huxham and Vangen 2000), clashes with traditional top-down hierarchical organizational forms, and with the increasingly prominent role of markets and quasimarkets in national contexts subject to the Anglo-American influence (Hood et al 2000;Ferlie et al 2003;Currie and Suhomlinova 2006). In the UK, a policy focus on networks has coexisted with the reinforcement of a hierarchical performance-management regime and the increasing marketization of public-service provision, mirroring developments elsewhere (Kickert and Koppenjan 1997;Tenbensel 2005).…”