Supporting the transition from individualistic to collective leadership: a longitudinal study of a university–healthcare partnership

Abstract

This chapter reports a qualitative longitudinal study conducted in a large-scale UK-based collaborative university-healthcare partnership to examine how collective leadership develops over time, what implications this evolution has for the tension between production and implementation of research, and how the transition from individualistic to collective leadership can be supported. It shows that this transition can be both enabled and constrained by the asymmetrical power relationships within a leadership team, whereby upward, downward and lateral directions of agency are exercised by multiple actors. It also demonstrates that the development of collective leadership can provide a clear direction for the partnership as a whole, whilst allowing for a plurality of approaches to enact this direction at the level of individual programmes of work. Finally, it argues that the development of collective leadership can be enabled by a combination of process-focused, reflection-focused and action-focused interventions.