Barbara C. Crosby

A leadership framework for cross-sector collaboration

This article presents an approach to collaborative leadership – the Leadership for the Common Good Framework. The framework includes the following elements: attention to the dynamics of a shared-power world; the design and use of forums, arenas, and courts, the main settings in which leaders and constituents foster policy change in a shared-power world; effective navigation of the policy change cycle; and the exercise of a range of leadership capabilities. The framework can provide useful guidance for public officials and managers who seek to meet complex social needs in an era of stringency in public service budgets and of skepticism about governments problem-solving ability. Beyond that, however, more research is needed on how best to pursue leadership in shared-power, cross-sector settings.

Policy Planning and the Design and Use of Forums, Arenas, and Courts

In complex, shared-power settings, planners are unlikely to have much direct impact on action or underlying ‘bedrock’ social structures. What they can influence is the ideas, rules, modes, media, and methods that link action and structure in shared-power settings. In turn, these links will have a dramatic effect on which decisions, issues, conflicts, and policy preferences are discussed, decided, and sanctioned. The characteristic shared-power settings are forums for discussion, arenas for decisions, and courts for management of residual conflicts and enforcement of the underlying norms in the system. Policy planning thus can be seen as the intentional design and use of forums, arenas, and courts in order to produce desired symbolic and substantive policy outcomes.

Public value creation through collaborative innovation

ABSTRACT This article explores how public managers can use insights about public sector innovation and public value governance to make more than incremental progress in remedying society’s most pressing needs. After outlining the features of public innovation, it considers some traditional barriers to achieving it. It then considers the usefulness of the public value framework for managers seeking to design innovative solutions for complex problems, and examines the type of leadership that is likely to foster collaborative innovation and public value. It finishes by offering levers for achieving innovation by adopting design logics and practices associated with inclusive, experimentalist governance.

Strategic Planning in the Military: The US Naval Security Group changes its strategy, 1992–1998

Abstract This is an account of the US Naval Security Group Commands (NSG) search for strategic management during a time of unprecedented change. In response to dramatic shifts resulting from the end of the Cold War, Congressional pressures for cross-service co-operation, and the emergence of new technologies, the NSG engaged in a six-year strategic planning process. The process helped the group refocus and develop strategies better suited to new demands for military preparedness. The process was incremental and eclectic; early leadership came from middle managers, rather than top officials. The process began with a ‘quick and dirty’ planning session initiated by department heads to deal with an immediate crisis and gained momentum and top-level involvement as the first session and subsequent strategic planning efforts showed results. The process was guided by a strategic planning framework specifically designed for public and non-profit organisations and relied on a variety of strategic planning tools and techniques, including stakeholder analyses, SWOT analyses and capturing the insights gained from scenario planning using the newer cognitive methods such as cognitive and oval mapping. This article provides a chronology of events over a six-year period, explores some of the strategic planning tools and techniques used, details results achieved and discusses some of the major lessons learned.

The Design and Use of Strategic Planning Arenas

Abstract This paper takes a close look at communication, process, power and institutional arrangements in the context of strategic planning. It introduces an eight step process for structuring strategic thinking and acting and develops the concept of “arenas” as a very influential — yet often very subtle — exercise of power over the course of a strategic planning process.

Adaptive governance in collaborations: Design propositions from research and practice

This collection offers a comprehensive assessment of research on the governance of nonprofit organizations. Nonprofit governance research has been dominated by the study of boards of unitary organizations and has paid insufficient attention to the multi-level nature of governance, governance relationships and dynamics, and the contribution of actors other than board members, to governance processes. Drawing on the research of leading scholars in the US, UK, Canada and Australia, this book presents new perspectives on non-profit governance, which help to overcome these weaknesses. Written in an accessible manner the book will be of value to scholars, researchers, students, reflective practitioners and governance consultants and advisers.

Why leadership of public leadership research matters: and what to do about it

ABSTRACT The tough-talking, take-charge, individualistic view of public leadership is alive and well throughout the world, despite the enthusiasm of leadership scholars for more shared, relational, and collectivist views. The times therefore seem especially appropriate for assessing the state of public leadership theory and research and charting a path forward to enhance understanding of the continued appeal of Great Person leadership and the promise of collective leadership. This essay considers the current public leadership context, highlights distinctive characteristics of public leadership, and provides an overview of recent public leadership research through a collective lens. We call for more attention to leadership theory from within public management and the broader leadership fields and to public value and public values in leadership theorizing and research. We suggest public leadership scholars roam more freely through the disciplines and experiment with a variety of methods beyond the traditional case study.

Finding a Home for Minnesota's Hazardous Wastes: Case Materials

In the late 1970s, the Minnesota Legislature confronted a dilemma as it tried to do something about the states hazardous wastes. Stricter federal regulations and mounting public concern about health threats from such wastes demanded legislative action, yet a previous effort to site a hazardous waste disposal facility in Minnesota had failed spectacularly. The earlier effort began in 1975, when the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (PCA) received a federal grant to develop a demonstration chemical waste landfill. The PCA then subcontracted with the waste control commission for the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area to develop site selection criteria and select candidate sites. No provision was made for public involvement before selection of the candidate sites. In December 1976, the PCA and waste control commission announced four candidate sites at a joint public meeting, and news media accounts gave residents of the areas around those sites their first inkling that they might soon live near a hazardous waste landfill. Local officials and residents were outraged that they had been excluded from the selection process. Subsequently the PCA held three public meetings near the proposed sites, but the meetings only served as a forum, not a salve, for local hostility. Additionally, two regional governance groups, the Metropolitan Council and the Inter-County Council, attacked the site selection process and demanded that they be involved. The PCA responded by scrapping the original process and beginning a new one. This time, public meetings were held in each of the seven counties in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area to solicit suggestions for site selection criteria. Eventually, new criteria were developed; they emphasized environmental protection and compatibility with regional, state, and local plans. Six

Teaching Leadership and Policy Change in a Public Affairs School

Abstract Public affairs graduate schools may have difficulty integrating public leadership and management and the analysis of public policies and the political process. Too often in the curriculum, process is separated from analysis, and policy issues are separated from politics and the mechanics of policy making. This article describes the design and operation of a two-course sequence, taught at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, that fosters this integration and helps students gain a stronger sense of themselves as leaders and stronger skills for intervening in the policy process from a variety of standpoints.

Introduction: Symposium on Leadership Education

embraces public affairs.At the same time, teaching leadership in schools of public affairs—compared with, for example, business schools—logically has a different emphasis and methodology. Some questions remain the same when scholars attempt to incorporate leadership into the teaching and research agenda of any university department or school that is not itself mainly devoted to leadership studies: How do we define leadership, and what body of theory and research is applicable? What is the right mix of theory and practice? Should leadership courses be integrated in core or concentration courses? Is leadership a standalone core or topics course? What is different about teaching undergraduates, graduates, and professionals or community groups? These questions are similar to those that beset efforts to internationalize the curriculum or ensure that the curriculum deals thoroughly with gender or multicultural views and issues. Indeed, once leadership has been introduced or as it is being introduced into the public affairs curriculum, faculty often must consider how and how much attention to give to global leadership and to leadership by and of people who have traditionally received little attention in leadership studies. The three main articles in this symposium explore the ways in which particular public affairs faculty and schools have incorporated leadership into their courses and degree programs.The fourth article reports the results of a NASPAA survey that asked member schools about the role of leadership in their curricula. First, Janet Denhardt and Kelly Campbell of Arizona State University focus on a particular leadership approach—values-based leadership—that they consider highly appropriate for public affairs education and describe a pedagogy—studio teaching—that supports this approach.They contrast values-based leadership and studio teaching with three other approaches— Introduction: Symposium on Leadership Education