Leading and participating: examining collaborative leadership

Lynn Berger, Susan Evans, Caroline Lambert, Erica Russ, Melissa Petrakis, Louise Whitaker, Caroline Walters, Liz Reimer, Mark Woolven and Monica Short

Chapter 11 in Research Handbook on Leadership in Social Work and Social Care, 2025, pp 139-150 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Leadership in social care, which embodies social justice, calls for inclusive, collaborative approaches. However, participatory and consensus-driven decision-making is regularly stifled by neo-liberal and managerial constraints, including the adoption of simplistic practices despite complex group dynamics. In this chapter, ten authors examine our situated experiences as practitioners, advocates, and academics in diverse fields related to social work, community engagement, and lived experience advocacy. Each author has over ten years of experience leading project-orientated teams grounded in collaboration, inclusion, and egalitarian principles. Using co-operative inquiry, we collectively and critically reflected on three scenarios drawn from the experiences of three of us enacting inclusive, participatory leadership processes informed by social work principles. Challenges in the influence of power and politics, shaping processes and outcomes, and the burden of holding elements to sustain participatory leadership emerged. Strategies that helped the authors harness the transformational potential of participatory leadership and address its challenges are discussed.

Keywords: Leadership; Collaboration; Social work; Social care; Co-operative inquiry; Practitioner-research (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035314485
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035314508.00020 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:22440_11

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().