The paper bridges the literature streams on collaborative governance and leadership by focusing on leaders’ behaviours and their impact on network performance.
Leadership in/of networks or integrative leadership has been defined as a process of “aligning initial conditions, processes, structures, governance, contingencies and constraints, outcomes and accountabilities such that public value is created” (Bryson et al, 2006, 52; Crosby and Bryson, 2005). Similarly, Huxham and Vangen (2000: 1171) focus on processes aimed at “building trust and mutual understanding and negotiating joint goals”. Strong leadership is necessary in a network to align the interest of the individual organizations with the cooperative whole (Lemaire and Provan 2010).
Whereas a considerable attention has been paid to networks, there has been much less explicit discussion on leadership in such contexts (Mandell and Keast, 2009). Indeed, much of the misrepresentation of network management is due, in part, to the assumption that “network” means “managerless” or “leaderless” (Lipnack and Stamps 1994). This gap in literature is true not only with regards to network management studies but also for the study of leadership in the public sector (Hartley and Benington, 2011) more generically in management (Storey et al, 2017).
This paper aims at providing an empirical contribution to the emerging literature on leadership in public sector networks by analysing how diverse types of leadership behaviours are able to influence the level of performance reached within the networks and therefore effecting the public value creation process.
The type of network we investigate is the inter-municipal network in which public activities are jointly performed by two or more municipalities or by a third legal party. Due to the fast-growing number of functions being delegated to local governments by central governments in the European scenario, networking and closer collaboration is expected to contribute to an improvement in the efficiency of local services and, consequently, to the apprehension regarding public value.
Our investigation relies upon survey data. We interviewed 68 mayors across Italy that are leaders of intermunicipal networks. Results of the empirical analysis show that leadership matters for performance, with some behaviours weighting more than others.
Cepiku_Mastrodascio_Giordano_IRSPM_2018.pdf 