Sustainable urban water management: understanding and fostering champions of change

摘要

This paper highlights and discusses ten characteristic attributes of emergent leaders (also knownnas ‘champions’) who worked as influential change agents within publicly managed, Australiannwater agencies to encourage more sustainable forms of urban water management. Thesenattributes relate to: the ‘openness to experience’ personality characteristic; career mobility andnwork history demographics; personal and position power; strategic social networks; the culture ofntheir organisations; and five distinguishing leadership behaviours (e.g. persisting under adversity).nGuided by the findings of an international literature review, the author conducted a multiple casenstudy involving six water agencies. This research identified attributes of these leaders that werentypically strong and/or distinguishing compared to relevant control groups, as well as influentialncontextual factors. While it is widely acknowledged that these leaders play a critical role in thendelivery of sustainable urban water management, there has been a paucity of context-sensitivenresearch involving them. The research project highlighted in this paper is a response to thisnsituation and has led to the development of a suite of 39 practical, evidence-based strategies tonbuild leadership capacity throughout water agencies. Such capacity is one of the elementsnneeded to drive the transition to more ‘water sensitive cities’.