Leadership in collaborative governance: Understanding the relationship of leadership and collaborative performance of Local Departments of Social Services executives

摘要

Public administration agencies are increasingly called upon to collaborate across organizational boundaries as a regular part of practice. Leaders in the organizations are expected to deliver positive outcomes from collaborations. Common sense implies that good leadership leads to successful collaboration within public administration agencies. However, the exact link between leadership and collaboration continues to be a puzzle for both practitioners and academics in the field. This study examines the relationship of leadership and collaborative governance within a group of social services executives, who are specifically chartered to collaborate with one another and across organizational boundaries for successful delivery of public welfare services. Relationship-based leadership orientation and trust-building leadership style are evaluated for main effects on perception of collaboration. Leadership satisfaction and performance satisfaction were evaluated for simple effects on the relationship between leadership orientation and leadership style on perception of collaboration. The results provide that there are no direct effects of leadership orientation and leadership style on perception of collaboration. Performance satisfaction moderated the association of both leadership orientation and leadership style on perception of collaboration. Leadership satisfaction moderated the relationship of leadership style with perception of collaboration. Implications from this study include the need for further study into a threshold of acceptable collaborative activities for practitioners.