Guest bloggers James Rees, Carol Jacklin-Jarvis and Vita Terry from the Centre for Voluntary Sector Leadership examine the challenges and opportunities offered by adopting collective leadership practices in third and voluntary sector organisations.

Authors: James Rees, Carol Jacklin-Jarvis and Vita Terry from the Centre for Voluntary Sector Leadership have provided this guest blog.

Date: 18 June 2018

A recent What Works Scotland literature review paper sets out interesting theories for understanding public service leadership, with a particular focus on the collaborative context that is key to much public service delivery in Scotland and elsewhere.

At the Centre for Voluntary Sector Leadership the authors have been exploring the UK literature that relates to third sector leadership, and find it is interesting to put their findings into closer dialogue to enrich the debate on leadership within and across sectors.

They argue that collective approaches to leadership offer a process perspective, in which individuals and stakeholders influence one another relationally, share responsibilities, and hold one another accountable. This understanding of leadership resonates with the democratic and inclusive values of many voluntary sector organisations (VSOs), and reflects structural requirements to share leadership between individuals with different roles and responsibilities.

Read the post on the What Works Scotland blog