**3. The new-institutional approach to local leadership: discursive and sociological and environmental factors**

*"Political institutions do not determine the behavior of political actors, but provide the framework of understandings within which actors identify, compare and select courses of action." Lowndes and Leach ([59], p. 560).*

The new-institutional perspective's premise is that to understand the causes and consequences of different forms of leadership we should consider whether

the institution has constraining or enabling effects on the leadership behavior (in terms of formal and informal rules), and judge their level of effectiveness as well as the extent of their activity [50, 62]. Accordingly, different leaders respond differently to the same situation, depending on their environment. This environment includes structural factors, such as legislative rules and regulations, intra- and inter-organizational interactions. Thus, leaders behave contingent upon the locality's context including local authority size, socio-economic status, central-local relationship as well as leaders' structural position in various networks [53, 55].

Further, cultural identity and norms are important factors influencing a leader's ability to govern. This captures the new-sociological institutionalism which has become particularly important in research on norms and legitimacy, focusing on an understanding of the importance of how and why norms, formal rules and culture in institutions [63–65] to shape their leaders' actions of the leaders.

Parallel to this stream of new institutionalism, a discursive perspective on leadership arises. Discursive institutionalism emphasizes the role of ideas and discourse to dynamic reality. Discourse is considered the interactive process of conveying ideas. Therefore, discourse does not only consist of ideas or what is said but includes the context in which we map why and by whom a particular message is delivered. Applying the two forms of discourse (coordinative and communicative discourse) to leadership research enables us to argue that the first form, coordinative discourse, refers to the communication among the network actors themselves, focusing on central actors' coordinative ability to lead the networks. The latter term refers to communicative discourse, that is, the communication and messages delivered from network actors and their leaders to the external stakeholders.

### **4. Discursive factors in network leadership research**

*"This shift in governance structure often necessitates that public managers not only lead the agency in which they are employed, but also work within, and often lead, a network. These two different contexts in which public managers operate require different managerial and leadership approaches" [66].*

Scholars propose that leadership in the network governance era be characterized by certain specific skills and behaviors. Network management and network leadership study mostly emphasize the importance of facilitation behaviors, which increase cooperation and coordination between network members and thus change both the network's rules and structure [9, 67–70]. Most studies focus on leadership skills as facilitating [48], framing and synthesizing [45], and bridging [43], and these capture the idea of coordinative discourse within the network. For example, Agranoff and McGuire [45] grouped network leadership behaviors into four categories based on their operational differences: activation, framing, mobilization, and synthesizing. Framing involves behaviors designed to establish work rules. Examples include ensuring individual roles are understood by all network members, asking network members to follow standard rules and regulations, and sharing the leadership role. Synthesizing regards behaviors promoting productive interactions among network participants by looking out for the personal welfare of network members, fostering trust, brainstorming, encouraging network members to use their own judgment in solving problems, and setting expectations for network members. Williams [71] noted several necessary leadership behaviors which promote communication inside the network: understanding of and empathy with the partners, trust-building, developing sustainable interpersonal relationships,

#### *The New Institutional Approach as a Lens on Local Network Leadership DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.101988*

and communication aimed at establishing shared meanings and resolving conflicts. Bass [72] defined such behaviors as structuring work relationships utilizing encouragement and rewards on one hand and sanctions on the other.

The literature on collaborative leadership distinguishes between three facilitating roles of collaborative leaders: that of convener (or steward), mediator, and catalyst [73]. Conveners facilitate and safeguard collaboration while maintaining project integrity. Mediators facilitate collaboration by managing conflict and arbitrating exchange between stakeholders. Catalyzers facilitate, help identify and realize value-creating opportunities. According to Ansell and Gash [73], "facilitative leadership will typically require leaders to play all three of these roles" (18–19). Piatak, Romzek, LeRoux, and Johnston [74] examined the management of goal conflicts in public service delivery networks and found that the lead organization should play the dual role of both network manager and member. Their data suggested that network managers should exert formal, vertical authority, combining it with informal, horizontal interactions which build goal consensus, thus relieving goal conflict. They also underscore the important use of rewards and sanctions when leading successful networks [75].

Provan and Kenis [5] proposed three modes of network governance which capture discursive coordinative communication in institutions: the network leader, or Participant-Governed Networks (participatory and internal coordination); Lead Organization-Governed Networks, featuring centralized and internal coordination, and; Network Administrative Organizations, emphasizing centralized and external coordination. In Participant-Governed Networks, for example, control and reflexive coordination of activities occur through direct collaboration in participatory decision-making. By contrast, coordination in Lead Organization-Governed Networks one central leader coordinates, often drawing its power from resource dependencies or other types of obligation. The final mode, Network Administrative Organizations (NAO) is coordinated via a separate, neutral administrative body, acting as a central broker for the activities of the entire network and bridging between diverse actors Berthod et al. [76].

Coordinative and communicative discourse is well-manifested in the literature on internal and external legitimacy. Leading the networks requires maintaining both two types of legitimacies [44]. The former, the internal legitimacy of the network, is concentrated on the communication inside the network, developing trust-based ties between members, resolving conflicts to everyone's satisfaction, and building communication mechanisms emphasizing the leader's coordinative and facilitative ability.

By contrast, building external legitimacy consists of seeking new members, promoting the network and its activities to outsiders, and mobilizing outside resources to achieve network goals matching the activating, mobilizing, and abilities of the leadership [43, 45]. These capture in communicative form the "discourse" in discursive institutionalism.

Reviewing the literature we may conclude that a network leader should invest the effort to develop both forms of discourse: promoting the coordinative abilities inside the network and communicative abilities from the network outward toward external actors and the environment.

## **5. Environmental factors in network leadership research: the local authority context**

*Contexts are the circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood ([77], p. 75).*

As network collaborations are embedded in a specific context their functioning is logically dependent on that context [11, 75]. More specifically, an effective local network in one context may not be successful in another, even when they have a similar purpose [78].

Virtanen [79] distinguished between two types of scientific knowledge in the context of public administration: *conceptual* and *factual*. The former relates to frameworks and theories through which certain phenomena in public administration are explained. The latter maintains that public administration is part of social reality and refers to such factors as actor and place, sector, culture, and institution. Public administration scholars study various contexts according to the research topic. For example, context is prominent where institutional embeddedness, environment, background, and settings are concerned [80–82], or administrative tradition and government capacity [83], and the network characteristics of decision-making [84]. In team leadership studies, context plays an important role in the relationship between shared leadership and performance [85–87].

Public administration scholars note that structures and processes define the context in which leaders act [88]. According to Provan and Milward's [89] networks framework any change in the network's environment originating outside, such as financial stability, challenges the network's overall effectiveness [89–91]. Researchers have established that an integrated structure through network centralization and direct mechanisms of external control has a positive effect on network effectiveness. However, these relationships are moderated by contextual conditions, such as stability and the availability of abundant resources.

According to the contingency approach, the tasks and goals of collaborations affect a leader's ability to collaborate successfully and promote collaborative innovation. For example, in their research on workforce development, Ansell and Gash [9] identified four contextual conditions influencing the efficacy of a collaboration leader: (1) access to resources; (2) the strength of the relationships with current and potential partners; (3) regional, state and local governance and service delivery infrastructures, and; (4) historical perceptions of workforce development shared by industry and economic development stakeholders. They found that local autonomy and conditions for economic competitiveness were the most important contextual characteristics for leading successful collaborations.

Contextual factors may include environmental complexities under government regulation, legal constraints, or a combination of organizational culture, norms, and management practices [92]. Local government studies bestow great importance to community characteristics in context [93–96]. In fact, research has shown that a community's socio-economic status affects the local leader's capacity to govern [97], and studies have supported the argument that local efficiency is positively related to the level of education in the community; more educated residents tend to select more capable leaders and have a better understanding of the issues on which they vote [47, 93, 94], tend to be actively involved in local affairs [98] and press the leaders for more accountability and have better evaluative tools to cause the standard of service to conform to their expectations [99].

In his comparative project on local political leadership in Europe, Steyvers [55] focused on mayoral business orientation as an aspect of external networking to show that institutional form affects leadership behaviors while being highly contingent upon leadership context. The indicators of leadership context include the municipalities' size and institutional position of municipalities in the intergovernmental arena.

Further, the *cultural context* of the community where the network operates can be crucial for leading effective networks [100–102]. More broadly, Klijn et al. [84] found that effective meso- (changes in the relationship between network organizations) and

#### *The New Institutional Approach as a Lens on Local Network Leadership DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.101988*

micro-level characteristics of network management (the level of decision-making and implementation) highly depend on the cultural context. Uster Beeri and Vashdi [103] continue this line of thought, focusing on the importance of such contextual issues as socio-economic status and ethnicity in a local authority to the relationship between network leadership and effectiveness. They found that the manner in which the local authority leads the local network derives from network structure, which in turn impinges on effectiveness. A sample of 586 participants from 68 networks indicated that this association is contingent on the politico-cultural characteristics of the local authority and its socio-economic status in which the network exists.

In general, local government research points to the differences in local authorities based on their size, economic stability, and type of population [25, 59, 94, 104]. Local authorities differ enormously in their structural, political, cultural, and socioeconomic indicators, not just cross-nationally, but also within a specific country, and these factors influence local leaders' ability to govern [61, 95, 105, 106]. In sum, both the local political and cultural systems and the intergovernmental context within which the local networks are situated are crucial explanatory factors for local leaders` behaviors.

## **6. Structural factors: a leader's position in the network**

Mouritzen and Svara [53] classified legislative-executive relations in terms of a combination of factors encompassing the acquisition and maintenance of the leadership position, the degree of control leaders has over appointment responsibilities, and the integration of leadership functions in the institutional position.

Some studies propose that leaders in a central position (when network is integrated through a central organization, and all members connect to a principal actor) better coordinate with other organizations to achieve network goals [107], using this central position to prevent free-riders while monitoring and controlling other network members [89, 107]. Further, they have an advantage over decentralized systems (with their multiplicity of players and linkages) in their ability to facilitate both integration and coordination [89, 108]. This is crucial to local purpose-oriented networks, which require better coordinative skills to achieve the network-level goal. Additionally, leaders holding central positions may more efficiently promote systems and integrate services [89] through an organized exchange of information and the coordination of collective action [109, 110].

The "brokerage" is still another structural position that could be a crucial factor for a network leader. While the leader may play a role of a broker, connecting disparate groups, he or she can more easily identify opportunities for creating new knowledge or products [111, 112], thus facilitating communication among diverse actors [113]. The position of broker plays a substantial and influential role in leadership ability, enabling governance by controlling access to resources and information across differing set of actors [114–118] while reducing the costs of interlocal cooperation [119]. According to Paquin and Howard-Grenville [120], brokers influence the network by "developing common goals, spurring actor interest and engagement, and/or defining norms of action" (p. 1625).

More recent conceptualizations of brokerage regard this role not as a mediator between two actors, but as a function that improves the quality of the relationship between these actors [121]. For example, leaders holding a brokerage role tend to resolve conflicts between organizations better, increase the network's social capital, and find resources to support collaboration [122]. Thus, the brokerage position enables leaders to act as a catalyst enhancing cooperation that builds and sustains connections in the network.

Therefore, an organization's position in a network is essential to affecting its ability to lead effectively, enhancing its cooperative and coordinative skills.

### **7. Conclusions**

This chapter aimed at providing an overview of current thinking on network leadership and related factors affecting local governance. The study focused on the leadership of local purpose-oriented service delivery networks, as these are prevalent in the local arena. To reiterate, the leadership of inter-organizational networks is concerns more than organizational leadership [123]. Such leadership requires organizational ability to achieve goals through collaboration with other organizations, and as a result, challenges emerge and evolve, necessitating the autonomous organization to be reconstituted in network form. The question then arises: How can local leaders administer networks so as to provide improved local services? The literature as reviewed above proposes many factors which affect the ability to lead those networks. The focus here has drawn on the New Institutional lens which encompasses the whole cycle of factors unique to local government and considered relevant to local leaders' ability to administer the networks. By combining the literature on network leadership in public administration with local governance the chapter offered insights on the structural, discursive, and environmental factors affecting a local lead organization's ability to run the networks.

These factors include the local lead organization's coordinative skills with the network itself. Such communicative abilities act as a bridge between the network and external stakeholders, thus enhancing its external legitimacy. Further, certain structural factors regarding a lead organization's position in a network were shown to be essential in leading the network. Finally, examining network leadership in the local arena, attention was directed to local environmental factors. These environmental factors refer to locality characteristics such as the intergovernmental context, political, cultural features of the specific municipality in which the network runs, alongside its size and socio-economic status of its community, and are crucial for the local lead organization. Future research might examine the combination of the factors discussed here in the context of conditions under which local lead organizations could bring about better functioning of local networks.

#### **Author details**

Anna Uster Department of Political Science, The Max Stern Academic College of Emek Yezreel, Jezreel Valley, Israel

\*Address all correspondence to: annau@yvc.ac.il

© 2022 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

*The New Institutional Approach as a Lens on Local Network Leadership DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.101988*
