ABSTRACT
Within collaborations aimed at solving complex public problems, leadership is clearly important in achieving successful outcomes (Bryson, Crosby and Stone 2006; Ansell and Gash 2008). We are especially interested in better understanding how leaders work across sectoral, organizational and cultural boundaries to bring diverse groups of people together to work out sustainable remedies for such problems. We see the leadership practice of these leaders as integrative – that is, they help organizations integrate people, processes, structures and resources in semi-permanent ways. Integration is similar to collaboration, but we think the former term captures more directly the need for leaders and constituents to move back and forth across boundaries and build linking pathways and other commonalities.
