ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on M. Foucault’s concept of “pastoral power” to consider how networks of practices are shaped through the activities of “network leaders.” Public policies increasingly suggest that networks need, in some sense, to be managed or steered to navigate these and similar challenges. The National Health Service has been at the forefront of change within UK public service governance. Policies see leaders as transformational and leadership as dispersed through the networks of service organisation and delivery. The emphasis on transformational leaders has evolved to consider the contribution of more distributed leadership, where the capacity to engender change is diffused amongst organisational groups. Emerging from the inscription practices, safety leads undertook a series of collective practices that sought to (re)define the boundaries of the community and, in turn, to instigate and maintain activities within that community that reinforce appropriate subjectivities.
