Aligning vertical structures and horizontal relationships: collaborative leadership and accountability mechanisms to enhance economic growth in England
| Author | Joyce Liddle |
| Date | 01 December 2018 |
| Published date | 01 December 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852316651694 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Review of
Administrative
Article
Sciences
International Review of
Administrative Sciences
2018, Vol. 84(4) 659–674
Aligning vertical structures
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and horizontal relationships:
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DOI: 10.1177/0020852316651694
collaborative leadership and
journals.sagepub.com/home/ras
accountability mechanisms
to enhance economic
growth in England
Joyce Liddle
CERGAM (Centre for the study of research and management),
Aix-Marseille Universite´, France
Abstract
This article explores vertical and horizontal dimensions of the work of public, private
and civic leaders involved in economic development in England, in particular, those
working in the complex terrain of Local Enterprise Partnerships, a key partnership
tool in the UK central government’s localism agenda for driving growth. It offers insights
into innovative ways in which state, non-state and citizen agents navigate a complex set
of vertical, legal authority structures within fragmented, horizontal and largely informal
new ‘spaces’ of interactions/interrelationships to collaboratively co-produce strategies
and plans for transforming local areas. To advance our knowledge of collaborative
leadership requires new methodological approaches to investigating multi-accountabil-
ities and how co-production works within ‘loosely coupled’ networks. It is imperative
to appreciate the problems associated with leadership working across sectoral
boundaries within complex networks of vertical, legal structures and horizontal, infor-
mal action spaces. In such networks, leaders, as institutional representatives, work
collaboratively to achieve objectives not readily attainable by member organisations
acting alone. They also need to compromise and negotiate their representative role
back to a parent organisation while protecting and promoting the priorities, aims and
interests of the new entity, in this case, a Local Enterprise Partnership. Theoretically,
then, the article is located in recent debates on the theory and practice of New Public
Governance, to show the inadequacies of New Public Management models for captur-
ing the complexities between formal authority structures and fragmented informal sets
of relationships. It also draws on accountability models, notably, from the Utrecht
School, to identify social relations between collaborative leaders on Local Enterprise
Corresponding author:
Joyce Liddle, Aix Marseille Universite´ – IMPGT, 21 rue Gaston de Saporta Aix en Provence, F-13100 Aix en
Provence, France.
Email: joyce.liddle@univ-amu.fr
660
International Review of Administrative Sciences 84(4)
Partnerships, and to show how they assert agency and individual actions within the
boundaries of participating institutions.
Points for practitioners
The findings should benefit professionals, public managers and policymakers in under-
standing formal and informal linkages on partnerships for economic development. The
article should facilitate an appreciation of the importance of greater accountability for
actions in cross-boundary working. Moreover, in exploring vertical and horizontal
dimensions of public, private and civic leadership in the complex terrain of Local
Enterprise Partnerships, the findings show their feasibility as key vehicles to develop
collaborative, co-produced strategies in transforming sub-national localities.
Keywords
accountability, economic growth, leadership, partnerships, public value, strategy
Methodology
In the early stages of this qualitative research, a desk-based review of the literature
was followed by scanning government reports, policy documentation, professional
publications and web-based Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) Network data.
Empirical data was gathered over an 18-month period (early 2012 to mid-2013)
and fieldwork consisted of a number of preliminary case-study visits to two LEPs
located in the North-East of England (out of the total population of 39 English
LEPs). Contacts were established through the author’s extensive network of policy
practitioners in all case-study areas. Preliminary visits were used to request relevant
information and schedule face-to-face, in-depth, semi-structured and telephone
interviews across the 39 LEPs. Key stakeholders were identified and a total of
six face-to-face interviews were triangulated with 10 telephone interviews. These
were augmented with data collected from the author’s participant observation in
key LEP meetings. Qualitative data were analysed thematically and categorised in
order to carry out a finely grained analysis. The combination of documentary
analysis, participant observation, interviews and case-study visits facilitated mul-
tiple sources of evidence to corroborate findings and reduce bias. Triangulation of
primary and secondary data increased reliability and validity.
The context: from traditional public administration
to public value management and governance
(via New Public Management)
For the past 20 years, governance has been a prominent subject of enquiry within
public administration, and increasingly regarded as the study of inter-jurisdiction
relations and third-party policy implementation between state, non-state and
Liddle
661
non-jurisdictional public collectives (Frederickson, 2007: 282–304). UK national
governments of all political persuasions introduced various performance manage-
ment tools and regimes to pursue public service improvement under the auspices of
New Public Management (NPM). NPM was considered a useful vehicle to enhance
policymaking and performance by introducing market incentives for greater prod-
uctivity, service improvement, responsiveness and accountability (Kettle, 2000),
and, indeed, it became dominant within the reform of public agencies (Pollitt
and Bouckaert, 2004). However, the recent economic crisis raised questions
about the hegemony of the market model and led to much institutional soul-
searching and redefinition of the role and methods of intervention of the state
(Emery and Giauque, 2014: 23–32).
More recently, it has been argued that neither traditional public administration
nor its successor, NPM, were successful in confronting the myriad of complex
problems facing both public officials and citizens. This led politicians and public
leaders to consider engaging new forms of civic/place-focused leadership based on
collective values as alternatives to centralised states and outdated notions of NPM
(Hambleton, 2015: 167–172; Quinn, 2015: 738–751). Adding ‘public value’ is now
essential as governments across the globe are faced with continued austerity and
budgetary constraints, and the importance of public value is at the core of NPM
(Chamit et al., 2015: 219–226; Osborne, 2006). Collective governance brings
together public and private stakeholders in collective forums to engage in consen-
sus-oriented decision-making (Ansell and Gash, 2008: 543–571), and collaborative
leadership constructively arms appropriate people with good information for creat-
ing authentic visions and strategies on shared organisational and community con-
cerns (Chrislip and Larson, 1994).
Globally, no one is entirely sure why public spending continued to rise (until
recently) and yet social problems persisted, but the old ways of working clearly
failed to bring about the necessary and vital changes. Moreover, it could be argued,
earlier experiments stifled innovation and policy interventions as quantitative
measurements crowded out more qualitative, meaningful and richer forms of
collaborative decision-making.
On taking office in 2010, the UK Coalition government introduced: a public
sector reform programme to include local decision-making and budgeting; a shift in
responsibility for outcomes from the state to citizens; and (of significance for this
article) the expansion of private and third sector provision in delivering public
services (Gooby-Taylor and Stoker, 2011). Collaborative leadership in an
English public services context needs to be set within literature spanning
30 years that charts the shift from traditional public administration (PA), to
NPM and then to post-democratic networked forms of New Public Governance
(NPG) in which citizens work collaboratively with public managers to co-produce,
co-design and co-deliver public services and to confront a myriad of complex social
problems (Bovaird, 2004; Moore and Benington, 2010; Osborne, 2010). The foun-
dations of NPG included the appeal for less government in the belief that the
private and non-profit sector could provide public services more efficiently with
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International Review of Administrative Sciences 84(4)
fewer funds (Morgan and Shinn, 2014: 3–12). The concern with the narrow, instru-
mental focus of NPM had generated a NPG countermovement to place political
views at the centre of the debate and to bring communitarian elements of the non-
profit sector together with aspects of the market (Morgan and Shinn, 2014: 3–12).
NPM had focused on more responsive and accountable service provision to
citizens by the application of business management techniques, including compe-
tition, customer satisfaction and measuring performance. However, it was heavily
criticised for narrow instrumentalism and the promotion of market solutions to
solve ‘wicked’ social problems. Furthermore, it neglected how governments collect
common citizen values to create integrated responses, or where values are conflict-
ual (Bao et al., 2012). NPG, on the other hand, is ‘public value-centred’ to achieve
common good, not just on narrow...
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