Such a perspective is not that far removed from Drucker’s notion of management as a liberal art (Drucker, 2003). Influenced from a Christian perspective, Drucker offers an alternative conception of management which sees a wider social imperative and context for the operation and practice of management. From this perspective he also sees power as being necessarily mediated and in direct relation to responsibilities.
In developing the model of leadership and management as a process of co-creation, more recent conceptions of leadership as a social process are also of interest. Denis, Langley and Sergi (2012) have conducted an extensive review of current streams of research in this area and have termed these approaches leadership in the plural. Within this categorisation they identify four key streams of research and it is the stream associated with ‘producing leadership through interaction’ (p. 211) that has most resonance with the concept of co-created leadership that this paper advocates and explores.
Leadership in the plural includes conceptions of leadership that have been termed distributed (Gibb, 1954; Bolden, 2011; Currie and Lockett, 2011), shared (Buchanan et al, 2007; Raelin, 2003), emergent (Hollander, 1961), participative (Vroom and Yetton, 1973) and servant (van Dierendonck, 2010; Greenleaf, 1977). Fletcher (2004: 650) encapsulates what leadership in the plural.
[It] reenvisions the who and where of leadership by focussing on the need to distribute the tasks and responsibilities of leadership up, down and across the hierarchy. It re-envisions the what of leadership by articulating leadership as a social process that occurs in and through human interactions, and it articulates the how of leadership by focusing on the more mutual, less hierarchical leadership practices and skills needed to engage collaborative, collective learning.
The model, represented below as a heuristic framework, has been developed through engagement with key literature and use of data from the Methodist study. The model is not intended to suggest that the relational aspects are formed incrementally or hierarchically but does seek to represent the relative importance of understanding management and leadership in public service contexts as being socially and relationally rather than individually constructed. Thus whilst individual skills, styles, values and ideologies play a role in the formation of an approach to management and leadership, these are developed and refined within the wider context of community/service needs, organisational values and culture and principally in relationship with others. The inverted triangle reflects a view that models of management and leadership in public service contexts should start their focus with context and need and seek to allow individuals to formulate their contribution to management and leadership within this wider context.