Cities and Spaces of Leadership

A Geographical Perspective

Cristina D'Alessandro, Kenneth A. Loparo

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137561916
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Política

Cities and Spaces of Leadership investigates the interaction between leadership, leaders and spaces at various levels. It analyzes how spaces and places influence leaders and leadership, as well as how the presence, distribution, action, and concentration of leaders in spaces contribute to their transformation.

1

Leaders and Leadership in a Globalized World

This chapter builds on a book by Léautier (2014), which looked at the question of leadership in a globalized world. It extracts major concepts and definitions, and sets the tone for the issues related to leadership and space, presenting what leadership is in the context of more networked spaces and places. The chapter brings in illustrative examples and links them to the major challenges and skills required for leaders to be effective in interconnected spaces. The chapter also identifies the spaces where leadership is concentrated, and the consequences of this spatial distribution. Key sections of the chapter explore the major concerns impacting policy makers with leadership positions in an increasingly globalized world. Spatial and temporal dimensions of globalization are introduced, and the kind of skills needed to contend with these dimensions in challenges faced by leaders is highlighted.

Introduction

Politicians, public administra-tors, civil society leaders, and corporate leaders operate in a variety of spaces, and their positions involve decision making and engagement across a number of levels of influence. The interface between the spaces and levels of decision making becomes more complex depending on the nature of their interconnectedness. The depth of relations between spaces and levels affects how decisions are made and the implication and scope of decisions and their outcomes. Spaces and particular moments in time also offer varied opportunities for leadership to emerge, affecting not only the potential, but also the trajectories of individuals in their leadership journeys.

Leaders in various spheres face a number of concerns as they seek to make decisions in the context of an increasingly globalized world (Léautier, 2014). Cities, especially large cities, capitals, and metropolises, are privileged places for leaders and leadership to develop, as they present leadership challenges that transcend space and time constraints. A city leader has influence on individuals who reside on the city, but also on rural folk who depend on the city for economic growth, markets, jobs, or entertainment. Choices on policies ranging from transport, to housing and waste collection, to the organization of space in a city have consequences not only for residents of today but for those of the future. It is not surprising that many city leaders continue to lead in other spheres of politics and business. Perhaps this is why, argues Sassen (1991), the cities where leadership is concentrated are the new centers of the world, making them contemporary global cities.

Countries going through major transition points—as from conflict to stability, or from economic stagnation to growth—are also important learning grounds for leaders. Such transition points present points of disruption or change that require a whole new way of looking at issues, and thereby provide the opportunity to alter course or strategy and shape a different trajectory for the lives and well-being of the residents of the country concerned. After conflict, new relationships need to be forged, and the opening up to dialogue brings ideas that are relevant not only for peacemaking purposes but also for developing the country going forward. Following the global financial crisis, which originated in advanced economies but had a major impact on other countries, even a relatively homogeneous set of countries showed considerable differences, both immediately following the crisis and years later. Isnawangsih et al. (2013) show that leadership choices to utilize countercyclical fiscal stimuli in Indonesia and the Philippines, which were larger and sustained for a longer period, caused these countries to diverge from Malaysia and Thailand. A further decision by Indonesian leaders to push forward investment-friendly structural reforms and the fortuitous timing of election spending pushed output up in Indonesia.

Multilateral organizations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), with mandates to influence large geographical settings and sectors, are key locations for the study of outcomes of leadership decisions and their consequences for learning, as has been shown by Isnawangsih et al. (2013). Specific moments in an interconnected world provide intense opportunities for leadership to emerge and to have global or regional influence. The trajectories of individual leaders through different spaces and moments are influenced by their leadership choices, and, indeed, these very spaces and moments also shape the leadership trajectories themselves.

While the trajectories of individuals through spaces and moments affecting their leadership and professional achievements vary, the concerns faced by individuals in leadership roles are generally common.

The first concern in common is the challenge a crisis presents to their leadership skills in identifying the major changes taking place across the world and, consequently, in the spaces where they operate. Facing crisis in an interconnected world requires a better understanding not only of geography, but also of history, technology, and sociology, in addition to the particular discipline of expertise required to make good policy. Gradual types of change can grow to become massive tectonic shifts that call for a different type of action. Assessments of the potential impact of climate change on global food supplies have shown that large increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, while not leading to large decreases in global crop production, would put a heavier burden on farmers in developing countries, who would need to undertake adaptive measures. Such an effect could exacerbate the disparity across spaces and places, and, in particular, between developed and developing countries (Rosenzweig and Parry, 1994).

The second concern goes beyond detecting when shifts are taking place, and includes observing and understanding the patterns of change in space and time, and their implications for decisions at the local or global scale. The skills needed for effective leadership in policy making include the ability to detect discontinuities in patterns, working with data covering different time periods and spatial coverage, and using the observed patterns of change to adjust strategy or implementation arrangements. A critical skill is also knowing when to act following an observation of a pattern of change, and when to take the political opportunity to institute large-scale or deeper change. The decision by leaders in Indonesia to roll out a fiscal stimulus swiftly in 2009 and couple it with election spending, which resulted in offsetting declining demand, caused the country to benefit from a much more positive trajectory following the crisis than any of its homologues (Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand), as shown in Isnawangsih et al. (2013).

The third concern comes from being able to understand the dynamics of change that impact important decision parameters. Many of the changes in a globalized world with impact across multiple spaces and time lines are driven by particular factors. Drivers of change include people (preferences for location, consumption, production, and reproduction); resources (land, food, water, and natural resources); economies (finance, trade, production, sourcing, and markets); and technology (agriculture, communication, knowledge sharing, manufacturing, and transport). Understanding the impact of the dynamics of change on the social meaning and responses to space and time are critical for effective policy and decision making.

The fourth concern is complexity, as captured by the types of interaction and the scale at which patterns are observed that matter for policy and decision making, particularly in relation to the adaptive strategies needed to be effective. Interactions across wide geographies can happen in an instant through social media, or can take a lifetime through travel from one location to the next. Complexity varies with scale. The understanding of the economy of a country by an international civil servant, who has lived and worked for a considerable amount of time in various countries and continents, differs from that of a policy blogger who reads and integrates comments on his/her blog on a daily basis. Olivier Blanchard wrote on Vox about the outcomes of reflections by the world’s greatest economists on the state of post-global crisis macroeconomics (Blanchard, 2015). The article covered the key policy choices made by countries, but without a clear assessment of whether the countries had defined the right goals. The scale, speed, and pattern of what can be observed changes the type of policy and decisions, and vice versa. Country policy makers face different starting points and obstacles, and while policy direction may be knowable at a general level, it cannot be knowable to the specific degree of relevance for a particular country. Such place-specific knowledge resides in people leading macroeconomic policies at the country level—the finance ministers and governors of central banks.

The fifth concern is the risks deriving from increased globalization. Tectonic shifts and their related patterns and dynamics increase the complexity of policy and decision making. Risks can occur more frequently, have graver consequences, or become contagious and spread over larger geographies. Global risks, like climate change induced by carbon emissions, tend to have an increased spatial or temporal dimension, with impacts that can cover the whole earth and its current and future populations. However, as public perceptions determine the type of policies that countries eventually adopt, there is a mismatch between the understanding and public agreement about the seriousness of the risks for a local population (where policy decisions are made) and the implications for further distant populations (that suffer the impact of the risk). Leadership challenges require interpreting scientific information in a manner that is explainable to the public and links global and long-term effects to local policy and interests. Such a broader global public debate and approach to negotiation, across multiple voices and perspectives, will allow the dangers posed by climate change to be broadly known and understood. Leiserowitz (2005, p. 1441) argues: “the dangers depend literally and figuratively on where one stands, while the solutions will require coordinated action of us all”.

The sixth concern is governance and the special role it plays in leadership across space and time. Conflict in one country affects not only geographical neighbors but also, at times, countries far away; and one cannot discuss challenges of conflict or post-conflict without looking at geography. Globalization intensifies the interplay between what is local, national, or international and its governance consequences. Leaders in a globalized world need to be aware of the relevant territorial attributes and use data from spaces and places in order to make effective decisions. Possessing knowledge of what we refer to as “territorial governance” provides superior ability to minimize risk and cope with uncertainty, as well as the skills needed to integrate the effect of rapid, spatially linked changes. Investors such as Walmart learned that they needed to adjust their country expansion strategy to accommodate local governance practices—such as the partnership between labor unions and company management in Germany—for them to successfully expand in those countries (Deresky, 2008). Indeed, Deresky (2008) argues that firms should ideally conduct global analysis of the investing space on three different levels: multinational, regional, and national. At the multinational level, the broader governance trends are at play, including political and economic development of nations around the world and the link between national and global governance. At the regional level, concerns relate to policies for selling across markets and risks of operating in a governance neighborhood, with the stability of the neighboring countries being key. At the national level, the analysis includes local governance concerns (legal and judicial systems, political arrangements in countries, and economic policies).

These six concerns are treated in this chapter, and their relationship to leadership skills is highlighted, in particular the skills to deal with temporal and spatial changes and dynamics. The chapter provides the theoretical underpinnings of space, time, globalization, and leadership. Through exploring some selected examples, the chapter illustrates situations in which time, scale, or pace of reaction has had important effects on decision making. The responses of individual leaders to specific situations are used to underscore the main points. The chapter ends with a summary of the skills that are relevant for effective decision making and the type of territorial knowledge needed to fully exploit leadership potentialities in an increasingly globalized world.

1.1 Spatial dimension of leadership

Leadership has multiple possible definitions, and can mean many things, depending on context. However, it generally evolves around:

(1)Position: the individual(s) who, regarded collectively, is (are) at the top of an organization, and can exert influence causing change in belief, attitude, or behavior of the target of influence (French and Raven, 1959)

(2)Time: the period during which an individual holds a position as head of an organization, or the length of tenure in high office, which has been seen to correlate with individual performance outcomes (Wallace and Suedfeld, 1988)

(3)Actions: the activity of exercising authority over a group of people or an organization, knowing that authority depends widely on situations (Lunenburg, 2012)

(4)Skills: the power or ability to be guiding other people (Lunenburg (2012) and accomplish at least one common task for the organization that he/she is leading

(5)Character: the act of inspiring others to perform or to achieve a specific goal, guided by willingness to play by the rules against competition and cooperate with those willing to do so (Hartman, 2001)

(6)Influence: a construct that explains the social influence an individual or group of individuals has on others, and the constraints they face as they operate to get goals achieved by others (Pfeffer, 1977)

(7)Authenticity: a construct that recognizes self-awareness in a position of authority and appreciation of one’s own and others’ values, knowledge, and strengths; degree to which an individual’s morals and values are perceived by others; awareness of context of operation; and possession of characteristics of confidence, hopefulness, optimism, resilience, and high moral character in an individual (Walumbwa et al., 2008)

All these definitions have embedded in them a concept of space and time, as well as scale or range and level, in addition to features or traits. As such, these definitions are consistent with time-space concepts, such as sovereignty (individual and spatial), territorial governance (space and place of influence), and territory (space or place of operation and influence). However, the effect of space on leadership transforms to a certain extent the earlier definitions of leadership. Consider the concept of personal reward, as outlined in French and Raven (1959, p. 263), defined as receiving approval from a desired person. With the advent of social media, persons who “like” another can be spatially distant from them. The number of “likes” and “dislikes” on social media can cause a teenager to be euphoric or to commit suicide, or can cause a product to disappear from store shelves or drop in sales overnight. There is a similar effect on the concept of legitimate power, which in the French and Raven (1959, pp. 264–266) definition comes from being elected, selected, or appointed to a position of authority. The ousting of the presidents of Egypt and Tunisia demonstrated that leaders can be removed through social movements that are organized practically overnight, as has been seen in what has been referred to as the Arab Spring (Lotan et al., 2011). People from a far-away space can be seen as legitimate leaders and swoop in to transfer power from a virtual to a real space. For example, Ashraf Ghani wrote and was interviewed extensively about Afghanistan before returning to his country to become the chancellor of Kabul University, minister of finance, and eventually a president of the country.¹

Global policy leadership is one form of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Glossary
• Introduction—Contemporary Spaces and Places of Power beyond Commonplace
• 1. Leaders and Leadership in a Globalized World
• 2. Spaces and Scales of Leadership
• 3. Leadership, Spirals, and Trajectories
• 4. Spaces of Leadership: The Weight of Location and Leadership Density in Spaces
• 5. Leadership Capacity of Spaces
• 6. Spatial Networks: Connecting Spaces through Leaders
• 7. Geographical Knowledge as an Important Part of Leaders’ Background
• 8. Spatial and Temporal Issues and the Role of Moments
• 9. Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index