Collaborative leadership and place-based development

Place leadership is at a critical juncture. Since the 1990s it has been taken-for-granted that for places to prosper, effective partnerships combining the interests of multiple stakeholders are essential. The leadership of place-based partnerships is crucial to their success and has accordingly received increased attention in academic and policy circles, but the notion of place leadership remains an ideological phenomenon founded on numerous case studies with few conclusions that can be generalised across wider spatial scales or beyond advanced economies. This paper examines place leadership through examining England’s Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs), in particular looking at the role of the private sector vis a vis the public sector. The complexity of these partnerships is explored, and the paper argues for the role of collaborative leadership to address that complexity. It contributes a set of guiding principle to guide new ways for place-based working that can better embrace the private sector and engender a more collaborative leadership practice.