Date and time
The importance of place leadership has recently been increasingly recognised within regional studies and other scientific disciplines, for example public administration, political science, business and organizational studies, geography and international relations as well as other areas of enquiry.
However, mainstream place leadership research is at a critical juncture. After having reached a wide and new recognition about its importance thanks to work of several scholars (e.g. Beer & Clower, 2014; Collinge et al. 2010; Liddle, 2010; Sotarauta, 2015; Sotarauta et al. 2017), it has now to gain consistency and rigour to foster its contribution to a bigger range of work. In ensuring the field’s appropriate application and adoption it need to move from exploratory to explanatory research designs; and to allow replicability, accumulation and generation of further knowledge.
In this seminar we want to explore in particular the potential for a systems approach (e.g. Ison et al., 1997) to study place leadership and to further reflect on the theoretical foundations of place leadership in the current turbulent world scenario characterized by contrasting forces and new trends, i.e. “global reversal, regional revival”.
We believe that this is a timely moment. As recent phenomena highlight, place is important in economic, political, social and organizational action and its leadership is crucial to determine economic performance and socio-economic resilience.
Call for Papers
Research papers, short position papers, commentaries on hot topics/events (e.g. Brexit), and research designs are invited to be presented and discussed with the aim to achieve the following:
· Collectively assess what has been achieved to date in examining the inter-relationship between place and leadership within the field of regional studies;
· Identify some of the key problems, limitations and challenges that this research has encountered and what might be done to address these;
· Explore potentially fruitful new and possibly transdisciplinary lines of place leadership research and how these might be pursued.
Other papers and contributions relevant to place leadership are also welcome. Beyond formal presentations, the seminar will allow time for collective discussion and for exploring the possibility to pursue collaborative and comparative work on place leadership.
We aim to start at 13.30 on Thursday the 14th and finish with after lunch at 14.00 on Wednesday 15th. A full programme will be published nearer these states.
Organisers:
Leslie Budd, The Open University: leslie.budd@open.ac.uk
Alessandro Sancino, The Open University: alessandro.sancino@open.ac.uk