Dear Emmanuel, 

I come from a society divided along gender, caste, class, ethnic, religious lines (India).

The extent to which subordinates mimic the leaders' actions depends on their personal relationship with the leader, the competency of the leader, and also how these identities are played out. 

Board members may ally with senior staff on the basis of these identities rather than supporting the leader creating organisation chaos.  . 

Best 

Ranjani

Your answer suggests that the propensity for imitation depends on some intervening and mediating factors including demographics and other social factors. Thank you very much sir, well appreciated.

Dear Emmanuel -

You may find some interesting results of leadership-inspired change in this case study on ProSocial - The Science of Working Better Together:  http://magazine.prosocialgroups.org/outstanding-evidence-for-prosocial-in-a-government-agency-setting/

Best regards,

Susan

Dear Emmanuel,

You might find this useful, on how corruption spreads in an organisation - albeit a private-sector one in this case: http://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/orsc.2015.0983

best regards

Liz

Dear Emmanuel; in socieities where inclusion is a problem (in political, economic, social, etc. spheres of influence), followers mimic their religious leaders; or persons they see as source of maintianing (getting) benefits, on cerain sort of social and demographic relationship. It also depends on which countries and social setting are you working. I am trying to develop what I term as "Community Empowerment Approach", community defined as group manifesting "inclusion" and working on the frameworks of inclusion that benefits "all" in the group. I agree that demographies and social factors matter but as transformative social (development) researchers, I beleive we need to go further in the analytic latitude. Can it make sense to take these demograpic and social factors as forces of exclusion in societies where inclusive development rarely exist?

Conclusions from Eight Published Studies on Co-management and Forest Sustainability

                By 1999, state–community partnerships to manage forests had become globally acceptable with partnerships being reported from more than fifty countries (FAO, 1999). In parallel, in Canada, state-community partnerships had taken the form of community-based stakeholder committees that advise on the development of forest industry or provincial agency-convened plans for public timberlands lands in nine of ten provinces. In 1994, the province of Ontario's Ministry of Natural Resources (OMNR) was mandated to provide local stakeholders with opportunities to become meaningfully involved in forest management planning. Like state-community partnerships globally, this was stimulated by failure of government management regimes, motivation to reduce bureaucracy, increase efficiency, and demand for increased local participation.

                State-community partnerships are conceptualized as adaptive organizational arrangements for natural resource (forest) sustainability. They typically range from user group management with government assistance to advisory group input into government management. All can increase forest sustainability by combining the interests and capacities of local community members with the ability of governments to provide enabling legislation, conflict resolution and other assistance.

                In 2001, I initiated the first in a series of ten published studies (eight are summarized here) to evaluate Ontario's stakeholder advisory committees and the partnering agency. This culminated in the publication of, "Evaluating the Transition to Sustainable Forest Management in Ontario's Crown Forest Sustainability Act and forest management planning manuals from 1994 to 2009" in the Aoril, 2015 issue of the Canadian Journal of Forest Research April. The series had began with a focus on cooperation (trust), specifically if and how it had developed. The following are lessons for state-community partnerships globally:

THE FIRST PHASE was based a comparative case study to evaluate deliberations between local district office staff and stakeholders (informed by scientists) and determine why development of cooperation (trust) varied. Deliberations were conceptualized as synonymous with analytic deliberation, one of Ostrom's eight design principles for robust environmental governance. Analytic deliberation is structured dialogue between scientists, resource users, and interested publics.

Conclusions

• Agency commitment was the most important criterion in the developing agency-committee cooperation.

• The extent to which district office support staff took an informal but nuanced, “hands on” approach that was carefully integrated with the capacity of local stakeholders was key.

• More than 50% of the key criteria that directly influenced deliberations did not occur in the other case. This highlights the uniqueness of each case and the importance of understanding local conditions for responsiveness.

• Advisory systems appear to have “thinner” cooperative relations than user group systems since participants are not likely to receive the benefits of their investments. This constrains the potential for voluntary labour or capital.

• Noncomplementary policies can crowd out cooperative relations between head and district offices of government bureaucracies

• Private sector organizations, subject to laws that protect the public interest, can be more responsive to local public interests than public sector organizations when they are more embedded within a community

• Overall, the most important theme that emerged was the level of generalized social capital within a community.

THE SECOND PHASE was based on content analyses of independent forest audits, self-evaluated reports of committee effectiveness, and interviews with current and former participants to confirm information complexity. Audits were also used to evaluate the success of committees. Deliberations were conceptualized as dependent on information that is congruent with decision maker needs in terms of timing, content, and form of presentation. Information complexity had emerged in the first phase, so became a focus.

Conclusions on information complexity

• Complexity of agency information was one of the most frequently mentioned issues that constrained participation.

• Committees struggled with the large amount of technical information (maps, terminology, acronyms) required to gain sufficient understanding, adapting models to the local context and with the effects of changing policy.

• Explorations of simulations revealed they can be subject to manipulation. Consequently, presentations must be ethical, comprehensible and communicate levels of uncertainty

Conclusions on the success of committees

• Responsiveness of the lead agency was high but didn't go as far as re-framing citizens to be integral participants in civic discourse who assist in making good decisions, resolving conflict, overcoming mistrust and building capacity

THE THIRD PHASE (1 publication) was a content analysis of legislation and planning manual revisions to confirm whether the agency's transition from sustained yield to the new sustainable forest management paradigm has been limited and analyse extent of policy change and learning.

Conclusions

• Bureaucratic learning about sustainability has been  limited. This suggests that, like the US Forest Service, persistent organizational resistance within OMNR may have constrained adoption of a new paradigm

• Lack of scaling up of feedback and learning in the bureaucracy and formal policy indicates limited transition to sustainability. Similarly, this suggests that, like the US Forest Service, old leader norms may continue to operate that create ineffective leaders for the modern context.

• Organizational conformity and homogeneity that had once well served agencies during the sustained yield era now risk agency ability to innovate and respond to change.

Good question and informative answers thank you all!

critical cultural issues Dr Alshibly