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Uhl-Bien and Arena (2018) presented a persuasive argument for recognizing the concept of enabling leadership as a critical form of leadership for adaptive organizations. This study aims to narratively explore the concept of enabling leadership in the context of social complexity.

To explore how leaders enable adaptive processes, Uhl-Bien and Arena (2018) called for future research using in-depth case studies of social actors centered on emergence in complex environments. In this in-depth case study, the authors pursue theory elaboration by using a form of analytically structured history process to analyze primary and secondary sources.

During archival research of Whitney Young, Jr’s largely overlooked and misunderstood leadership in the historic social drama of the 1960s US civil rights movement, the authors discovered compelling evidence to support and extend the theoretical arguments advanced by Uhl-Bien and Arena (2018).

The reflexivity associated with interpretive case approaches confronts the issue of subjectivism. The authors ask readers to judge the credibility of their arguments accordingly.

Using a relational leadership-as-practice lens, the authors interpret the dramaturgical performance Whitney Young, Jr directed to facilitate coherent emancipatory dialogue, affect the social construction of power relations and enable the adaptive space needed for social transformation to emerge.

The purpose of this paper is to alert the reader to the urgent need to address the most pressing challenge and opportunity of the twenty-first century, namely, leadership that enables flourishing for all forever.

This conceptual paper suggests a heuristic for the reader and supplies a working model of leadership as enabling function for flourishing that arises from a survey of the literature around leadership development, as well as a brief review of the literature on flourishing.

The paper highlights the reality that there are, as yet, only a small number of organizations and leadership that have conceptualized and implemented the notion of flourishing by design and that a great deal more research and implementation needs to occur to prove the validity of the model.

There is a need to undertake quasi-experimental research in which leadership development praxis incorporates the element of flourishing by design and then action research through which the outcomes can be measured, modified and ongoing improvements iterated into the organizational design.

This paper suggests a different mindset and skillset for leadership and, by implication, leadership development. The ongoing research into “Seeking Best Methods for Leadership Development”, through the authors’ Round 1 Delphi survey has uncovered the elements of Human Capital, Social Capital, Structural Capital and Self Leadership, as core elements desired by global CEOs as necessary for an effective leadership development program. What the authors did not probe for, and need to probe for, is the element of “Flourishing Capital” or the degree to which the leadership might be developed to serve as an enabling function for flourishing for all forever.

If organizations design flourishing into the raison d‘être of the organization, then organizations will seek and develop leadership that has flourishing as a core motif and focus. If organizational leadership supports and enhances flourishing as a central motif, then a shift will occur from profit only to profit that supports flourishing for all forever.

The paper highlights the reality that there are, as yet, only a small number of organizations and leadership that have conceptualized and implemented the notion of flourishing by design and that a great deal more research and implementation needs to occur to prove the validity of the model.

Instructional leadership is a school leadership approach that places great emphasis on enhancing the quality of teaching and learning. This study explored the enabling factors of instructional leadership in subject coordinators.

The participants in this qualitative study were 24 subject coordinators in elementary schools in Israel. Data collection was based on semi-structured interviews, and data analysis included three stages: sorting, coding and categorizing.

The findings identified three significant enabling factors of instructional leadership in subject coordinators: pedagogical knowledge, relationship capability and support from the principal.

This study suggests that the enabling factors of instructional leadership in subject coordinators differ from those of instructional leadership in principals because of their different places in the school structure and explains the enablers of instructional leadership in subject coordinators as middle leaders.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate a leadership crisis in Africa with the view to suggested new model that help overcome the leadership gap.

This paper adopt the complexity leadership approach to explicate the leadership crisis in Africa.

This paper suggested that the use of complexity leadership model of enabling leadership to better understand the complex leadership crisis.

The application of the leadership enables an appreciation of contemporary leadership realities.

This paper adopting complexity leadership is novel and helps to fill the gap in understanding of present leadership crisis.

This paper introduces a conceptual lens for leading social change in slums and informal settlements. In line with this aim, the purpose of this case study is to describe the public problem-solving approach of a social change organization situated in an informal settlement through the lens of adaptive leadership, complexity theory and social change leadership (SCL).

This paper follows an engaged reflection tradition. First, the author-practitioners describe an informal settlement case hereafter called ISC in southeast Iran where many people have historically remained undocumented and uneducated. Using complex adaptive systems theory, adaptive leadership and SCL as the conceptual lens, the paper analyzes ISC as a complex adaptive context in which the community and the government are in tension in solving problems, particularly illiteracy. The instrumental case study draws from participant observation and document analysis to describe and examine the endeavors of a community office operating within ISC. Through this reflective analysis, the authors illustrate how a social change organization can effectively tackle public issues like illiteracy within informal settlements.

This paper applies complexity leadership theory to a social context. The study illustrates how social change organizations can support the transformation of informal spaces into adaptive spaces to enact social change.

This paper reflects on engagement activity near the insecure borders of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. By extending an organizational-level theory to the public sphere, this paper contributes theoretically to the complexity theory literature. Moreover, it provides a practical insight for community development and slum upgrading projects.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how multi-professional approved clinicians (MPACs), responsible for the care of patients detained under the Mental Health Act (2007), can enable clinical leadership in mental health settings.

A questionnaire was completed by clinical psychology and mental health nursing practitioners in a mental health trust in the UK working towards or having gained approved clinician (AC) status, identifying barriers to implementation of the roles and enablers. Qualitative interview data were also gathered with psychiatrists, clinical psychologist and Mental Health Nurse ACs (three in each group).

There are a number of barriers and enablers of distributed leadership promoted by the MPAC role. Themes identified focused on enabling person-centred care, clinical leadership and culture change more broadly within mental health care. The AC role is supporting clinical leadership by a range of professionals, promoting patient choice by enabling access to clinicians with the appropriate skills to meet needs. Clinical leadership roles are promoting links between organisational priorities, teams and patient care, fostering distributed leadership in practice.

This project reflects the views of a limited number of practitioners within one organisation which limits generalisabilty.

Organisations need clear strategies linked to workforce development and implementation of the roles to capitalise on their potential to support clinical leadership and person-centred care.

This study provides initial qualitative data on potential benefits and challenges of implementing the role.

The paper reports on research into effective leadership interventions. The findings and conclusions are derived from 12 diverse vocational education and training (VET) sites around Australia. Data are from 44 written survey and interview responses and five focus groups yielding a total of 64 respondents. The main finding is a four‐stage cycle of effective leadership interventions and is demonstrated through a case of enabling leadership. The study incorporates context‐dependent profiles of different leaders’ attributes at each of the four stages of the leadership intervention cycle. The research generates new theory and knowledge in an area of leadership research. That is, it is found that the traits and attributes of individual leaders are necessary but not sufficient to explain how to achieve effective and enabling leadership.

This chapter describes the change efforts and action research projects at a Dutch multinational which, over a period of 25 years, produced in one of its businesses a zigzag path toward collaborative leadership dynamics at the horizontal and vertical interfaces. The chapter also identifies the learning mechanisms that helped achieve this transformation. Changing the patterns at the vertical interfaces proved to be a most tricky, complex, and confusing operation. The data show that organizations need hierarchical interfaces between levels, but are hindered by the hierarchical leadership dynamics at these interfaces. The data furthermore show that competitive performance requires more than redesigning horizontal interfaces. A business can only respond with speed and flexibility to threats and opportunities in the external environment when the leadership dynamics at agility-critical vertical interfaces are also changed.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the leadership competencies of the Z generation (born after 1997) in the VUCA business environment. In today’s scenario, the business works differently than it used to previously. The young workforce wants not just to contribute their energy to the organisation but to their colleagues and themselves too, with the leading global sceneries.

An unstructured questionnaire was prepared by testing the reliability and validity of the data. Multiples linear regression analyses were used to derive results and to check whether the competencies are dependent on the VUCA skill sets. Entrepreneurial leadership, enabling leadership, operational leadership and architectural leadership are chosen to be the independent variables for this study.

The findings reveal that the dependability is on all the four factors for the VUCA business environment and hence the need is to practice the same in the organisation.

The test has been done on a sample having 260 respondents. This study reveals data of the workspace environment only and not how Gen Z will behave to the conditions as individuals. Gender-perspective is not taken into account in this study.

The implications can be seen for the organisations’ understanding of how to deal with generation Z and empower them. The organisation-structure and processes that were developed previously will not be limited now just to making the organisations function but also impact self-development for Gen Z, the development that is focussed on work-teams of Gen Z and so the global market eventually.

The originality is in the variables that have been taken for this study. As the world is growing rapidly, the mind-set and the style in which the manager works are changing. Therefore, it is necessary to take into account what leadership style will affect the current business environment.

Recent advances in the interactive technologies have transformed the way today's organizations and their different stakeholders learn. Now, because of the increasing learning requirements, neither these organizations nor their stakeholders can afford to be too self‐focused while learning; instead, they collaborate and learn together. Existing theories of learning are not sufficient to explain this complex learning “co‐creation”. Therefore, this paper aims to explore how different actors of a value network co‐create emergent creativity, learning and adaptability in the presence of imposed administrative control and coordination.

The approach adopted in the paper draws on human complex adaptive systems (CAS) perspectives.

Within the value networks, the emergent and informal constraints imposed by interdependent relationships coexist with the imposed administrative controls. Despite being valuable for planning and coordination, these administrative controls do not foster learning co‐creation, while, within the value networks, the informal emergent dynamics imposed by interdependent relationships, i.e. adaptive leadership, are crucial for co‐creation of emergent learning and creativity. An organization can enable leaders who foster co‐creation of learning, creativity and adaptability; and the interactive technologies boost the adaptive and enabling leadership and support the co‐creation of learning, creativity and adaptability within the value networks.

The research represents the first effort to explore learning “co‐creation” within a value network.