Leading in turbulent times : an exploratory study of leadership in social enterprises in Western Sydney

Abstract

This study aims to explore the leadership practices of social enterprises in Western Sydney. Like contemporary businesses, social enterprises operate in complex and volatile environments. These features constantly changing economic conditions and, more recently, a pandemic, which together have reduced the access social enterprises have to contributions like donations, grants and gifts. While social enterprises use business principles to generate income, this is done while providing benefits to society, as the profits are used either to contribute to the stability of the enterprise or to fund social programs. Therefore, social enterprises have both commercial and social objectives. A body of recent literature has emphasised the need for significant systemic change in Australia's social enterprise sector, given the current level of volatility and turbulence in the economic market. In addition, recent studies have identified leadership as a significant aspect for social enterprises, especially in turbulent economic, social and environmental situations. Despite the importance of social enterprises to the economy, the literature on leadership in these organisations is considered underdeveloped. Hence, this qualitative study aims to investigate the leadership practices of social enterprises in Western Sydney by interviewing a sample of their leaders, employees and volunteers. The study canvasses the literature on leadership approaches and adopts a critical leadership studies (CLS) framework to explore the leadership practices of the selection of social enterprises included in this study. CLS questions traditional leader and follower identities and advocates that the distinctions between leader and follower can be blurred. Leadership can be co-constructed in a variety of ways, necessitating a comprehensive grasp of context. To understand the nuances of such co-created realities of leadership, qualitative methods were used to investigate the research problem. Leaders, employees and volunteers from a selection of social enterprises in Western Sydney were interviewed using a data gathering method referred to as the Critical Incident Technique (CIT). By referring to the literature on leadership, the findings revealed that while leaders viewed themselves as 'servant leaders', most participants believed leaders needed to be 'participative' or 'democratic' during routine operations. Employees expected the leaders of their social enterprises to exhibit elements of 'authentic' leadership, and volunteers mainly viewed the leader as something of the heroic 'great man' but at the same time expected leaders to show 'transformational' qualities. In fact, most participants expected their leaders to practice 'transformational leadership', especially during crisis situations.

Date of Award	2022
Original language	English