1 Social Change and Leadership for the Common Good

Leadership and the common good are both loaded concepts – that is, loaded with meaning and politically sensitive. Years ago we engaged in “double loading ” by incorporating common good into our definition of leadership as “the inspiration and mobilization of others to undertake collective action in pursuit of the common good” (Bryson and Crosby, 1992). Since then we’ve devoted considerable effort to developing a comprehensive framework and practical guidance for leaders and followers engaged in leadership for the common good. We focus on inter-related types of leadership practice: leadership in context; personal, team, and organizational leadership; and at the community or societal level: visionary, political, and ethical leadership. Finally, we emphasize policy entrepreneurship, or integrating all the other types of leadership practice, over the course of a policy change campaign. We offer a cyclical framework of policy change and we parse views of the common good that may drive or infuse the process. This essay will explain a bit more about what motivated us to link leadership, social change and common good; then we’ll explore our view of leadership and link it to social change organizations. Finally, we will pose some questions that intrigue us. Beginning in the early 1980s, we began to seriously study how social change occurs. We wanted to know why some individuals and organizations seemed to achieve major shifts in policies, laws, and social mores and why others fell by the wayside. W