Civic leadership for a transformative social economy: A comparison of city leadership constellations in Italy and the UK

This chapter discusses the role of civic leadership as an open agency which can promote place-based partnerships and coalitions (both formal and/or informal) to address complex challenges and to create social, economic and environmental value. In particular, we argue that social economy actors should develop civic leadership roles and capabilities to become more effective social change agents, to design and lead place-based ecosystems for value co-creation, and to institutionalize new collaborative governance structures. We present explorative empirical research conducted in the cities of Padua (Italy) and Peterborough (United Kingdom), which is based on a multi-site mixed-methods research design and uses a qualitative approach to social network analysis. Specifically, our work aims at identifying city leaders from a positional and reputational perspective in four main domains of local governance: political/democratic; public services; business environment; community/social domain. Our findings reveal that a decentred vision of civic leadership works in the eyes of the city leaders who participated in our study, showing city leadership constellations that are often fragmented and, in some cases, invisible to other city leaders, especially in the case of social economy actors. Implications of our study are both conceptual and practical: conceptually, they call for opening up our cognitive understanding and cultural legitimation of civic leadership; practically, our findings highlight the importance for social economy organizations to develop leadership functions and managerial structures devoted to building connections within civic leadership constellations.