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Introduction: Local Government Reform and a Journey to the Empty Quarter

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Systemic Leadership for Local Governance

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Abstract

The empty quarter. Hobbs immediately leads the reader to an unusual starting point. After outlining the rapid sequence of local government reforms imposed over several decades, Hobbs maintains that effective reform lies beyond the mechanistic paradigm. The abiding capacity-building themes of innovation and learning, collaboration and leadership, including oft-repeated barriers to progress, suggest that a variety of thinking skills is needed to address these complex challenges. Although a variety of approaches could help to address complexity (supply), practitioners (demand) are unaware of this variety, leading to a supply/demand dysfunction. A fundamental dilemma is that the usual disciplinary modes of thinking and working will not help us overcome these challenges. The chapter concludes with ‘a journey to the empty quarter’, explaining the form of thinking which is lacking.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The field of back-casting, in contrast to forecasting, is addressing this issue by imagining a future and then devising a plan to help create that future (rather than predict it). See Robinson (1990).

  2. 2.

    In the Kantian sense of exposing illusion ‘To avoid errors, one must search for their origin in illusion. Uncovering illusion is a much greater service to truth than any direct refutation of errors’ (Kant and Jäsche 1800).

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    Catherine Hobbs

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Hobbs, C. (2019). Introduction: Local Government Reform and a Journey to the Empty Quarter. In: Systemic Leadership for Local Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-08280-2_1

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