Regional leadership for innovation – are we slack enough?Professor Andrew Beer

Roger Stough, George Mason University

Regional Leadership

Stough concludes: 1. once endogenous factors are controlled for, regional economic performance is dependent upon leadership and resource endowments

• only the former is amenable to action to enhance achievement.

2. leadership is enhanced when it has access to superior information, both now and into the future.

Regional Leadership

3. he noted the importance of ‘slack resources’ in enabling leadership to both develop and find purposeful expression.

• effective leaders need to have the capacity – available time, fiscal resources et cetera – to attend to the community leadership tasks to hand

 

Slack Resources in Australia?

...community leaders tend to be older, better educated, have higher incomes and are male. Community leaders are also disproportionately drawn from the land-based elite (Gray et al 2005: 132).

Leadership Comes at A Cost

Slack Resources in Australia?

• But Australia is changing: • More diverse, service oriented economy • Challenges to family farms • Rise of mining and mining related employment

• Seachange/Treechange communities• Hollowing out of existing industries, and some communities   

Slack Resources in Australia?

Challenges: • Australia runs a lean economy

– few slack resources within the public or private sectors

• The ‘target and audit’ culture of government allows little room for slack resources or ‘non core’ business

• Absence of clear, articulated pathways for the emergence of leaders locally and regionally– Nature of Australian Federalism an impediment

Implications

• Build the institutions of leadership regionally – Leadership as a goal, a priority

• Create pathways for leadership • Accept the leadership role of

government agencies and staff • Celebrate and reward leadership and its

achievements