Enabling Public Service Collaborations Through Network Leadership

How can network leadership enable interorganizational public service collaboration? In this study, enabling leadership practices are described through interviews with network leaders in 16 purposefully sampled public service networks with extreme positive and negative outcomes from working with disengaged youths. The strategical selection of informants allows the study to address a call for empirical research on the "black box" of how leadership practices enable outcomes in interorganizational networks. The findings advance our theoretical and practical understanding of enabling network leadership in human service organizations by conceptualizing it as dynamic interconnected functions, rather than precise roles. This conceptualization is better suited for a theoretical and practical understanding of networks as dynamic rather than stable performance systems.