Our research projects

Leadership projects being undertaken by the Aotearoa Centre for Leadership and Governance.

Leadership, the Environment and Sustainability

This is is a major future research direction involving Professor Brigid Carroll, Dr Rhiannon Lloyd and Dr Leny Woolsey with a number of events, research projects and stakeholders already in the works:

  • A research partnership with Crown Research Agency Scion to partner with them on leadership and sustainability (more details to follow).
  • A research partnership with Professor Marjolein Lips-Wiersma from AUT on leadership, sustainability, hope and meaningful work (more details to follow).
  • Professor Carroll is convening a stream titled Leadership imperatives, imperfections and impossibilities in addressing climate crises at EGOS in Vienna in 2022.

Complex Cross Boundary Governance

Professor Brigid Carroll along with Professors Christa Fouche and Jennifer Curtin were awarded a VC Strategic Development Award in 2017 to establish a project supporting capability and capacity building across complex governance structures connecting government, community and iwi. They have produced one article (Carroll, B., Fouche, C., and Curtin, J. (2020) Governance for Social Purpose: Negotiating Complex Governance Practice. Frontiers in Psychology, 23 September.) Currently the following is in development:

  • An online webinar series called Governance, Policy Advocacy, Evaluation, and Navigating Partnerships is in talks with Auckland Online to be developed for a public audience and targeted at those supporting such initiatives across New Zealand.
  • A policy document is under construction with public sector consultants Navigator Ltd to provide a roadmap for such work for public sector agencies in particular.
  • A resource involving four case studies of complex governance practice currently been written up to be an accompanying document for the above policy document and offer insight into the practice dimensions of such governance.  

Leadership Development and Responsibility

Led by Dr Rhiannon Lloyd, Professor Brigid Carroll and Dr Leny Woolsey are engaged in what will become a stream of work on leadership development for responsibility. The Responsible Leadership Literature so far has not had a development lens and constructing one creates a strong synergy with work into sustainability and the environment discussed previously. That work has started with:

  • An invited chapter on Co-responsibility and Partnership for the new Mike Saks book on Responsible Leadership. This chapter involves a case illustration of the Paris climate Agreement and a theorization of co-responsibility from a partnership lens.
  • A submission to a special issue in Management Learning on ‘The hidden curriculum of responsibility (un)learning at business schools’ for an article on Negotiating Responsibility in Leadership Development involving Dr Rhiannon Lloyd, Dr Leny Woolsey and Professor Brigid Carroll.
  • Future work on responsible leadership development for sustainability and environment action is also being planned (details to follow).

Leadership and Well-Being

This research project is a collaboration with Dr Barbara Plester a colleague from the Department of Management and International Busines, explores the current influences on workplace well-being and how leadership is inducing new initiatives supporting worker well-being. We investigate the emerging discourse and framing of well-being, particularly in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact upon workplaces. We explore change in work models such as ‘working from home’ (WFH) and concurrent effects such as surveillance, monitoring and outputs. Our research questions also encompass how the social aspects of work such as fun, collegiality and social events have been affected. Our focus on ‘courageous conversations’ about workplace well-being and change, highlight the notion of trust and transparency as both workers and leaders navigate work and well-being within the fast-changing global and local work contexts. A number of outputs are planned (more details to follow).