Toward a Framework of Social Change Leadership

This paper presents and describes an emergent framework of social change leadership, based on a multi-year, multi-modal, qualitative study of social change organizations. The framework poses that the consistent use of a set of leadership drivers, anchored in a set of assumptions and core values of social justice, helps members of these organizations engage in practices and activities that build collective power, which is then leveraged to produce longterm outcomes for social change. We suggest the study of social change leadership has implications for broader work on leadership, in two ways. First, it helps illuminate social constructionist understandings of leadership that see it as shared or collective rather than inherent in one or more visible individuals. Secondly, it highlights the importance of both beliefs and behaviors — worldview and action – and the interaction between them as fundamental to leadership.

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