Expert Leadership and Hidden Inequalities in Community Projets

Mortimer, Christine and Paddison, Brendan (2019) Expert Leadership and Hidden Inequalities in Community Projets. In: Inequality and Organizational Practice : Volume 1: Work and Welfare. Palgrave Explorations in Workplace Stigma . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, pp. 37-64. ISBN 9783030116439

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Abstract

This chapter explores the development of a mid-range theory that can be used in organisations when considering how to engage multiple stakeholders in a project that requires expert input. The case study presented here is concerned with a ground-breaking approach to integrate heritage, culture and social benefit through the medium of archaeology and heritage. The findings indicated that the ‘expert’ as a leader of the project created hidden inequalities in the team, preventing the longer-term social outcomes of the project from materialising. A Realist Evaluation (Pawson and Tilley, 1997a) protocol was developed which created an ‘intervention’, permitting the non-linear complex interactions between multiple groups and multiple stakeholders to be observed and evaluated. This allowed for the political, strategic, organisational, operational and individual perspectives to be addressed making it a suited evaluative approach to this type of multiple stakeholder project.