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Andrew Beer discusses the nature, origins and expression of place leadership in communities undergoing large-scale economic transformation.

Image courtesy of interviewee. September 5, 2024

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The speaker reflects on the impacts of change within regions and communities, especially those dealing with job losses due to the closure of industries, such as coal mines and automotive plants in Australia. Despite extensive literature on the topic emphasizing leadership from policymakers, the speaker notes a lack of understanding regarding community sentiments toward these changes and the responses from leaders.

The Australian car industry faced significant transformations since the 1970s, culminating in complete closure of major plants and loss of nearly 100,000 jobs. The expectations of the community vastly exceeded the responses of government and industry leaders, who tended to rely on authority rather than engaging meaningfully with affected individuals.

Interestingly, local governments and community organizations garnered more respect from residents than traditional leadership roles, as they provided essential support during turbulent times. The research included surveys of both workers affected by plant closures and the broader community surrounding these plants, highlighting a disconnection between governmental perceptions and community needs.

Key findings suggest that future leadership should include greater community engagement and support from local non-profits and businesses rather than focusing solely on industry responses. Governments are advised to adopt more ambitious and direct strategies to reconnect with and empower communities, fostering a sense of hope and agency among residents. The speaker also raises the importance of considering gendered expectations in leadership and the necessity for further research on these dynamics and their implications on policy.

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Here are five key points from the video:

1. **Community Response to Change**: The speaker emphasizes the observation that while policies and actions about regional changes (such as the closure of coal mines and plants) are often outlined by authorities, there's a significant gap in understanding how communities genuinely feel about these changes and their trust in leadership. The community’s perception can differ greatly from what leaders claim to have achieved.

2. **Impact of the Automotive Industry's Decline**: The decline of the Australian automotive industry, particularly after the removal of tariff protections and the impact of the mining boom, caused significant job losses, affecting around 100,000 workers predominantly in Victoria and South Australia. Despite anticipatory strategies from companies regarding their closures, communities felt abandoned and disappointed by both industry and government responses.

3. **Perception of Leadership**: The research indicated that traditional forms of leadership by formal powers (government officials, industry leaders) were viewed negatively by the affected communities. Instead, local governments and community organizations, which have less formal power but greater local engagement, were seen as more effective leaders during the transition period.

4. **Expectations vs. Reality**: There exists a disconnect between the expectations of the communities and the government’s perception of their performance during the economic shock. The local populations expect much more from their leaders in times of crisis and have found that the actual responses fell short of those ambitions.

5. **Recommendations for Policy Improvement**: The video suggests that governments need to be more ambitious and proactive in connecting with affected communities. It advocates for increased local engagement and empowerment of community organizations, social service providers, and other local actors to help rebuild trust and provide a sense of hope and future direction in the face of economic transitions.

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Here are some key quotes from the video that encapsulate its main ideas:

1. **On the process of change in communities:**
- "And as part of that journey, in terms of my own exploration of that issue, I've read many papers and I've seen many documents written often by government authorities and other entities."

2. **On the narrative of change:**
- "It seems to me that this process of being led is in some ways a one-sided narrative, a one-sided story."

3. **On the lack of understanding of community sentiment:**
- "we had a very poor understanding about what the community as a whole felt and also what they felt about the leadership that was being offered to them."

4. **On the closure of the automotive industry:**
- "And the government of the day threatened to take away the supports they had been providing for many years. And so the industry just closed overnight."

5. **On the disconnect between leaders and the community:**
- "There was perhaps a disconnect between what we might find on the ground and what leaders may tell us they were achieving."

6. **On community views of leadership:**
- "From a community point of view, all that they saw was failure by the Australian government, failure by the state governments...and failure by the automotive industry."

7. **On perceptions of effective leadership:**
- "local governments, which in Australia have very few resources...but they are very local...were actually considered much more highly in terms of being a leader."

8. **On expectations of government:**
- "Their expectations of the community were far more ambitious, and that's a challenge for government."

9. **On the impact of community engagement:**
- "Give them some authority, give them some resources to actually go out and begin to give people a sense that they can shape their own future, write their own story."

10. **On the implications for future research:**
- "I think the policy implications are that governments do need to be more ambitious and governments also need to...put more boots on the ground...connected to these communities."

These quotes together highlight the themes of leadership, community engagement, government response to economic change, and the need for a more nuanced understanding of the impact of industrial closures on communities.

X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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For a number of years now, I've been looking at regions

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and communities that have been undergoing change,

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whether it's been the closure of coal mine

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or the closure of an individual plant.

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And as part of that journey, in terms of my own exploration

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of that issue, I've read many papers

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and I've seen many documents written often

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by government authorities and other entities.

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And they always talk about the actions

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that are taking place in a region

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and how that is a process that's being led by others,

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hopefully towards a better future.

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And it seems to me that this process

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of being led is in some ways a one-sided narrative,

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a one-sided story in the sense

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that we had a very good idea about what the outcomes were

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for those made redundant outta those plants

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or to lose their job in that industry.

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And we had a good idea about

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what the policy makers said they did,

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but we had a very poor understanding about

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what the community as a whole felt

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and also what they felt about the leadership

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that was being offered to them

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by those occupying government positions

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or other positions of power and influence.

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And so we wanted to explore that to get a first taste of

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what this might look like

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and whether in fact there was a mismatch between

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what leaders say and what followers say.

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Australian car industry had been going

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through change ever since the early 1970s when some changes

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to tarot protections were removed.

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And the industry went through a series of

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shocks, if I can put it that way.

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And we gradually saw the closure

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of all the automotive plants, across Australia

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until there were only three brands left.

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And those three brands, two were American

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and one was Japanese.

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And for a long time they had a very vibrant industry still,

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and they produced most of the cars

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for most of the Australian market.

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But from about the late 1990s onwards,

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those supports were taken away.

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And at the same time, the value of the Australian dollar

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went up as the, mining boom kicked in.

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And so we saw closure

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after closure until only the bare bone

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to the industry were left.

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And the government of the day threaten

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to take away the supports they've been

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providing for many years.

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And so the industry just closed overnight.

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They announced its closure within a six month period, each

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of the three manufacturers announced their closure

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and the industry was gone.

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And they gave a three year notice period such that

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they said In three years time, we'll all be closed,

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and we are working towards that.

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And for some of the manufacturers, they said, well,

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we know this process is happening.

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We wanna do it in the best possible way

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and we want the last car we produced

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to be the best car we ever produced.

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So they had a very deliberate strategy about

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how they would exit and the entire industry disappeared.

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And to put that into context, that result, that was forecast

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to result in the loss of about a hundred thousand jobs

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across Australia, concentrated in just two regions

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or states, Victoria

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and South Australia literature,

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particularly the literature on place leadership says

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essentially leadership can be found anywhere.

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It can be found in government,

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it can be found in community level activism.

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It can be found in industry,

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and it can vary from place to place in the wine way.

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It finds expression and impact that it has.

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What's important is global connections.

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And what's also important is connections into those

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who hold formal power.

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And often there's a sense in both the leadership literature

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and also the literature on governance,

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that governments are often somewhat distant from communities

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as they're affected because they have other imperatives

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to do with party political process, the need

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to get reelected, the need to balance out a whole range

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of vested interests, which may make them poorly suited to

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responding in the best possible fashion to a place going

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through an extreme shock.

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And so that literature suggested there was perhaps a

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disconnect between what we might find on the ground

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and what leaders may tell us they were achieving in terms

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of getting ahead of the shock that was to come.

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And so we wanted to investigate that as well.

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There's really two components to this.

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Firstly, we'd already embarked on a large scale survey.

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All, all the workers made redundant, out

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of the Australian car industry.

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So we got over 1300 workers to fill in our Wave one survey.

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And we've been tracking them every year

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for five years when we've just finished that process.

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But at the same time, we realized many

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of the workers in those plants came from quite some

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considerable distance away to work in those plants.

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And many of the people living nearby the plants were

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affected by the plants, but they didn't work there.

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So they were actually all,

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all the previous studies were blind to

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what they were thinking and doing.

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So we, had the resources through funding

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by the Australian Research Council to do a survey,

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a representative survey of people living

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around the major car plants that closed in the city

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of Adelaide and the major car plants clo that closed in,

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the city of Melbourne.

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At the same time, we were also able to do a survey

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of the broader metropolitan areas of both Adelaide

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and Melbourne so we could compare

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and contrast the results between the two.

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So if you've got population affected directly by closeness

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to closed plants and the ingested broader population,

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and we had that for both cities

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and in combination, it gave us quite a large data set.

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Base leadership wasn't being exhibited by

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those who claim to be leading

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and wasn't being exhibited by in ways

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that we necessarily anticipated at all.

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So industry made a major commitment

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to doing a world's best practice,

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global best practice transition away from the car industry.

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But from a community point of view, all

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that they saw was failure by the Australian government,

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failure by the state governments with differences

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between Victor and South Australia.

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And failure by the automotive industry in particular.

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They saw those three sources of very significant power

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as not providing them a pathway to a better future.

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And they held them in inconsiderable distaste

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and distrust over that matter.

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Uh, what we did see,

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however, is groups that you would not necessarily expect

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to be well regarded for the leadership

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that they could perform were actually considered much more

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highly in terms of being a leader.

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And this included local governments,

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which in Australia have very few resources

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and very few powers, but they are very local.

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This included social service providers, those charities,

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those not-for-profits

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with boots on the ground helping people

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on a day-to-day basis.

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And it included some community organizations including

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football clubs, netball clubs, churches, et cetera.

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And that was to a certain extent, reinforcing the power

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of community level engagement.

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And the way that shaped the sentiment, if you like, of

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the population in these places, something

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that the formal political science literature

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acknowledges you hold authority.

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I, as executive dean, I have authority over individuals,

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but leadership is something you perform and you enact.

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It is something that you do.

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And it's created by the relationship

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between the leader and the follower.

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And what it tells us is that

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formal powers were content to

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rest on their authority and did not bother to

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or did not take the necessary efforts

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to establish their leadership through enact

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by walking the talk, by seeing to have an impact

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and by listening to concerns of the community.

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And that speaks to a broader set

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of agendas within contemporary social sciences,

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including the very large debate around the places

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that are left behind as evident in Europe, north America,

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and to certain degree in Australia.

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It speaks to the fact that to a certain extent,

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as economies have become larger, wealthier,

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they've also become more disconnected.

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And that sense of leadership and being led

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or following has, has disappeared

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with it influential policies in shaping the perceptions

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of the community with those policies that were seen

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to deliver real gains for the

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Community in the short term and in the long term.

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So they're regarded highly social service providers

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and others who, if you like, was perceived

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to be providing them with that sense of emotional support.

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And there's someone for me in that moment

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of being made redundant or my community going backwards

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and their local shops closing

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and employment opportunities getting worse.

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So that was, one of the ways in which

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that found expression.

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The other way in which it found expression was in the strong

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emphasis on the hope given

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by other private sector investments,

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other private sector business.

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So while when asked to look to the future respondents said,

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we're very disappointed by what the car industry did,

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but we think other private industry

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and other private investment is going

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to carve out a good future for this region.

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And we believe they're demonstrating

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and giving us a future for the fu a vision

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for the future that we can buy into.

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So in that sense, there was two dimensions to

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what good leadership looked for,

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looked like in that, that instance.

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And it was something that other actors, state, government,

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federal government, were not able to be attached to.

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And I think that was to their detriment, other work

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basically gave the impression

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that they felt they'd done the best that was possible.

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Some privately in their conversations with our

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researchers indicated

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that they did feel they were somewhat hamstrung

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by the structures of government, the sense of balance

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and checks that they have to deal with in government.

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But they did feel that on balance they had performed well.

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They, they felt they had done better than the previous

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efforts to deal with the shock.

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So I gave you a potted history

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of plant closures in the automotive industry in Australia

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before the benchmark government

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and politicians used was they did better than last time.

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So the previous major closure were

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by Mitsubishi's Motors Australia Limited.

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And they, they, their ambition was

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to do a better job than they did in 2004

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and 2008 when that Mitsubishi closed.

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And you could argue they, in fact, I would even agree

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that they did do better,

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but they still didn't meet the expectation

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to the community of their followers.

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And that's the significant gap

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they were giving themself a few,

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like a relatively modest ambition, whereas the expectations

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of the community were far more ambitious.

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And that's a challenge for government.

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And that's I think one of the reasons why, to go back again,

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the places left behind exist

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because governments aren't understanding

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the ways in which the community understands these shocks.

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When people talk about generational disadvantage,

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when people would talk about their expectation

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that young people may never get jobs

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or that they know of communities in their families,

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in their community where three generations have been

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unemployed and that people understand the depth of

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that problem because they've lived it,

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they've seen it on a daily basis.

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And their expecting governments

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to do so much better than that.

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I think for us, some of the areas

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of future research are really around better understanding

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how transferable this set of insights are.

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Is this something that is peculiar to the Australian system

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of government or other, other systems of government that,

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are much better addressing these issues?

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And I've done some work internationally

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with colleagues from both United Kingdom where you,

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I think you find very similar outcomes,

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but also with colleagues from Finland, which

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where I think you find very different outcomes

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'cause they have different expectations

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and in very large measure of different ambitions.

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So I think that's a further research

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that we need to continue with.

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I think we also have to understand better the impact

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of gender in this equation.

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Uh, at this stage we don't know whether community attitudes

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are gender divided, whether men

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and women have very different sets of expectations

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of leaders and whether the leadership women is looking

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for women are looking for is different

13:15.875 --> 13:17.755
to the leadership men are looking for.

13:18.255 --> 13:20.675
And that is something that can have a number of dimensions

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that have to be teased out.

13:22.665 --> 13:23.955
What are the policy implications?

13:23.995 --> 13:28.125
I think the policy implications are that governments do need

13:28.245 --> 13:31.665
to be more ambitious and governments also need to,

13:31.665 --> 13:33.825
particularly in Australia, they need to put more

13:34.515 --> 13:37.145
boots on the ground in terms of being connected

13:37.145 --> 13:38.145
to these communities.

13:39.115 --> 13:43.555
Their constituency for responding

13:43.555 --> 13:46.475
to major economic shocks isn't just the industry,

13:46.605 --> 13:48.675
which has always been the tendency in Australia.

13:49.055 --> 13:51.355
And I think the United Kingdom, let's go

13:51.355 --> 13:53.155
and fix, you know, respond to the people affected

13:53.155 --> 13:54.435
by the closure of the car industry.

13:54.625 --> 13:55.755
They don't say, let's go

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and respond to the people affected by

13:57.435 --> 13:58.635
that in that community.

13:59.135 --> 14:00.635
And so they need more boots on the ground.

14:00.635 --> 14:02.195
They need more services, they need greater

14:02.195 --> 14:03.395
visibility than they need to be seen.

14:03.395 --> 14:06.195
To be caring, being seen is an important part of it.

14:07.655 --> 14:11.655
I think they also need to acknowledge

14:11.655 --> 14:15.415
that others within these affected communities might also be

14:15.805 --> 14:20.345
well placed to deliver their message

14:20.565 --> 14:22.865
and to represent them in terms of bringing about

14:23.545 --> 14:26.505
a positive sense that there is a future which is positive.

14:27.335 --> 14:30.355
So through the research we've identified other industry.

14:30.405 --> 14:32.755
We've identified social service providers,

14:33.365 --> 14:36.195
we've identified community groups as being the sorts

14:36.195 --> 14:39.635
of places people look for unexpectedly.

14:40.875 --> 14:44.515
Why not mobilize them in various ways?

14:44.625 --> 14:47.435
Give them some authority, give them some, some resources

14:47.495 --> 14:48.515
to actually go out

14:49.055 --> 14:50.675
and begin to give people a sense

14:50.675 --> 14:53.115
that they can shape their own future, write their own story.

14:53.895 --> 14:55.995
And I think that's one of the key lessons to come out

14:55.995 --> 14:56.635
of this piece of work.

"Exploring Community Responses and Leadership Dynamics Amidst Economic Transitions in Australia"

00:00:00 - For a number of years now, I've been looking at regions and communities that have been undergoing change, whether it's been the closure of coal mine or the closure of an individual plant. And as part of that journey, in terms of my own exploration of that issue, I've read many papers and I've seen many documents written often by government authorities and other entities. And they always talk about the actions that are taking place in a region and how that is a process that's being led by others, hopefully towards a better future. And it seems to me that this process of being led is in some ways a one-sided narrative,
00:00:42 - that we had a very good idea about what the outcomes were for those made redundant outta those plants or to lose their job in that industry. And we had a good idea about what the policy makers said they did, but we had a very poor understanding about what the community as a whole felt and also what they felt about the leadership that was being offered to them by those occupying government positions or other positions of power and influence. And so we wanted to explore that to get a first taste of what this might look like and whether in fact there was a mismatch between what leaders say and what followers say. Australian car industry had been going
00:01:25 - to tarot protections were removed. And the industry went through a series of shocks, if I can put it that way. And we gradually saw the closure of all the automotive plants, across Australia until there were only three brands left. And those three brands, two were American and one was Japanese. And for a long time they had a very vibrant industry still, and they produced most of the cars for most of the Australian market. But from about the late 1990s onwards, those supports were taken away. And at the same time, the value of the Australian dollar
00:02:05 - And so we saw closure after closure until only the bare bone to the industry were left. And the government of the day threaten to take away the supports they've been providing for many years. And so the industry just closed overnight. They announced its closure within a six month period, each of the three manufacturers announced their closure and the industry was gone. And they gave a three year notice period such that they said In three years time, we'll all be closed, and we are working towards that. And for some of the manufacturers, they said, well, we know this process is happening. We wanna do it in the best possible way
00:02:45 - to be the best car we ever produced. So they had a very deliberate strategy about how they would exit and the entire industry disappeared. And to put that into context, that result, that was forecast to result in the loss of about a hundred thousand jobs across Australia, concentrated in just two regions or states, Victoria and South Australia literature, particularly the literature on place leadership says essentially leadership can be found anywhere. It can be found in government, it can be found in community level activism. It can be found in industry, and it can vary from place to place in the wine way.
00:03:26 - What's important is global connections. And what's also important is connections into those who hold formal power. And often there's a sense in both the leadership literature and also the literature on governance, that governments are often somewhat distant from communities as they're affected because they have other imperatives to do with party political process, the need to get reelected, the need to balance out a whole range of vested interests, which may make them poorly suited to responding in the best possible fashion to a place going through an extreme shock. And so that literature suggested there was perhaps a

"Investigating Leadership in the Face of Economic Change: Insights from the Australian Car Industry"

00:04:09 - and what leaders may tell us they were achieving in terms of getting ahead of the shock that was to come. And so we wanted to investigate that as well. There's really two components to this. Firstly, we'd already embarked on a large scale survey. All, all the workers made redundant, out of the Australian car industry. So we got over 1300 workers to fill in our Wave one survey. And we've been tracking them every year for five years when we've just finished that process. But at the same time, we realized many of the workers in those plants came from quite some considerable distance away to work in those plants.
00:04:53 - affected by the plants, but they didn't work there. So they were actually all, all the previous studies were blind to what they were thinking and doing. So we, had the resources through funding by the Australian Research Council to do a survey, a representative survey of people living around the major car plants that closed in the city of Adelaide and the major car plants clo that closed in, the city of Melbourne. At the same time, we were also able to do a survey
00:05:31 - and Melbourne so we could compare and contrast the results between the two. So if you've got population affected directly by closeness to closed plants and the ingested broader population, and we had that for both cities and in combination, it gave us quite a large data set. Base leadership wasn't being exhibited by those who claim to be leading and wasn't being exhibited by in ways that we necessarily anticipated at all. So industry made a major commitment to doing a world's best practice, global best practice transition away from the car industry.
00:06:14 - that they saw was failure by the Australian government, failure by the state governments with differences between Victor and South Australia. And failure by the automotive industry in particular. They saw those three sources of very significant power as not providing them a pathway to a better future. And they held them in inconsiderable distaste and distrust over that matter. what we did see, however, is groups that you would not necessarily expect to be well regarded for the leadership that they could perform were actually considered much more highly in terms of being a leader.
00:06:54 - which in Australia have very few resources and very few powers, but they are very local. This included social service providers, those charities, those not-for-profits with boots on the ground helping people on a day-to-day basis. And it included some community organizations including football clubs, netball clubs, churches, et cetera. And that was to a certain extent, reinforcing the power of community level engagement. And the way that shaped the sentiment, if you like, of the population in these places, something that the formal political science literature
00:07:35 - I, as executive dean, I have authority over individuals, but leadership is something you perform and you enact. It is something that you do. And it's created by the relationship between the leader and the follower. And what it tells us is that formal powers were content to rest on their authority and did not bother to or did not take the necessary efforts to establish their leadership through enact by walking the talk, by seeing to have an impact and by listening to concerns of the community.

"Exploring Disconnection: Community Perceptions of Leadership and Economic Shocks in Modern Societies"

00:08:19 - of agendas within contemporary social sciences, including the very large debate around the places that are left behind as evident in Europe, north America, and to certain degree in Australia. It speaks to the fact that to a certain extent, as economies have become larger, wealthier, they've also become more disconnected. And that sense of leadership and being led or following has, has disappeared with it influential policies in shaping the perceptions of the community with those policies that were seen to deliver real gains for the Community in the short term and in the long term.
00:09:01 - and others who, if you like, was perceived to be providing them with that sense of emotional support. And there's someone for me in that moment of being made redundant or my community going backwards and their local shops closing and employment opportunities getting worse. So that was, one of the ways in which that found expression. The other way in which it found expression was in the strong emphasis on the hope given by other private sector investments, other private sector business. So while when asked to look to the future respondents said,
00:09:45 - but we think other private industry and other private investment is going to carve out a good future for this region. And we believe they're demonstrating and giving us a future for the fu a vision for the future that we can buy into. So in that sense, there was two dimensions to what good leadership looked for, looked like in that, that instance. And it was something that other actors, state, government, federal government, were not able to be attached to. And I think that was to their detriment, other work basically gave the impression that they felt they'd done the best that was possible. Some privately in their conversations with our
00:10:26 - that they did feel they were somewhat hamstrung by the structures of government, the sense of balance and checks that they have to deal with in government. But they did feel that on balance they had performed well. They, they felt they had done better than the previous efforts to deal with the shock. So I gave you a potted history of plant closures in the automotive industry in Australia before the benchmark government and politicians used was they did better than last time. So the previous major closure were by Mitsubishi's Motors Australia Limited. And they, they, their ambition was
00:11:10 - and 2008 when that Mitsubishi closed. And you could argue they, in fact, I would even agree that they did do better, but they still didn't meet the expectation to the community of their followers. And that's the significant gap they were giving themself a few, like a relatively modest ambition, whereas the expectations of the community were far more ambitious. And that's a challenge for government. And that's I think one of the reasons why, to go back again, the places left behind exist because governments aren't understanding the ways in which the community understands these shocks.
00:11:54 - when people would talk about their expectation that young people may never get jobs or that they know of communities in their families, in their community where three generations have been unemployed and that people understand the depth of that problem because they've lived it, they've seen it on a daily basis. And their expecting governments to do so much better than that. I think for us, some of the areas of future research are really around better understanding how transferable this set of insights are. Is this something that is peculiar to the Australian system of government or other, other systems of government that,

"Exploring Gender Dynamics and Community Engagement in Leadership Amid Economic Change"

00:12:35 - And I've done some work internationally with colleagues from both United Kingdom where you, I think you find very similar outcomes, but also with colleagues from Finland, which where I think you find very different outcomes 'cause they have different expectations and in very large measure of different ambitions. So I think that's a further research that we need to continue with. I think we also have to understand better the impact of gender in this equation. at this stage we don't know whether community attitudes are gender divided, whether men and women have very different sets of expectations of leaders and whether the leadership women is looking
00:13:15 - to the leadership men are looking for. And that is something that can have a number of dimensions that have to be teased out. What are the policy implications? I think the policy implications are that governments do need to be more ambitious and governments also need to, particularly in Australia, they need to put more boots on the ground in terms of being connected to these communities. Their constituency for responding to major economic shocks isn't just the industry, which has always been the tendency in Australia. And I think the United Kingdom, let's go and fix, you know, respond to the people affected by the closure of the car industry.
00:13:55 - and respond to the people affected by that in that community. And so they need more boots on the ground. They need more services, they need greater visibility than they need to be seen. To be caring, being seen is an important part of it. I think they also need to acknowledge that others within these affected communities might also be well placed to deliver their message and to represent them in terms of bringing about a positive sense that there is a future which is positive. So through the research we've identified other industry. We've identified social service providers, we've identified community groups as being the sorts
00:14:55 - Why not mobilize them in various ways? Give them some authority, give them some, some resources to actually go out and begin to give people a sense that they can shape their own future, write their own story. And I think that's one of the key lessons to come out of this piece of work.

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