Leadership For Global Citizenship

From our vantage point at Save the Children, one of the largest US-based international relief and development agencies, founded in 1932, the shared-power, no-one-in-charge-world that Barbara C. Crosby describes presents myriad new challenges and opportunities to civil society, non-governmental organizations and citizen-leaders dedicated to positive change. Barbara C. Crosby′s book helps us understand the forces defining this new environment and the most promising leadership practices for achieving our goals within it. -- Gary Shaye, Vice President of International Programs, Save the Children In today′s world, critical public problems – like environmental degradation, poverty, and the AIDS epidemic – spill beyond national boundaries. Those who lead campaigns to remedy these problems must be skilled in bringing very diverse people together and pursue common goals in an ever-changing global environment. These leaders need to build and sustain interorganizational networks that can thrive in many cultures and geographic regions. Leadership for Global Citizenship offers these leaders a comprehensive leadership framework and practical guidance for inspiring and mobilizing citizens around the world to join in local and global initiatives to promote the common good. Barbara C. Crosby presents numerous examples from case studies of leadership in two transnational citizen organizations, Amnesty International, and the International Women′s Rights Action Watch (IWRAW). Previous books and articles have focused on the global commons as a territory wherein the world′s citizens partake of vital natural and social resources and build global civil society. This book is the first to focus on the leadership concepts and practices that can help strengthen collective action across national boundaries to sustain the commons and promote the common good. This book also offers practical guidance for people who want to build and sustain transnational citizen organizations and networks, which are growing in numbers and impact. Crosby offers tools for the exercise of leadership in the global commons, including group assessments, multiple perspectives on team and organizational dynamics, systems thinking, the democratic process, and the search for cross-cultural ethical principles.

Barbara C. Crosby is associate professor at the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs and former academic co-director of the Center for Integrative Leadership at the University of Minnesota. She is a fellow of the Leadership Trust in the UK, and during 2002-3, she was a visiting fellow at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland.  Dr. Crosby has taught and written extensively about leadership and public policy, integrative leadership, cross-sector collaboration, women in leadership, media and public policy, and strategic planning.  She is the author of Leadership for Global Citizenship (1999) and co-author with John M. Bryson of Leadership for the Common Good: Tackling Public Problems in a Shared-Power World (2d. ed. 2005). A frequent speaker at conferences and workshops, she has conducted training for senior managers of nonprofit, business and government organizations in the United States, the United Kingdom, Poland, and Ukraine.  She is a former journalist, gubernatorial press secretary and speech writer.  She has a Ph.D. in leadership studies from the Union Institute and University.