Leadership in the shaping and implementation of collaboration agendas: how things happen in a (not quite) joined-up world

This article contributes to the theory of collaboration in social settings and is based on data collected during action research interventions in a number of public and community interorganizational collaborations. We conceptualize leadership in collaborations as stemming from three leadership media--structures, processes, and participants--and argue that none of these is wholly within the control of the members of a collaboration. Leadership activities that participants undertake in order to move a collaborative agenda forward are described.