Drucker Could be Right, but ... : New Leadership Models for Institutional-Community Partnerships

The adaptive capacity of American higher education is rooted in 2 related factors: the ability of institutions to understand and operate within a shared environment with the communities they serve and leadership that is appropriate to a changing, increasingly boundary-free context. As a philanthropic organization that has provided support to both communities and higher education institutions for more than 60 years, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation has had a unique vantage point in observing the interactions between institutions and communities. Based on experiences from a wide range of projects sponsored by the Foundation, we suggest that such institutional-community collaboration is increasingly being demonstrated in institutional settings around the country and that the leadership practiced in such settings is a unique synthesis of that practiced in the contributing cultures: traditional institutional hierarchies and grassroots community-based organizations. Successful leaders approach the tasks of creating vision, defining boundaries, engaging people, authority and resources, and inspiring sustained commitment in these settings to reflect an understanding of both cultural contexts. These approaches can assist higher education institutions and communities to find mutual benefits in the 21st century.