The subjects of leadership and care ethics have a limited presence in the voluntary sector literature. However, interest has grown in the former in recent years, and the latter has been suggested as a potential counter discourse to contemporary neoliberal narratives of the sector. What is missing from these accounts is an acknowledgement of the often unresolvable ethical and leadership tensions that are encountered in practice contexts. This article offers a nuanced view of how care ethics flows through leadership, using empirical data to illuminate an alternative reading of the literature. It contributes to debates around leadership in the voluntary sector by both offering a nuanced, ethically inflected theoretical understanding and providing an approach through which to inform leadership practice.

This paper explores the future potential of informal learning for leadership development in the nonprofit sector through the experience of the Centre for Voluntary Sector Leadership (CVSL) at the Open University, UK. From its inception in 2016, CVSL developed learning outside the mainstream curriculum, providing open access informal learning opportunities to increase access to leadership development for practitioners in smaller nonprofit organizations. Our experience of developing and delivering this learning has encountered challenges related to institutional, sector, and policy contexts. Despite these challenges, we argue that HE-provided informal leadership learning has the potential to address issues of accessibility, timeliness, and relevance for smaller nonprofit organizations. The paper reflects on the future role of informal learning as part of an "ecosystem" of nonprofit leadership development in a volatile and marketized environment.

This practice paper reflects on the experience of delivering leadership development for the voluntary sector through open-access online learning. We outline key elements of learning design and explore the potential and challenges of widening access to leadership development through this form of learning. We note the importance of aligning the conceptualisation of the leadership approach to learning and the principles of open access. The paper ends by offering insights for leadership development practitioners.

A claimed technological advantage of online professional development (OPD) is the flexibility for educators to learn at a time and space of their convenience. However, the question of how, and with whom educators learn in OPD has received limited empirical attention. Using a participatory design approach, we explored the lived experiences and social networks of 19 educators following a formal OPD in a microcredential format. The mixed method study findings indicated that most (but not all) educators developed learning ties with their peers. This suggests that additional structural opportunities are needed to maintain social engagement in OPD. The findings will be of interest primarily to educators developing and delivering OPD, as well as current or potential professional learners who want to make the most out of OPD.

As the world recovers from a pandemic, which has disproportionately harmed the poorest and most vulnerable amongst us, it is worth taking some time to reflect onwhether leadership studies is as relevant as it could be to the problems of our world. Does it need a reboot and if so, how drastic should this be and in which directions should we channel change? Notions of rebooting suggest something more than piecemeal or incremental alterations and instead evoke a foundational change to the operating system. In contrast, a reset is something we do with machines that have glitched so that we can return them to their regular modes of functioning. Which one of these does leadership studies need? The conference is hosted by the Open University’s Research into Employment, Empowerment and Futures academic centre of excellence, a group dedicated to exploring emancipatory futures of work. We invite submissions that offer insights into how leadership could be conceptualised or practiced for the future, through offering an innovative, critical or unusual interpretation. Submissions can come in the form of papers or workshop ideas. Bearing in mind the rebooting theme, we are open to ‘naı̈ve’ entries into our field from outside, by scholars who think leadership could be a useful framing for their work.We now offer provocations that we hope will stimulate but not restrict submission ideas.

This thesis explores the role of the voluntary sector in the delivery of an NHS Multispecialty Community Provider (MCP) pilot project in the area of Erewash, England. It draws on engaged research, informed by ethnographic and action research traditions through which a broad range of data were gathered in order to present a detailed picture of the project in practice. In doing so it contributes both to the academic literature and to the work of practitioners and policy makers. Firstly, it identifies the tensions inherent in the voluntary sector’s role as ‘transmission belt’ organisations, providing empirical evidence of this role in practice and building on Albareda’s (2018) original conception. In addition, it suggests the pressure to work in this way risks damaging the sector’s relationship with both service users and communities. Secondly, the thesis explores the ways that trust, power, and control interact in collaborative contexts, utilising Bachman’s (2001) notion of different ‘traditions’ to suggest that the voluntary and public sectors reflect different ways of working that are interactions of ‘personal’ and ‘system’ trust and power. These different traditions surface tensions that make collaboration difficult. Thirdly, the thesis identifies the complex leadership dynamics at play in collaborative contexts and the dominance of NHS hierarchical aspects, particularly in relation to clinical professionalism. Despite this, the thesis builds on Huxham and Vangen’s (2000a) notion of ‘making things happen’ to identify the positive and proactive leadership role the voluntary sector can enact in practice. However, it cautions that, as both directive and facilitative forms of leadership are needed in collaborative contexts, an increased focus on public sector-initiated collaborations could paradoxically make the sector less collaborative. The thesis offers suggestions for both policy and practice, as well as identifying potential ways to take the research forward in the future.