Leadership in the Context of Complex Global Interdependence: Emerging Realities for Educational Innovation

Among the central challenges of effective leadership in the 21st century are understanding and responding to the patterns of interdependence that now increasingly characterize the social, economic, and political spheres. It is no longer possible to address effectively local concerns except in complex, global contexts. Neither is it possible to respond aptly to confounding, large-scale global issues without assessing and attending to local subtexts. Leaders and policy-makers must now be capable of sensitively and yet critically weighing often quite disparate aims, bodies of data, and practices, bringing them into productive and sustainable relationship.

The scale and depth of interdependence characteristic of the contemporary world are bringing widely differing social, economic, and political communities and institutions into unprecedented close relationship. But it is also bringing about the interfusion of widely differing cultures and interests. The choices confronting contemporary societies thus cannot be limited to deciding upon factual solutions under the assumption of essentially shared values, but necessarily entail negotiating broad assent on both common norms and the meaning of beneficial change.