Publicness as an antecedent of transformational leadership: the case of Norway

Abstract

A large number of empirical studies have shown a wide range of positive effects of transformational leadership, which is arguably the dominating leadership paradigm in the last two decades. In this study, we ask whether this type of leadership is as common in public as in private organizations. Through a survey, the leadership style of 2488 leaders in Norwegian organizations with more than ten employees was mapped out. Focus is set on whether the occurrence of transformational leadership varies according to an organization’s publicness. It is hypothesized that the effect of publicness on transformational leadership will be mediated through bureaucratization, centralization, professionalization, pro-social motivation and gender composition. The study controls for organization size and task, variables often missing in comparisons of public and private organizations. The main finding is that publicness has no direct effect on transformational leadership when controlling for main task, organizational size and the leader’s gender. However, it does affect transformational leadership indirectly through bureaucratization, professionalization and gender composition. Based on the findings, more general implications for comparing public and private organizations are discussed.

Points for practitioners

It is often claimed that leadership in the public sector is different from leadership in the private sector. This study shows that such a claim is an oversimplification. First, there should be an awareness that leadership does not take place only in the private or public sector, but also in a myriad of hybrids between the public and the private sectors. Second, various challenges for leaders may be more strongly linked to basic features such as task and organizational size, rather than to whether an organization is public or private.

Keywords

bureaucratization gender composition Norway professionalization pro-social motivation publicness transformational leadership

Leadership studies over the last three decades have revealed a plethora of positive consequences of transformational leadership (Avolio and Bass, 1991; Avolio et al., 2009; Bass, 1985; Northouse, 2013; van Knippenberg and Sitkin, 2013; Yukl, 2012). As transformational leadership is clearly important for an organization’s functioning and efficiency (Orazi et al., 2013; Wright and Pandey, 2010), an important question arises: are transformational leaders less common in public than in private organizations? Even though the general expectation seems to be that the answer is ‘yes’ (Bass and Riggio, 2006: 93), empirical studies conclude that transformational leadership is as common in public as in private organizations (Bass and Riggio, 2006; Lowe et al., 1996; van Wart, 2011).

However, these studies are encumbered with serious weaknesses. First of all, most studies still rely on a dichotomist distinction between the private and public sectors, even though it has been vigorously argued that public–private should be viewed as a dimensional phenomenon rather than as a dichotomy (Bozeman, 2013). Although the introduction of the concept of publicness has been met with great interest in the research community, studies combining a focus on the dominating leadership theories with the concept of publicness are still lacking (Andersen, 2010).

Secondly, it is assumed that the effects of publicness are mediated through both structural and demographic differences. Most common is the assumption that professional bureaucracies are more frequent among public organizations (Mintzberg, 1979), and that this organizational form represents a context affecting both the need for, and the possibility of, exercising transformational leadership. Bureaucratization, with its structural characteristics of centralization and formalization, is assumed to limit the possibility for leaders to exercise transformational leadership (Wright and Pandey, 2010), while stronger professionalization is assumed to increase the occurrence of transformational leadership styles (Bass and Riggio, 2006: 95). Less common is the assumption that public organizations’ leaders are different from those of private organizations, displaying a higher proportion of female leaders and leaders more motivated by altruistic motives (Boyne, 2002), and that such leaders more often act as transformational leaders. While empirical, dichotomist comparisons between public and private organizations both corroborate and dispute these assumptions (Baarspul and Wilderom, 2011; Boyne, 2002; Rainey, 2014; Rainey and Bozeman, 2000), there are no empirical studies on how the eventual effects of publicness on transformational leadership are mediated by the structural and demographic characteristics of the organization and the leaders.

Finally, most comparisons between public and private organizations lack important control variables, most notably size and task. As a rule, public organizations are larger than private ones (Boyne, 2002). Furthermore, in most countries, tasks systematically vary between the public and the private sectors as a result of both market failures (collective goods) and political decisions on what is a public responsibility (Pesch, 2008). Missing controls for these variables may result in a confounding in the effect of publicness with the effects of size and task (Rainey, 2014).

This study aims to address some of the weaknesses associated with studies of transformational leadership in the public sector. The article is structured as follows. First, studies on transformational leadership in public sector organizations are reviewed. Second, the concept of publicness is defined. The third part elaborates hypotheses on how publicness affects the propensity for leaders to engage in transformational leadership behaviour. In the fourth part, the hypotheses are empirically scrutinized through an extensive survey conducted in 2011 of 2488 Norwegian leaders in both the private and the public sectors. Finally, the findings and implications are discussed.

Transformational leadership

In his overview of leadership research, Yukl (2012: 69) states that: ‘Since the 1980s, much of the research on the effects of leadership behavior has been based on theories of transformational and charismatic leadership’. Based on the book by Burns (1978) in which he popularized the concept of transformational leadership, Bass (1985, 1990) and Avolio and Bass (1991, 2004) elaborated on what came to be termed the full range model of leadership. Three basic leadership styles were originally detected: transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership. In this study, we focus exclusively on one of these leadership styles – transformational – as this is the type of leadership style most clearly associated with positive outcomes such as performance, job satisfaction and commitment (Bellé, 2014; Dvir et al., 2002; Grant, 2012; Jackson et al., 2013; Michel et al., 2011; Moynihan et al., 2012; Park and Rainey, 2008; Piccolo et al., 2012; Wright and Pandey, 2010).

Transformational leadership is defined as a form of inspirational leadership (Bass and Steidlmeier, 1999), in many instances similar to charismatic leadership (Miner, 2006; van Knippenberg and Sitkin, 2013; van Wart, 2011). It appeals to people’s inner motivation, inspiring them to act. Four important activities or elements constitute transformational leadership: idealized influence (functioning as a symbol for the collective, instilling pride and a sense of unity), inspirational motivation (setting visions, using symbols and acts to inspire people), intellectual stimulation (asking provocative questions, putting forward challenging hypotheses) and individual consideration (treating people individually). Initially, these forms were considered as components of transformational leadership, but recent research has detected a sizeable overlap between them, and empirically they are often treated as one single dimension (Antonakis et al., 2003; Avolio and Bass, 2004; Michel et al., 2011; Nederveen Pieterse et al., 2010).

One main source of inspiration for the elaboration of the theory on transformational leadership was Burns’ book on political leadership (1978). Burns linked leadership to change, and focused on the role that individual leaders played in a transformation of the public sector. In later years, the role of individual leaders in change and transformation of the public sector has been toned down within public administration research. The focus is rather set on economic, social and cultural elements, political and ideological change, and pressure from institutionalized standards (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2011). One reason for this is probably the assumption that public sector organization set stronger limits for leaders’ possibilities to act as change agents or ‘organizational entrepreneurs’ than what is the case in private sector organizations (Borins, 2002; Denis et al., 2007). For instance, Wright and Pandey (2010: 75–76) note that ‘transformational leaders are expected to be both less common and less effective in public sector organizations than in private sector organizations’. Meta-studies, on the other hand, find transformational leadership to be as common in public sector organizations as in private sector organizations (DeRue et al., 2011; Dumdum et al., 2002; Lowe et al., 1996).

Publicness as a context for leadership

Studies on the antecedents of transformational leadership are all based on a dichotomous distinction between the public and the private sector. Such an approach ignores the fact that there are many hybrid organizations between the public and the private (Andersen, 2010; Desmarais and Abord de Chatillon, 2010; Lowe et al., 1996). Bozeman (1987) has strongly argued that the difference between public and private should be viewed as a dimensional construct with different degrees of publicness. Alas, ‘some organizations are “more public” or “more private” than others and even business firms may be compared on their degree of publicness, just as government agencies can be compared on the basis of their privateness’ (Bozeman, 2013: 176).

Publicness is defined along two basic dimensions: political authority and economic authority (Bozeman, 1987; Wamsley and Zald, 1973). The economic authority dimension refers to the degree to which an organization is dependent on resources from the market, thus creating income by selling goods or services in a (more or less) competitive market. Some degree of government funding of a private organization would increase the organization’s publicness. The degree of political or government control constitutes the political authority dimension, and is closely associated with ownership and the degree to which the government owns an organization, although ownership and control should not necessarily be regarded as identical (Andrews et al., 2011). Thus, a business will increase its publicness if a government buys shares in it. The two dimensions can be combined in a grid used to locate specific organizations (Bozeman, 2013: 177).

Such a dimensional view also includes one of the main trends over recent decades: convergence between sectors (Pollitt, 2001, 2003). Although convergence is difficult to establish empirically, there are some indications that decades of New Public Management initiatives such as outsourcing, performance measurement, changed leadership recruitment and contracts and so on have resulted in a blurring of the lines between the public and private sectors (Christensen and Lægreid, 2011; Emery and Giauque, 2014; Poole et al., 2006). Using a dichotomous approach ignores this ‘hybridization’ and may have resulted in placing similar organizations in different categories when comparing them, for instance by placing semi-public organizations in the category ‘public’. This may again be a potential explanation for the few and rather weak differences between public and private organizations (see Baarspul and Wilderom, 2011; Boyne, 2002).

Publicness as an antecedent of transformational leadership

Research on the antecedents or predictors of transformational leadership distinguishes between contextual and personal characteristics (Bass and Riggio, 2006: 197). Contextual antecedents include organizational elements such as structure (Wright and Pandey, 2010), employee characteristics (Wofford et al., 2001) and type of environment (Zhang et al., 2014). Personal characteristics are most commonly linked to personality traits such as ‘the big 5’ (Bono and Judge, 2004) and narcissism (Resick et al., 2009), but also to emotional intelligence (Rubin et al., 2005).

As a starting point for this study, publicness is regarded as a macro context where the effects on transformational leadership are mediated by both organizational and personality characteristics (Hansen and Villadsen, 2010). Thus, theoretical explanations on the mechanisms through which publicness will produce differences in leadership styles are needed (Baarspul and Wilderom, 2011). First, it is claimed that publicness will affect the formal structure of organizations, specifically their bureaucratization and centralization (Rainey, 2014: 80–82). Second, it is argued that publicness will influence the characteristics of the organizations’ employees. This study focuses on the level of professionalization of the employees. Third, we argue that publicness influences the type of leaders that occupy leadership positions, in the sense that public organizations attract leaders with different personal characteristics from their counterparts in private organizations. Focus is placed on two personal characteristics where public and private organizations have been shown to be significantly different: gender and type of motivation (Boyne, 2002; Rainey, 2014).

Starting with the structural elements, it is argued that public organizations are more bureaucratized than their business counterparts (Boyne, 2002: 116; Shamir and Howell, 1999). Bureaucratization means the degree to which leaders must comply with formal rules and procedures in their daily work. Transformational leadership may be perceived as being a non-bureaucratic type of leadership, giving more attention to people and individuals than rules and procedures. However, as noted earlier, empirical studies do not support the notion that transformational leadership is less common in public than in private organizations (Dumdum et al., 2002; Lowe et al., 1996). One reason for this may be that many public organizations are not as bureaucratic as is generally assumed, while private business organizations may not be as unbureaucratic as commonly perceived (Pandy and Wright, 2006; Wright and Pandy, 2010). Thus, instead of using sector as a proxy for bureaucratization, the presence of rules and procedures in an organization should be studied. This gives two hypotheses:

H1a: Bureaucratization increases with publicness.

H1b: Bureaucratization reduces the use of transformational leadership.

The second basic structural element is centralization, or the degree of autonomy leaders have to take decisions without conferring with higher-level leaders or owners. There is a possibility that external constraints on leaders are tighter in the public than in the private sector (Nutt and Backoff, 1993), and thus that the leaders’ autonomy is more limited (Boyne, 2002; Rainey, 2014: 83; Rainey et al., 1976). This is partly an effect of bureaucratization, but also, it is assumed, of public organizations being more centralized than private ones. The logic behind this argument is grounded in ideas about both ownership and funding. Public organizations will be ‘owned’ by politicians, and in many instances political organs will be characterized by conflict rather than goal congruence. Conflict among owners will probably foster greater needs to control organization managers in their work to implement decisions made by a majority. Another common assumption is that dependence on funding from the market will lead to a decentralization of power to the operative core of the organization. The need ‘to respond quickly to local conditions’ is assumed to increase according to dependence on funding from the market (Mintzberg, 1979: 183).

Centralization may be hypothesized as having a negative effect on transformational leadership (Wright and Pandy, 2010). If leaders lack autonomy, there will be little room for individual consideration, and the leader will have a severely limited possibility of adapting to individuals and of setting their own inspiring visions and goals. However, as with bureaucratization, there is no deterministic relationship between centralization and publicness (Boyne, 2002). We will nonetheless maintain the two following hypotheses:

H2a: Centralization increases with publicness.

H2b: Centralization reduces the use of transformational leadership.

Several pieces of research have also drawn attention to differences in the professionalization of public and private organizations (Rainey, 2014: 325–327). In this article, professionalization is defined as the level of formal education of an organization’s workforce. In most Western countries, highly professionalized tasks such as education and health services are conducted within a public sector organization. A large proportion of a highly educated workforce in an organization may affect the exercise of leadership in several ways. Most common is the assumption that professionalism is inherently linked to autonomy and strong inner motivation (Engel, 1970; Mintzberg, 1979; Scott, 1965). Due to the workforce’s superior knowledge, their work is difficult to monitor and control directly, making transactional leadership less relevant. In addition, one study (Wofford et al., 2001) concluded that employees with professional characteristics were more receptive to the effects of transformational leadership. Thus, the following could be hypothesized:

H3a: Professionalization of an organization increases with publicness.

H3b: Professionalization of staff increases the use of transformational leadership.

One of the best empirically validated differences between public and private organizations is found in the motivation of both leaders and employees (Boyne, 2002). People employed in the public sector display significantly higher pro-social motivation (PSM) than employees in the private sector (Houston, 2011; Kjeldsen and Andersen, 2013; Naff and Crum, 1999; Perry and Wise, 1990; Perry et al., 2010). PSM is defined as a ‘general altruistic motivation to serve the interests of a community of people, a state, a nation or humankind’ (Rainey and Steinbauer, 1999: 20). There are no studies on the link between the type of motivation and transformational leadership, which is somewhat strange as PSM could almost be viewed as an integral part of transformational leadership (Avolio and Locke, 2002; Paarlberg and Lavigne, 2010). It may thus be hypothesized that leaders with strong pro-social motivation will favour behaviours associated with transformational leadership:

H4a: Pro-social motivation among leaders increases with publicness.

H4b: Pro-social motivation increases the use of transformational leadership.

One of the striking differences between public and private organizations is the gender composition at all hierarchical levels. In Norway, which is the empirical focus of this article, reports from the National Statistical Bureau (SSB) for 2012 indicate that while 70 percent of the workforce in the purely public sector consists of women, the same figure for private and public companies is 36 percent. In the purely private sector, 50 percent of all those defined as leaders are women, while leaders in private and public companies consist of 76 percent men. It seems as though the gender gap between leaders widens with the degree of publicness. Several recent studies have identified a significant difference between male and female leaders with regard to transformational leadership behaviour (Bass, 1999; Eagly et al., 2003; van Engen and Willemsen, 2004). Women seem to engage more often in transformational leadership behaviour than men. The mechanism behind this difference may be that there is a gender difference in the preference for a specific leadership style, or that a transformational leadership style is more congruent with expectations of a feminine leadership style, thus making it easier for women to take on such a role than a more transactional role (Eagly et al., 2003). Thus:

H5a: The number of female leaders increases with publicness.

H5b: Female leaders exhibit more transformational leadership than male leaders.

Control variables

In addition to the variables already discussed, several other elements may affect differences in both leadership style and publicness. Such elements may create spurious relationships between the two concepts (Andrews et al., 2011). As argued by Rainey (2014), basic tasks and technologies may be far more important distinctions between public and private organizations than funding and ownership. In most countries, public organizations are assigned specific tasks, either because of market failures or political decisions (Pesch, 2008). For instance, in Norway, basic schooling, health services and social services are carried out almost completely by purely public organizations. Thus, the visible differences in publicness – i.e. funding and ownership – may only reflect differences in tasks, and their function and technology. Different tasks will in many instances foster different organizational arrangements. Following contingency theory (e.g. Donaldson, 2001), structure will be formed by task in the sense that increasing task uncertainty and complexity will correlate with less bureaucratization and centralization, as well as with higher professionalization. Furthermore, tasks aimed at helping others – health care, medicine, teaching and so on – may attract people with higher pro-social motivation than organizations focusing on more commercial tasks. Thus, in this study, we will assume that both publicness and organizational mediators will vary systematically with the task of the organization.

In his review of differences between public and private organizations, Boyne (2002: 109) mentions that ‘doubts remain about the relative bureaucratization of the two sectors. Furthermore, a shadow is cast over much of the evidence by the failure to include statistical controls for organizational size. If public agencies tend to be larger than private firms, then the correlations between publicness and bureaucracy may be spurious.’ This study controls for organization size. Finally, studies have also displayed a tendency towards variation in leadership styles across hierarchical levels (Lowe et al., 1996). Transformational leadership seems to be less used the higher the hierarchical level of the leader, a finding that may be explained by the fact that the higher the level of the leader, the less he or she will be directly engaged in the motivation of others, and the more he or she will be occupied by filling other leadership roles (Mintzberg, 1979).

The empirical study

As part of AFF’s Leadership Study 2011, conducted by the Administrative Research Institute (AFF) at the Norwegian School of Economics, Bergen, a survey was sent to 4108 leaders in Norwegian organizations with more than ten employees, representing 1716 different organizations. The sample was stratified proportionally according to business and size. Within each selected organization, a questionnaire was sent to all persons defined as leaders. The initial sample was 4108 leaders, constituting a representative sample of Norwegian leaders. A total of 2910 leaders responded, giving a response rate of 71 percent. Leaders of trade associations, voluntary organizations and foundations were discarded, leaving a total of 2488 respondents in the current analysis.

Concerning publicness, four types of organization were defined: (1) privately owned businesses, (2) businesses with shared ownership (both private and public sector owners), (3) publicly owned businesses, and (4) purely public organizations. These organizations could be regarded as placing themselves on a linear scale between ‘purely public’ and ‘purely private’. Such a simplification would, however, disguise important qualitative differences among the four types of organization. Public companies first and foremost differ from ‘purely public’ organizations on the funding dimension, thus making it possible to say something about differences created by the funding dimension. Companies with shared ownership differ from ‘purely private’ organizations on the ownership dimension, enabling something more specific to be said about the effect of the ownership dimension. We thus created three dummy variables measuring publicness, using ‘purely private’ organizations as the reference point.

Transformational leadership is measured using the leadership version of the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) (Avolio and Bass, 1991; Bass, 1985). The data consist of a leader’s self-report on their own leadership behaviour. Empirical studies have proved that leaders rate themselves as somewhat more transformational than do their subordinates (Brown and Reilly, 2009; Hautala, 2006), a fact that is not surprising since the items measuring transformational leadership in the MLQ are positively framed (van Knippenberg and Sitkin, 2013).The study should thus be read as a leader’s perception of their own leadership style rather than as an employee’s evaluation of it. As experienced by several other researchers (see van Knippenberg and Sitkin, 2013), an exploratory factor analysis failed to produce the different sub-dimensions theoretically constituting transformational leadership. Scales produced according to theoretical expectations gave low alphas for four elements (between 0.51 and 0.58), and an acceptable alpha for only the element of ‘inspirational motivation’ (0.73). A single measurement of transformational leadership consisting of all 20 items displayed a good alpha of 0.83.

The mediating variables were measured by the same questionnaire through items using a 1–5 scale from ‘totally disagree’ to ‘totally agree’. Missing values were transformed into series means. Five items were made to measure centralization (for instance ‘Any decision made by employees in this organization has to be sanctioned by a leader’), and another five to measure bureaucratization (for instance, ‘This organization has a large number of written rules and procedures’). Pro-social motivation was measured by four items (for instance, ‘I am motivated by being able to help others through my work’). All items measuring the three theoretical phenomena discussed above, 14 in all, were entered simultaneously into an exploratory factor analysis, resulting in three clear factors in line with the theoretical expectations, indicating few problems with any common instrument effects.

Task was controlled for using the sectorial categorization utilized by the national statistical bureau (i.e. ten categories, see Table 1 for specification). Gender (male = 1, female = 2) and hierarchical level were measured through single items, the latter being dichotomized between top leaders/CEOs (2) and other-level leaders (1). Organizational size was measured through the number of employees in the organization. Since there are proportionally many small organizations in Norway, particularly among purely private firms, size was logarithmically transformed. Degree of professionalization of the organization was measured through the question, ‘Approximately how large a proportion of your employees have higher academic education?’, and is measured in percent.

Table 1.

One-way ANOVA

	Purely public	Public company	Public–private company	Purely private	F-value (sig.)
Bureaucratization^a	3.23	3.42	3.57	3.26	9.0 (.00)
Centralization^a	1.93	2.00	1.98	1.98	0.8 (.51)
Pro-social motivation^a	4.26	4.07	3.99	4.05	14.2 (.00)
Professionalization^b	56	42	44	29	71.8 (.00)
Transformational leadership^a	4.02	3.94	3.95	3.92	11.0 (.00)
Primary goods/agriculture^a	2	4	6	88	14.1 (.00)
Oil, gas, energy^a	5	31	18	47	106.5 (.00)
Industry/manufacturing^a	1	2	6	91	76.9 (.00)
Building and construction^a	9	7	3	80	71.2 (.00)
Shops, hotels, restaurants^a	1	1	2	95	99.5 (.00)
Transport, post, telecom.^a	30	19	6	45	38.8 (.00)
Financial services^a	7	10	24	59	32.0 (.00)
Education/public adm.^a	80	4	1	16	392.6 (.00)
Health services^a	64	9	2	25	81.0 (.00)
Other services^a	16	8	8	69	7.2 (.00)

^a= Mean values,^b= %. (F-value (sig)). N = 2325–2488.

Analysis

Table 1 shows the mean differences on the variables included in the analysis.

There are significant differences between the different types of publicness on all variables except centralization. Table 2 displays the zero-order correlations between the variables, as well as alphas for the indexes (in parentheses). We have omitted the correlations between tasks/types of goods produced as they are irrelevant for the analysis. Also omitted are the base category in publicness (purely private organizations) and the base category in task/good provided (‘shops, hotels, restaurants’ as it is the category with the highest proportion of purely private organizations).

Table 2.

Univariate description of, and zero-order correlations (Pearson’s r) between, variables in the analysis

	Mean (STD)/%	Y	x1	x2	x3	x4	x5	x6	x7	x8	x9
(Y) Transformational leadership	4.0 (.4)	(.83)
(x1) Shared ownership	7%	.00	–
(x2) Public company	9%	−.01	−.07**	–
(x3) Purely public organization	25%	.10**	−.13**	−.15**	–
(x4) Bureaucratization	3.3 (.9)	.18**	.08**	.04*	−.04*	(.83)
(x5) Centralization	2.0 (.8)	−.13**	.01	.01	−.02	.08**	(.71)
(x6) Pro-social motivation	4.1 (.7)	.31**	−.05*	−.02	.11**	.16**	−.06**	(.86)
(x7) Professionalization (% high ed)	39%	.18**	.04	.03	.24**	.01	−.13**	−.04*	–
(x8) Gender (% female)*	31%	.16**	−.02	−.05**	.19**	.01	−.03	.15**	.05**	–
(x9) Hierarchical level (% CEO)*	12.5%	−.10**	−.05*	−.01	−.04	−.06**	−.12**	.02	.08**	−.08**	–
(x10) Size (log10)	2.0 (.8)	.09*	.07*	.02	.32**	.27**	.02	.03	.21**	.04	−.15**

Chronbach’s alpha for composed indexes in ().* Female and CEO high values. N = 2325–2488. * = sig. le.05, ** = sig. le.01.

Table 2 (cont).

Univariate description of, and zero-order correlations (Pearson’s r) between, variables in the analysis

	Mean (STD)%	Y	x1	x2	x3	x4	x5	x6	x7	x8	x9	x10
(x11) Primary goods/agriculture	8%	−.09	−.04*	−.07**	−.15**	.07**	.07**	.01	−.07**	−.04**	−.06**	.16**
(x12) Oil, gas, energy	11%	−.03	.15*	.27**	−.14**	.09**	.06**	−.06**	.05**	−.11*	.00	.01
(x13) Industry/manufacturing	15%	−.08**	−.01	−.09**	−.21**	.04**	.04**	−.06**	−.16**	−.13**	−.01	−.04**
(x14) Building/construction	15%	−.08**	−.05**	−.01	−.13**	−.04	−.03	−.06**	−.15**	−.16**	.00	−.08**
(x15) Transport, post, telecom.	8%	.01	−.01	.12**	.06**	.03	.06**	−.02	−.04*	−.12**	−.01	−.07**
(x16) Financial services	7%	.03	.15**	.00	−.10**	.11**	.00	−.04*	−.11**	.02	−.02	.00
(x17) Education/public admin.	16%	.07**	−.10**	−.07**	.53**	−.13**	−.06**	.09**	.25**	.17**	.01	.11**
(x18) Health services	9%	.06**	−.06**	.00	.27**	.05**	−.01	.13**	.06**	.23**	.02	.10**
(x19) Other services	16%	.04*	.00	−.02	−.09**	−.12**	−.07**	.00	.05**	.05**	.08**	−.20**

Chronbach’s alpha for composed indexes in ().* Working in specified sector, female and CEO high values. N = 2325–2488. * = sig. le.05, ** = sig. le.01.

Table 2 displays significant correlations between ‘purely public sector’ and ‘educational services/public administration’/ ‘health services’, indicating that the majority of these tasks are conducted in purely public organizations in Norway. Furthermore, there are strong positive correlations between ‘educational services/public administration’/ ‘health services’ and the number of female leaders, professionalization and organizational size.

Fifty-nine percent of the leaders in the sample come from purely private organizations, and they are chosen as the base category in the regression analysis. Task was transformed into nine (10–1) dummy variables with ‘primary goods/agriculture’ as the base category. Following procedures to test for indirect effects (Frazier et al., 2004), we ran separate regression analyses between the different types of publicness (shared ownership, public company and purely public organization), sector (or task) and organizational size as independent variables and the assumed mediating variables (bureaucratization, centralization, pro-social motivation, and professionalization) and transformational leadership as dependent variables, as well as a full model with transformational leadership as dependent variable while including the control variables.

A shown in Table 3, publicness has no direct effect on transformational leadership, as might be indicated by the bivariate correlations, but rather has effects mediated through bureaucratization, pro-social motivation and professionalization. The indirect effects are small but significant at the .01 level using the ‘normal’ model suggested by Frazier et al. (2004; see also Mallinkcrodt et al., 2006: 373).

Table 3.

Results from five OLS regressions

Dependent variable→	Bureau- cratization	Centrali- zation	Pro-social motivation	Professio- nalization	Transformational leadership
Shared ownership	.02	.00	−.02	.02	.00
Public company	.00	.00	.00	.02	−.01
Purely public org	−.07**	.00	.04	.07**	.01
Primary goods/agricult	.01	.07**	.03	−.03	−.01
Oil, gas, energy	.07**	.06**	−.04	.13**	−.01
Industry/manufacturing	.03	.03	−.04*	−.05*	.03
Building/construction	−.03	−.03	−.04*	−.03	.00
Transport, post, telecom	.01	.06**	−.02	.00	.03
Financial services	.10**	.01	−.03	.16**	.00
Education/public admin.	−.11**	−.06*	.05	.24**	−.02
Health services	.05*	.00	.10**	.07**	−.04
Other services	−.06**	−.06**	.01	.16**	.03
Size (log)	.28**	−.01	−.01	.18**	.02
Bureaucratization					.14**
Centralization					−.09**
Pro-social motivation					.28**
Professionalization					.15**
Gender					.12**
Hierarchical level					.10**
R² adj	.12	.02	.03	.16	.18
F-value	8.5**	4.5**	6.9**	41.4**	31.1**

Beta-coefficients. * = sig. le .05, ** = sig. le .01.

Discussion

The empirical findings in this study indicate that differences in transformational leadership are not linked directly to the publicness of an organization. The effect of publicness is rather mediated by organizational and personal characteristics. First, findings indicate that purely public organizations are less – not more – bureaucratized than the organizational forms characterized by less publicness. This finding runs counter to what can be termed the ‘orthodoxy’ of what makes public and private organizations different (Boyne, 2002). The findings reported here instead support a more general organizational contingency theory arguing that bureaucratization is more a product of (a) organizational size and (b) task (Donaldson, 2001) than of publicness. This supports the suspicion voiced by Boyne (2002) and Rainey (2014) that many of the seeming differences between public and private organizations are caused by size and/or task rather than by publicness.

Furthermore, contrary to what was expected, bureaucratization increases transformational leadership. One possible interpretation is that the relevance of transformational leadership increases with bureaucratization. Extensive bureaucratization will limit the autonomy of employees, decreasing the feeling of control while increasing the repetitiveness of work, factors usually associated with low motivation (Hackman and Oldham, 1976). Transformational leadership, on the other hand, is first and foremost regarded as a type of inspirational leadership, aimed at motivating employees to higher performance (Bass, 1999). In highly bureaucratized organizations, transformational leadership will thus be more needed and have stronger effects than in organizations where employees experience higher autonomy and variation in tasks. In addition, rules may function as a substitute for leadership (Kerr and Jermier, 1978). With extensive rules and regulations, there is little need for direct leadership in the sense of monitoring. In addition, rules and routines may relieve leaders of some tasks, giving them more time to engage in behaviour that can be characterized as transformational. Some other studies have reported identical results and offered the same interpretation (Podsakoff et al., 1996).

Purely public organizations are also more professionalized than both purely private and more hybrid forms of organization. As expected, an increasing professionalization of staff seems to increase the use of transformational leadership. It could be argued that professionalization is also a substitute for leadership, making more space for leaders to engage in transformational leadership activities. Another explanation can be found in theories on what motivates professionals (Miner et al., 1994). In addition to intrinsic motivators associated with challenging tasks, professionals seek recognition and status. While status is usually related to professional peers, recognition may also come from other sources, including leaders. As a central element in transformational leadership is individual consideration, this type of leadership may be well suited to giving professionals the recognition they seek.

The hypothesized mediating effect through centralization gets no support from this study, because – as supported by Boyne (2002) – there is no significant difference concerning centralization among the varying degrees of publicness. Centralization is more a function of task than of publicness. This further supports contingency theory claims (Donaldson, 2001). Centralization in itself has the hypothesized negative effect on transformational leadership behaviour, but as centralization is not affected by publicness, we will not go into a more detailed discussion of this. More surprising is the non-significant effect of publicness on pro-social motivation. Pro-social motivation is linked to task, and first and foremost is associated with the production of health care and social services. Again, the importance of task rather than publicness is emphasized.

As a main conclusion, we find more transformational leadership in purely public organizations, although this is not a direct effect of publicness but rather is due to the fact that purely public organizations:

are larger than private firms, resulting in a higher bureaucratization and professionalization, both in turn increasing the use of transformational leadership;

have a higher proportion of female leaders than organizations with lower degrees of publicness, and female leaders are more transformational in their leadership style than men;

perform different tasks from organizations with lower degrees of publicness, mostly health and social services, resulting in higher pro-social motivation which in turn results in more transformational leadership.

Bureaucratization plays a dual role here. On the one hand, purely public organizations are more bureaucratized because of larger size, while on the other hand they seem to be – independent of size – less bureaucratized than organizations with lower degrees of publicness. Concerning the occurrence of transformational leadership, these effects work in opposite directions, to some degree counterbalancing each other.

The actual study focuses on only one phenomenon – transformational leadership – in one specific context (Norway), but the findings have wider implications. As pointed out by several studies (Andrews et al., 2011; Boyne, 2002; Rainey, 2014), comparisons between public and private organizations often lack controls for basic variables such as task or organizational size. In this study, even the difference in pro-social motivation among organizations of different degrees of publicness – one of the most significant differences in Boyne’s (2002) study – disappears when controlling for these elements. These findings cast a shadow over previous comparisons between public and private organizations, raising doubts as to whether the assumed differences are spurious rather than real.

The lack of effects of publicness in this study should not lead to a conclusion that publicness is unimportant. The publicness dimension should rather be further empirically refined. In this study, only four different types are identified and used in the empirical analysis. At the same time, we experience an increasing diversity in organizational forms, both within the public sector and in different forms of networks including the public, the voluntary and the private sectors. How this ‘hybridization’ affects leadership should be one of the prioritized areas of research in the future. Furthermore, comparing the occurrence of transformational leadership in organizations with different degrees of publicness should include other elements. One such element could be the cognitive demand of situations and tasks the leader is facing (Nielsen and Cleal, 2011). Another could be whether publicness affects the environments leaders face, and whether this interacts with the occurrence of transformational leadership (Antonakis and House 2014). Both these elements could be assumed to vary systematically along the dimension of publicness. Finally, studies should aim to detect what – if any – are the distinct elements of a ‘public sector leadership’ (Orazi et al., 2013: 502). All the research strains suggested above would not only enrich general leadership theories, but also theories of public sector administration and management.

Footnotes

Dag Ingvar Jacobsen is Professor of Political Science at Agder University in Kristiansand, Norway. He has published several books (in Norwegian), as well as articles on organizational change, the relationship between politicians and administrators, and inter-organizational cooperation in journals such as Governance, Public Administration, Public Management Review and Scandinavian Political Studies.

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