Abstract
One of the quotes that is most frequently found in research reports on leadership is by James MacGregor Burns, who claims that “leadership is one of the most observed and least understood phenomena on earth” (Burns, 1978, p. 2). This is often accompanied by another quote by Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus (1985), stating that “never have so many labored so long to say so little” (p. 4). With this kind of deterrence that was presented to us in the 1970s and 1980s, it is surprising that leadership at present is being studied at all. Nevertheless, when looking at more recent reviews, the field has never been more vibrant. For the last 30 years, the topic of leadership has continued to flourish as the amount of publications has continuously increased (Gardner, Lowe, Moss, Mahoney, & Cogliser, 2010; Lowe & Gardner, 2000). New theoretical perspectives have been developed in the last few decades and these have reinvigorated the field as a whole, and if one looks at future directions for research that are proposed by distinguished scholars in the field, job security seems warranted for those studying leadership.
Despite the present shiny status of leadership as a research domain in general, the situation in the field of public administration does not present itself as being equally bright. Where in general management studies the advent of charismatic and transformational leadership theory has generated a multitude of research reports, creating a refreshing perspective on a field that had come to a standstill in the 1970s (Hunt, 1999), this has not been the case in public management and public administration (Getha-Taylor, Holmes, Jacobson, Morse, & Sowa, 2011; Van Wart, 2003). This lack of interest in public or administrative leadership may be due to a number of reasons. One reason may be the lack of available resources and researchers, with so many other interesting topics and only limited time and budgets (Van Wart, 2003). Another reason is the apparent skepticism against the application of transformational type leadership in the public sector (Bass & Riggio, 1996; Currie & Lockett, 2007; Javidan & Waldman, 2003), which henceforth did not cause the rejuvenating boost that could be observed in general leadership studies.
Calls for sector-contingent perspectives on leadership are to some extent justified on the basis of empirical research results (Hooijberg & Choi, 2001; Raffel, Leisink, & Middlebrooks, 2009). There is also good reason to avoid the mistakes that have been made with New Public Management and the mimicking of management practices in the private sector. However, the field of public administration and public management should take care not to get bogged down in parochialism or exceptionalism. After all, for each study that calls for a contingent approach, another study demonstrates that there are at least as many similarities as differences with regard to leadership theories (Hooijberg & Choi, 2001; Judge & Piccolo, 2004; Lowe, Kroeck, & Sivasubramaniam, 1996).
Therefore, it would be a wise choice not to discard but rather to build on general leadership theories on the one hand. On the other hand, merely applying general insights without taking contextual particularities into account has proven to be practice. In the case of public or administrative leadership, it may therefore be equally wise to adjust general principles to the particular environment. Integrating specific issues or concepts particular to the context may increase the validity of research, as is stated by Getha-Taylor et al. (2011). Examples of such an approach can be found in Trottier, Van Wart, and Wang (2008), who test a combination of transactional and transformational leadership with a specific public sector measure; in Wright, Moynihan, and Pandey (2012), who combine transformational leadership with core public administration concept of public service motivation; and in Wright and Pandey (2010), who look into the effect of the typical public sector characteristic of organizational structure. It is precisely on the tradition of this kind of research that the five contributions—entered in alphabetical order—in the present symposium are built.
The first article by Christian Bøtcher Jacobsen and Lotte Bøgh Andersen addresses the effect of a typical public sector characteristic as well as a leadership instrument—a command system. In a public sector organization, leaders will be much more likely to implement their ideas by means of a command system than by any other alternative, such as an incentive system. Based upon a longitudinal sample of publication data of Danish public research institutions, the authors demonstrate that the perception of the command system (supportive vs. controlling) influences publication output positively if the command system is perceived as supportive, whereas the publication output is negatively influenced if the system is perceived as controlling.
The second article by Eva Knies and Peter Leisink also addresses the influence of what can be considered the typical public sector environmental characteristic of autonomy on leadership behavior in two types of public sector organizations (police and hospitals). They find that the perceived discretionary room enhances supervisors’ willingness to support employees, which in turn positively influences their actual supportive behavior. Next to this, supervisors’ abilities with regard to providing actual support also positively influence this supportive behavior.
The third article by Adrian Ritz, David Giauque, Frédéric Varone, and Simon-Anderfuhren-Biget looks at outcomes of leadership processes in public sector organizations. By means of surveying public managers, the authors investigate the relationship between transformational leadership and organizational citizenship behavior. They find that both general principles (goal clarity) and specific public sector characteristics (public service motivation) influence the presence of organizational citizenship behavior as a measure of individual performance.
The fourth article by Wouter Vandenabeele digs deeper into the findings of the previous article, as it addresses some of the aspects of the socialization process associated with transformational leadership. The article relates leadership promotion of typically public values to public service motivation development by means of internalization processes as found in self-determination theory. A survey of state employees demonstrates that satisfaction of their psychological needs of autonomy and competence moderates the extent to which public values are internalized.
The fifth and final article by Brenda Vermeeren, Ben Kuipers, and Bram Steijn examines the relation between leadership style and perceived organizational performance with local government employees. The authors demonstrate a partially mediating effect of human resources management on the influence of leadership on job satisfaction. This latter variable in turn partially mediates the relation between job human resources management and organizational performance, thus linking leadership to the particular human resources management situation of the public sector and the outcomes of job satisfaction and performance in a logical causal chain.
What these articles have in common, besides the topic of leadership, is that they all are based on solid empirical research methods. Also, they present varied theoretical approaches in which they combine general insights with specific public administration particularities, not just for their leadership approach but also for their broader theoretical foundations. General motivational perspectives—goal setting, crowding out, or self-determination theory—are combined with specific public sector characteristics, just as general human resources management principles—Abilities-Motivation-Opportunities (AMO) theory—are allowed to fit in the particular public sector situation. This approach not only demonstrates the interdisciplinary nature of public administration as a field, but it also provides a more fruitful way of transferring insights from one field to another and furthering the theory (as opposed to the mere mimicking of practices).
These articles also present (a limited part of) the fruit of the European Group of Public Administration’s (EGPA) permanent study group on public personnel policy (which is the European sister organization of the American Society of Public Administration’s Section on Personnel and Labor Relations). Within this group, every 3 years a researcher-driven research program is developed. In the period 2008 to 2010, leadership in the public sector was the topic on which members of the study group focused their research. The articles presented in this symposium represent part of the work that has been carried out within these 3 years, not just by the authors themselves, but also by the other members of the study group, who provided valuable feedback on the initial papers when they were presented at the annual EGPA conference meetings. However, as these articles—as stated above—fit in a wider perspective of leadership research in the public sector, we hope that their appeal exceeds the boundaries of this study group and that they provide a positive—though piecemeal—contribution to the theory in the field.