Leadership, culture and performance: The case of the New Zealand public sector (original) (raw)

Held back and pushed forward: leading change in a complex public sector environment

Purpose – Public organizations often need to implement organizational change. Several authors have argued that the specific characteristics of public organizations make the implementation of organizational change in public organizations distinct or even more difficult. However, this issue has received little empirical investigation in both public management and change management research. Public organizations typically operate in an environment characterized by checks and balances, shared power, divergent interests and the political primate. The purpose of this paper is to advance knowledge about how the implementation of change and its leadership is affected by the complex environment in which public organizations operate. Design/methodology/approach – A case study approach is adopted. A merger of three government departments in a Dutch city is selected as a case. This merger took place in an environment that became increasingly complex as the implementation process advanced. The main method of data collection was interviewing the managers that were involved in the organizational change. In all, 23 interviews were conducted and fully transcribed. The interviews were then coded using Atlas.ti software. Findings – The analysis indicates that a high degree of environmental complexity forces public organizations to adopt a planned, top-down approach to change, while the effectiveness of such an approach to change is simultaneously limited by a complex environment. In addition, typical change leadership activities, such as defining the need for change, role modeling and motivating employees to implement the change, are not sufficient to implement change in a complex environment. In order to overcome environmental dependencies and maintain momentum in the change process, public managers must engage in more externally oriented leadership activities. Originality/value – The paper provides empirical evidence about the relevant and rapidly growing research topic of organizational change in public organizations. The paper concludes with hypotheses that can be tested in follow-up research, and as such provides a starting point for future research concerning change management in public organizations.

Rethinking Leadership for the Public Sector

Australian Journal of Public Administration, 2002

Leadership and management are best thought of as a matter of competencies. Or are they? The paper challenges the current orthodoxy in Australia on this question, and suggests that leadership and management need to be regarded as reflecting opposing values. The paper also distinguishes between charismatic and collective forms of leadership, and proposes the latter as likely to be of greater value in a public sector context. A challenge for public sector organisations is how to strike and maintain a suitable balance between management for ongoing operations and leadership for deep-reaching change. Strategies for developing collective leadership capability are suggested.

Leadership through change: a public sector perspective

The research study reported in this management project examines the issues of leadership through change in the UK local authority public sector. Using the work of Senge as a guide and as an action research project, my objective was to facilitate successful positive change in the service in which I practice as a leader and manager. Consideration was given to how I could improve my work as a leader to become what Senge describes as a leader who steps ahead, who has the ‘courage, capability, and credibility to inspire change at many levels’ (Senge & Kaufer 2000:1). The project tracks and examines that process over a three year period. A major conclusion of the project is that Senge’s work appears to have provided a useful perspective to enable examination of past events and current reality. The project also appears to support Senge’s view that leaders have a significant role in sustaining change by helping to create energy through vision and passion and in managing the forces that limi...

Leadership in the public sector — the next decade

The International Journal of Leadership in Public Services, 2010

This paper describes the ways in which the next decade will be different from the last. Times are becoming more and more turbulent -a new kind of organisation is needed to survive and thrive in these times, what we call a Purposeful Self-Renewing Organisation (PS-RO). This, in turn requires a different style of organisational leadership -leadership as a quality that is dispersed across the organisation not confined solely to the cadre of senior managers listed on an organisation chart.

A Leadership Approach to Achieving Change in the Public Sector

2007

Many leadership interventions in Madagascar and other countries have shown that focusing on leadership can be effective in leveraging and accelerating technical reforms in a variety of settings. Reinforcing leadership capacity is important because leaders play a critical role in prioritizing, leveraging, modeling and implementing reforms, and because they need new skills as their roles and responsibilities change as a result of reforms. This note tells the story of Madagascar's transformation after the 2001 crisis. Emerging from crisis and riddled with systemic and institutional barriers to development, amply manifest in all of its systems, structures, and in behaviors and perceptions at the individual level, Madagascar made significant progress through committed leadership and attention to systemic, underlying dysfunctions. It is the story of how delivery of customized support to those in power who are willing to make a difference can unleash capacity.

Leadership In the Public Sector

Review of Public Personnel …, 2004

To fill the need for leaders and change agents throughout all levels of federal agencies, public sector human resource managers are now called on to develop innovative leadership development programs. Developing leaders for the 21st century requires attention to workforce trends as well as flexibility and creativity. Federal government leadership development programs need to address special leadership concerns of public agency managers, including creative thinking, collaboration, cross-organizational team building, and leading for results. This research provides overviews of federal leadership development programs and includes average and exemplary models. Lessons learned from this research offer a new set of leadership development assumptions for the public sector. Data were gathered from document analysis, preliminary network interviews, and in-depth personal interviews with program designers and participants.

THE MANAGEMENT OF CHANGE IN PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS: A LITERATURE REVIEW

This article presents a review of the recent literature on change management in public organizations and sets out to explore the extent to which this literature has responded to earlier critiques regarding the lack of (public) contextual factors. The review includes 133 articles published on this topic in the period from 2000 to 2010. The articles are analysed based on the themes of the context, content, process, outcome, and leadership of change. We identified whether the articles referred to different orders of change, as well as their methods and theory employed. Our findings concentrate on the lack of detail on change processes and outcomes and the gap between the common theories used to study change. We propose an agenda for the study of change management in public organizations that focuses on its complex nature by building theoretical bridges and performing more in-depth empirical and comparative studies on change processes.