Comparing Public and Private Managers' Leadership Styles: Understanding the Role of Job Context

ABSTRACT

Comparing public and private managers is a major subject in the public management literature, but there have been only a few empirical studies of the differences in their respective leadership styles. Traditionally, leadership style is explained by the characteristics of the manager, the employees, and their job. This study explains leadership by the manager's job context: the degree of job complexity, role clarity, and job autonomy. We argue that differences in job context explain the use of different leadership styles in the public and private sector. To clearly specify the importance of sector, the study investigates direct, mediating, and moderating effects. Based on a survey of Danish public and private managers with 949 respondents, this article shows that job context variables vary significantly between public and private sector managers. The article provides some explanations for why public managers use more participative leadership, while private ones use more directive leadership.     

Zone of Acceptance under Performance Measurement: Does Performance Information Affect Employee Acceptance of Management Authority?

Public sector employees have traditionally enjoyed substantial influence and bargaining power in organizational decision making, but few studies have investigated the formation of employee acceptance of management authority. Drawing on the “romance of leadership” perspective, the authors argue that performance information shapes employee attributions of leader quality and perceptions of a need for change in ways that affect their acceptance of management authority, conceptualized using Simon's notion of a “zone of acceptance.” A survey experiment was conducted among 1,740 teachers, randomly assigning true performance information about each respondent's own school. When employees were exposed to signals showing low or high performance, their acceptance of management authority increased, whereas average performance signals reduced employee acceptance of management authority. The findings suggest that performance measurement can alter public sector authority relations and have implications regarding how public managers can use performance information strategically to gain acceptance of management authority and organizational change.     

Do Welfare State Regimes Determine Public Sector Reforms? Choice Reforms in American,Swedish and German Schools

The idea that modern welfare states can be grouped into distinct regimes dominates contemporary studies of welfare state restructuring, and several studies have concluded welfare state reforms to be correlated with regime structures. These studies build, however, on analyses of only cash-benefit programmes whereas social services are almost neglected in current welfare state research. Thus, the aim of this article is to test the explanatory capacity of the welfare state regime perspective in relation to reforms in the service dimension of advanced welfare states – normally termed 'public sector reforms'. For this purpose, the author has conducted a focused comparison of the degree to which archetypical examples of the liberal regime (United States), the social democratic regime (Sweden) and the conservative regime (Germany) have introduced vouchers and parental choice into their public primary schools. Schools and education have ranked high on the public sector reform agenda since the 1980s, while the school choice issue signifies core aspects of the rationale of the reform movement: re-arranging public provision of services into quasi-markets. The article identifies, however, a clear lack of correlation between adoption of the school-choice policy and welfare state regimes. Instead, the reforms undertaken in all three countries seem closely related to the institutional rules of political decision making.     

Banking, interest intermediation and political power

Abstract. This article seeks to introduce the concept of political power more explicitly into the discussion of the organizational attributes of societal interests. In pursuit of this objective, it defines a set of empirical indicators of the organisational conditions of interest intermediation systems that enhance the exercise of political power. The indicators are illustrated through a comparative study of the banking sector at the European Community level and in five countries: Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The comparison of the banking sector interest intermediation systems shows that the power of banks in Germany rests not only on their equity participation in large industrial concerns, but also on a highly developed interest intermediation system, the most integrated of the five countries. The analysis demonstrates from still another perspective the close imbrication of the state and finance in France. Finally; the article demonstrates the deep fragmentation of the US associational system, a system that has acted as a serious obstacle to banking system reform in America.     

Exploring Charismatic Leadership in the Public Sector: Measurement and Consequences

A survey of more than 203 middle and upper–middle managers that assessed their superiors ( N =51) in the Canadian public sector showed that charismatic leadership in such a setting comprises four dimensions: (1) energy and determination; (2) vision; (3) challenge and encouragement; and (4) risk taking. However, such leadership is only modestly related to motivational consequences and is not significantly related to unit performance. We discuss our findings in terms of their theoretical implications for leadership research in general and for the public sector in particular.     

Does Ethical Leadership Matter in Government? Effects on Organizational Commitment,Absenteeism, and Willingness to Report Ethical Problems

Recent ethical scandals involving managers in government organizations have highlighted the need for more research on ethical leadership in public sector organizations. To assess the consequences of ethical leadership, 161 managers in a large state government agency and 415 of their direct reports were surveyed, and personnel records were obtained to measure absenteeism. Results indicate that after controlling for the effects of employee characteristics, perceptions of procedural fairness, and supportive leader behavior, ethical leadership reduced absenteeism and had a positive influence on organizational commitment and willingness to report ethical problems. Implications of the findings and suggestions for future research are presented.     

The Grass is Greener,But Why? Evidence of Employees’ Perceived Sector Mismatch from the US,New Zealand,and Taiwan

ABSTRACT

To answer the question of who wants to work for the government, scholars have relied on a few approaches, including sector preference, sector-based comparison of work motives, and sector-switching patterns of job mobility. The present study offers a related but distinct approach: perceived sector mismatch. The attractiveness of public sector jobs differs greatly across countries; thus, in order to present a more comprehensive study, we examine data from the U.S., New Zealand, and Taiwan, where attitudes towards public sector jobs differ significantly as a result of different public service laws and traditions. Across all three samples, we find that, among private sector employees, the preference for a public service job is related to socio-economic disadvantage. Among public sector workers, reasons for perceived sector mismatch vary, but often suggesting job dissatisfaction in current public sector jobs, rather than perceived advantages of the private sector (including compensation). These findings are followed by theoretical and practical implications from this comparative study.     

Public sector innovation in the Asia-pacific trends,challenges, and opportunities

Public organizations face a multitude of challenges that force them to innovate existing processes, policies, programs, and products. Indeed, in recent years, innovation has become a core topic of study in public administration. However, the vast majority of the public sector innovation literature stems from the United States and Western Europe. The lack of Asia-Pacific studies is particularly striking given that countries like Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan consistently rank high on public sector innovation. This special issue brings together state of the art empirical research on public sector innovation in the Asia-Pacific region that examines a range of drivers and outcomes of innovation, including studies comparing Asia-Pacific countries and countries in the East and the West. The findings show that public sector employees in the studied countries all seek opportunities to innovate, whereas cultural norms and values either constrain or enable innovative behaviour and affect the extent to which employees experience leadership support for displaying such behaviour.     

Influence of organizational culture on knowledge transfer: Evidence from the Government of Dubai

In the current context of globalization and technological spread, the role of knowledge as an organizational resource is phenomenal. Knowledge management can be seen as an add-on to reform paradigms such as new public management, good governance, and smart government, which has generated significant interest for public sector reformists in recent years. The amount of literature on knowledge management in public the sector of the United Arab Emirates is relatively scanty. In the Government of Dubai (1 of 7 Emirates in the UAE), the journey towards knowledge management has started 2 decades or so ago and now has begun to take structural roots in many organizations. This study examines the relationship between organizational culture elements (i.e., trust, communication between employees, reward, leadership, and learning and development), organizational socialization, and knowledge transfer in the government organizations in Dubai. Based on a theoretical framework to measure the influence, this study conducted a questionnaire survey in the Government of Dubai entities. From 811 respondents representing these organizations, the survey results unfold positive relationship between knowledge transfer and the 4 selected organizational cultural elements (i.e., trust, communication between employees, reward, and leadership). Socialization is found to play a moderating role in all the hypothesized relationships except between reward and knowledge transfer. It also examines further research implications to support knowledge transfer processes and practices in the public sector of Dubai and the UAE.     

Managerial perceptions of leadership and management in an African public service organization

This article describes and analyses data on perceptions of leadership and management, generated by a study of managerial behaviour, organizational functioning and performance in the Ministry of Local Government, Lands and Housing (MLGLH) in Botswana. The study was commissioned by the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida). The findings indicate that the managers in the investigation did not generally recognize the distinction between organizational leadership and management that is postulated in the predominant current western view. The perceived ideal leader who emerges from the investigation is kindly and supportive and provides clear directions; the western ideal of the ‘corporate hero’ did not emerge from the findings. Further, the Tswana managers emphasize the reaction of the boss as a major factor in judging their own performance. This finding of the acceptance of hierarchical authority and accompanying dependency supports evidence from the few empirical studies undertaken previously in Africa, and has implications for the current plan to implant elements of the ‘Singaporean model’ in Botswana.     

Religion, Spirituality, and the Workplace: Challenges for Public Administration

The relationship between religion and politics in the United States is a much-studied academic area, particularly evident in political institutional and behavioral venues such as interest groups, electoral behavior, and political culture. One academic area that has not received much attention is the influence of religion on public administration. Recently, however, public administration scholars have begun to mimic their counterparts in the business world by examining the role of religion and spirituality in the public workplace, especially with regard to organizational performance, ethical behavior patterns, decision making, and the personal spiritual health of employees. This article examines the role and impact of religion and spirituality in the workplace, reviews court cases and political measures regarding religious expression in the public sector, explores a private sector model to explain the interrelationship between religion and spirituality in the public workplace, and challenges public administrators to consider the positive role that religion and spirituality can play in the public workplace.     

DEVELOPMENTS IN PUBLIC SECTOR AUDIT: HOW EFFECTIVE ARE EFFICIENCY AUDITS?

Abstract: A crucial issue facing the public sector is the extent to which efficiency and effectiveness are elements in the concept of accountability to parliament and the people. This paper argues that the recent moves towards efficiency audit in many countries, including Australia, need to be extended to effectiveness audit, and that to the extent that this does not occur, efficiency (and compliance) audit in the public sector is ineffective and accountability lacking.
An examination of Australian public sector auditing is undertaken first, based on a discussion of the 1974–76 Royal Commission on Australian Government Administration, the 1977–82 Review of New South Wales Government Administration and the subsequent implementation of their recommendations as the means of clarifying and elucidating the definitions of compliance, efficiency and effectiveness audit, as well as a means of critically analysing Australian developments. Developments in public sector auditing in the United Kingdom and the United States of America are critically examined. Finally, the future prospects and problems facing public sector audit in Australia are reviewed, and policy options relating to the development of comprehensive audit are outlined.     

Private Sector Imprinting: An Examination of the Impacts of Private Sector Job Experience on Public Manager's Work Attitudes

What are the attitudes of public managers who have had full‐time private sector work experience? Public managers with private sector work experience report different perspectives when compared to their counterparts who have spent their entire careers in the public sector. Though private sector work experience negatively correlates with job satisfaction, it only does so for the “new switcher,” whose last job was in the private sector. As careers advance, the negative impact seems to wane, leaving a public sector workforce that, in part as a result of their private sector work experience, are relatively more intrinsically motivated and involved in their jobs. We conclude with discussion of implications for human resources management.     

The United States,Japan, and the European Union: comparing political economy approaches to China

Abstract

This paper examines US, Japanese, and European political economy approaches to China, and their effect on US–Japan and US–EU relationships. Great powers with a greater security concern in dealing with another major country care more about power while those with less of a concern are preoccupied with calculations for wealth. China's rise and its actions have posed a far greater security challenge to the United States and Japan and are driving the two countries closer together. The political economy game involving China reveals a dominant welfare motive among the advanced market economies. The ambition to transform China politically has diminished. China's integration into the global market makes a relative gains approach difficult to implement. Globalization simply limits the ability of a state to follow a politics-in-command approach in the absence of actual military conflict, which explains why the political economy approaches of the United States, Europe, and Japan are not that different in the scheme of things. China's own grand strategy to reach out to the world to outflank the US–Japan alliance has also contributed to a divergent European policy toward China although there are severe limitations to Beijing's ability to drive a wedge between the United States and Europe.     

We’re Not all Happy Yet: Attitudes to Work,Leadership, and High Performance Work Practices among Managers in the Public Sector

This article explores the attitudes of male and female managers in the public sector toward high performance Human Resource Management (HRM) policies and practices, work, and organisational leadership, and compares these attitudes to those of managers in the private sector. It finds that female public sector managers are most positive about high performance HRM policies and practices. Male public sector managers are less positive than female managers in the public sector and male and female managers in the private sector across all the measures. Psychological contract theory suggests either the changes associated with high performance HRM policies and practices, or attempts to decrease the disadvantage felt by women in the public sector may have resulted in a sense of disadvantage among some men in the sector, and created a changed, more transactional psychological contract between these men and their organisation. Strategies are needed to reengage public sector men.     

The Determinants of US Public Opinion Towards Democracy Promotion

In this paper, I evaluate two competing perspectives regarding what underlies the public’s support for democracy promotion—a democratic values-based perspective positing that the public’s support for democracy promotion is based on a principled desire to spread American values, beliefs, and ideologies to other countries, and a national interests-based perspective claiming that it is based on a rational desire of Americans to advance the US’ political and economic interests abroad. Using a survey experiment, I find that, in general, Americans are not driven by either democratic values or national interests to support democracy promotion even though they believe that democracy promotion is in the interests of both the recipient country and the United States. Only a subset of the population is motivated to support democracy promotion for the sake of democratic values. This subset of the population is driven by cosmopolitanism—that is, a sense of concern for the welfare of those living in other countries and a sense of moral responsibility to promote democracy abroad derived from the US’ position as a world leader, not national pride.     

Does Performance Management Lead to Better Outcomes? Evidence from the U.S. Public Transit Industry

Although performance management processes are widely assumed to be beneficial in improving organizational performance in the public sector, there is insufficient empirical evidence to back this claim. In this article, the authors examine the impact of performance management practices on organizational effectiveness in a particular segment of the public transit industry in the United States. The analysis utilizes original survey data on performance management practices comprising both strategy formulation and performance measurement in 88 small and medium‐sized local transit agencies in conjunction with comparative outcome data drawn from the National Transit Database maintained by the Federal Transit Administration. The results provide evidence that more extensive use of performance management practices does in fact contribute to increased effectiveness in this segment of the transit industry.     

Ethnic Heterogeneity and Public Support for Welfare: Is the American Experience Replicated in Britain,Sweden and Denmark?

The link between ethnic heterogeneity and public support for welfare policy is debated. The thesis of a negative relationship is supported by much American research. Historically the race issue has blocked a number of American welfare schemes; across the United States ethnically heterogeneous states have less generous benefits, and citizens having negative attitudes towards blacks often oppose welfare. The research question is: To what extent will increased ethnic heterogeneity in European countries establish the same mechanisms? Three theoretical positions are discussed: the position that the American experience is unique; the position that it is generalisable; and a middle position of it being contingent on institutional settings. The latter position predicts that the American experience can be avoided, especially in social democratic welfare regimes where the ethnicity issue has not been politicised. Empirically the article is based on survey data from the United Kingdom, Sweden and Denmark, in which a number of American items were directly replicated. Despite indications of American uniqueness and welfare‐regime effects, the findings support the position that the in‐group/out‐group mechanisms found in the United States are being replicated in Europe.     

Managing the development process: Community strategies in economic revitalization

This paper considers community strategies in economic revitalization. Guidelines are proposed for local economic development practitioners and as a framework for further research. Findings are based on extensive analysis and comparative study of economic development efforts in four medium-sized industrialized cities in the northeastern United States. The role of motivating, organizing, and diagnostic agents, including crisis situations, community based planning, and local development agencies, are highlighted. The analysis presents economic revitalization as an on-going activity requiring strong local leadership, competent local development institutions, and broad-based public and private sector participation.