Lessons in Leadership: Meeting the Challenges of Public Services Management

Citation

Cromb, D. (2006), "Lessons in Leadership: Meeting the Challenges of Public Services Management", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 27 No. 6, pp. 529-530. https://doi.org/10.1108/01437730610687818

The authors attempt to address three things in this book:

1. 1.

   the problem that leadership is meant to solve;

2. 2.

   the processes through which leadership is enacted; and

3. 3.

   the relationship between managers and elected politicians in the course of leadership.

They do so within the context of new public management and the new welfare state, drawing upon a significant body of empirical research from a wide range of writers, as well as case studies.

This is quite a task, given that the nature of the new welfare state is not completely clear, although the authors list some propositions upon which it is based. These include reconstructing the relationship of the public services to the public, so that the public experience their services as treating them with dignity and taking their needs and problems seriously. A flow on is that serving the public better implies challenges to the status quo within public service organisations, and working though the problems that existing cultures are posing, in order to develop radical solutions.

The purpose of the book is to study how managerial leaders can be successful in the public services. The authors attempt to identify how successful managerial leaders see things, what their values and beliefs are, what they pay attention to, and what they do when they bring about modernisation and reform. Chapter one examines leadership and reform of the public services, highlighting the political and democratic context. Chapter two is an extensive literature review, especially looking at visionary leadership and its applicability to the public sector. Chapters three and four are still in the literature, although with reference to case studies to be found there. Chapters five, six and seven are strongly case study based. The last chapter summarises and concludes with nine lessons in leadership.

The clear driver for examining leadership in the public services is new public management (NPM). There is no single view of what leadership is or where it can be found in an organisation. However, the authors find that NPM is long on references to “management” but short on references to “leadership”. For them, the way forward is new public leadership, their naming of the adaptive leadership required in today's public service. NPM can be said to focus upon achieving service improvement, from a citizen perspective, whilst maintaining an overt focus upon bottom‐line financial performance. NPM has a change or transformational agenda and it needs to be accompanied by those who can lead and motivate those within the organisation to adapt their behaviours and possibly even beliefs. For leadership within a NPM context to be effective it must demonstrate a willingness to embrace a creative agenda and encourage others to do so also. Effective leadership is based on strong political support for the managerial leadership at the top of the organisation.

There is a lot to like about the book. It does focus on leadership within the public service rather than leadership generally. It places leadership within the context of public service change (NPM) rather than separate it as a trait or a process in isolation. It does draw upon a wide range of literature from many countries. Notwithstanding, it can be a hard read. A conclusion or summary at the end of each chapter would be helpful: the authors draw many conclusions but they can be hard to find unless each chapter is read from start to finish.

I also feel that the authors could have made an effort to assist readers in examining the state of leadership within their own organisations. The authors quote researchers operating within the National Health Service as arguing that “leadership effectiveness is ultimately determined by the perceptions of staff”: therefore, a suggested survey instrument(s) would have been beneficial. Readers could make up their own, using the references from the literature review in this book, but this is inefficient and probably not very effective. Academics who research, draw conclusions, and publish their findings, need to go the extra step and help practitioners with implementation – implementable validity, as Chris Argyris calls it.

These are two relatively small gripes about an otherwise very valuable body of work. An existing or aspiring public servant in a leadership role would find a lot here to assist in framing their personal and professional development activities. Organisational development practitioners should be using this work as a frame of reference for examining their own organisations, through staff surveys for example – this includes both attitudinal/satisfaction surveys and process/systems surveys, such as against a business excellence model. Highly recommended.