“Paths for Action”: Leadership Theory and Practice in Complex Public Sector Systems

The nature and challenges of public sector leadership and management are examined in four case studies of project management in complex metropolitan environments. The cases selected by the authors as representative of contextual factors affecting decision-making processes and project outcomes. Drawing on recent theoretical work on complex leadership approaches (Uhl-Bein et al 2007, Hazy 2008, Lichtenstein & Plowman 2009), the authors assess leadership practices enacted and the circumstances that influence these practices. Leadership types theorized by Uhl-Bein et al (2007) are identified operating at different levels and across networks, with contextual factors outlined. The article concludes with a framework for leadership practice and management identifying network facilitation and complexity friendly tools as a practice within complex public sector systems.

Symposium - Organisational transformation in policing: Leadership and change in extreme contexts

Nearly 4000 people died in Northern Ireland’s long running conflict, 314 of them police officers (Brewer and Magee 1991, Brewer 1996, Hennessey 1999, Guelke and Milton-Edwards 2000). The republican and loyalist ceasefires of 1994 were the first significant signal that NI society was moving beyond the ‘troubles’ and towards a normalised political environment. The Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement of 1998 cemented that movement (Hennessey 1999). Policing was a key and seemingly unresolvable element of the conflict, seen as unrepresentative and partisan. Its reform or ‘recasting’ in a new dispensation was an integral part of the conflict transformation endeavour(Ellison 2010). As one of the most controversial elements of the conflicted past, it had remained outside the Agreement and was subject to a specific commission of interest (1999), generally known as the Patten Commission. The Commission’s far reaching proposals included a change of name, badge and uniform, the introduction of 50/50 recruitment (50% Roman Catholic and 50% other), a new focus on human rights, a new district command and headquarter structure, a review of ‘Special Branch’ and covert techniques, a concern for ‘policing with the community’ and a significant voluntary severance process to make room for new recruits, unconnected with the past history of the organisation(Murphy 2013).

This paper reflects upon the first data collection phase of a long term processual study of organisational change within the Royal Ulster Constabulary / Police Service of Northern Ireland. This phase (1996-2002) covers early organisational change initiation (including the pre-change period) and implementation including the instigation of symbolic changes (name, badge, and crest) and structural changes (new HQ structure and District Command structure). It utilises internal documentation including messages from the organisations leaders, interviews with forty key informants (identified through a combination of snow-balling from referrals by initial contacts, and key interviews with significant individuals), as well as external documentation and commentary on public perceptions of the change. Using a processual lens (Langley, Smallman et al. 2013) it seeks to understand this initial change phase and its relative success in a highly politicised environment.

By engaging key individuals internally and externally, setting up a dedicated change team, adopting a non normative, non urgent, calming approach to dissent, communicating in orthodox and unorthodox ways with members, acknowledging the huge emotional strain of letting go of the organisation’s name and all it embodied, and re-emphasising the role of officers as ‘police first’, rather than ‘RUC first’, the organisations leadership remained in control of a volatile and unhappy organisational body and succeeded in moving it on through this initial phase, even while much of the political establishment lambasted them externally. Three years into this change process the organisation had a new name, a new crest, new structures, procedures and was deeply engaged in embedding the joint principles of human rights and community policing within its re-woven fabric. While significant problems remained, the new Police Service of Northern Ireland had successfully begun a long journey to full community acceptance in a post conflict context.

This case illustrates the significant challenges of leading change under political pressure, with external oversight and no space for failure(Hannah, Uhl-Bien et al. 2009). It empirically reflects the reality of change implementation as messy, disruptive and unpredictable and highlights the significance of political skill and contextual understanding to success in the early stages(Buchanan and Boddy 1992). The implications of this for change theory and the practice of change implementation are explored (Eisenhardt and Graebner 2007) and some conclusions drawn about what such an extreme case tells us about change generally and change implementation under pressure.

Managing the Entanglement: Complexity Leadership in Public Sector Systems

Abstract
Complexity and environmental uncertainty in public sector systems requires leaders to balance the administrative practices necessary to be aligned and efficient in the management of routine challenges, and the adaptive practices required to respond to complex and dynamic circumstances. Conventional notions of leadership in the field of public administration do not fully explain the role of leadership in enabling and balancing the entanglement of formal, top-down, administrative functions and informal, emergent, adaptive functions within public sector settings with different levels of complexity. Drawing on and extending existing complexity leadership constructs, this paper explores how change was enabled over the duration of three urban regeneration projects, each representing high, medium and low levels of project complexity. The data reveals six distinct yet interconnected functions of enabling leadership that were identified within the three urban regeneration projects. The paper contributes to our understanding of how leadership is enacted and poses questions for those engaged in leading in complex public sector settings.

The analysis of political will and its role in leadership: a study of portuguese mayors

This thesis analyses the concept of Political Will, suggests its operationalization and establishes a typological theory that provides the necessary support for the diverse strategies of action of a leader. It claims that political leadership styles articulate a choice of action that results from the Political Will of a leader, which is determined by his intention and his discerned possibilities to act. One main research question guided our research: How does a political leader select and change his leadership style? The most illustrative literature on political leadership is reviewed and the characteristics of democratic governance are analyzed. This is followed by an overview of the most noteworthy theories on the theme and a claim for the need of concept coherence, given the multiplicity of the existent standpoints. After that, we concentrate on leadership styles, with a focus on the local governance context. Human action and intentionality are addressed with particular attention, as well as the motivational drivers for action, in order to advance a conceptualization of Political Will through two dimensions: intention and possibility. This analysis led to a number of relevant propositions: (1) Political Will ‘exists’ when the agent has the intent and the possibility to act; (2) these two dimensions ‘translate’ simultaneously what the agent believes he must do and can do; (3) Intention and possibility reflect diverse but limited worldviews; (4) political leadership styles result from the agent’s Political Will; (5) different combinations of the expected and actual worldviews result in different leadership styles; and (6) political leadership styles can change accordingly to several strategies which allow conformity or reflect reaction to worldviews. We suggested the operationalization of the two dimensions of Political Will through the analytical tool of Grid-group Theory, which provided the identification of the heuristic devices that allowed further comprehension on the subjectivity of the agent’s choice. Four standard property spaces – representing four types of leadership styles – result from a preliminary approach to this process. Afterwards, and because these dimensions operate simultaneously, we advance on the analysis and suggest some plausible heuristical conflicts to happen and describe which consequences, strategies and type migrations are conceivable. An inclusive and more complete set of resulting property spaces renders fourteen different types of leadership styles and sixty different predictable causal paths that result from the expected migration strategies. Case-studies were conducted as plausibility probes designed to provide improvements to our theoretical claims and addressed the cases we selected for research purposes: Portuguese Mayors. The findings from five case studies are discussed and the probable impact and congruence of each with the theoretical claims are assessed. The communalities of the causal mechanisms related to the function of intention and possibility as the dimensions of Political Will and their role in explaining different leadership styles are, finally, addressed. To conclude, we advance some repercussions, mainly in the public policies field of research, and suggest a number of different and necessary paths for further work.

Destructive Groups: The Role of Projective Identification in Suicidal Groups of Young People

Group suicidal behaviour by young people has been attracting increasing worldwide attention, but the subject has rarely been studied from a clinical or psychodynamic perspective. Although etiological factors are not well understood, unconscious as well as conscious group processes likely contribute to self-destructive actions. In this article we discuss the role of projective identification in the development of suicidal behavior by individuals who are part of a destructive group. We consider how these factors may operate, illustrated through a case description of a young man involved with a group of high school students that included at least four who made serious suicide attempts. Recognition and understanding of these forms of communication have important implications for clinical practice and suicide prevention.

Using creative problem solving (CPS) to improve leadership in a non-profit organization

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the Creative Problem Solving (CPS) method in improving the leadership process in a non-profit organization. The research was designed around an intervention and structured in three stages (pre-consult, intervention and follow-up), with a team designated by management, in order to bring leadership cohesion to both departments of the organization and also between the board and executive management. The results, expressed in the tasks performed and in the interviews to team members, allowed us to conclude on the effectiveness of the CPS method to improve organizational leadership, by establishing a stronger relationship between departments, as well as, in the long term, between the board and executive management. These results highlight possible solutions to improve the leadership of non-profit organizations.

The influence of authentic leadership on employees analyzed through self-determination theory

Dissertação de Mestrado, Gestão de Recursos Humanos, Escola Superior de Gestão, Hotelaria e Turismo, Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais, Universidade do Algarve, 2015

Authentic Leadership and Behavioral Integrity as Drivers of Follower Commitment and Performance

The literatures on both authentic leadership and behavioral integrity have argued that leader integrity drives follower performance. Yet, despite overlap in conceptualization and mechanisms, no research has investigated how authentic leadership and behavioral integrity relate to one another in driving follower performance. In this study, we propose and test the notion that authentic leadership behavior is an antecedent to perceptions of leader behavioral integrity, which in turn affects follower affective organizational commitment and follower work role performance. Analysis of a survey of 49 teams in the service industry supports the proposition that authentic leadership is related to follower affective organizational commitment, fully mediated through leader behavioral integrity. Next, we found that authentic leadership and leader behavioral integrity are related to follower work role performance, fully mediated through follower affective organizational commitment. These relationships hold when controlling for ethical organizational culture.

Research into the Impact of School Leadership on Pupil Outcomes: Policy and Research Contexts

This paper extends the introduction to the authors’ study of successful school leadership and how it influences pupil outcomes begun in the Editorial introduction. Critical to an appreciation especially of the external validity of their results is an understanding of the policy context in which the English leaders in their study found themselves; this is a policy context dominated by concerns for external accountability and increases in the academic performance of pupils. In addition to describing this context, the paper summarises the conceptual and methodological framework that guided the early stage of their research and outlines their mixed-methods research design.

Leadership in Improving Schools: A Qualitative Perspective

This article reports early case-study data gathered from 20 schools involved in the ‘Impact of School Leadership on Pupil Outcomes’ project. We present and discuss the perceptions of headteachers and other school leaders regarding leadership factors that directly and indirectly affect pupil outcomes in these improving schools. Included are issues relating to the pivotal role played by the headteacher in setting and communicating a strategic vision for the school; models of distributed leadership; and the building of leadership capacity so as to build a collective responsibility for the improvement of pupil outcomes.

The Impact of School Leadership on Parental Engagement: a Study of Inclusion and Cohesion

This article focuses on the role played by principals in enhancing parental involvement in primary schools. The schools involved in this research were characterised by a high presence of ethnic minority children and were located in a neighbourhood of low social and economic status in the Midlands region of the United Kingdom. Qualitative methods were employed in order to explore the influence of strong leadership on engagement of the parents. The study spanned a period of four years, giving an opportunity to examine sustainability of the activities introduced by the principals and staff. The findings reported are based on data collected from an Infant and Junior School involved in a number of extra-curricular and curriculum-enhancing projects. It argues that strong leadership fosters engagement of parents in school activities and thus academic achievement of pupils improved over time. The findings bring evidence that the role of the school principal is crucial in the introduction, implementation and sustainability of solutions focused on parental involvement, as well as bringing benefits to the social cohesion of the local community. Full Text: