What is Public about Public Leadership? Exploring ImplicitPublicLeadership Theories

Datos Bibliográficos

ID6295410
AutoresRick Vogel (0000-0002-1361-5085, Universität Hamburg, autor de correspondencia), Laura Werkmeister (Universität Hamburg)
Año2021
Volumen31
Número1
Páginas166-183
Fecha de publicación2021-02-04
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Public Administration Research and Theory (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1053-1858 • E-ISSN: 1477-9803
EditorialOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/jopart/muaa024
OpenAlexW3034317585
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas24
Referencias citadas78

While scholarship on public leadership has recently gained momentum in public administration, it is unclear how researchers should account for the “public” in public leadership. We shed new light on this issue by introducing the approach of Implicit Leadership Theories (ILTs) to the field of public administration. This socio-cognitive approach suggests that people’s everyday, rather than scholarly, theories about the characteristics of leaders provide important explanations of how they respond to leadership situations. We investigate whether people hold Implicit Public Leadership Theories (IPLTs) and explore how these images of public leaders contrast with generic ILTs. We extract these taxonomies from data gathered in a survey experiment in Germany (N = 1,072). Results show that IPLTs have overlaps with generic ILTs but are unique in terms of rule abidance and innovation-orientation. In contrast, charismatic aspects of leadership only figure in generic ILTs. The structure of ILTs, both generic and public, is surprisingly stable across the subsamples of public and non-public employees. We discuss how the findings may assist public management scholars in the development of explicit theories of public leadership and derive a research agenda based on a socio-cognitive approach

Charisma · Contrast (vision · Field (mathematics · Leadership Theory · Political science · Public relations · Scholarship · Shared leadership · Sociology · Transactional leadership · Accounting and Organizational Management · Computer Science · Management and Organizational Studies · Psychology · Public Policy and Administration Research · Social Psychology