The New Public Leadership Challenge

Citation

Brookes, S. (2011), "The New Public Leadership Challenge", Human Resource Management International Digest, Vol. 19 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/hrmid.2011.04419daa.016

The New Public Leadership Challenge

Article Type: Suggested reading From: Human Resource Management International Digest, Volume 19, Issue 4

S. Brookes and K. Grint (Eds)Palgrave Macmillan2010,ISBN: 9780230224179

This ambitious and timely book draws together contributions from specialist academics, policymakers, practitioners and consultants in public leadership, organizational design and change, public-sector management and public-sector reform. The collection was inspired by debates arising from a successful Economic and Social Research Council seminar series convened by the editors, and contains a mixture of theoretical, conceptual and empirical data with the last largely gathered from action research, participant observation, case-study material and survey/interview findings.

The book is a welcome addition to literature on public leadership, not least as it fills a gap in knowledge in the UK and Europe. It will also add to global debates on public leadership in a period of fiscal austerity.

Literature on public leadership is better established in the US, with few titles available in Europe. I would like to congratulate both editors in producing an important volume on public leadership within a reform program. It examines how consistently leadership is being applied across the public sector, as well as its measurement and evaluation. These stated aims are reflected in 21 eclectic chapters, grouped into three themes.

After a sound introductory chapter setting the scene for examining differences between new public management and new (collaborative) public leadership in a reform program, the author of Chapter 2 assesses the importance of civil-service leadership and offers a new framework for analysis. Chapters 3 and 4 address leadership in healthcare and education; both stress the need for professional leadership as a challenge to the neo-liberal model of business leadership.

Chapter 5 is not, strictly speaking, about leadership, but focuses on how new public-management reforms have affected public confidence and the legitimacy of policing. Perhaps the editors might have exerted a stronger steer or brief on the content?

Chapter 6 examines local-government reform and political leadership, demonstrating how institutional legacies negate imaginative and energetic leadership. It is difficult to see how this chapter on political leadership differs from a later chapter (to be discussed later in this review).

In chapter 7, which again is not explicitly about leadership, rather the consequences of new public-management reforms on the UK defense industry, the author draws on US and Canadian research and principal agency theory. Lord Turnbull, former UK Cabinet secretary and leader of the civil service, provides a contribution based on long civil-service experience to identify public-sector leadership developmental needs in a complex world of continuous reform. The distinctive context, constrained choices, and need for refection and collective approaches to problem solving are highlighted.

In chapter 9, drawing on US literature, the author correctly asserts that new public leadership is under-researched, by illustrating that existing research on political leadership fails to acknowledge political and economic contexts, how to manage tensions between centralized control and performance regimes, and the impact of leaders on outputs/outcomes.

Chapter 10 adds to our theoretical and practical knowledge of collective/distributed leadership by using examples from criminal justice. This is followed by a refreshing review of how tame, wicked and critical problems demand specific types of leadership. Some useful figures accompany the text.

Chapter 12 is a forward-thinking chapter on whole-systems leadership. What follows in Chapter 13 is based on a survey of 1,400 managers; the public-management index. This is an interesting chapter, containing numerous quotes, but the terms “leadership” and “management” are used interchangeably, thereby confusing both concepts. A major problem with this chapter, in view of the overall theme, is that a survey of managers’ perceptions about their role, albeit with a questionnaire including some questions on leadership, offers only a limited contribution to the leadership debate.

In the following chapter we are offered an insightful analysis of some empirical findings based on an adaptive-leadership and public-value theoretical framework. The author (academic) shadowed a senior public-sector leader to examine leadership in a particular context, to demonstrate theory in practice, rather than a post hoc application of theory followed by reflection on practice. This results in an illuminating new approach.

Chapter 15, though interesting, is not essentially related to leadership. Instead it provides a narrative based on empirical data on NHS mental-health managers. The findings are stories of managers coping or resisting the reform process.

The author of chapter 16 uses a specific piece of legislation in criminal justice to demonstrate a missed opportunity for public leaders. More especially, the Act in question provided an excellent way of developing shared and distributed leadership, with lukewarm (at best), or non-existent (at worst) results. The limitations placed on local leaders are a significant element of this chapter, and I wondered why this chapter was not combined with some of the contents in chapter 10.

Chapter 17 shared similarities with the earlier chapter on whole systems, but develops the notion of “systems leadership” to explain partnership working, whereas Chapter 18 highlights changing delivery chains and the importance of distributed and shared learning and innovation.

In chapter 19 a distinction is drawn between public and third-sector leadership and chapter 20 focuses on the relevance and practical uses of existing understanding of measuring and evaluating public leadership.

In the excellent concluding chapter, the main strands of each contribution are drawn together with two key questions emerging. First, is new public leadership different from new public management, which has largely been discredited, and how can new public leadership be evaluated? Both offer a rich seam for future research.

Inevitably, in a collection carrying so many diverse contributions, there will be overlaps in coverage, queries on chapter ordering, and a need to assert strong editorial control over content, structure and format. Despite some small quibbles in these respects, I do believe that this is a brave and groundbreaking book in an under-researched area.

Reviewed by Joyce Liddle, International Centre for Public Services Management, Nottingham Business School, UK.

A longer version of this review was originally published in the International Journal of Public Sector Management, Vol. 24 No. 1, 2011.