Leadership in the Public Sector

• Author: Patricia Wallace Ingraham,Heather Getha-Taylor
• DOI: 10.1177/0734371X04263323
• Published date: 01 June 2004
• Date: 01 June 2004
• Subject Matter: Journal Article

10.1177/0734371X04263323

REVIEWOFPUBLICPERSONNELADMINISTRATION/June2004

Ingraham,Getha-Taylor/LEADERSHIPDEVELOPMENT

Leadership in the Public Sector:

Models and Assumptions for Leadership Development

in the Federal Government

PATRICIA WALLACE INGRAHAM

HEATHER GETHA-TAYLOR

Syracuse University

Tofill the need for leaders and change agents throughout all levels of federal agen -

cies, public sector human resourcemanagers are now called on to develop innova-

tive leadership development programs. Developing leaders for the 21st century

requires attention to workforce trends as well as flexibility and creativity.Federal

government leadership development programs need to address special leadership

concerns of public agency managers, including creative thinking,collaboration,

cross-organizational team building, and leading for results. This research pro-

vides overviews of federalleadership development programs and includes average

and exemplary models. Lessons learned from this research offer a new set of lead-

ership development assumptions for the public sector. Datawere gathered from

document analysis, preliminary network interviews, and in-depth personal

interviews with program designers and participants.

Keywords: leadership development programs; strategic human resource man-

agement; training innovation

Effective leadership is integral to organizational effectiveness. Effective

leaders create positive organizational cultures, strengthen motivation,

clarify mission and organizational objectives, and steer organizations to more

productive and high performing outcomes. Recent evidence of the impor-

tance of leadership and its absence or limited presence in some public organi-

zations is plentiful. A 2003 study conductedby the Partnership for Public Ser-

vice, for example, analyzed the U.S. Office of PersonnelManagement’s 2002

Federal Human Capital Survey (FHCS) to determine the “best places to

work” in the federal government (Partnership for Public Service, 2003).

Although the Partnership’s Best Places to Work analysis of FHCS data indi-

cated that leadership was a key driver in workplace satisfaction, the FHCS

95

Review of Public Personnel Administration,Vol. 24, No. 2 June 2004 95-112

DOI: 10.1177/0734371X04263323

© 2004 Sage Publications

ARTICLES

overall did not indicate that satisfaction with leadership was high in the fed-

eral government. Rather, it indicated that more than half of the federal

employees surveyed found leadership to be deficient. This finding is obvi-

ously alarming (U.S. Office of Personnel Management, 2002).

Because leadership plays a crucial role in the other two factors believed to

drive employee satisfaction—utilizing employee skills and teamwork—

developing and sustaining effective leaders for the government of the 21st

century is clearly fundamental. As further evidence, a recent analysis of the

organizational transformation at the Internal Revenue Service concluded

that effective and committed leadership was a critical factor in the success of

that organization’s change (Thompson & Rainey,2003). Finally,in an anal-

ysis of management capacity and the “potential for performance”in federal

agencies and state and local governments, Ingraham, Joyce, and Donahue

(2003) reported that, in each case where strong management capacity was

developed, strong leadership was also present.

The concern for finding and keeping effective leaders is a priority not

only for the public sector but for the private sector as well. In private sector

organizations, the role and authority of leadership is clearly identifiedand

often heralded; indeed, private sector nostrums such as Lee Iaccoca’s “Lead,

follow, or get out the way!” are often echoed in public leaders’ charges.

Comptroller General David Walker’s 2003 address to the National Press

Club included a call to action: Government leaders, he said “need to recog-

nize the leadership and stewardship obligations that we have to our chil-

dren, grandchildren, and future generations” (Walker, 2003, n.p.).

Exercising leadership in public sector organizations, however, is different

from leading private organizations. One of the most significant is the bifur-

cated administrative model created by placing elected and appointed offi-

cials, as well as senior leaders from the career bureaucracy at the top of many

public organizations. This pattern is most notable in the federal govern-

ment (Ingraham, 1995) but has important parallels in state and local gov-

ernment as well. Split leadership, combined with democratic accountabil-

ity, oversight procedures created by courts and legislatures, and intense

media attention, creates an environment for public sector leaders that is

constrained in many complex ways.

This is not to suggest that public organizations should not worry about

leadershipbecauseitissohard.Rather,thepointisthatleadershipiscritical

to effective organizational adaptation to change as well as to more general

organizational performance (Ingraham, Sowa, & Moynihan, 2004;

Thompson & Rainey,2003). For public organizations, the need to perform

96 REVIEW OF PUBLIC PERSONNEL ADMINISTRATION/ June 2004