Managing the Entanglement: Complexity Leadership in Public Sector Systems

• Author: Jack W. Meek,Mary Lee Rhodes,Joanne Murphy,David Denyer
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12698
• Published date: 01 September 2017
• Date: 01 September 2017

692 Public Administration Review • September | October 2017

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 77, Iss. 5, pp. 692–704. © 2016 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12698.

Managing the Entanglement:

Complexity Leadership in Public Sector Systems

Jack W. Meek is University of La Verne

Academy Professor and professor of public

administration in the College of Business

and Public Management at the University

of La Verne, where he serves as director of

the Center for Research. He offers courses

in research methods and collaborative

public management. His research focuses

on metropolitan governance, including

the emergence of local and regional

collaboration and partnerships, policy

networks, and citizen engagement.

E-mail: jmeek@laverne.edu

Mary Lee Rhodes is associate professor

of public management at Trinity College,

Dublin, Ireland. Her research is focused

on complexity, public service systems, and

the dynamics of performance. She has

published numerous articles on housing as a

complex adaptive system, and her book on

Complexity and Public Management

was published by Routledge in 2011. Her

current research focuses on the nature and

dynamics of social impact, social innovation,

and social finance.

E-mail: rhodesml@tcd.ie

Joanne Murphy is lecturer in

organizational change in the Management

School at Queen’s University Belfast,

United Kingdom and a fellow in the Senator

George J. Mitchell Institute for Global

Peace, Security and Justice. Her research

focuses on leadership and organizational

change, especially institutional change in

postconflict environments. She has written

extensively on change after conflict.

E-mail: joanne.murphy@qub.ac.uk

Abstract : Complexity 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

dynamic circumstances. Conventional notions of leadership in the field of public administration do not fully explain

the role of leadership in 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 article explores how leadership is enacted over the duration

of six urban regeneration projects representing high, medium, and low levels of project complexity. The article suggests

that greater attention needs to be paid to the tensions inherent in enabling leadership if actors are to cope with the

complex, collaborative, cross-boundary, adaptive work in which they are increasingly engaged.

Practitioner Points

• The multiplicity of actors, contexts, and objectives in complex public administration projects present distinct

challenges to leaders, requiring a nuanced set of leadership practices.

• In low-complexity environments, administrative leadership practices are common. In medium-complexity

environments, both administrative leadership and adaptive practices are present; in complex environments,

adaptive practices predominate.

• In complex environments, inclusion of diverse skills/perspectives is dominant, but other adaptive practices

such as stimulating innovative ideas and changing plans, processes, and routines emerge.

• Enabling leadership manages tensions created by the need to achieve both a sense of stability to coordinate,

structure, and control organizational activity (administrative) and the conditions for innovation, change, and

transformation.

• Greater attention needs to be paid to the tensions inherent in enabling leadership if actors are to cope with

the complex, collaborative cross-boundary work in which they are increasingly engaged.

Joanne Murphy

Queen ’ s University Belfast, United Kingdom

Mary Lee Rhodes

Trinity College Dublin , Ireland

Jack W. Meek

University of La Verne

David Denyer

Cranfield University, United Kingdom

P ublic administration and leadership scholars

are expressing growing concerns that existing

models of leadership may not fully capture the

leadership dynamics operating in today ’ s complex

environments (McKelvey and Lichtenstein 2007 ).

In a recent issue of Public Administration Review,

authors (Hansen 2013 ; Nalbandian et al. 2013 ; Van

Wart 2013) emphasized the importance of leadership

processes in enabling change and transformation

in complex public sector systems, yet many of

these studies draw on leadership constructs based

on “classical management and role theory” (Van

Wart 2013, 553). In the twenty-first century, the

multiplicity of actors, contexts, and paradigmatic shifts

in public administration present distinct challenges

to leadership (Heifetz, Linsky, and Grashow 2009 ;

Terry 1995 ; Van Wart 2003). Leadership is “embedded

in a complex interplay of numerous interacting

forces” (Uhl-Bien, Marion, and McKelvey 2007 ,

302). Unstable times and crises increase distractions

and often require unique approaches (Boin and

Otten 1996 ; Van Wart 2003; Wheatley 2006 ). It is

unsurprising, therefore, that researchers have struggled

to come to terms with the empirical realities and

the subtlety of exploring leadership practices in such

“tangled” environments (Van Wart 2003).

Recent research on complexity leadership has

challenged traditional notions of leadership by

shifting attention away from the characteristics of

leaders and the actions of individuals toward the

relational, dynamic, distributed nature of leadership

processes (Uhl-Bien 2006 ; Uhl-Bien, Marion, and

McKelvey 2007 ). The complexity perspective suggests

that leadership is required to maintain a sense of

stability in order to coordinate, structure, and control

organizational activity, as well as to generate the

conditions for innovation, change, and transformation

David Denyer is professor of

leadership and organizational change in

the Cranfield School of Management at

Cranfield University, United Kingdom. He

has an international reputation for his

research on leadership in extreme contexts,

organizational resilience, and evidence-based

management. He has published a large

number of articles and book chapters and

regularly speaks at international conferences

and high-profile events. He has also made

a substantial contribution outside academia

through strategic and policy advisory roles.

E-mail: david.denyer@cranfield.ac.uk