Perceived managerial and leadership effectiveness within the Canadian public sector

• Author: Robert G. Hamlin,Sandi Whitford
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrdq.21406
• Date: 01 December 2020
• Published date: 01 December 2020

QUALITATIVE STUDY

Perceived managerial and leadership effectiveness

within the Canadian public sector

Robert G. Hamlin

1

| Sandi Whitford

2

1

Department of Human Resources &

Leadership, Wolverhampton Business School,

University of Wolverhampton,

Wolverhampton, UK

2

GB Contract Inspection Ltd, Regina,

Saskatchewan, Canada

Correspondence

Robert G. Hamlin, Department of Human

Resources & Leadership, Wolverhampton

Business School, University of

Wolverhampton, 10, Lansdowne Avenue,

Codsall, Wolverhampton WV8 2EN, UK.

Email: r.g.hamlin@wlv.ac.uk

Abstract

This study responds primarily to numerous calls for specific

public management and public administration-related

research to better understand public leadership currently

performed in an increasingly complex and ambiguous world.

It also responds to calls in the human resource development

(HRD) literature for more qualitative managerial behavior

research. The inquiry explores perceptions of what behav-

iorally distinguishes effective managers from ineffective

managers, as expressed by managers and nonmanagerial

employees within a Canadian public utility company. It

reaches for generalization by comparing the results against

findings from equivalent qualitative managerial behavior

studies carried out in three subareas of the British public

sector. Using the critical incident technique (CIT), concrete

examples (critical incidents [CIs]) of observed managerial

behavior were collected from managers and nonmanagerial

staff. The CIs (n= 530) were subjected to open and axial

coding to identify a smaller number of discrete behavioral

categories (BSs). Selective coding of the identified BSs

(n= 99) resulted in 16 positive (effective) and 12 negative

(ineffective) behavioral criteria (BCs) being deduced. Over

92% of the Canadian BSs are convergent in meaning with

over 81% of the compared British BSs. Consequently, they

are likely to be generalizable to other subareas of the Cana-

dian public sector. The 8% of nonconvergent Canadian BSs

and their respective underpinning CIs contain no content

that could be construed as being context-specific to the

DOI: 10.1002/hrdq.21406

© 2020 Wiley Periodicals LLC.

Human Resource Development Quarterly. 2020;31:423–448. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hrdq 423

Canadian public utility sector. Implications of these study

findings for HRD research and practice are discussed.

KEYWORDS

competencies/competency, evidence-based HRD, leadership

development, management development, managerial and

leadership effectiveness, perception

1|INTRODUCTION

In the increasingly complex and ambiguous world of the 21st century, new challenges and pressures are being placed

on public sector organizations (Vogel & Masal, 2015). For example, there is the need for increasing business effi-

ciency that requires managers to be highly effective in managing upwards, downwards, and outwards, and for placing

less reliance on traditional hierarchical authority but instead more on the skills of negotiation, inter-organizational

diplomacy, and relationship building (Head, 2010; O'Toole, Meier, & Nicholson-Crotty, 2005). Furthermore, as Leslie

and Canwell (2010) argue, the current main challenge for the public sector is to deliver improved services through a

motivated and engaged workforce. This means administrative leaders/public managers need to give priority to build-

ing leadership capacity and capabilities at all levels. Their view supports Wallis and McLoughlin (2007) who contend

that more effective leadership is called for at both senior and middle levels of management in public sector organiza-

tions. Such challenges have led some writers to argue that public leadership is becoming a distinctive and autono-

mous domain in the field of public administration/public management and that it needs to be studied separately

from general leadership (Getha-Taylor, Holmes, Jacobson, Morse, & Sowa, 2011).

This view is supported by Chapman et al. (2016) who claim there is “a lack of convergence both theoretically

and empirically that presents challenges to advancing an integrative theory or even fostering a more coherent dia-

logue around what is known about public leadership”(p. 113). Orazi, Turrini, and Valotti (2013) assert that adminis-

trative leaders in the public sector behave differently from their counterparts in the business world. As a result, they

argue there is a great need for leadership development programs to focus on these reputed behavioral differences,

instead of merely mimicking programs designed for leaders in the private sector. However, few contemporary public

sector-specific qualitative manager/leader behavior studies that focus on exploring what those behavioral differ-

ences are, or more broadly on what constitutes effective manager/leader behavioral performance in the 21st cen-

tury, have been carried out over the past two decades (Liccione, 2005; Mumford, 2011; Van Wart, 2003, 2013).

Furthermore, as Vogel and Masal (2015) state, most studies of public leadership using the “behavioral approach”are

based on “conceptual foundations and with operational definitions of leadership traits, skills and behavior”obtained

from the classical literature on transformational leadership (p. 1175). They also assert that “empirical evidence on

whether public sector organizations facilitate or inhibit transformational leadership is sparse and yields mixed results”

(p. 1176). For example, Trottier, van Wart, and Wang (2008) found US federal government employees ranking their

leaders higher in transactional rather than transformational competencies. Yet according to Hansen and

Villadsen (2010), public managers are more likely than managers in private companies to adopt participative styles of

leadership behavior which tend to fall into the transformational category of managerial competence. These mixed

findings lend support for Van Wart's (2013) call for researchers to conduct behavioral studies of administrative

leaders/public managers designed specifically to identify competency profiles and models that are context-specific to

public sector organizations. We suggest management training programs based on such derived profiles/models are

likely to provide better guidance and support for public managers than conventional programs informed/shaped by

context-general theories such as the transformational and transactional models of leadership.

Several 21st-century human resource development (HRD) researchers have conducted manager/leader behavior

studies that are consistent with the type of inquiries called for by Van Wart (2013). Following the example of Latham

424 HAMLIN AND WHITFORD