Public‐Sector Leadership Theory: An Assessment

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1540-6210.00281
• Published date: 01 March 2003
• Date: 01 March 2003
• Author: Montgomery Van Wart

214 Public Administration Review •March/April 2003, Vol. 63, No. 2

Montgomery Van Wart

Texas Tech University

Public-Sector Leadership Theory:

An Assessment

This article reviews the mainstream leadership literature and its perennial debates and compares

it to the public-sector (administrative) leadership literature. The mainstream leadership literature

fully articulated the transformational models in the 1980s and began the serious work of integrat-

ing transactional and transformational types of leadership into comprehensive models in the 1990s.

Many have considered this to be a major advance over the field’s previous fragmentation and

excessively narrow focus. This integration has not been reflected in the public-sector literature, in

which the normative debates about what leaders should do has received most of the attention in

the last decade. Although many types of leadership in the public sector have been discussed

extensively, such as leadership by those in policy positions and working in community settings,

administrative leadership within organizations has received scant attention and would benefit

from a research agenda linking explicit and well-articulated models with concrete data in public-

sector settings.

In 1995, Larry Terry noted the neglect of administrative

or “bureaucratic leadership” in the public-sector literature.

This article assesses the state of the administrative leader-

ship literature. It examines the following questions:

•Is the study of administrative (that is, bureaucratic)

leadership important?

•What are the reasons for the neglect of administrative

leadership, including the difficulties associated with this

type of research?

•Has the administrative leadership literature made

significant strides since Terry’s observation in 1995? If

not, why?

•What are the specific strengths and weaknesses of the

literature, whatever its overall robustness? In particular,

how does it compare with the mainstream (that is, largely

private-sector-focused) literature?

•What areas are ripe for research?

To address these questions, a relatively exhaustive re-

view of public-sector leadership was conducted, as well as

a thorough review of the major schools in the mainstream

literature. Because of the many weaknesses in the litera-

ture (in scope, in numerous gaps, and in theory building),

it is hoped this article can make a major contribution in

defining the terrain of this complex and difficult area so

that more rapid and coherent progress can be made.

The Importance and Challenges of

Leadership Research

The Importance of Leadership

To most people, the importance of leadership is self-

evident no matter what the setting. In organizations, effec-

tive leadership provides higher-quality and more efficient

goods and services; it provides a sense of cohesiveness,

personal development, and higher levels of satisfaction

among those conducting the work; and it provides an

overarching sense of direction and vision, an alignment

with the environment, a healthy mechanism for innova-

tion and creativity, and a resource for invigorating the or-

ganizational culture. This is no small order, especially in

contemporary times.

Leadership is difficult in all eras, to be sure, but it seems

that today’s leaders face additional challenges. While the

shared-power environment created in the second half of

the twentieth century enhanced many aspects of democ-

racy, “it also makes leadership more difficult” (Henton,

Montgomery Van Wart is the director of the Center for Public Service and

an associate professor at Texas Tech University. His research interests include

administrative ethics, public management, human resources management,

and leadership. He is currently completing a book on administrative leader-

ship for M.E. Sharpe. Email: monty.vanwart@ttu.edu.