The Administrative Sherpa and the Journey of Public Service Leadership

• DOI: 10.1177/0095399713498747
• Author: Catherine Althaus
• Date: 01 May 2016
• Published date: 01 May 2016
• Subject Matter: Articles

Administration & Society

2016, Vol. 48(4) 395 –420

© The Author(s) 2013

DOI: 10.1177/0095399713498747

aas.sagepub.com

Article

The Administrative

Sherpa and the Journey

of Public Service

Leadership

Catherine Althaus1

Abstract

The sherpa is offered as a helpful metaphor amid the rich and diverse

metaphorical landscape describing public administration at the interface

between senior public servants and ministers. The sherpa model

acknowledges the complexity and nuanced leadership now demanded in the

Westminster tradition, offering fresh tools for practitioners to think more

critically about their role and how they can improve leadership skills. It also

offers theoretical ability to incorporate relevant but underdeveloped factors,

such as the environment, into the administrative leadership equation, thus

enlarging issues at stake and forces demanding scrutiny, if administrative

leadership is to be better understood.

Keywords

metaphor, leadership, sherpa, public administration

Administrative leadership is complex and nuanced at all levels of public ser-

vice, especially, for senior public servants working within a Westminster

model, which is the focus of this article. Public servants must accommodate

the competing needs of a variety of stakeholders and “masters,” provide

1University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

Corresponding Author:

Catherine Althaus, School of Public Administration, University of Victoria, PO Box 1700 STN

CSC, Victoria, BC V8W 2Y2, Canada.

Email: calthaus@uvic.ca

498747AAS48410.1177/0095399713498747Administration & SocietyAlthaus

research-article2013

396 Administration & Society 48(4)

policy vision and prudent judgment within a competitive arena, take risks and

be entrepreneurial within an environment of stringent accountability, and bal-

ance the notion of public interest against, often short-term, expedient politi-

cal calls for action. Leadership in the public service is expected to be exercised

at all levels of the bureaucracy leading to multiple and often contending

forms of administrative leadership (Podger, Simic, Halton, Shergold, &

Maher, 2004; Vinzant & Crothers, 1998).There is no single model or frame-

work of leadership and no one set of leadership terminology that might be

used to describe what happens or prescribe what is needed.

Administrative leadership is seen as a relatively new field and has been pre-

occupied with synthesizing the state of the literature, in works such as those

exemplified by Kellerman and Webster (2001), Van Wart (2003), and Rainey

(2009). The aim is to get a handle on the proliferation of information on the

topic, to suggest theoretical movement in the trajectory of insight, and to reiter-

ate that leadership in the public setting is a practical exercise that is neither neat

nor easy. Kellerman and Webster (2001) used the categorization of (a) indi-

vidual; (b) groups/organizations; (c) nations; (d) transnational arrangements;

and (e) cross-cutting themes, to try to highlight different foci in the literature.

Van Wart (2003) traced a historical trajectory of eras in modern leadership the-

ory from (a) great man; (b) trait; (c) contingency; (d) transformational; (e) ser-

vant; (f) multifaceted integrative approaches to leadership. But no single model

stands out (Van Slyke & Alexander, 2006). Rainey (2009), specifically links

public sector leadership with organizational culture and processes, highlights

the interactive roles of followers and leaders, and makes a case for consider-

ation of the unique properties and settings of public sector leadership vis-à-vis

its private sector counterpart. However, a key message from the field of admin-

istrative leadership studies framed in the literature is that diverse theories exist

and many practical applications of leadership are at stake.

An example of one aspect of the diversity of modern administrative lead-

ership is represented by calls to the modern public service to be responsive—

to user or “client” communities (see for example, Sheaff, Pickard, & Smith,

2002), to the public interest (see for example, Chang, 2005), and to the elected

government of the day (see for example, Stewart, 2008). The notion of

responsiveness has provoked questions on whether it infringes on the impar-

tiality demands of public servants (Public Service Commission of Canada,

2008). Australian academic, Jenny Stewart (2008, p. 1), frames the respon-

siveness debate in ethical terms:

Too much responsiveness implies a public service that has become compliant to

the point of subordinating its professional integrity to the political needs of

Ministers. Too little, implies a public service that ignores its duty to serve Ministers

in favor of pursuing its own interests.