Public Sector Leadership: Definition
Since the publication of Weber’s Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (1922), the issue of how an individual might influence the behavior of others has been a major topic of research in the administrative and political sciences. However, the topic has experienced a discontinuous level of attention. Excepting a few eminent works – in particular, Selznick’s (1957) classic Leadership in Administration – the “publicness” of leadership has usually been referred to as political leadership, which is mainly performed by elected representatives in democratic regimes or authoritarian rulers in dictatorships. The consolidated belief that administrative leadership (i.e., public sector leadership) is not relevant was related to the assumption that public executives were overwhelmed and tied by external “forces” (i.e., political power and regulatory procedures) shaping public administration and its operation, leaving no discretional power or opportunity to change the...
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Saporito, R., Turrini, A. (2019). Public Sector Leadership and Governance. In: Farazmand, A. (eds) Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31816-5_3411-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31816-5_3411-1
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