Dissertationen zum Thema „Public leader“

It has become popular for political scientists to discuss the transformation from government to governance and the networks’ greater influence on public policymaking. However, this debate lacks methodological, empirical and theoretical research about the relationship between governance networks and representative democracy. The main objective of this essay is to understand the relationship between governance networks and representative democracy through a case study of the governance network Leader Linné. The theoretical framework includes four analysis models about the relationship between governance networks and representative democracy that are analysed by five factors connected to representative democracy. Each model has a specific approach to the public policymaking in networks e. g. were the power lies, how the general interest is understood and the role of politicians. The essay is designed as a case study combined with interviews of participants from the network’s national, regional and local level. The result of the essay is that the relationship between the governance network and representative democracy is complemental, meaning that representative democracy makes the central decisions in society where secondary decisions are made through a combination of representative- and participate democracy introduced by Leader. In Leader Linné the general interest is formed at EU level and politicians have a managerial role.

Purpose: The purpose of this mixed method phenomenological study was to explore and understand the leadership preferences of millennial employees in the public sector. Leadership preferences were generally defined as the traits and behaviors supervisors possess that millennials favor in the workplace. The study was designed to explore the beliefs, attitudes, and needs current public sector millennial employees have about their supervisor or leader.

Methodology: The subjects in this study were 50 millennial employees in the human resources department of a public-sector agency in Los Angeles County, California. Subjects responded to two research instruments: (1) a 7-item survey, the LMX7 Questionnaire, utilized to examine the quality of exchange between a leader and subordinate; and (2) a 20-item survey, Kelley’s Followership Questionnaire, utilized to measure independent critical thinking and active engagement. Eight employees were selected and responded to an interview that utilized 11 semi-structured questions to assess subjects’ individual experiences of public sector millennial employees.

Findings: Examination of quantitative and qualitative data from the respondents indicated that, despite their apparent similarities, millennial employees in the public sector are unique. Second, an examination of the same data indicated that, while the benefits and stability of the public sector initially attracted millennials, the opportunity to work in an innovative department with a supervisor who acted as a change agent and listened to their ideas while providing feedback was important to them.

Conclusions and Recommendations: If the public sector is to attract, motivate, and retain millennials, leaders must adopt a positive and open attitude toward this generational group while ensuring an innovative and engaging environment. Millennials, accused of being disloyal to organizations, were more likely to remain in their public- sector positions if they felt valued. This study could be replicated longitudinally to explore the attitudes and beliefs of millennials as they age or enter another life or career stage to determine if changes could be attributed to age or life or career stage rather than tied to their specific generation.

Military intervention forces use a variety of techniques to achieve success in counterinsurgency operations. One technique recently put into more widespread practice by military units in Iraq and Afghanistan is key leader engagement. Key leader engagements are meetings that members of intervention forces conduct with influential people within a host-nation population capable of swaying the support of broader constituencies. The intent of these engagements is to establish functional relationships with powerful local leaders to further mission objectives.

This project is the first attempt to empirically evaluate the impact of key leader engagements as part of counterinsurgency operations. Using data from the Department of Defense's Combined Information Data Network Exchange (CIDNE) database during the military "Surge" of forces in Baghdad, Iraq, the author evaluates the impact of key leader engagements on reducing attacks against elements of the coalition military intervention force in the city. While some of the findings support practitioners' assertions about key leader engagements, others go counter to some of the prevailing assessments of key leader engagement effectiveness. First, the author finds that key leader engagements only impact levels of violence when conducted in conjunction with other intervention force operations. Second, the author found that—contrary to some practitioners' assessments that more engagements led to more successful counterinsurgency operations—large numbers key leader engagements were not always associated with a reduction in attacks. It was only those forces that appeared to use key leader engagements discriminately that observed a reduction in attacks. Third, key leader engagements involving promises were associated with an increase in attacks against the intervention force. Finally, contrary to the expectation that more frequent contact with small numbers of key leaders would reduce prejudice and strengthen cooperative relationships, frequent contact with small numbers of key leaders was associated with an increased propensity for attacks.

Based on these findings, the author recommends that the U.S. military continue its efforts to identify "best practices" for key leader engagements, refine the methods of evaluating the effectiveness of these engagements, mandate the integration of lethal and non-lethal targeting boards, and incorporate a greater analytical capability into the evaluation of persuasive operations in war.

Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) has been studied extensively in a variety of settings for the last thirty years. There has been no research, however, on OCB in the public library environment. OCB is grounded on the premise that helping others in the organization, even when such behavior is unrewarded, has a cumulative effect that is beneficial both for individual staff members and for the organization as a whole. This focus on “helpful” behaviors is especially relevant for a field such as public librarianship, given its foundation on altruistic ideals.

This dissertation begins to address the lack of research on organizational citizenship behaviors in public libraries by examining the relationship among OCB and two of its correlates: Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) and perceived supervisor support. Analysis of data reveals that OCB shows a statistically significant correlation with both LMX and perceived supervisor support, but that perceived supervisor support is a more powerful predictor of OCB in the workplace studied. One of the primary findings of this research is that institutions wishing to encourage OCB must focus not only on the citizenship behaviors of front-line staff, but also on the skills of the middle managers and other managerial leaders who directly oversee them. Immediate supervisors play a critical role in facilitating OCB by maintaining high quality exchange relationships with, and demonstrating consistent support for, their supervisees. This finding has practical importance not only for how managerial leaders should be expected to perform, but also for their hiring, training, and development.

Organizational citizenship behavior has been shown to impact positively traditional work outcomes such as effectiveness and productivity, as well as attitudinal and behavioral outcomes such as organizational commitment and engagement. This research affirms the importance of OCB as an organizational construct and highlights its potential for the public library environment. Further, it provides practical methods for fostering and maintaining a workplace culture that values and encourages citizenship behaviors. This study will be of particular interest to library administrators, human resource managers, and those in managerial leadership positions as they seek to hire for, train, develop, and retain both managerial and front-line staff who demonstrate behaviors that improve interpersonal relationships and organizational effectiveness.

Purpose: The purpose of this sequential, explanatory mixed-methods study was to identify and describe to what extent the quality of the leader-follower relationship, as perceived by followers, affects followers’ organizational citizenship behaviors in a public-service organization.

Methodology: A sequential mixed-methods study was the chosen design for this study as it allowed the researcher to conduct the study in phases. The first phase consisted of quantitative research in the form of a survey questionnaire that measured followers’ organizational citizenship behaviors demonstrated toward individuals and the organization. The researcher then conducted semistructured, face-to-face interviews that measured the quality of the leader-follower relationship to gain a deeper understanding of the effect the leader-follower relationship has on followers’ organizational citizenship behaviors.

Findings: Followers working in a public-service organization engage in organizational citizenship behaviors at a moderate to high level, willingly assisting co-workers and to a lesser extent, their organization. Additionally, those who identified experiencing a high-quality leader-follower relationship spoke highly of their leader, the opportunities they are given to be creative in their service to the public, and their ability to work as a team to accomplish desired results. Those who did not experience a high-quality leader-follower relationship also performed organizational citizenship behaviors but cited only their intrinsic motivation and not leader influence as the inspiration of their efforts.

Conclusions: Public-service followers understand and accept the responsibilities that come with keeping the public trust and achieve personal satisfaction in fulfilling the needs of others. They go above and beyond in their job duties regardless of the quality of relationship they experience with their leader. However, public-service followers who experience a high-quality relationship with their leader experience a deeper satisfaction in their work relationships, in their contributions and in public service.

Recommendations: Additional research is needed in the area of public-service leadership, public-service followership and the public-service customer. It would be beneficial to replicate this study in one or more public-service organizations to gain additional data that can help better understand the leader-follower relationship and its effect on followers’ organizational citizenship behaviors.

The possibility to be able to better manage the Swedish public health care has been a focus from way back to the middle of the 20th century. This study focuses on a middle managerial position called Base-unit Executive Officer, which we feel is of great influence to the public health care. Because of the changes to the public health care organisations over a long period of time we find it important and interesting to research a managerial role in the midst of these changes. By going through information containing opinions, attitudes, and other information from employees within a CCDO we will try to enlighten what we feel are informational currents of opinions surrounding the notion of competence, leadership and management. The purpose of our study is to be able to help create an environment of open reflections and new ideas of what sort of competencies are required for the manager role.

The study is defined by our research problem which give use the following question:

What room is there for a broader comprehension of what kinds of competencies are desirable and useable in the role as a Base-unit Executive Officer?

To be able to interpret the primary data of the study a theoretic framework was created in the purpose to function as a tool for continuation of the study. The study was done with the use of hermeneutical paradigm together with a compromise between deductive and inductive approach.

The primary data of the study was collected with a qualitative method through semi-structured interviews with six employees of whom three were Base-unit Executive Officers. The reason for the use of a qualitative method was that it gives us conditions to gather the opinions, thoughts, values etc. of the respondents.

By merging the tools of our theoretic framework and the collected data we were able to establish an analysis. We concluded that the analysis consisted of both congruence and discrepancy related to our theoretical framework. The discrepancy showed that there exist a room for a broader comprehension of what kinds of competencies are desirable and useable in the role as a Base-unit Executive Officer. There is room to develop the comprehension of competence in areas such as management and leadership as defined by our theoretical framework.

Because of our path between deductive and inductive approach the reader should carefully evaluate the truth criteria in the study. Validation in the inductive sense is a tough task for a short and small study such as this one. We do however believe that give our preconditions have reached an acceptable level in the truth criteria. When taken into practical application we have hope that our initial thoughts of enlightment will enable a positive development of the managerial role of the Base-unit Executive Officers.

The last five decades have seen the population of Hispanics in California rise from 16% to 39% (California State Data Center, 2013). As the number of Hispanics has grown, so has the number of Hispanics responsible for heading public organizations in the State. As more Hispanics obtain leadership positions, they face the same challenges that many other leaders’ face; to do more with less and to operate under the scrutiny of the citizens they represent (Kettle, 2009). The pressure to deliver effective and efficient services is further complicated by the hierarchical structure of public organizations; and the ideals of the old public administration, new public management, and new public service that shape how public administrations function today. The purpose of this study was to determine the best-practices that Hispanic leaders employ to make them successful in leading a public organization. This descriptive phenomenological study utilized a purposive sample of 10 participants who currently provide direct or indirect leadership to a public organization in their role as an elected official. Data was collected through semi-structured interviewed utilizing an eight-open ended question interview protocol. As a result, 6 key findings were identified. One notable finding was that Hispanic leaders of public organizations indicated that key components to their success included; (a) collaboration, (b) communication skills, and (c) continual engagement of internal and external stakeholders. As a result, this study identified current best-practices of Hispanic leaders in public organizations, which help inform current and future Hispanic leaders on what is required to lead a successful organization. It addition, it provides the components to develop a toolkit of diverse leadership skills and abilities that may assist Hispanic leaders navigating through the bureaucracy that engulfs public organizations.

From 2017 to 2019, the primary strategy to improve public schools in the U.S. was increasing competition through the expansion of charter schools and the promotion of vouchers to send public school students to private schools. The problem this presented was that key education leaders had not provided adequate input and feedback into this strategy. The purpose of this qualitative study was to gather the perspectives of accomplished education leaders on how Tiebout’s theory of competition and the concept of the Ontario K-12 School Effectiveness Framework impacted quality, trust, and capacity. Data were collected using semistructured interviews with a purposeful sample of 15 accomplished education leaders from the charter/school choice community and traditional public schools. Data were analyzed using Bernauer’s modified three-phase method. School and classroom leadership, meaningful and informative assessment that guides instruction, substantive student engagement, and a focus on a strong curriculum and effective teaching were the key themes that aligned with quality, trust, and capacity. Education leaders did not see Tiebout education as a key driver that would alone improve the quality of public education. Leaders believed that some schools improved in response to Tiebout competition but also shared cautions on the diminishing returns, collateral damage, and equity concerns because Tiebout competition created winners and losers. Social change may be impacted by the results of this study in that the results define and share examples of healthy and unhealthy competition in public education. The results of this study can help inform policy makers and educators as they create opportunities that will enhance the long term personal and economic success of all U.S. students.