Effective leadership in public administration: "The great leader is seen as servant first", Robert K. Greenleaf

Résumé du document

Globalization, decentralization, economic uncertainties, and other contemporary challenges ask for a new kind of governance and a new role for public agents in every country. Governments have to reshape the public sector to cope with this environment that requires civil servants to assume new missions. With this aim in view, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development proposed in 2001, to create and re-inforce a model of public sector leadership. Nevertheless, what a model of public sector leadership could be, remains unclear. If leadership can characterize political leaders, speaking about leadership in the public administration means dealing with high-ranking civil servants, often regarded as reserved and discrete. The following work is about what an effective leader in the public administration is. First, after a review of some definitions of leadership and the problem they pose for the public administration, the main characteristics of a specific leadership model in the public sector will be evoked. In the second part, this model will be more concretely linked with the new needs of administration as a very specific organization, and with the needs of society. It will be the occasion to stress some of the limits and conditions attached to leadership in public administrations.

Extraits

[...] Effective leadership in public administration: great leader is seen as servant first”, Robert K. Greenleaf Globalization, decentralization, economic uncertainties, and other contemporary challenges ask for a new kind of governance and a new role for public agents in every country. Governments have to reshape the public sector to cope with this environment that requires civil servants to assume new missions. With this aim in view, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development proposed in 2001 to create and reinforce a model of public sector leadership. [...]

[...] They must demonstrate great courage in their will to change the system and in their will to learn and to acknowledge the mistakes of the past. Modest and visionary, tradition lover and change seeker: the public administrative leader of tomorrow is a contradictory character, and it makes him remarkable. Bibliography Books and articles BURNS, MacGregor, James, Leadership, Harper Torchbooks GREENLEAF, Robert K., Servant Leadership, in The Leader's Companion, Wren, J. Thomas, New York, NY: The Free Press pp 23. MALTAIS, Daniel, LECLERC, Michel, RINFRET Natalie. Le leadership administratif comme concept utile à la modernisation de l'administration publique, Revue française d'administration publique. pp. [...]

[...] In public sector, leadership is used to facilitate adaptation of a complex large-scaled organization to the numerous changes happening in today's society, in order to eventually impact society itself. Creating change to adapt the public service to the need of today's world is in fact one of the most important roles of the public sector leaders nowadays. They must promote change as much as they can, by accomplishing their missions in a new and efficient way, enriched with civil values. [...]

[...] In public administration, everybody has a specific place and a specific role to play. At the same time, when the OECD asks member countries why they had the feeling they needed to modernize their administrative organization, the reason appears to be that a gap exists “between how their public sectors are now, and how the interests of the nation needs them to be now or in the future” (OECD 2001: 10). Public service culture appears to stray a long way from public needs. [...]

[...] Here is where the leadership of the administrator can lie. The qualities of a leader are of importance when they participate in a dynamic of exchanges and mutual supports between him or her and his or her followers, or collaborators, since this term may be more appropriate for a staff in a public office. Consequently, if high-ranking civil servants are first managers in an administrative office, this does not exclude them from leadership and it is worth noting that the best managers are also leaders. [...]