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Introduction
When leaders are callous and mediocre in their behaviours, they prevent employees from dealing effectively with job challenges. Such leaders also make it difficult for employees to develop and be resilient at work, harming the future capability of the organisation.
The quality of public services is in part determined by how public managers lead their staff (Govender, 2017). Unfortunately, however, public leaders can at times be harmful to achieving these capabilities, which are much needed in dynamic, and often unpredictable public administration (PA) contexts (Shaw et al., 2011).
The modest amount of existing research on harmful or destructive public sector leadership has identified diverse behaviours such as uninformed decision making, poor communication, bullying, lying and inconsistent or tyrannical behaviour (Reed and Bullis, 2009; Aravena, 2019). These behaviours harm employee well-being, turnover, productivity and morale (Webster et al., 2016; Schyns and Schilling, 2013), as well as organisational performance, which occurs via leaders “undermining and sabotaging […] the motivation, well-being or job satisfaction of subordinates” (Shaw et al., 2011, p. 575). Harmful leadership does not need to be deliberate. It can be unintentional, careless and incompetent (Krasikova et al., 2013; Shaw et al., 2011). It also need not be dramatic, such as abusive or bullying supervision, which is well researched (Reed and Bullis, 2009; Vogel et al., 2016). Instead, it can be quotidian, and quite common. This latter, mediocre leadership seems quite sparsely researched, despite its likely frequency. Mediocre does not mean benign. Hogan et al.’s (2011) review of management derailment states “that two thirds of existing managers are insufferable, and at least half will eventually be fired” (p. 556).
Although the research on public sector leadership is substantial and has had a significant impact, it does not always attend to people management, and it is at times also “rose tinted” in that it does not always address common weaknesses of public sector leadership, such as a tolerance of mediocrity and poor people management (Berman and West, 2003; De Waal, 2010). It also neglects the importance of leadership that helps staff grow and develop in their jobs to better deal with emerging challenges.
Hartley’s (2018) paper has identified ten propositions about public leadership. Many of them do not just...