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ABSTRACT
Our study of secondary schools in England illustrates the ineffective implementation of transformational leadership within public service organizations by policy-makers. First, a rather narrow, managerialist variant of transformational leadership is promoted, which is resisted by school teachers and principals. Second, associated with this, policy does not take account of the institutional context within which public services organizations operate. Third, policy-makers, rather than leaders transform the context within which leadership takes place and any leadership discretion is constrained by central government audit. Instead, moral, professional and contingent approaches to leadership are enacted at the local level with individualized, rather than dispersed leadership, as a consequence of regulatory and normative pressures.
KEYWORDS institutional theory * leadership * professions * public management * transformation
Introduction
Our article examines leadership within public services organizations, its effect upon organizational performance and its interaction with organizational context. We build upon a call for more research to examine the interaction of transformational leadership and context to assess a widely practised universal application of the transformational leadership concept (Pawar & Eastman, 1997). Despite recognition that transformational leadership is particularly difficult to enact within public services organizations (Dobell, 1989; Frederickson, 1996), there remains a research gap. 'No matter where you look in or for this subfield [transformational leadership in public services], the needs are great and the research opportunities are manifold' (Van Wart, 2003: 225). In pursuing our research agenda we bring together previously disparate organizational, public administration and educational leadership literatures, all with long-standing traditions but which, hitherto, have developed separately. Further, we combine quantitative and qualitative approaches in our analysis of leadership approaches in line with Bryman's call for methodological diversity and the benefit of a multi-method approach to studies of leadership (Bryman, 2004).
We focus upon the case of secondary schools in England. This represents an ideal opportunity to investigate the applicability of transformational leadership in public services given policy emphasis upon improving failing schools through transformational leadership and the multi-million pound investment in a National College for School Leadership devoted to the development of transformational leaders with which the UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, has closely allied himself.
The article is structured as follows. First we discuss the rise of the transformational leadership approach. We critique the transformational...