Change leadership and change embeddedness in public organizations: Connecting macrolevel reform to microlevel implementation

Governments initiate major public sector reforms for various reasons. Although change leadership appears crucial, its role in implementing reforms in public organizations receives scant attention. Insights from public administration and change management literature help to bridge the gap between the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Public administration (London) Vol. 101; no. 3; pp. 902 - 916
Main Authors: Higgs, Malcolm J., Kuipers, Ben S., Steijn, Bram
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.09.2023
Subjects:
Ambiguity
Behavior
Changes
Embeddedness
Employees
Implementation
Leadership
Middle managers
Organizations
Public administration
Public sector
Reforms
Sense of purpose
Youth organizations
ISSN:0033-3298, 1467-9299
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Governments initiate major public sector reforms for various reasons. Although change leadership appears crucial, its role in implementing reforms in public organizations receives scant attention. Insights from public administration and change management literature help to bridge the gap between these macrolevel and microlevel perspectives. Our multilevel study of two youth care organizations addressing public sector reform explores how leadership behavior—and in interaction between top and middle managers—contributes to the concept of what we call change embeddedness among front‐line employees. The use of leadership behaviors during the reform that are leader centric (shaping) appear to be associated with greater ambiguity and worse change embeddedness. However, leadership focused on engaging employees and boundary spanning with external organizations seems to support the embeddedness of the reform, especially when these behaviors are connected to a clear sense of purpose around the change.
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ISSN:0033-3298
1467-9299
DOI:10.1111/padm.12833