Change leadership and change embeddedness in public organizations: Connecting macrolevel reform to microlevel implementation
| Published date | 01 September 2023 |
| Author | Malcolm J. Higgs,Ben S. Kuipers,Bram Steijn |
| Date | 01 September 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12833 |
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Change leadership and change embeddedness in
public organizations: Connecting macrolevel
reform to microlevel implementation
Malcolm J. Higgs
1
| Ben S. Kuipers
2
| Bram Steijn
3
1
Hull University Business School, UK
2
Leiden University, The Netherlands
3
Erasmus University Rotterdam,
The Netherlands
Correspondence
Ben S. Kuipers, Institute of Public
Administration, Leiden Leadership Centre,
Leiden University, P.O. Box 13228, 2501 EE
The Hague, The Netherlands.
Email: b.s.kuipers@fgga.leidenuniv.nl
Abstract
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 man-
agement 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.
1|INTRODUCTION
Public organizations are continuously challenged to change as they operate in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and
ambiguous (VUCA) world (Van der Wal, 2017). Kuipers et al. (2014) stress that understanding the way external con-
text informs the implementation of change and its leadership within public organizations is crucial to develop both
Received: 20 January 2021 Revised: 30 October 2021 Accepted: 22 December 2021
DOI: 10.1111/padm.12833
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which
permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no
modifications or adaptations are made.
© 2022 The Authors. Public Administration published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
902 Public Admin. 2023;101:902–916.
wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/padm
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