Distributed leadership and performance‐related employee outcomes in public sector organizations
| Published date | 01 June 2023 |
| Author | Mads Leth Jakobsen,Anne Mette Kjeldsen,Thomas Pallesen |
| Date | 01 June 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12801 |
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Distributed leadership and performance-related
employee outcomes in public sector organizations
Mads Leth Jakobsen
1
| Anne Mette Kjeldsen
1
| Thomas Pallesen
2
1
Department of Political Science, Aarhus
University, Aarhus C, Denmark
2
School of Business and Social Sciences,
Aarhus University, Aarhus C, Denmark
Correspondence
Anne Mette Kjeldsen, Department of Political
Science, Aarhus University, Bartholins Allé
7, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark.
Email: annemette@ps.au.dk
Funding information
Velux Fonden, Grant/Award Number: 904122
Abstract
Distributed leadership is the sharing of leadership tasks
between managers and employees. This article demonstrates
how a distributed leadership perspective adds to the public
administration literature by including an important sensitivity
to planned and nonplanned leadership. We propose a theo-
retical model that explains the impact of distributed leader-
ship on employee outcomes which have a direct or indirect
impact on organizational performance in public organizations
contingent on alignment with individual leadership capacity
and organizational goals. Our empirical analysis in the Danish
hospital sector shows initial support for the expected rela-
tionships between distributed leadership and performance-
related employee outcomes such as job satisfaction and
innovative behavior. This indicates that the distributed lead-
ership perspective holds the potential to strengthen service
delivery in complex public service organizations while there
is weaker support for the notion that the positive impact of
distributed leadership depends on individual leadership
capacity and theirsupport for organizational goals.
1|INTRODUCTION
Public administration research in leadership and performance has blossomed during the last two decades. In a litera-
ture review, Vogel and Masal (2015) identify the public leadership outcome literature as one of the major elements
of this development. Like Crosby and Bryson (2018), they identify the latest trend of collaborative styles of leader-
ship, which represent a growing interest in and occurrence of collaborative governance rather than government of
hierarchies. For instance, in a special issue on leadership and public values in Public Administration (Hartley
The authors are listed alphabetically to reflect equal contributions to thearticle.
Received: 6 January 2021 Revised: 1 November 2021 Accepted: 3 November 2021
DOI: 10.1111/padm.12801
500 © 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Public Admin. 2023;101:500–521.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/padm
et al., 2019, 243), leadership was studied as “a set of relational processes of influence, mobilization and direction
among different actors, groups, organizations and networks.”Similarly, Chapman et al. (2016) and Orazi et al. (2013)
report a rising interest in shared leadership approaches, and Van Wart (2013, 559) pinpoints the “meteoric rise of
collaborative leadership”in public administration research. This development is driven by the critique that traditional
studies are too leader-centered and overlook that “followers are active participants rather than passive recipients in
the leadership process”(Vogel & Masal, 2015, 1181), and that leaders sometimes need to foster systems in which
they are not always needed and leave these systems when they are working well (Van Wart, 2013, 558). This has led
to calls for the public administration literature to use its strong focus on the public context to develop theories of
collective leadership (Ospina, 2017).
This article assesses the theoretical and empirical relevance of distributed leadership for multiple employee out-
comes that are previously demonstrated to be directly or indirectly related to organizational performance in complex
public organizations. Distributed leadership is the sharing of leadership tasks between employees and managers within
an organization in order tosolve conjoint tasks. Ithas at its core the conception of leadership as a collective phenome-
non arisingacross individuals,positions, and levels (Gronn,200 2). Despite widespread scholarly recognition that this col-
laborative/shared/distributedleadership trend in public management goes hand in hand with a strongrecommendation
of this kind ofleadership (Bolden, 2011), theabove-mentioned reviews highlight a number of problems in the literature
on distributed leadership. The theoretical framework and concept of distributed leadership lack precision (Chapman
et al., 2016, 121), in particular in a public sector context. Furthermore, large-N studies including studies over time that
allow for moresystematic analysisof relationships andcausality are too rare (Chapman et al., 2016; Van Wart,2013). So
far, research on the impact of distributed leadership within public services is restricted to few outcomes, mainly in a
schooland education context(Devos & Hulpia, 2009;Harris,2013; Hulpia et al., 2011; Tian et al., 20 16).
On this note, the present article addresses three questions. First, it asks what distributed leadership adds to exis-
ting leadership perspectives on employee outcomes and ultimately performance in public administration. This part
aims to identify the theoretically unique elements of distributed leadership and allows for an assessment of whether
and how it adds to existing leadership approaches explaining public organizations”performance. We argue that dis-
tributed leadership does add a new and useful perspective to the public administration leadership literature on public
service performance by (a) providing a collective leadership perspective to existing leader–follower and formal lead-
ership perspectives, and by (b) having a sensitivity to planned and nonplanned leadership, which is particularly rele-
vant for complex public organizations.
Second, we modeldistributed leadership as a theory of performance-relatedemployee outcomes in terms of theo-
retically well-established mechanisms and scope conditions relevant for public organizations; that is, goal support and
leadership capacity. The model predicts that distributed leadership can have both a positive and negative impact on
performance:Negative if distributed leadershipinvolves staff who has the capacityto exercise leadership and disagrees
with organizational goals, and positive when a high capacityfor leadership is combinedwith high goal support.
Third, we examine whether distributed leadership is empirically related to desirable performance-related
employee outcomes as expected based on our theoretical model. We do this with different measures such as
employee job satisfaction, innovative behavior, self-rated performance and individual sickness absence using cross-
sectional and panel survey data collected in one of Scandinavia's largest public hospitals in 2012 and 2015. Our
results show some empirical support for our theoretical model based on positive relationships between distributed
leadership, innovative behavior, and self-rated performance, while there is weaker support for the need to take goal
support and leadership capacity into account.
2|DISTRIBUTED LEADERSHIP IN COMPLEX PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS
Chapman et al.'s (2016) observation that the leadership literature in general needs more specific and repeatedly used
conceptualizations is also an accurate description of the present status of the concept of distributed leadership.
JAKOBSEN ET AL.501
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