Gender Still Matters and Impacts on Public Value and Innovation and the Public Reform Process
| DOI | 10.1177/0952076708100876 |
| Author | Su Maddock |
| Date | 01 April 2009 |
| Published date | 01 April 2009 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Gender Still Matters and
Impacts on Public Value and
Innovation and the Public
Reform Process
Su Maddock
University of Manchester, UK
Abstract At present, in England there is little alignment between innovative work and
government accountability frameworks. Innovation rarely catches on if it is
driven from the top or through a system’s approach to change; its flow
depends on networking and active relationships, which take time, are less
predictable yet provide a much stronger anchor for sustainable institutional
reform. In earlier stages of reform the divide was between those leaders who
are actively driving change and those were more passive in their leadership
role. Most public sector executives are now actively concerned with ‘public
value’ and transforming their organizations rather than merely making them
more efficient.
Keywords collaborative leadership, gender, innovation and public sector transformation
Social outcomes and impact are the object of reform but they are too often delivered
through business models that focus on productivity and system’s efficiency at the
expense of innovation. There is real tension between leaders who seek to render
existing systems more efficient and those adaptive or transforming leaders who
view change and transformation as dynamic processes that demand staff engage-
ment, given momentum by the public value agenda. While the majority of public
sector managers and leaders adopt both transactional and transformational ways of
working, most continue to have a preference for ‘planning and control’ rather than
for ‘collaborative practice’, which is a problem for government when the latter is
the more congenial to innovation (Bentley, 2007). Until recently public sector
DOI: 10.1177/0952076708100876
Su Maddock, Director of Whitehall Innovation Hub, National School of Government, Senior Fellow
Manchester Business School, The University of Manchester, Booth Street West, Manchester,
M15 6PB, UK. [email: susan.maddock@mbs.ac.uk] 141
© The Author(s), 2009.
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0952-0767
200904 24(2) 141–152
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