TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP AND THE USE OF NORMATIVE PUBLIC VALUES: CAN EMPLOYEES BE INSPIRED TO SERVE LARGER PUBLIC PURPOSES?
| Author | SANJAY K. PANDEY,SHEELA PANDEY,RANDALL S. DAVIS,SHUYANG PENG |
| Date | 01 March 2016 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12214 |
| Published date | 01 March 2016 |
doi : 10. 1111/p adm .12214
TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP AND THE USE
OF NORMATIVE PUBLIC VALUES: CAN EMPLOYEES BE
INSPIRED TO SERVE LARGER PUBLIC PURPOSES?
SANJAY K. PANDEY, RANDALL S. DAVIS, SHEELA PANDEY AND SHUYANG PENG
This article asks whether and how transformational leadership in the public sector can inuence the
use of normative public values in organizational decisions. We focus on transformational leader-
ship’s inuence on three core normative public values (representation,equity, and individual rights).
The extent to which public organizations and their employees emphasize normative public values in
their decision-making can signal important messages to external stakeholders about respect for and
responsiveness to all citizens, valuing citizens from different walks of life equally, and respect for
constitutionally guaranteed rights. We proposea model in which transformational leadership has a
direct inuence (infusing) and an indirect inuence (convincing others) on employee use of public
values in organizational decision-making. Empirical tests provide support for the proposed model,
with the indirect inuence (convincing others) providing a stronger impetus. The article concludes
with a discussion of the results and implications.
Building on Burns’s (1978) seminal contribution, a number of generic/mainstream man-
agement scholars have made signicant contributions to the study of transformational
leadership (see Bass and Riggio 2006 for a synthesis). The use of values is at the heart of
transformational leadership and therefore a number of scholars have characterized trans-
formational leadership as ‘values-based leadership’ (e.g. Shamir et al. 1993; Brown and
Trevino2009). This scholarship, however, does not seek to identify specic values or study
the inculcation or use of specic values as an important outcome. Instead, the outcomes
of interest pertain to business metrics such as quality, teamwork, cost effectiveness, and
protability (Bass et al. 2003; Cha and Edmondson 2006).
Studies referring to public sector transformational leadership conrm a similar pattern
(Fernandez 2005; Kuipers et al. 2014; Moynihan et al. 2014). For example, two recent stud-
ies focus on the effect of transformational leadership on employee use of performance
information (Moynihan et al. 2012; Kroll and Vogel2014). Other studies examine the inu-
ence of transformational leadership on follower satisfaction, organizational goal clarity,
and performance (Obereld 2012; Vigoda-Gadot and Beeri 2012; Bellé 2013; Caillier 2014;
Jacobsen and Andersen 2015).
As a result, we know little about whether and how transformational leadership can fos-
ter the use of normative public values in the public sector. This is matter of great import,
and many public administration scholars have made a case for the important role of pub-
lic sector leaders in upholding and advancing normative public values (Terry 1998; Beck
Jørgensen 1999; Denhardt and Denhardt 2003; Bozeman 2007; Hartley et al. 2015). Public
values encapsulate a normative consensus about citizen rights and obligations, and pro-
vide the underpinnings for public policy and government action (Bozeman 2007). Under-
scoring the crucial role organizational leaders play in the use of public values, Nalbandian
Sanjay K. Pandey is at the TrachtenbergSchool of Public Policy and Public Administration, George Washington Univer-
sity, USA. Randall S. Davis is at the Department of Political Science, Southern Illinois University, USA. Sheela Pandey
is at the Center for Organization Research and Design, Arizona State University,USA. Shuyang Peng is at the School of
Public Administration, The University of New Mexico, USA.
Public Administration Vol.94, No. 1, 2016 (204–222)
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
NORMATIVE PUBLIC VALUES AND TRANSFORMATIONALLEADERSHIP 205
(2005, p. 311) notes that effective city managers forge ties with the community ‘on solid
foundations of public values’. City managers, as leaders of their organizations, can accom-
plish this if they inuence other managers to use public values in decision-making.
This leads to the key questions we examine in this article on whether and how
transformational leaders in the public sector can inuence the use of normative pub-
lic values in organizational decisions. Early and ongoing debates on authentic versus
pseudo-transformational leadership provide an important lens with which to examine
whether or not transformational leaders can inuence the use of normative public values
(Bass and Steidlmeier 1999; Price 2003; Hutchinson and Jackson 2013). On one side is the
classic formulation of transformational leadership that highlights authentic transforma-
tional leadership as an exercise steeped in morality. This morality is deontological and
other-regarding, and is therefore expected to be supportive of the use of public values.
On the opposing side are two major lines of dissent. First, there is the argument about
the ‘dark side’ of transformational leadership, positing that it can be directed to serving
self-interested ends, thereby subverting larger collective purposes (Conger and Kanungo
1998). Second, scholars focused on the public sector and cross-sector collaboration argue
that transformational leadership has a performance-oriented technical bent and cannot be
expected to have an inuence on civic and other-oriented values of employees (Denhardt
and Campbell 2006; Sun and Anderson 2012). This disagreement is amenable to an
empirical test.
Such an empirical test requires choosing a set of public values. Although there is no
consensus on a denitive list of public values, it is possible to identify public values around
which there is widespread agreement. A number of scholars have argued about the unique
role of the public sector in promoting certain values (Nalbandian and Edwards 1983; Van
der Wal et al. 2008; Moore 2014; Witesman and Walters 2014). These include values such
as equity, representation, and individual rights. Taken together, these values fall in the
important domain where citizen concerns and public management actions intersect (Beck
Jørgensen and Bozeman 2007). Bozeman and Johnson (2015) call such values ‘normative
public values’ because they offer compelling justication for government action to ensure
that all citizens are heard, respected, and treated equally.
How then can transformational leaders foster the use of normative public values in
organizational decisions? Wepropose that transformational leaders motivate their follow-
ers to embrace normative public values through two pathways – direct appeal (infusion
pathway) and through an appeal to follower values (convince others pathway). We test
our propositions using data from Phase IV of the National Administrative Studies Project
(NASP-IV) that surveyed senior managers in local governments. We begin with a brief
overview of the public values concept we employ and then map out potential linkage
between transformational leadership and public values. Next, we introduce the study
model and hypotheses. This is followed by the methods section, which provides details
on data collection and measurement. Then, we present analysis and ndings, which pro-
vide support for both a direct and an indirect effect of transformational leadership on the
use of public values in organizational decisions. We conclude with a discussion of study
implications.
NORMATIVE PUBLIC VALUES AND TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP
Public values have been an area of remarkable scholarly activity in recent years with sym-
posia published in the Public Administration Review in 2014 and the American Review of
Public Administration Vol.94, No. 1, 2016 (204–222)
© 2015 John Wiley& Sons Ltd.
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