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Research report for the End of Award Report

Reference number: RES-000-23-1136-AAward title: Developing Organization Leaders as Change Agents in the Public ServicesInvestigators: Professor Mike Wallace, Professor Rosemary Deem, Professor JonathanMorris, Professor Michael ReedInstitutions: Cardiff University, University of Bristol

BACKGROUND

Our purpose was to address the three-part central question:

1. what forms of externally provided leadership development support do present andaspiring leaders of English service organizations in education and health seek and how are these perceived and experienced,

2. how far is such support designed to build their capacity as public service change agents, and

3. how are activities provided by National Leadership Development Bodies (NLDBs) and their impact on participants’ perceptions affected by the association of each national body with, or its independence from, central government-driven public service reform?

We analysed public documents and interviews with senior staff in public serviceorganizations, senior NLDB staff and trainers, policy-makers and professional association representatives. Answers to each part of our central question were:

1. The perception of being a leader embodying a change agency role was almost universal.The majority of senior service organization staff, motivated to improve their practice as leaders, had experienced external leadership development--most commonly NLDBcourses.

2. Within government, promoting change agency through NLDB provision was viewed assignificantly reform-related. But NLDB senior staff and trainers perceived that their provision on leading change was fundamentally generic in focus, while making referenceto reform.

3. The NLDBs’ activities were framed as largely generic whatever the degree of formalassociation with government, and perceived as such by those experiencing this provision. Senior higher education (HE) staff, however, whose NLDB had a distanced associationfrom government, perceived that they had most choice over whether (rather than how) to implement reforms or pursue independent agendas.

Context

This was the first substantial comparative investigation of public service leadershipdevelopment in England. It reflects widespread interest in developing senior staff in theirmanagerial role (Day 2001), including the public services (Bush 2008; Pont et al 2008;Hartley and Hinksman 2003). The dominant metaphor framing coordination activity bysenior staff has shifted from management to leadership (Hoyle and Wallace 2007). Burns’(1978) treatise on ‘transformative’ political leadership, promoting the moral imperative ofradical collective improvement, stimulated a revolution in discourse and practice. Thecomplementary ‘cultural turn’ in management theory advocates leaders forging a ‘strong’ unified culture to achieve collective goals (Schein 1985). ‘Transformational’ leadership now

To cite this output: Wallace, Mike et al (2009). Developing Organisation Leaders as Change Agents in the Public Services: Full Research Report ESRC End of Award Report, RES-000-23-1136-A. Swindon: ESRC

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frames UK government public policy and leadership development interventions (OPSR 2002; Newman 2005). It implies significant individual agency, or choice of action (Giddens 1984), to forge a shared vision for a better future and foster synergistic efforts to achieve it.Leadership is now widely associated with change for improvement, management beingrelegated to maintenance (Louis and Miles 1990). Implicitly, leadership is integral to ‘changeagency’ (Caldwell 2003): proactively initiating and implementing valued change. Originallyconceived as consultancy (Lewin 1947), change agency embodies a relationship with the‘agent’ acting instrumentally on behalf of others. We wished to explore how far senior staff in public service organizations perceived themselves as leaders who were change agents, and on whose behalf.

We were especially interested in examining how leadership development may shape these perceptions. Government sponsorship of such provision coincides with the increasingassociation of managerial roles with implementing ‘modernisation’ reforms. The latter reflectthe historic ideological shift towards New Managerialism (Clarke and Newman 1997) with itspolicy technology of New Public Management (Hood 1991). They have curbed the traditionalautonomy of service providers as professionals (Freidson 2001), applying specialisedknowledge in diverse settings, through quasi-marketization and accountability regimes (Ferlie et al 1996). Senior staff, however, are being part-professionalised as leaders throughcredentialised leadership development (Hoyle and Wallace 2005). Reforms are now movingbeyond what NPM can achieve through control towards the post-NPM (Ferlie et al 2003) milieu, promoting decentralized collaborative service networks (Newman 2001; Newman andClarke 2009). They are to be developed through leadership and management underpinned by a citizen-oriented ‘new professionalism’ (Cabinet Office 2008), fostering local improvement.

Leadership development, provided by specialists outside participants’ organizations, presents a means of harnessing leaders as change agents promoting reform. Documentary evidenceindicates that the UK government is attempting to employ it as a conduit for reforms(O’Reilly et al 2007). This government is a particularly heavy investor (PIU 2001), creatingthe strongly centralized arrangement in England of NLDBs for different service sectors.There is a longer tradition of professional development through away-from-the-workplacetraining (Eraut 1994), which NLDBs have variably harnessed as course commissioners or providers. When our study began, eleven NLDBs had been created or reconfigured since 1997. Those for largely public- funded services (albeit with growing private sectorinvolvement), including the National College for School Leadership (NCSL) and the National Health Service Institute for Innovation and Improvement (NHSIII), have a closer formal relationship with government than the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education (LFHE). HE is proportionately less publicly-funded, and its public service status is contestable (Deem et al. 2007). We wondered if the close or distanced nature of this relationship affected NLDBprovision and its impact on the self-perceptions of senior staff as change agents for reform or independent agendas.

Research Significance

Our main contributions to theory-building on public service change are, first, capturing how ideologically-framed discourses impact on policy and practice. We conceptualised thestruggle between three competing ideologies informing leadership development : residual,long-threatened though still influential professionalism; currently dominant managerialism;and emergent ‘leaderism’, combining managerial, professional and user orientations(O’Reilly and Reed 2010). Second, theorising the dynamics of context- leader interaction. We

To cite this output: Wallace, Mike et al (2009). Developing Organisation Leaders as Change Agents in the Public Services: Full Research Report ESRC End of Award Report, RES-000-23-1136-A. Swindon: ESRC

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explored how ‘top’ leaders express agency, inside structural limits, working on variablymanipulable aspects of context to extend their influence (Wallace and Tomlinson 2010).

Policy implications are, first, determining how leadership development contributed tomobilizing and mediating reform and independent change agendas across public service administrative levels (Wallace 2008). Second, establishing how far NLDBs constituted a joined-up or ‘siloised’ and potentially duplicative strategy for building public serviceleadership capacity across English public services.

Theoretical Framework

We focused on two analytical levels and their interrelationship: the framing of perceptions, and their expression in the change process (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Theorising the contribution of leadership development to public service reform

Professionalism ManagerialismReform as a Change Process

Central Government

political + discourse + controlproject strategy technology

Orchestration:acculturation mediation

National Leadership Development Bodies

Orchestration:acculturation mediation

Public Service Organizations:senior staff

Leaderism

To cite this output: Wallace, Mike et al (2009). Developing Organisation Leaders as Change Agents in the Public Services: Full Research Report ESRC End of Award Report, RES-000-23-1136-A. Swindon: ESRC

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First, ideologies underpin discourses in the struggle to legitimate preferred conceptions ofprovision, influencing the perceptions of stakeholders implicated in public service change.Each ideological discourse de- legitimates competitors, undermining the ir assumptivefoundations and technical infrastructure. Policy discourses generate powerful narratives toconvince stakeholders that this way of seeing and doing is preferable (Fairclough 2003). Weinitially identified two unequally competing ideologies. ‘Managerialism’, with increasing reference to leadership, promoted a radically different organizational logic from neo-corporatist bureau-professionalism (Farrell and Morris 2003) for delivering and assessingpublic services. The dominance of managerialism brought marginalization of the residual ideology of ‘professionalism’. From our early findings (O’Reilly and Reed 2008) weidentified a third, emergent, ideology of ‘leaderism’: a novel synthesis of efficient managerial coordination and effective expert accountability within new forms of organizationalgovernance. It is promoted via the reprofessionalisation (enhancing public serviceleadership’s standing as a profession) of senior service organization staff as leaders.

Second, at the social interaction level, complexities of generating systemic change through developing leadership capacity to promote or mediate government-driven reform werecaptured through three inter-related concepts (Reed 2002; Deem et al 2007). Government-driven public service reform was construed as a political project informed by managerialism and related NPM policies. It is coupled with a discourse strategy to shape thinking through persuasive spoken language and written texts, and a loose configuration of controltechnologies (including NLDBs). They constitute means of translating political aspiration anddiscursive intent into practice. NLDBs operate as control technologies mainly through‘culture management’ (Wallace and Pocklington 2002), a component of managerialisminspired by the cultural turn in management theory. They promote one-way acculturation,manipulating participants’ organizational and professional cultures so they assimilate (Berry1997) beliefs and values favouring commitment to acculturators’ goals. However,stakeholders have variable capacity for mediation: modifying or subverting the practices andbeliefs they are being encouraged to adopt (Spours et al 2007).

Policy-makers, NLDB and senior public service organization staff orchestrate (Wallace2004) change across administrative levels, brokering its cultural acceptance andimplementation or promoting independent change agency. They contribute to steering the brokering process and mediate change as it interacts with ideologically-framed discourses and institutionalized practices reflecting their organizational and professional cultures. Acombined cultural and political perspective on interaction (Wallace 2000) conceptualiseshow uses of power to acculturate senior staff through leadership development may bemediated by their responsive uses of power according to their cultural allegiances.

Arrows in Figure 1 imply directions of influence investigated:

• at the ideological level in a contest for domination;• at the social interaction level within reform as an orchestrated change process of

acculturation and mediation across administrative levels;• between these analytical levels as the ideological struggle reciprocally influences the

change process.

To cite this output: Wallace, Mike et al (2009). Developing Organisation Leaders as Change Agents in the Public Services: Full Research Report ESRC End of Award Report, RES-000-23-1136-A. Swindon: ESRC

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OBJECTIVES

Four aims addressed our central question through this theoretical lens.

Analysing ideologies and their linkage with social interaction:

Aim A: to track the evolution in England since 1997 of discourses of public service reform and change with special reference to leadership development, as reflected inpublic documentation and the personal accounts of different stakeholders;

Analysing social interaction and its linkage with ideologies:

Aim B: to determine the variety of externally provided leadership development support activities which current and aspiring leaders seek and experience, and why, with particular attention to the significance that is accorded to relevant nationalleadership development;

Aim C: to examine the acculturation and capacity-building processes, networks andmechanisms employed by these national bodies to orchestrate the implementation of modernisation and other change agendas;

Aim D: to determine the extent to which those being trained or seeking leadershipdevelopment support perceive that activities offered by the appropriate national leadership development body are crucial to their careers and have potent ial to inform their own capacity-building as change agents, and how far they perceive that their leadership development needs are capable of being met in other ways.

METHODS

Our qualitative design enabled in-depth understanding of policy-related discourses and perceptions amongst stakeholders in external leadership development. Limitations were thatwe could not resolve whether informants used discourses ‘bilingually’ (Hoyle and Wallace2008) without commitment, to comply with perceived expectations, or whether claims about mediating reforms matched practice. Aims were addressed by sub-dividing our researchquestions (Annex 1) to frame data collection and analysis.

Since government might have varied influence on leadership and its development in servicesectors with different proportions of public funding, we selected three largely public- fundedsectors--secondary schools, primary care trusts (PCTs), and hospitals--and higher education institutions (HEIs) as a part-public funded sector.

The three NLDBs concerned were established in their present form since the Labourgovernment ’s accession in 1997 (Table 1).

To cite this output: Wallace, Mike et al (2009). Developing Organisation Leaders as Change Agents in the Public Services: Full Research Report ESRC End of Award Report, RES-000-23-1136-A. Swindon: ESRC

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Table 1: National Leadership Development Bodies and sectors investigated

NLDB Service sector served Association between NLDB and central government

NCSL largely public-funded schools (including secondary schools)

close: government education department remit letter

NHSIII largely public-funded health organizations (including PCTsand hospitals)

close: set-up after government ‘arm’s length bodies’review, incorporating NHS Leadership Centre

LFHE part public-funded highereducation institutions

distanced: set-up by bodies representing HEIs, UKfunding council financial support

The first data collection method (Aim A) was a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of publicdocuments from 1997, mostly from websites (Table 2).

Table 2: Documentary data collection

Documentary Sources (1997-2008) No. DocumentsGovernment documents (central government, health and education departments) 48Government documents addressed to NLDBs 7NLDB documents 56Sectoral professional association and other stakeholder documents 17Total 128

The second method (Aims B-D) comprised four rounds of semi-structured interviews withinformants from different administrative levels (Table 3). We re- interviewed over half of thesenior staff interviewed in Round 1 to address themes emerging from initial data analysis. Wealso conducted a CDA (Aim A) of Round 1 and 4 interviews with senior staff. Excellentaccess enabled us to interview more informants than the maximum anticipated.Unforeseeable administrative problems (End-of-Award form ‘major difficulties’ section)affected the project start- and end-dates, but not the research itself.

Table 3: Interview data collection

Type of interviewee Timing of Round, No. Interviews1 2 3 4

Summer2007

Autumn2007-Spring2008

Spring-Summer

2008

Summer-Autumn

2008

Secondary schools (5), headteachers, senior staff 25 11Primary Care Trusts (5), chief executives, senior staff, PEC Chairs

21 15

Hospitals (4), chief executives, senior staff 20 10HEIs (6), vice chancellors, senior staff 30 19NLDB senior staff, NLDB-associated trainers 27Other HE leadership development providers 5Professional association representatives 18Central government politicians, civil servants 17

Total (218 interviews with 163 informants) 96 50 17 55

To cite this output: Wallace, Mike et al (2009). Developing Organisation Leaders as Change Agents in the Public Services: Full Research Report ESRC End of Award Report, RES-000-23-1136-A. Swindon: ESRC

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RESULTS

We examined the ideologically-framed discourses surrounding leadership development forpublic service reform, the change process with special reference to NLDBs, and their interlinkage (Figure 1). Key findings are summarised for each aim.

Aim A (discourses of reform and leadership development)

Headline: these discourses mainly reflected the dominant ideology of managerialism.Residual professionalism was being partially reworked through the reprofessionalisation of leaders within emergent leaderism.

Discourses of reform and links with leadership. The government’s political project of public service reform reflected managerialism through four themes: technocratic management (performance management, targets) populist individualism (choice and voice,personalisation); service alliances (local strategic partnerships); and system efficacy(capacity-building, earned autonomy). However, the government’s discourse strategy also reflected the ideology of leaderism in discourses of leadership and its development, primarily within the theme of system efficacy through capacity-building and increasing earnedautonomy for public service organizations. This strategy further legitimated the governmentproject by representing it as providing public service-wide strategic leadership. Thegovernmental leadership discourse encompassed agency (including for reform), responsibilityfor performance and improvement (incorporating managerialism), and location at multiple levels, linking with the reform themes of technocratic management and partnership working. Three discourses of leadership were discernable: transformational (commonest), dis tributed(regular), and public servant (occasional).

NLDB and professional association leadership discourses largely mirrored those ofgovernment, consistent with its political project. Possibly reflecting greater residualprofessionalism in HE framing academic autonomy, the LFHE put more emphasis ondistributed leadership.

Senior staff discourses reflected versions of transformational and, less commonly, distributed leadership, associating it with individual agency--but not necessarily linked with government-driven reform. They associated their leadership role with being change agents for reform,though not simply this, suggesting some acculturation (or compliance) as reformers.Conversely, the partial alignment of their reform and leadership discourses with those of government implied moderate mediation.

Discourses of leadership development. The government’s leadership developmentdiscourse reflected leaderism in portraying the former, and NLDBs, as reform components.Leadership development was construed as a means of enhancing leaders’ agency, change implementation skills, and culture as leaders. NLDBs operated as a control technology, acculturating senior staff towards leading reform, though not exclusively. Compared with ‘hard’ target and accountability technologies, NLDBs represented a ‘soft’, supportive ‘culture management’ technology, drawing on traditions of professional development. Promotingleaders’ agency suggests that leaderism, in contrast to managerialism, concerns acculturatingreformers who deploy agency in adapting reforms within current policy fosteringresponsiveness to local community needs and ‘citizen-consumer’ (Clarke et al 2007)preferences. Indeed, government discourse of generic reform articulated the requirement for

To cite this output: Wallace, Mike et al (2009). Developing Organisation Leaders as Change Agents in the Public Services: Full Research Report ESRC End of Award Report, RES-000-23-1136-A. Swindon: ESRC

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‘cross-sector’ leadership development, implying inter-NLDB collaboration in developing boundary-spanning cross-sector leaders.

NLDBs substantially reproduced the government’s leadership development discourse(distinguishing senior from frontline staff more consistently than several health servicedocuments which blurred this distinction). The LFHE represented HE senior staff asindependent of government, reflecting the sector’s greater autonomy. While each NLDBdepicted leadership development as including distributed leadership, provision mainlytargeted the most senior staff and ‘middle- leaders’ rather than frontline staff. NLDBs thus support an elite reprofessionalisation of senior staff and aspirants as leaders. Leaderismapparently favours the agency of senior staff over frontline staff, creating potential for a schism in the residual ideology of professionalism.

Senior staff expressed diffuse leadership development discourses, suggesting some distancingfrom the government discourse strategy. The strongest (expressed by a quarter) wasassociated with self-development, chiming with government and NLDB discoursespromoting leaders’ agency and ‘new professionalism’ (Cabinet Office 2008).

Aim B (leadership development activities, especially NLDBs)

Headline: as significant providers, NLDBs were strategically placed to acculturate senior staff as reformers. Yet the main motivations for seeking leadership development (or not)concerned personal development and career enhancement. That senior staff werepredisposed more towards their reprofessionalisation as leaders than contributing to reformsimplies unfavourable conditions for strong acculturation.

Activities. Two-thirds of senior staff had sought or experienced NLDB provision, and three-quarters alternative provision, since 1997. Those accessing this development were at all senior career stages in secondary schools, but it was less widely experienced amongst the most senior staff in other sectors. The commonest form (about half) across all sectorscomprised programmes of more than five days. Such provision was sought more extensivelyfrom NLDBs than alternative providers in all sectors except hospitals. Other providers weremore commonly sought for alternative activities including one-to-one or group support andshort courses. The significant, yet limited, reach of NLDBs and the popularity of alternative provision constrained NLDBs’ acculturation potential. We also note that their dominantmode--away-from-the-workplace training--is weak for changing practice compared withworkplace support (e.g. Eraut and Hirsh 2007) such as mentoring.

Motivations . Senior staff (roughly half) most commonly sought external leadershipdevelopment to improve their personal practice generically, reflecting a strong ethic of ‘professionality’ (Hoyle 1974). It was diffusely expressed as developing their thinking or approach. One motivation for a third was being selected or recommended to undertake leadership development, while a third wished to enhance their career through promotion or preparing for it--indicative of their reprofessionalisation as leaders through credentialisedcareer and status progression. Such motivations suggest that senior staff were not primarily motivated by contributing to reform.

Conversely, no informants rejected provision because of any perceived link with developing them as reformers. Rather, low credibility of provision was the commonest reason(mentioned by a third) for eschewing it. A few in each sector (other than hospitals) stated that

To cite this output: Wallace, Mike et al (2009). Developing Organisation Leaders as Change Agents in the Public Services: Full Research Report ESRC End of Award Report, RES-000-23-1136-A. Swindon: ESRC

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external leadership development had no career relevance, implying their rejection of thecareer progression logic underlying provision. Limited reach (and likely impact on practice), alongside a significant career interest amongst senior staff, suggest that its acculturation potential was moderate.

Aim C (NLDB orchestration of reform and other agendas)

Headline: Despite the strictures of the government brief for the NCSL and NHSIII,orchestrators in all three NLDBs appeared moderately to have mediated the governmentemphasis on leading reform. Their provision focused on generic leadership ideas and change agency which included consideration of reforms but left participants to decide whether and how to address them alongside independent agendas. NLDB operation was siloised. Eachhad different lines of accountability and orchestrated its provision independently, with only light-touch inter-NLDB coordination and exchange of ideas.

NLDB orchestration. The government’s discourse strategy was partly orchestrated throughthe NCSL and NHSIII briefs being allied to public service reform, creating conditions for acculturation. The NLDBs for schools and health had been subject to government review, generating their current role specification. The LFHE had no formal reform link. NLDBdocuments, informants and associated trainers significantly reproduced the government’s discourses of leadership and its development, stressing transformational leadership (LFHEless so). NLDB activities centred on training provided or commissioned, other support andapplied research. Two framed provision through independently developed maps ofexpectations: the NCSL’s Leadership Development Framework and the NHSIII’s NHSLeadership Qualities Framework. Reach was extended, primarily by the NCSL, through web-based resources. These two NLDBs, especially, operated as a control technology indisseminating the government’s discourses of leadership and its development.

Seeds of moderate mediation lay in NLDBs’ promulgated conception of change agency. It encompassed, though not exclusively, government-driven reforms. Staff were conceptualised as initiating and implementing change of generally unspecified origin, leaving room foracculturation towards reform or mediatory interpretation. NLDB orchestrators used their authority to establish provision that neither solely addressed nor challenged the government’s political project. They diluted the potency of their provision for acculturating leaders as reformers by generically acculturating leaders as change agents for any improvement thrust.

About half the senior staff from each sector reported an emphasis in the leadershipdevelopment they had experienced on change agency: mainly leading and managing change but also spanning self-reflection during change, generating transformation, and alteringculture. Informants did not perceive such instances as promoting government reforms.Several examples of independent change were mentioned, but all were compatible with the reform thrust. NLDBs thus reproduced only certain elements of the government’s discourse of reform: especially leadership, an emphasis on cultural change, and the necessity for serviceimprovement. Equally, senior staff did not report any NLDB advocacy of alternative visions or practices to which generic transformational leadership might be directed. NLDB mediation was demonstrably limited, encouraging participants to decide whether and how to implement reforms rather than fostering subversive or tangential agendas.

NLDB coordination. There was little synergy between NLDBs, several informants noting the potential for competition. Each NLDB participated in the centrally-orchestrated Public

To cite this output: Wallace, Mike et al (2009). Developing Organisation Leaders as Change Agents in the Public Services: Full Research Report ESRC End of Award Report, RES-000-23-1136-A. Swindon: ESRC

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Service Leadership Alliance, involving occasional voluntary meetings, and had some links with other NLDBs. Government informants spoke of coordinating, not imposing, NLDBactivities. While leadership development was part of the reform project, it was not directively orchestrated. Indeed, senior NLDB staff stressed the importance of sectorally-contextualisedprovision for credibility with participants. Their orchestration activity was mediatory inpromoting largely siloised, generic but sector-sensitive NLDB provision. It reflects enduringgovernment ‘departmentalism’ (Kavanagh and Richards 2001), despite the drive towards ‘joined-up government’ (Cabinet Office 1999; Bogdanor 2005). Ironically, this thrust was consistent with the perceptions of NLDB senior staff as leaders legitimately deployingagency to achieve a sectoral NLDB vision.

Aim D (impact of NLDBs on careers and change agency)

Headline: NLDB provision was regarded as quite significant for career enhancement,contributing towards the reprofessionalisation of senior staff as leaders. NLDBs represented a moderately powerful control technology for acculturating senior staff as change agentswho addressed reforms within their wider improvement agendas (which nevertheless did not challenge reforms), but weak in acculturating them as reformers. Claimed impacts ofprovision were largely diffuse and more educational than practical, primarily informingreflection on change agency and leadership. Shaping senior staff discourse in this way suggests a benign, palliative irony (Hoyle and Wallace 2008) for government policy-makers.Attempted acculturation through NLDBs focusing on change agency as leaders may have encouraged senior staff to use power as moderately mediatory change agents: adaptively implementing reform alongside other improvements, within the bounds of acceptability to government.

Careers . A third of senior staff testified to the career importance of external leadership development provision. A fifth, from schools, stressed that provision provided credentials for leadership progression (mostly in relation to the required preparatory qualification forheadship). By contrast, three-fifths of senior staff held the impact of NLDB and other provision to be more on their thinking about their change agency than their leadership (significant minorities in schools and PCTs, marginal in hospitals and HE institutions). Only a minority in each sector reported direct impact on their practice. A sizeable minorityperceived that the accumulating experience central to their learning could be facilitated by other forms of support. NLDB provision was thus seen as often useful but seldom sufficient for improving practice.

Change agency. Virtually all senior staff (regardless of NLDB provision experience)confirmed their proclivity to mediate government-driven reforms. They saw themselves asleaders who were change agents, consistent with the government’s discourse strategy. Yet while half saw this role to encompass faithfully implementing reforms, two-thirds perceived it to include adapting them, and two-thirds to include taking independent initiatives. Overall,the policy discourse of leadership, underpinned by leaderism, had a significantacculturational effect on senior staff, though only partly achieved through NLDBs. Theimplicit relationship between senior staff as change agents and government diverged more from government discourse, since they had not been acculturated to see themselves primarily as agents for government-driven reform.

To cite this output: Wallace, Mike et al (2009). Developing Organisation Leaders as Change Agents in the Public Services: Full Research Report ESRC End of Award Report, RES-000-23-1136-A. Swindon: ESRC

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CONCLUSION

Our research suggests that organizational and wider public service change, both discursive and practical, is a highly orchestrated and mediated process in which organizational leaders--located at various levels--play a strategic role. But it also indicates that the change process isconstrained by institutionalized power relations that frame the ‘room for manoeuvre’available to organizational leaders. Finally, ways in which public service organizationalleaders access this contextually and structurally-specific capacity for change are dependent on the complex interplay between ‘global’ reform discourses mobilized by policy elites and their interpretive orchestration and mediation by local leaders.

ACTIVITIES

The project advisory group comprised three academics and four stakeholder grouprepresentatives. It met four times at key research decision-points. We received excellentadvice on theory development, strategy, feedback on draft interview schedules and papers,comments on our interim findings, and support with the final dissemination conference.

We have actively engaged with the international and UK academic community from the outset (Table 4). Academic dissemination comprises 20 conference and 7 symposium and seminar papers. We have achieved high visibility and our ideas have benefited fromfeedback.

Table 4: Papers presented at academic conferences, symposia and seminars

Coverage of paperpresentations

UK Mainland Europe North America Australia

2006-2007 7 2 1 -

2008-2009 7 6 3 1

Highlights include:

• O’Reilly and Reed: ‘Leaderism’ and UK public service reform, paper presented at the European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS) conference, Amsterdam, 2008

• Wallace and Tomlinson: Contextualizing leader dynamics: how public service leaders endeavour to build influence, winner of the Best Paper Award for the Public Management and Governance track, British Academy of Management conference 2008;

• Deem: Higher education and new managerialism in an era of restructuring, keynote address to the Canadian Association of University Teachers Women’s conference,Ottawa, Canada, 2008;

The project website contains a full list of conference, symposium and seminar papers, and links to key items portraying the range of early outputs:

http://www.cf.ac.uk/carbs/research/groups/esrc/outputs.html

Dissemination of interim findings included an invitation seminar attended by ten practitioners interviewed in Round 1, from all four service sectors. We responded to a hospital request for

To cite this output: Wallace, Mike et al (2009). Developing Organisation Leaders as Change Agents in the Public Services: Full Research Report ESRC End of Award Report, RES-000-23-1136-A. Swindon: ESRC

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a feedback visit, and fed findings into a consultation with DIUS and BERR representatives on services innovation, plus attended a ‘roundtable ’ convened by the ‘Guardian Public’magazine.

Results were disseminated at the final dissemination conference in London. We sent an invitation with a briefing paper on our findings to all interviewees and an equal number of other stakeholders. Every stakeholder group was represented amongst the 32 practitioners attending. All 14 respondents who completed an evaluation sheet assessed it positively as both interesting and educational. We offered research sites a bespoke feedback visit.Responsively, we visited the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, the LFHE and a secondaryschool, and will be meeting the Public Services Leadership Alliance convenor.

OUTPUTS

Publications already developed from conference papers are:

Deem, R (2008) Unravelling the fabric of academe: the managerialist university and its implications for the integrity of academic work, in Turk, J (ed) Universities at Risk: How Politics, Special Interests and Corporatization Threaten Academic Integrity Ottawa:James Lorimer(http://www.cf.ac.uk/carbs/research/groups/esrc/Deem08HOTurkloom.pdf)

Deem, R (2009) Leading and managing contemporary UK universities: do excellence and meritocracy still prevail over diversity? Higher Education Policy 22, 1: 3-17(http://www.cf.ac.uk/carbs/research/groups/esrc/CHERdiversityHrEdPolD5.pdf)

Wallace, M and Tomlinson, M (2010) Contextualizing leader dynamics: how public service leaders endeavour to build influence Leadership (accepted for publication)(http://www.cf.ac.uk/carbs/research/groups/esrc/Wallace & Tomlinson leader dynamics paper.pdf)

O’Reilly, D and Reed, M (2010) ‘Leaderism’: an evolution of managerialism in UK public service reform, Public Administration (accepted for publication, nominated paper)

Wallace, M, O’Reilly, D, Morris, J and Deem, R (2009) Public service leaders as ‘change agents’ - for Whom? Responses to leadership development provision in England, PublicManagement Review (revised and resubmitted, nominated paper)

Wallace, M, Tomlinson, M and O’Reilly, D (2009) Acculturating school leaders as change agents for reform? Mediatory responses to leadership development in England,Educational Management and Leadership (submitted)

Progress with a book and further articles is detailed in the End-of-Award form‘dissemination’ section.

Our dataset of Round 1 and 4 interviews accepted by the Economic and Social Data Serviceis the first of its kind, available for future researchers interested in public service leadership and its development.

To cite this output: Wallace, Mike et al (2009). Developing Organisation Leaders as Change Agents in the Public Services: Full Research Report ESRC End of Award Report, RES-000-23-1136-A. Swindon: ESRC

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IMPACTS

Findings have informed policy-makers with strategic responsibility for leadershipdevelopment provision. We attended a consultation meeting at the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit in April 2009 to feed into a review being undertaken at the Prime Minister’s request. We offered a favourably received ‘central hub and NLDB nodes for each public service sector’ model of provision to generate greater synergy between NLDBs, and reduce gaps and overlap. We understand that the idea has informed proposals in the review report, to be published this autumn. The meeting was judged sufficiently informative for the Strategy Unit to make a commitment to further dialogue as government policy develops.

Dissemination of published outputs to practitioners and the international research community is ongoing (above and End-of-Award form ‘dissemination’ section). Dialogue with both communities suggests that our theoretical ideas and policy advice have resonance andpotent ial for deepening understanding and informing efforts to build public service capacity for effective change agency.

FUTURE RESEARCH PRIORITIES

Three strategic themes emerged from our project that have major implications for future research on the complex interplay between reform discourses, leadership development and organizational change in public services.

First, the emergence and significance of new conceptions of leadership and leadership development in an era where the complexities of coping effectively with the competingdemands of enhanced ‘user entitlements’, intensified public expenditure pressures andrevivified professional cultures are likely to become even more acute and intractable(Rawnsley 2009).

Second, the longer-term impact of the re-professionalisation of public service seniorpersonnel on the development of a new form of ‘civic or democratic professionalism’ that is pro-actively engaged with changing service user needs through mutual deliberation and co-production (Kremer and Tonkens 2006).

Third, the problem of effectively aligning new conceptions of leadership and professionalism with hybridized modes of ‘post-bureaucratic public services governance’ in which traditional power mechanisms and authority relations are diluted in favour of more transparent and accountable decision-making regimes (Newman and Clarke 2009).

(4998 words)

To cite this output: Wallace, Mike et al (2009). Developing Organisation Leaders as Change Agents in the Public Services: Full Research Report ESRC End of Award Report, RES-000-23-1136-A. Swindon: ESRC

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To cite this output: Wallace, Mike et al (2009). Developing Organisation Leaders as Change Agents in the Public Services: Full Research Report ESRC End of Award Report, RES-000-23-1136-A. Swindon: ESRC

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To cite this output: Wallace, Mike et al (2009). Developing Organisation Leaders as Change Agents in the Public Services: Full Research Report ESRC End of Award Report, RES-000-23-1136-A. Swindon: ESRC

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ANNEX 1

The aims were addressed through eight research questions, operationalised by sub-dividing them.

Aim A (discourses of reform and leadership development)

RQ1.1 What are the evolving discourses of leadership, leadership development, reform andindependent change within government?

RQ1.2 What is the evolving relationship between these discourses across government, NLDBs, present/aspiring service organisation leaders, and the other sources?

Aim B (leadership development experiences, especially from national bodies)

RQ2.1 What is the range and the most common external leadership development support activities (offered by NLDBs and other providers) that leaders seek and experience?

RQ2.2 Why do they seek this range of external leadership development support opportunities?

RQ3.1 What are the characteristics of NLDBs and their partnerships?

RQ3.2 What discourses of leadership and its development, government-driven reform and/orindependent change underpin the brief of NLDBs?

RQ4.1 To what extent do leaders perceive that development activities provided by these NLDBs and their partnerships target them as government-driven reformers and/or independent change agents?

RQ4.2 How do leaders’ perceptions about NLDB and partner activities targeting them asgovernment-driven reformers and/or independent change agents affect their willingness to seek such opportunities?

Aim C (national body orchestration of reform and other agendas)

RQ5.1 To what extent are these leaders’ perceptions consistent with the discourses underpinning the brief of the NLDBs?

RQ5.2 How far are those responsible for this provision attempting to acculturate and build leaders’ capacity as government-driven reformers and/or independent change agents?

RQ6.1 To what extent are the NLDBs informed by similar principles across services and sectors?

RQ6.2 How are the NLDBs shaped by service-specific contextual characteristics?

Aim D (impact of national bodies on careers and change agency)

RQ7.1 To what extent do leaders seeking and experiencing externally provided leadershipdevelopment support perceive themselves as change agents for government-driven reform and/or independent change?

RQ7.2 What discourses of leadership, (leadership development) government-driven reform andindependent change underpin leaders’ views of themselves as change agents forgovernment-driven reform and/or independent change?

RQ8.1 What is the impact of external development activities (of NLDBs and other agencies) on such leaders’ cultural beliefs and values about leadership, government-driven reform, their capacity as reformers/independent change agents?

RQ8.2 What is the impact of external development activities (of NLDBs and other agencies) on leaders’ perceptions of the career importance of these activities?

To cite this output: Wallace, Mike et al (2009). Developing Organisation Leaders as Change Agents in the Public Services: Full Research Report ESRC End of Award Report, RES-000-23-1136-A. Swindon: ESRC