Developing Public Service Leaders: Elite Orchestration, Change Agency, Leaderism, and Neoliberalization

Developing Public Service Leaders examines why and how governments and representative bodies in public service organizations have mounted major interventions over the last two decades to develop senior staff as leaders. A critical explanation is developed of the foundational contribution made by national leadership development interventions in the 2000s to the emergence, proliferation, and normalization of leadership development provision. Through carrying out qualitative research in England, the authors investigate the national leadership development interventions for school education, healthcare, and higher education. Whilst also looking at the contemporary legacy of these interventions within a global scale, examining the growing international movement and comparing interventions across the world.

The book looks at new ways to approach leadership development, adopting a novel perspective on leadership as a metaphorical concept and coining the concept of ’leaderism’, and exploring how although senior staff may be widely acculturated as leaders, they may not necessarily be committed to acting as government change agents. Leadership development makes a diffuse contribution towards the ongoing neoliberalization of public services.

Developing Public Service Leaders is a comprehensive and essential read for a researcher or policymaker striving for an in-depth understanding of the field and its ramifications.

Mike Wallace, Cardiff Business School, Michael Reed, Cardiff Business School, Dermot O’Reilly, Lancaster University Management School, Michael Tomlinson, University of Southampton, Jonathan Morris, Cardiff Business School, Rosemary Deem, Royal Holloway

Professor Mike Wallace is Professor of Education Management and Policy at the School of Education and School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, and Professor of Public Management, Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University. He served as Strategic Adviser for Researcher Development and Director of the Researcher Development Initiative for the Economic and Social Research Council and his main interest lies in the management of change in public services, spanning policy development and implementation, complex and programmatic change, public service reform, planning for change, large-scale reorganization, and leadership development interventions.

Professor Michael Reed is Professor of Organizational Analysis at Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University. One of the founding editors of the organization theory journal, Organization, Reed is a Fellow of Academy of Social Sciences and Learned Society of Wales. His major research interests focus on changing relationship between political elites, occupational experts, and organizational control regimes within Anglo-American political economies.

Dr Dermot O’Reilly is a Senior Lecturer in Management Learning and Leadership, Lancaster University and previously Senior Research Officer for the research project ’Developing Public Service Leaders as Change Agents in the Public Services’, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and based at Cardiff Business School.

Dr Michael Tomlinson is Associate Professor of Education and Work at Southampton Education School, University of Southampton. He was previously a lecturer at Keele University in the School of Public Policy and prior to that a Research Officer on the research project ’Developing Leaders as Change Agents in the Public Services’ funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and based at Cardiff Business School. His main research interests include sociological and political economic aspects of higher and post-compulsory education, focusing on higher education policy and its relationship to employability, labour markets, marketisation, graduate and academic identity.

Professor Jonathan Morris is Professor of Organizational Analysis at Cardiff University’s Business School. He was previously Research Associate, Lecturer and Senior Distinguished Research Fellow at the school. His research interests are at the intersection of major organizational transformations and their workplace implications. He has published ten books and eighty journal articles on these themes and he is a Fellow of the Academy of Social sciences and the Learned Society of Wales.

Professor Rosemary Deem is Emerita Professor of Higher Education Management and Doctoral School Senior Research Fellow, Royal Holloway, UK, where she was has been a Member, College of Review Panel Members, European Science Foundation since 2017.