| Review of: | Dynamics of Leadership in Public Service: Theory and Practice by Montgomery Van Wart |
|---|---|
| Reviewed By: | Gerald M. Pops |
| Reviewed in: | Public Administration Review |
| Date accepted online: | 02/11/2007 |
| Published in print: | Volume 67, Issue 2, Pages 343-366 |
Making Sense of Leadership
The author of a major work on values in public administration (1998) and a trainer of executive officers, Montgomery Van Wart has taken on the ambitious task of reviewing the subject of administrative leadership in public organizations. To that end, his
The book is, above all, a teaching text, and it works well in this regard. Each chapter ends with discussion questions, some of which include simulated cases that stimulate the student to revisit and apply the concepts that have been introduced. The language is explanatory and clear, benefiting from frequent public sector examples.
The plan of the book revolves around a "leadership action cycle," which Van Wart describes as "designed to be useful in training and applied settings." The primary function of the model is to exhaustively mine and organize the leadership literature as it relates to personal traits, skills, and behaviors-collectively called "competencies"-that bear on a leader's effectiveness. Van Wart does this by presenting, with considerable mastery in the writing and completeness of explanation, fully 37 competencies, a laborious enterprise that takes him well into the second half of this rather large book. The competencies approach is augmented by two early chapters on the nature of the "global assessments" that all leaders are (or ought to be) called upon to make of their environments, limitations, and priorities as they take on their positions. The author's word "taxonomy" aptly describes his approach to both competencies and leader assessments and gives the book a highly classificatory and encyclopedic character and feel.
If the book were to end here, the reader would have a masterly reference book to keep at close hand, useful for answering questions and defining terms concerning the elements of leadership and its development, as well as a good teaching text. However, the author has another purpose in mind for the last one-third of the book-a comparative review of more than a century of vigorous and many-sided scholarship. In his words, this is necessary because "although an applied approach is useful at a practical level, a deeper understanding of leadership requires an analysis of the competing theories and frameworks that have been advanced in the field" (273).
It is at this juncture that the enterprise runs into difficulty. As a new set of analytical tools is carefully fashioned for round two, the reader cannot be blamed for shifting uncomfortably in his or her seat. But bear with the author: By the time he finishes, he has illuminated the field in a way that permits a complete view of the many elements and interconnections of leadership. Although his constant theory building to accommodate this comparison of theory may seem "overthought" and overrationalized, this reader was left with a much clearer understanding of the principal features of a literature landscape that is more lunar than cultivated.
In the first chapter, the leadership literature is briefly organized in a chronological presentation of approaches according to various schools of thought and according to four questions that address the major debates among researchers: (1) To what degree does leadership make a difference? (2) What should leaders focus on? (3) Are leaders born or made, and to what degree can they be trained? (4) What is the best style (set of management behaviors) to use? The second question is of particular interest to public sector scholars and often arises under the heading of the proper scope of discretion for decision and action by the government administrator. One need only recall the famous Finer-Friedrich debate of the early 1940s over the matter of administrative responsibility. On the other questions, the author finds that the field of public sector leadership accepts most of what is said in the private sector literature.
Van Wart renders a service by explaining the different ways that "style" has been defined in the literature. He also is persuasive in downplaying the distinction that so many authors erect between the concepts of management and leadership while implying the same: "Rather, all good managers must occasionally be leaders ..., and all good leaders had better be good managers ...at least some of the time if they are not to be brought down by technical snafus or organizational messiness. Indeed, one of the enormous challenges of great leadership is the seamless blending of the more operational-managerial dimensions with the visionary leadership functions" (25).
The following chapters on the importance and nature of leader assessments lay out a comprehensive picture of the factors that need to be assessed upon taking over a leadership position and a prescriptive view of some of the steps to be taken. But there is no mention of how a leader might go about gaining the knowledge and perspective needed to make these assessments. Certainly, it cannot be assumed that the putative leader's background is sufficient to prepare him or her to make the assessment. Is the assessment instinctive? Is it based on strong values gained from a blessed background that has positioned the leader to ask the right questions? And, if a steep learning curve is necessary (after all, the number of leader assessments the author says must be made seems outlandishly huge for one human to accomplish), then are there special competencies or prescribed processes for mastering this phase?
A distinction of degree rather than kind is drawn among traits, skills, and behaviors, and these terms are well defined and defended, as well as effectively presented. Traits are relatively innate or long-term dispositions, skills are broadly applied learned characteristics, and behaviors are concrete actions.
Van Wart distills the leadership
To bridge the progression from taxonomy to literature review, Van Wart introduces clusters of competencies that he labels "styles" and applies to them certain contingency factors ("all the different types of variables that affect the style or behavior of leaders as they seek to be effective"). The leader's selection of a style or multiple styles from among the many competencies becomes part of the leadership action cycle. Styles are selected by particular leaders to fit different operational environments and realities. They include directive, laissez-faire, supportive, participative, delegative, achievement-oriented, inspirational, external, and combined. Categories of contingency factors include leadership characteristics, task characteristics, subordinate characteristics, and organizational characteristics.
Using combinations of contingency and style variables, Van Wart classifies all of the major leadership theories, not unlike a border collie sorting sheep into separate pens (regardless of their satisfaction with the sorter's choice). A word should be added about "transformational" leadership, which carries much weight in other leadership texts. Van Wart sees this body of theory as "more normative in its perspective, nearly always focusing on ideal behaviors of great leaders" (338) and concerned with creating new visions and committed to organizational change.
Following a chapter on leadership development, also approached as a teaching and taxonomical exercise, Van Wart concludes with a short, summative chapter on evaluating leadership. Likely, he intended it to be longer, and he entices the reader by promising at its end "an example of perhaps the greatest administrative leader in U.S. history: George Washington." Sadly, owing to editorial oversight, the example does not materialize. We are left only with the author's rather bland definition of public administrative leadership: "a composite of providing technical performance, internal direction and support to followers, and external organizational direction-all with a public service orientation" (434).
In the end, Van Wart's catalog of assessments and competencies required for effective leadership is enlightening but daunting. One might reflect that most leadership efforts, even those streamlined for specific styles and discrete intended results, are surely are bound to fail, and as a result, our public organizations are typically and unsurprisingly unsuccessful. But this does not appear to be the reality (Goodsell 2003). This apparent contradiction begs questioning. Is there room instead for the hypothesis that effective organizations do not necessarily have to be dependent on great or even good leadership? Is there empirical support for the idea that some organizations achieve much of what is expected of them through a combination of mediocre leadership, a body of professional knowledge, ethical performance of duty, and policy directives that allows them to simply muddle through?
Reservations about the scope and applicability of Van Wart's book might be reinforced when two excellent books by Jeffrey S. Luke (1998) and Robert and Janet Denhardt (2006) are considered. The thrust of Luke's thesis is that the nature of the public sector is so different from that of the private or even the nonprofit sector that it casts leadership into different realms. Private sector leadership contemplates take-charge executives pursuing organizational excellence, stimulating extraordinary performance by their employees, and transforming the organization's internal culture. Public problems, on the other hand, are interconnected across organizational and jurisdictional lines, each organization lacking the resources, authority, and influence to bring about change by itself. In such an environment, the task of public sector leaders is to connect with each other and to act as catalysts in order to bring their issues to the public and policy agenda, gather the diverse sets (really, networks) of people, agencies, and interests needed to address the issues, stimulate multiple strategies and options for action, and sustain that action and momentum by managing the interconnections through some type of institutionalization and information sharing.
Although some of the competencies needed to succeed and thrive in such an environment are undoubtedly addressed by Van Wart, most are treated as vague generalities about environmental scanning, networking, and partnering behaviors. Similarly, the critical importance of passion and strength of character to leadership observed by Luke is largely missed. Luke's words resonate strongly in the sensibilities of public administrators: "character undergirds and infuses energy into the specific tasks and skills," and three habits form the basis of character-a passion for results, a sense of connectedness and relatedness, and exemplary personal integrity (Luke 1998, xviii-xix). Van Wart would likely describe this as a "style" and treat catalytic leadership as but another leadership theory to catalog.
Though Luke calls attention to the need to think idiosyncratically about the nature of leadership in the public sector, the Denhardts challenge us to think more broadly about the nature of leadership in general-in particular the nonrational, affective aspects of leadership or, as they put it, the
Putting together the solid scholarship of Van Wart on the traditional literature, the insights of Luke on the connective tissue of the public sector and its need for catalytic leadership, and the Denhardts' innovative perceptions on the art of leadership, the reader is left with a rather complete understanding of the current state of public sector leadership. Add to this some storytelling about acknowledged masters of the American administrative leadership craft-George Washington and George C. Marshall for starters-and a serious student of the art and science of public leadership will be ahead of the game.