Examining the Nature and Significance of Leadership in Government Organizations(journal article)
by Tracey Trottier, Montgomery Van Wart, XiaoHu Wang
from Public Administration Review, Vol.68 No.2, 2008, pp.319–333
"Though the mainstream organizational literature has advanced in the last 20 years with the integration of transformational and distributed leadership theories, as well as genuine attempts at comprehensive models, the public sector literature has lagged, especially in utilizing large-scale empirical studies. This study takes advantage of a very large government data set to test the utility of one of the best known theories, the "full range" leadership theory of Bernard Bass. It addresses three important research questions: How inclusive is Bass’s operational definition of leadership? How much of an impact do Bass’s leadership competencies have on follower satisfaction? Finally, how important is transformational leadership compared to transactional leadership in government settings?"