Please read the case study instructions (attached) and read the case study (attached). I have also attached the materials for this week to help in analyzing the case. Analyze the five items listed and write a detailed case analysis (usually about 800 wor

Overview (1 of 9)

Lesson Overview This lesson (Chapters 7 and 8 in your textbook) focuses on your leadership competencies. In this lesson, you will learn how an individual is socially influenced and how we socially influence others.

First, you need to explore foundational concepts and models of leadership by reviewing the role of power and political behavior for managers. You will need to explore traditional leadership models and focus on contemporary models of leadership. Leadership is like a prism—you see something new and different each time you look at it from a new angle. You will learn additional lenses for understanding and addressing the range of leadership issues and the pressures that leaders face. You could also explore new perspectives and models of leadership: transactional, authentic, transformational. Following you understanding of leadership, you will get an appreciation of power and politics in organizations. You will understand the importance of politics and power, the changing perspectives on power, the sources of power, and the positive and negative impacts of power.

Lesson Objectives After completing this lesson, you should be able to

explain the current leadership context and skills needed;

identify reasons why leadership is important;

define the different approaches to leadership;

understand the different perseptives in leadership in public administration and public management;

understand the importance of politics and power;

explain the changing perspectives of power;

explain the sources of power;

use the concepts of balancing power; and

understand the positive and negative effects of power.

Lesson Readings & Activities By the end of this lesson, make sure you have completed the readings and activities found in the Lesson 7 Cour se Schedule.

Key Questions (2 of 9)

Key Questions to Organize and Guide Your Study When you read the textbook and extra reading materials, think about the following questions:

What are the differences between leadership and management? What are the differences between a leader and a manager?

PADM510: ORGANIZATION BEHAVIOR Lesson 7: Power, Politics, and Leadership

Should the president of United States be a leader or a manager? Based on you understanding of the first question, do you evaluate the president’s job using leadership criteria or management criteria? Why?

Is a leader born or made? Why?

Might leadership style be the result (not cause) of subordinate behavior? Why?

Is it possible to get rid of politics at an organization? Why or why not?

Leadership Theories and Practices (3 of 9)

Leadership Theories and Practices In the current context of recurrent crisis in the public sphere, the challenge of defining, finding, and supporting adequate leadership has never been greater or more pressing. Crises include the domestic and global recession and associated sovereign debt crisis, multiple armed conflicts in which the United States is involved, and global environmental and natural disasters that challenge the capacity of public organizations to respond effectively. Inadequate leadership contributed to many of these crises. Despite unprecedented demonstrations of the risks and consequences of inadequate leadership capacity in public organizations, however, the profession of public administration has not embraced leadership as a fundamental element of success.

The question of leadership became more important while administrative discretion, or actions taken outside the explicit wording of legislation and policy, was seen as unavoidable and inevitable in the complex world of public policy. Use of judgment, and going beyond the exact wording of legislation to achieve goals and objectives, seemed to require skills other than the management skills identified in the early public administration writings, such as budgeting, organizational design, and so on.

As public administration embraced the idea of administrative leadership, it imported many of the more theoretical approaches to leadership into its scholarship and education.

Traditional Approaches to Leadership The study of leadership has gone through a number of distinct eras or phases. Not everyone agrees on the details, but it is fair to say that leadership began with the so-called "great man" or "traits" approach. The traits approach to leadership focused exclusively on the leader himself (rarely "herself," given the times) and the supposed traits leaders possessed that separated them from lesser individuals. These traits might be physical (strength, beauty, size), intellectual (intelligent, wise, decisive), or moral (humble, other-regarding, patriotic). This approach could help identify why leadership was an important aspect to explain historical events or the performance of an organization, but by definition it could not train people to be leaders. Leaders were born different than the rest of us.

Researchers of leadership also consider the behavior of leaders into their studies rather just the traits that leaders possess (Denhardt, Denhardt & Aristigueta, 2016). Different types of leadership have been identified and examined. The essential and widely used distinciton is relationship-oriented and task-oriented. Different approaches suggest different types of leaderhip styles. For example, the mangerial grid has two demensions: concern for production and concern for people. In another approach, situational leadership, its emphasis is "on the relationship between the leader and his or her followers" (Denhardt, Denhardt, & Aristigueta, 2019, p. 201). The leadership style dpends on the the readiness levels of the followers.

The contingency approach takes both individual and sitatuional factors into consideration. The leader effectiveness is "contingent on the relationship between the style of leadership and the degree to which the situation enables the leader to exert influence" (Denhardt, Denhardt, Aristigueta, & Rawlings, 2019, p. 203).

Contemporary Approaches to Leadership Denhardt, Denhardt, Aristigueta, and Rawlings (2019) state that most of the contemporary approaches agree that "leaders may be born but that they also can be made—or at least improved on" (p. 205). Also, besides traits, the contemporary approaches also look into other aspects associated with leadership, including skills, competencies, and strategies.

In 1978, the eminent political historian James MacGregor Burns (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_MacGregor_Burns) published a book simply titled Leadership. Burns used the differentiation between two types of leadership, transactional and transformational, to build his case for the importance of leadership:

Transactional leadership involves exchanges between leaders and followers. It accepts values as given and does not challenge the status quo.

Transformational leadership involves a leader-follower relationship that alters the values of the followers, convinces them of the need to reorder their view of the world and motivates them, in the words of a U.S. Army recruiting jingle, "to be all that you can be."

Denhardt, Denhardt, Aristigueta, and Rawlings (2019) have examined different contemporary approaches:

value-based leadership;

servant leadership;

positive leadership; and

shared, connective, and collaborative leadership.

References

Denhardt, R. B., Denhardt, J. V., Aristigueta, M. R., & Rawlings, K. C. (2019). Managing human behavior in public and nonprofit organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Ltd.

Burns, J. M. (1978). Leadership. New York: Harper & Row.

Tension from Public Administration's History (4 of 9)

Tension From Public Administration's History: The Role of Leaders

In public administraiton, leadership is also a key concept. However, there is a long-standing debate in the public service literature over the appropriate role of leaders (managers) in a constitutional democracy.

Wilson (1887), for instance, called for a separation between politics and administration to avoid undue influence of the one on the other. Appleby (1973) and others rejected this notion, pointing out that government is different from private enterprise and that private managers can only succeed in public leadership positions with a public interest attitude.

Waldo (1948) eschewed scientific administration as proposed by Taylor (1947), contending that the public service needed its own science of administration that was different from private business.

Selznik (1949) anticipated modern leadership theory with his call for cooptation of the public into government decision-making, as well as his description of transformational leadership principles. The Hoover Commission (1949) recommended empowerment of public executives, advocating for instance that they be allowed to reorganize departments without congressional approval.

Twenty years later, Kaufman (1969) correctly identified the three-way tension in public administration between representativeness, political neutrality, and executive leadership. He predicted the recurrent themes of reform around decentralization is to remove politics from administration and to remove administration from politics, thus leading to the neutrality and independence of the civil service. New Public Management (NPM), with its foundation of management based on public-choice theories of efficiency and output, sparked a sequence of privatization initiatives in the public service, resulting in the “hollowing out” (Hood, 1991) of government, a term referring to services provided by private contractors as opposed to public employees.

Two Opposing Schools of Thought This century-old debate resulted in the establishment of two opposing schools of thought among public administration scholars regarding the role of leadership in the public sector, both of which, ironically, recommend a diminished role. Advocates for a market-based approach to service delivery in the public sector believe this approach would bring about the best efficiency and accountability. Public interest advocates, on the other hand, point out the shortcomings of economic individualism, and believe public servants should only follow the directions of politicians, courts, and legislators. In both schools, public managers serve a secondary role, allowing others—private contractors or elected representatives—to do the “real work” of government.

Relation to New Public Management (NPM) The shortcomings of the NPM led a number of scholars to express concern regarding the overreaching or misdirection of public managers functioning as economic individualists. These public administration authors warn that strong leadership may be a danger to the democratic process. They worry that managers in such a system have an inherent propensity to shirk, to be opportunistic, to maximize their own self-interest, to act with guile, and to behave in a way that constitutes a moral hazard. They believe that public managers should be beholden to their political bosses, and that while their ability to set and carry out goals is an important function, their actions should be constrained by the goals and purposes of the institutions they represent. Public managers should work to examine the system as a whole, and work to integrate their role in the system into the greater whole through goal setting that reflects public values of justice and equity rather than business values of maximum economic efficiency and maximizing self-interests.

References

Appleby, P. H. (1973). Big democracy. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.

Hood, C. (1991). A public management for all seasons? Public Administration, 69(1), 3–19.

Kaufman, H. (1969). Administrative decentralization and political power. Public Administration Review, 29(1), 3– 15.

Selznick, P. (1949). TVA and the grass roots. Berkeley, CA: UC Berkeley Press.

Taylor, F. W. (1947). Scientific management. New York, NY: Harper & Row.

The Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government (1949). Task Force Report on National Security Organization. January 1949.

Waldo, D. (1948). The administrative state: A study of the political theory of American public administration (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Holmes and Meier.

Wilson, W. (1887). The study of administration. Political Science Quarterly, 2(2), 197–222.

Problems with Leadership in the Public Service (5 of 9)

Problems With Leadership in the Public Service Despite the extensive debate regarding the relative merits of different forms of leadership in public administration throughout its history, or perhaps as a result of the lack of a clear consensus regarding either the role or the form of leadership in public sectors, there are a number of startling examples of failed public leadership that have in turn led to high-profile mishaps. For example, inadequate leadership contributed significantly to the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters. Failed leadership at the federal, state, and local levels played a prominent role in the poor federal response to Hurricane Katrina. Shortcomings of leadership were also instrumental in the Federal Home Loan Bureau’s role in the recent housing crisis.

These failures demonstrate the importance of leadership in public organizations. Nevertheless, challenges to the appropriateness of “managers” in public service are reflected by a large gap between the public and general leadership literature. Fairholm (2004) notes that “it has been a struggle to discuss the philosophy of leadership in public administration” (p. 577). As an example of this struggle, speaking to those who delve into public sector management research, Cook (1998) cautioned “wariness in trying to reach beyond art to science in developing the political core of public management thus may be appropriate. Nevertheless, it is certainly possible for scholars to derive a set of testable hypotheses from the Madisonian framework” (p. 230). There is an extensive literature on public leadership, but it has not progressed to the level of the general leadership literature. There is a broad consensus regarding its lack of depth, breadth, and substance. There have been calls for research efforts to help better define the need, structure, tools, processes, and functions of leadership in the public sector.

Increased Complexity of Public Organizations' External Environment (6 of 9)

Increased Complexity of Public Organizations' External Environment The current complex public service environment reflects the atmosphere following the September 11 attacks. This requires public leaders to balance operational priorities with unanticipated emergent needs, particularly in the setting of an increased focus on performance placing additional demands on public service leadership. It is true that our country has never been without significant economic, military, social, or political upheaval. The Great Depression was more disruptive and destructive than our recent financial crisis. The Second World War was more costly in terms of money and lives than the Iraq war. The Haitian earthquake and Hurricane Katrina are among the most destructive natural disasters in modern history, but there have been much worse. Nevertheless, the current period is remarkable for the frequency and severity of public crisis as well as the ongoing unprecedented transformation of the economic, technological, and political American landscape.

Regardless of the comparative seriousness of today’s problems compared to earlier years, there exists a compelling and urgent need for modern leadership in the public service, and a concomitant need for academic support to supply the necessary understanding, principles, and structure of modern public service leadership.

Increased Complexity of Public Organizations' Internal Environment (7 of 9)

The Increased Complexity of Public Organizations' Internal Environment Public organizations’ internal environments have also become increasingly complex. Schneider (2002) uses the term radix organization for this new level of complexity, describing organizations as flexible value chains and support activities for customers. The term captures the complicated structures that public organizations have assumed, with outsourcing arrangements of various services, ambiguous oversight structures, etc. In the bureaucratic approach to organizational structure, the organization’s leader has direct power and control over the remainder of the organization. In the radix organization, however, the leader's success depends on an ability to interact with the organization’s various stakeholders, an environment in which many public organizations must function. With the influence of political leaders, legislative oversight bodies, private interest groups, and private citizens on public organizations, the command and control approach is outdated at best, failing to provide the flexibility and adaptability required for these dynamic environments.

Radix organizations are characterized by structures such as teams, alliances, contingent workers, and outsourcing arrangements, all of which are characteristic of many public organizations. As opposed to bureaucratic organizations built on a strictly vertical power structure, radix organizations understand different types of authority in nonvertical relationships.

CMS as an Example An example of a radix organization is the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which is tasked with implementing the recently adopted healthcare reform legislation. CMS’ mission of financing and overseeing the care of elderly and disadvantaged patients is provided by a network of private contractors that in turn interact with many thousands of care providers. The Medicaid program has the added complexity of being administered at the state level, with no two states having the same eligibility, program structure, etc. Thus, Donald Berwick, President Obama’s appointee for the CMS directorship, must work with this network of independent providers and insurers, 50 different state legislatures and governors, and a deeply divided U.S. Congress to implement a vast legislative mandate (over 2,400 pages) that lacks clarity on many fronts. There is little question that the traditional bureaucratic, command- and-control approach to such an undertaking would have little likelihood of success. Rather, Berwick must work collaboratively with this vast array of stakeholders in order to carry out this task.

The Need for New Leadership Models (8 of 9)

The Need for New Leadership Models Radix organizations such as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services require new leadership structures to deal with their increasingly complex environments. The law of requisite variety states that an organization must have the same level of variety (complexity) as its environment in order to successfully interact with that environment (Ashby, 1960). Thus, as public organizations’ internal and external environments become more complex, their organizational structures must similarly increase their complexity so that the organizations can successfully accomplish their mission.

The traditional bureaucratic structure with its strictly hierarchical power structure was developed for an earlier age. Previously, there was little ambiguity as to the roles of public organizations and their leaders. This dynamic no longer prevails. Through various periods of reform, political adventurism, and judicial review, public organizations have become more complex, with multiple stakeholders, oversight mechanisms, mixtures of private and public service delivery, and citizen involvement. As per the law of requisite variety, this increased complexity requires that public organizations’ structures become correspondingly more complex and diverse in order to successfully interact in this environment. Leadership will determine how successfully public organizations are able to adapt to their changing environments. It is clear that as the complexity of the U.S. society has increased, traditional top-down forms of civic leadership have become ineffective. In order for the public sector to deal with the myriad challenges it faces in health care, Social Security, security, defense, interaction with the private sector, and the increasingly unrealistic expectations of the public, strong and dynamic leadership will be even more crucial.

Learning Case (9 of 9)

Learning Case