International Journal of Public Leadership

Purpose This article explores how gender-diverse managers in US libraries and museums experience leadership and perceive gender to influence leadership. Design/methodology/approach In-depth interviews were conducted with five gender-diverse managers. Data were analyzed with inductive, semantic thematic analysis and a complementary, deductive analysis using Wharton's multilevel gender framework. F…

Purpose This study examined the relationship between toxic leadership and turnover intention among professional firefighters in Nevada. Psychological well-being and resilience were tested as potential mediators using parallel mediation analysis. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected from 348 firefighters to measure toxic leadership, psychological well-being, resilience, and turnover. Ha…

Purpose The dominance of New Public Management has waned, leaving public leaders facing complex, wicked problems that technical efficiency alone cannot solve. While Public Value offers a promising alternative, practitioners lack a coherent framework to navigate its demands. This study aims to bridge the gap between abstract Public Value theory and management practice by proposing a Tri-axial Mode…

Purpose This study examines public trust in traditional and religious leaders in Ghana, focusing on the influence of perceived corruption, engagement, responsiveness, and effective management of natural resources. Design/methodology/approach Employing data from the 9th Round of Afrobarometer surveys conducted in 2022, the study utilizes descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression analys…

Purpose Artificial intelligence (AI) is commonly offered as a potentially beneficial application towards bettering the future of people, organisations and society. However, AI can have a dark side, where, for example, ideologically driven AI decision-making is directed at political ends involving the impoverishing of the poorest in society to further neoliberal individual and collective political…

Purpose Self-awareness is an essential ingredient of leader performance. However, existing research has not unpacked the specific experiences and practices supporting the development and maintenance of self-awareness. This study establishes a framework to study self-beliefs and a dedication to leader self-development, which we understand to be the antecedents of self-awareness, using examples of …

Purpose This study investigates the interactive effects of leadership effectiveness and organizational learning on workplace innovation within US federal agencies. Design/methodology/approach It uses data from the 2024 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey and ordinary least squares regression to estimate the regression coefficients. Findings The results show that both leadership effectiveness and or…

Purpose This study investigates how an individual's culture, upbringing and systemic barriers affect the way women navigate the political landscape, while considering the persistent underrepresentation of women in Indonesian politics. This study offers a new Typology, offering insights into identity strategies that emerge among successful women political leaders. Design/methodology/approach A qua…

Purpose In the context of public service, this study aims to verify the influence of the communication skills of immediate managers on public servants' motivation, satisfaction and engagement at work and indirectly on perceived effectiveness. Design/methodology/approach Initially, a structural model was proposed. Data were then collected through a structured questionnaire sent to employees of pub…

Purpose The study aimed to explore the impact of women’s leadership on social innovation and the uplifting of the quality of education in K-12 settings in Sindh, Pakistan. Design/methodology/approach The study employed a cross-sectional survey research design. The population consisted of women leaders of K-12 public sector schools. From which 288 women leaders were selected through random samplin…

Purpose This paper explores the relationship between populist rhetoric and political communication within the context of Dravidian politics in Indian politics. Populist rhetoric has been a strategic tool used by both national and regional party leaders, but here, we are specifying regional parties’ usage, particularly the Dravidian Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and the All India Anna Munnetra Kazhagam …

Purpose To examine the critical role of public leadership in preventing systemic ethical erosion. The study argues that leadership failures create “conscience dust,” a gradual decay of professional ethics, and proposes a multi-level framework, the “Architecture of Integrity,” to counteract it, with special reference to the Hellenic (Greek) Public Administration. Design/methodology/approach The st…

Purpose To achieve the sustainable development goals, women must have equitable leadership and involvement in politics and public life to promote inclusivity in problem-solving. Several studies have established the relationships between democracy, women's participation in democracy and gender equality. To capture an underexplored avenue, this study examined the causal relationships between politi…

Purpose This study aims to examine how gendered norms and institutional contexts shape leadership in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) public and nonprofit sectors. It explores gender differences in leadership styles, the mediating role of organizational culture and how male leaders adapt to feminized expectations in nonprofit settings. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative, interpretive app…

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore how leadership practices impact the implementation of trust-based management and how trust-based management relates to organizational outcomes in trust reforms in public sector organizations. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses partial least squares path modeling (PLS-PM) to analyze aggregated, survey data from 1,006 respondents in 2021 and 8…

Purpose This study aims to develop and elaborate the concept of leadership as institutional mechanism (LaIM), providing an integrative framework that bridges leadership theory and institutional theory. It seeks to reconceptualize leadership not merely as individual traits or behaviors but as socially embedded and institutionally structured mechanisms that sustain organizational authority, governa…

Purpose This paper develops a conceptual framework linking bureaucratic simplification to organizational effectiveness in the public sector. It explores administrative efficiency as a mediating mechanism and examines how transformational and digital leadership moderate this relationship. Design/methodology/approach This is a conceptual paper based on an integrative review of relevant literature i…

Purpose This contribution is set up as a conceptual paper aimed at the development of a framework for a behavioral explanation and a moral assessment of populist leadership. Design/methodology/approach A literature review is performed, resulting in 16 propositions. The propositions can be used for a QCA study. Findings The framework is conceptually extended to the exercise of control by trust and…

Purpose The article wants to unpack a curious, but important, puzzle: if, as most analysts agree, the core unifying feature of right-wing populisms is the adoption of masculinist and anti-feminist performances, one would expect women to be sidelined and excluded from leadership positions. However, even in the current moment of anti-feminist backlash, there is a significant and growing number of w…

Purpose This paper examines the effect of AI leadership on talent management among public service employees in Ghana. Drawing on transformational leadership theory (TLT) and the technology acceptance model (TAM), it explores the mediating role of innovative culture and the moderating effects of AI acceptance and digital maturity in this relationship. Design/methodology/approach A time-lagged rese…