Setting sail in a storm: leadership in times of cutbacks

J. E. T. Schmidt and S. M. Groeneveld

Public Management Review, 2021, vol. 23, issue 1, 112-134

Abstract: This paper explores what type of leadership public managers engage in during cutbacks. A qualitative case study involving cutbacks in three public organizations shows how cutbacks trigger centralized decision-making and top-down planned change processes, reducing public managers’ room to manoeuvre. Within such processes, public managers’ leadership behaviour becomes focused on securing employees’ support for change in ways that vary across levels of the organizational hierarchy. Based on a comparison of the empirical findings with insights from the literature streams on change leadership, transformational leadership, and crisis leadership, the paper formulates propositions on how cutbacks affect leadership behaviour of public managers.

Date: 2021
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DOI: 10.1080/14719037.2019.1668472

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