Leadership Development and Moral Agency in the Public Service
Leadership Development and Moral Agency in the Public Service
Charles Garofalo
Professor
Department of Political Science
Texas State University
San Marcos, TX
USA
Abstract
This paper’s principal purpose is to address leadership development as a component of capacity-building in the transition states. It argues that as the transition states struggle with the shift toward democratic institutions and markets, an essential step is the inclusion of moral agency in their leadership development programs. The paper also proposes a framework and vehicle for the incorporation of moral agency into CEE governance. Finally, moral agency is important if public administration, in the transition states and elsewhere, is to move from simplistic legalisms to the real responsibilities of decision making and discretion that are embedded in the modern administrative landscape.
Introduction
Leadership is central to governance in all polities. It is an essential part of our collective capacity to develop vision and strategy, formulate, implement, and evaluate policies, to provide stability and continuity, and to deliver services to citizens in an ethical, effective, and efficient manner. Without public leadership, civil society could not be sustained nor could citizens’ preferences and needs be satisfied. Therefore, it is clear that systematic institutional attention to leadership is fundamental to governance everywhere, including the CEE countries, as they grapple with the transition to democracy. In this context, this paper briefly reviews the leadership literature, examines leadership development in OECD countries, as possible guides, approaches, and strategies for leadership development in the CEE region, and offers a framework for the incorporation of moral agency into leadership development and management programs.
In a sense, this paper is, in Richard Rose’s (1993) words, an exercise in lesson-drawing. If it encourages citizens and public officials in CEE countries to consider the experiences of OECD members as those experiences may apply to their own settings, it will have achieved its purpose. With particular regard to the development of ethical leadership, OECD countries, including the four CEE members of the OECD, have followed different but similar paths—different in the details of emphasis, format, and structure, similar in the absence of an explicit philosophical foundation for the formulation of moral agency and integrity-based management in the public service. CEE countries, in particular, and OECD members, in general, to varying degrees confront the same challenges in the development of ethical leadership in governance: cynical or at least skeptical citizens, rule-bound hierarchies, and a need to repair the discontinuity between public service values and public service cultures. Nonetheless, the underlying premises of this paper are that the development of leadership, especially ethical leadership, constitutes a major element in capacity-building in all political systems, including those in Central and Eastern Europe, and that public administrators are both professionally and morally entitled and required to exercise leadership in meeting their obligations to their stakeholders.
Leadership
The literature on leadership, whether public or private, is replete with a wide array of theoretical approaches, definitions, and expectations. For example, as Peter G. Northouse (2001) says, leadership is treated, among other things, as a trait, a behavior, the focus of group processes, a power relationship between leaders and followers, an instrument of goal achievement. For his part, leadership is a process in which an individual influences a group of other individuals to attain a common objective. Leadership is not a trait or characteristic in the leader, but a transactional event between leaders and followers, meaning that leaders and followers affect one another in an interactive, rather than linear, process. But leadership also has been described as transformational, rather than merely transactional (Burns 1978). Transactional leaders, according to this formulation, concentrate on technical issues within the familiar boundaries of the status quo, while transformational leaders try to change the status quo, to engage and empower employees, and to encourage communication and growth. In any event, leadership continues to command a great deal of attention on both the practitioner and academic level.
The other major themes in recent leadership literature include the differences and similarities between leadership and management, the demands on leaders amid the pressures and perplexities of globalization, technological innovation, environmental issues, privatization, the new public management, and the overriding requirement to manage culture and change. Analysts such as Joseph Rost (1991), Edgar Schein (1992), Robert Denhardt (1993), Ronald Heifetz (1994), Larry Terry (1995), Nada Korac-Kakabadse, Andrew Korac-Kakabadse, and Alexander Kouzmin (2001), and Malcolm Dawson (2001) have approached leadership from a variety of perspectives in an attempt to clarify the language of leadership and to promote a more vibrant and valuable leadership conversation. Part of the language of contemporary leadership concerns the claim that the world is experiencing a radical transformation, a paradigm shift, in which such established notions as hierarchy, authority, and accountability are undergoing major changes that, in turn, demand changes in established assumptions, practices, and leadership styles. Indeed, today, we hear and read of the need for spirituality, vision, and values in the workplace, and of such concepts as servant leadership. In general, we can conclude that leadership is many things besides instrumental goal achievement. It involves wisdom, adaptation, conflict resolution, dialogue, influence rather than coercion, commitment, and community. In short, it involves the continual struggle to make sense of contemporary confusion in the work setting and elsewhere, to reconfigure personal and professional relationships, and to find meaning and purpose in our daily lives. This, in turn, brings us to ethical leadership.
Like leadership, in general, ethical leadership can be considered from many angles. But regardless of which perspective we adopt—personal, professional, or political, for example—we are essentially concerned with the character and conduct of present and prospective leaders. We are interested in the virtues that leaders embody in their decisions and actions, and we are attentive to the effect that leaders have on the lives of their followers. Either explicitly or implicitly, we recognize that leadership bears an ethical burden. As Northouse (2001) argues, “ethics is central to leadership because of the nature of the process of influence, the need to encourage followers to accomplish mutual goals, and the impact leaders have on establishing the organization’s values” (255). Leadership and ethics, therefore, are inseparable, or to put in another way, it is not possible to consider leadership seriously without taking into account its ethical nature.
Yet, despite the indivisibility of ethics and leadership, the literature on ethical leadership tends to remain at the hortatory level. Although many scholars and others have emphasized the importance of integrity in public administration, for example, the meaning, consequences, and implications of integrity-based organizational or cultural change are either treated without a specific moral framework or are ignored altogether. Some scholars such as William Hitt (1990) who have written on ethics and leadership seem to think that the fundamental issues have been resolved, that the requisite commitments and skills are in place, and that linking leadership with ethics is merely a technical task. But, as Robert Denhardt (1993) maintains, “most public organizations have not undertaken active efforts to promote ethical behavior,” (242). Most public organizations, in fact, fail to distinguish between the legal and the ethical and, thus, tend to approach the entire subject from the familiar rules-based perspective. Therefore, what is needed to move the public service, in general, from a legalistic to an ethical understanding of leadership is a clear and practical moral framework, a normative foundation designed to enhance the critical faculties of public servants and to provide a basis for values clarification, as well as justification of policies and programs. Later, this paper will sketch such a foundation. For now, suffice it to say that ethical leadership in public administration means the capacity and courage to make hard choices and to explain and justify those choices to legislators, judges, and above all to citizens.
Leadership Development in OECD Countries
According to the OECD (2001), leadership development today is an increasingly important issue across member states. A new type of leadership is required in the face of globalization, decentralization, and intensive use of information technology. Policy coherence, negotiating and managing accountability in the midst of privatization, new public management, and other reforms, as well as growing expectations of transparency, adaptability, and flexibility, demand more systematic and sustained attention to the development of a different kind of leadership. As the classic command and control model of leadership loses credibility, authority comes into question, hierarchies are often flattened, and employee commitment rather than compliance becomes a high priority.
Historically, the most important role of public sector leaders was to solve problems in a specific environment. The responsibility of contemporary leaders, however, is to solve the problem of adaptation, of closing the gap between the real and the ideal, of how things are and how they should be. The OECD (2001) argues that citizens expect leaders to promote institutional adaptations in the public interest and to promote certain fundamental values that are embodied in public spiritedness. Although the nature of these values and this public spiritedness is unspecified, the mere mention of such concerns does point in the direction of leadership as a function of integrity, vision, judgment, and courage. Indeed, the OECD (2001) asserts a particularly close connection between public sector leadership and public sector ethics, and between public service ethics, trust, transparency, accountability, and governance which, essentially, is the institutionalization of national values. The embodiment of those values, leadership is at the heart of good governance.
Among OECD members, there is a spectrum of leadership development approaches and patterns. At one end of the spectrum, we find France with a high level of central intervention, exemplified by its Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA), as well as Japan and Korea, which employ similar strategies. At the other end of the spectrum are countries with market-oriented approaches such as New Zealand, in which senior positions are advertised and are, in principle, open to any qualified candidates. Between these poles are countries with a range of approaches, often including the establishment of senior executive systems such as the United Kingdom and the United States. In most OECD countries, control of leadership positions is retained at the central government level, but there is considerable flexibility within departments and agencies to adapt leadership strategies to their particular needs and circumstances.
Although the six countries described by the OECD (2001)—Germany, Mexico, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom, and United States—vary in their approaches and strategies for leadership development, several common trends were identified. First is to define a competence profile for future leaders, the idea being that such competencies could be different from those required for present leaders. The Senior Civil Service in the United Kingdom and the Senior Executive Service in the United States exemplify this approach. Second is to identify and select potential leaders. A major question here is whether to select future leaders from outside or to nurture those already in the public service. Those countries on the more centralized end of the spectrum tend to use the former approach, while others, such as Australia, Canada, and the United States, either use or intend to use the latter approach, which is often called succession planning and management.
Last, there are the responsibilities to encourage mentoring and training and to sustain leadership development. The provision of opportunities for coaching, counseling, and networking is considered key in this connection, along with the allocation of sufficient resources and appropriate incentives. The integration of civil servants into a team of senior leaders with common values and visions is vital for the creation of effective future governance.
A Proposal for Leadership Development and Moral Agency in CEE Countries
Clearly, leadership development varies among OECD nations. Whether driven by demographic pressures such as looming retirements, discontinuity between public service values and public service cultures, global, technological, and economic change, or a combination of these factors, leadership development takes different forms, depending on the nature, capacity, and quality of governance in a given polity. From centralized to moderately centralized to decentralized, OECD countries are implementing numerous programs to ensure the creation and cultivation of future leaders in their respective public sectors. The missing ingredient, however, is an explicit framework for the formulation and inclusion of moral agency in leadership development initiatives. Despite the laudable, almost obligatory, calls for vision, values, and integrity, OECD countries tend to take a structural rather than normative approach to the development of ethical leadership. Codes of ethics, anti-corruption measures, legal and regulatory prohibitions on certain practices—all legitimate concerns—constitute the principal portion of the programs and practices of OECD members. Although these efforts as well as other structural initiatives are necessary, they are not sufficient for the development and promotion of ethical leadership, including moral agency, in the public service.
But reform, under any circumstances, can be daunting. Resistance is likely, the benefits merely speculative, and the incentives weak. In the CEE countries, where the definition of public service is changing radically, these challenges are even greater. Questions abound, as individuals and institutions struggle with fundamental concerns about roles, responsibilities, and relationships. The transition from command and control societies in which public servants found themselves enmeshed in patronage systems to more democratic forms in which public servants can be expected to exercise autonomy, judgment, and discretion in order to enact the public interest is painful and perplexing. While questions may abound, credible answers may be in short supply. Therefore, the proposal for a normative emphasis in leadership development is offered respectfully, in recognition of the formidable hurdles still to be overcome in the shift toward more democratic and ethical governance.
The significance of the public service in effecting change in all CEE countries is generally acknowledged. For example, according to Professionalism and Ethics in the Public Service: Issues and Practices in Selected Regions (United Nations, 2000), public service plays a pivotal role in shaping a new society by rediscovering and embodying the true meaning of the public interest. Embodiment of the public interest is central to the meaning of moral agency advanced here. As Charles Garofalo (2003) argues, moral agency is inseparable from the public interest which “embodies the common good, signifies obligation and accountability, and symbolizes reason and responsibility” (499). But moral agency is also much more. It is practical action, an indelible fiduciary quality, and the capacity to probe the issues in the daily struggles over budgets, agendas, and turf battles. Moral agency includes justifiable decisions, a strategic grasp of organizational politics, and a shrewd sense of timing. Moral agency is at the heart of effective leadership.
Clearly, however, leadership, especially moral leadership, is not easy to achieve anywhere, including Central and Eastern Europe. For example, despite the participation of the ministers and senior officials from the 21 CEE countries in the November 1997 UN conference in Thessaloniki, Greece, as well as the representation from the European Commission, the OECD, and Transparency International, the UN report starkly states that “government leaders are not demonstrating a willingness to deal with the problems to cause much optimism for meaningful reform” (17). The problems at the societal level included primarily corruption, along with threats to democracy, human rights, and the rule of law, while at the administrative level, they included inadequate pay, salary compression, and poorly trained personnel—precisely the kinds of problems that make reform so difficult, and the kinds of problems that require more than hortatory assertions about the need for integrity, vision, and accountability. Thus, since we must start somewhere, let us start with a proposal to increase the chances of at least creating cadres of governmental leaders in the CEE countries who have the moral clarity and conviction to deal with the problems in a way that encourages hope and optimism among ordinary citizens, as well as members of professions, the private sector, and other major sectors of society.
Our task at this juncture is to propose a model of moral agency in public administration that holds out reasonable hope of contributing to the development of the kind of new leadership that the OECD claims is needed in the 21st century. As we recall, the need is for leaders who understand and undertake policy coherence, boundary spanning, negotiation, flexibility, adaptation, and transparency. We need leaders who are effective and efficient as well as ethical, who can operate at various levels simultaneously, and who can hold two or more thoughts in their minds at the same time. We need leaders committed to democratic deliberation, discourse, and decision making, in order to reframe administrative culture and attain responsible and humane governance. We need moral public servants.