The Recent Literature on Public Leadership Reviewed and Considered

Original publication by Barbara Kellerman and Scott W. Webster
Leadership Quarterly, Elsevier Science Inc., Vol 12, Issue 4, Winter 2001 485-514.
Synopsis by Kevin Arnold, Leadership Educator, Kravis Leadership Institute, Claremont McKenna College

How does one bring order and logic to the chaotic array of literature that directly or indirectly addresses the issues of leaders and leadership? To do so, one first focuses attention on a single dimension and then creates a structure in which the current writings can be loosely identified and explored. Kellerman and Webster provide a useful reference to both academics and real world practitioners by sharing their review of recent literature on Public Leadership. In so doing, they strive to stimulate future research on Public Leadership, which is an academic “field just now being sown.”

To structure the discussion the authors define their terms:

• Leaders strive to create change
• Individuals or institutions may achieve public leadership through governance and public policy in the political sector
• Leadership is a dynamic process involving both leaders and followers in change

Kellerman and Webster restrict their exploration to recent literature, specifically books and articles written during the years 1999 and 2000. They categorize their findings into five groupings: individuals, groups or organizations, national, transnational and a collection of several popular “cross-cutting themes”. In each section they cite examples they consider representative of the breadth or lack of breadth in each area.

In referencing literature that emphasizes the individual, the autobiographical works of J. Lewis, and Lee Kuan Yew are cited along with biographies by D.L. Lewis (on Web Du Bois) and Aron (on Boris Yeltsin) to argue that “ a well told life story is leadership literature at its best”. Yet, Kellerman and Webster underscore that studies of American presidents comprise the major case studies on individual public leadership. Comments on the works of Gergen (on Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton), Greenstein (on leadership styles from Roosevelt to Clinton), Cowden (on Adlai Stevenson) and Cook (on Eleanor Roosevelt) exemplify the useful, yet differing approaches to the study of presidential leadership. To round out the individual leadership category, the authors explore the differing authorship styles of Stuckey and Wabshall, Owen and Just & Crigler in analyzing President Clinton’s handling of his affair with Monica Lewinsky. The section concludes with a brief argument that similar investigation of business leaders supports the authors’ contention that there is more in common than distinct between public and corporate leaders.

The discussion of groups and organizations provides the authors the opportunity to reflect on several of the more popular concepts in modern organizational thinking. There are brief descriptions of the work of Rada, Forester and Bennis & Heenan on collaboration, and that of Spreitzer, De Janasz & Quinn, as well as Van Gugt & De Cremer on empowerment. Finally, under the topic of globalization, the authors cite Rosen, Dingh, Singer and Phillips’ study of cultural tendencies, Kellerman’s own theories of converging contexts as written in her “Reinventing Leadership” and Lipman-Blumen’s work on connective leadership that focuses on political commonalities rather than differences.

Discussion of nations as leaders, as well as the individual leaders within nations, is the basis for a short commentary by the authors. The writings of Kuperman on American foreign policy in Rwanda and Byman, Pollack and Rose on similar perspectives on Iraq support the “nation as leader” concept. Rotberg and Wolosky, in contrast, examine the responsibilities of Mugabe (Zimbabwe) and Putin (Russia) as influential, though not necessarily successful, leaders within their own nations.

The examination of the public leadership literature focused on nations leads naturally to an expanded collection of sources concerned with how those nations engage in, or are influenced by transnational arrangements. In a slightly more subjective section of the article, the authors explore economic and geostrategic (namely military) multinational organizations and their impact on current perspectives of leadership. The writings of Schott (WTO), Pond (European Union) and Nye and Donahue (globalism, globalization) as well as Carpenter (NATO), Boutros-Ghali (United Nations) and Paul & Hall (U.S. power sharing) are cited.

The final collection of references completes the bridge between academic and practical perspectives by addressing the topics of diversity, ethics and mass movements. Walters and Smith’s book African American Leadership and a variety of authors’ perspectives on gender issues are included (Vianello and Moore, Reynolds, K.M. Lewis). The spectrum of approaches to studying ethics in leadership spans from issues of moral character in leaders (Bass and Steidlmeyer) to futurist concerns for leader responsibilities in an age of rapid technological advances (Joy). Finally, the authors offer the very interesting examples of Putnam’s Bowling Alone, Brass and Krackhardt’s study of social capital, Crosby’s study of the Amnesty International organization, as well as Jodi Williams’ leadership in the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines to alert the reader to the role of mass movements in influencing modern day decision making.

The authors conclude their article with a matrix of public leadership scholarship and a brief summary of the major challenges facing public leadership scholars. They offer the guidance that, “Leadership Studies would clearly benefit from scholars and indeed practitioners who choose to dedicate themselves more deliberately to tying theory and practice more closely together.” To this end they very successfully offer their research as evidence that scholars and practitioners have a wide range of issues and materials on which to draw.