Leading through Tumultuous Events in Public Sector Organizations

Abstract

Public sector organizations (PSOs) are subject to turbulence and constant change. A PSO’s ability to lead a coherent response to this rapidly changing environment is crucial to ensuring the continuity of public service delivery. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for dynamic leadership strategies to address turbulent events and promote resilience in PSOs. This study utilized focus groups and interview data from one large Australian PSO to examine leadership practices that were implemented to respond to a series of turbulent events. Specifically, the study adapted six robust governance strategies (i.e., scalability, prototyping, modularization, bounded autonomy, bricolage, and strategic polyvalence) to explore their pragmatic application in the context of the case PSO in responding to two turbulent events (i.e., relocation and COVID-19 pandemic). Findings show that while deploying all the strategies is beneficial, the power of polyvalent knowledge together with dynamic leadership and governance structures within PSOs is one way that PSOs can continue to respond to ever increasing environmental uncertainty and resource constraints. Practical implications are discussed.

Keywords:

• Dynamic leadership
• public sector leadership
• turbulent events
• remote working
• robust governance strategies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Department of Water and Environmental Regulation under Grant [Number: G1004766].

Notes on contributors

Azadeh Shafaei

Dr Azadeh Shafaei is a Lecturer at the School of Business and Law, Edith Cowan University. She is also a core member of ECU Center for Work + Wellbeing. Azadeh has previously worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the School of Business and Law and a Senior Lecturer at Graduate Research School, Edith Cowan University. Prior to joining Edith Cowan University, Azadeh was a Senior Researcher at Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER). Azadeh has been actively involved in several research projects funded by internal and external bodies across Australia, Malaysia and internationally. She has successfully collaborated with international scholars on joint research projects, which have resulted in journal publications and book chapters.