Public network leadership and the ties that lead

Leadership in public networks is a controversial and under-investigated topic. One could think that leadership and networks are clashing terms, as networks are flat and non-hierachical organizations, characterized by sharing... [ view full abstract ]

Leadership in public networks is a controversial and under-investigated topic. One could think that leadership and networks are clashing terms, as networks are flat and non-hierachical organizations, characterized by sharing of power and responsibilities. In 2009, however, McGuire and Silvia (2009) argued that leadership in networks exists, and showed that it matters for network effectiveness. Moving from the idea of a single, heroic individual, some authors have recently proposed the idea of shared, distributed and collective leadership in public networks (Ospina and Folden 2010).

In the paper we argue that leadership in public networks varies in combination with the characteristics of the network's structure. More specifically, following the public administration literature, we considered two network characteristics such as network autonomization and density, and explored the combinations of network autonomization, density and leadership leading to network success.

Public networks for the provision of homecare assistance for the elderly in Switzerland (Spitex networks) provided the empirical setting for our study. Data were collected through a survey of Spitex directors: 523 directors were contacted and 265 agreed to participate in our study, giving a response rate of about 50%. The configurational approach of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA, Ragin 1987, 2008) was chosen to analyse data.

Results shed light on two different paths leading to network success.

AUT * ~DENS * LEAD + AUT * DENS * ~ LEAD => SUCCESS

The former involves autonomy from Government, highly connected networks and no network leaders; the latter involves autonomy from Government, loosely connected networks and centralized network leadership. Results shed also light on the role of autonomization as an insufficient but necessary part of two causal paths which are themselves unnecessary but sufficient (INUS condition in QCA parlance).

The results contribute to existing studies and managerial practices in multiple ways. From a theoretical standpoint, first, they contribute to explore the importance and characteristics of leadership in public networks. Secondly, they contribute to the development of a configurational approach to the study of public networks (Verweij et al. 2013; Raab et al. 2015, Wang 2016; Cristofoli and Markovic 2016). From a managerial standpoint, our results provide public managers with insights about when to assume the leadership of a network, depending on certain characteristics of their network settings.