Steward leadership in Westminster system governments: Evidence from New Zealand and Wales

In this paper, I develop a model of steward leadership to elucidate how individual senior civil servants (SCS) in Westminster system governments exercise influence beyond ministerial authority, and the precursor sensemaking... [ view full abstract ]

In this paper, I develop a model of steward leadership to elucidate how individual senior civil servants (SCS) in Westminster system governments exercise influence beyond ministerial authority, and the precursor sensemaking pathways that enable them to do so. When SCS perceive their framing of a strategic challenge to diverge from their minister’s, they can engage in a cluster of practices to shift government action towards their framing, which I conceptualise as ‘steward leadership’. Underpinning steward leadership, I identify a socially situated cognitive process of sensemaking that shows SCS claiming legitimacy for their preferred framing, and for their own agency, independent of the minister. They draw upon prominent logics of reform, as well as their personal values and a sense of their own standing, as they do so. I reveal SCS as independent, human sensemakers, rather than perfectly rational, impartial bureaucrats indivisible from their ministers, as Westminster conventions promulgate.