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  5. P35 Public Leadership Under Pressure

P35 Public Leadership Under Pressure

Public Leadership Under Pressure: Grand Challenges, Political Turbulence, and Public Value

Panel Chairs

Corresponding Chairs

Review Group Chairs

Co-Chairs

  • Professor Rich Callahan, University of San Francisco (US)
  • Professor Jean Hartley, The Open University (UK)
  • A/Professor Rudolf Metz, Corvinus University of Budapest, (HU)
  • A/Professor Anne Mette Kjeldsen, Aarhus University (DK)
  • Dr Mette Kjærgaard Thomsen, University of South Denmark (DK)
  • A/Professor Mads Leth Jakobsen, Aarhus University (DK)
  • A/Professor Matthias Döring, University of South Denmark (DK)

General introduction

Grand challenges and polycrisis intensify leadership demands in the public and political domain, where effective responses depend on collective action across levels, organizations, and sectors. How can public and political leadership ensure high quality public service delivery and societal value in an increasingly more complex and challenging environment and evolve, coordinate, and build capacity under the contemporary conditions of uncertainty, insecurity and unsafety? In today’s environment characterized by polycrisis, wicked societal problems, and grand challenges more effective, efficient, and at the same time more value-driven and ethical leadership is needed, not just from politicians, but from a multitude of stakeholders, including public professionals and local governments, civil society and citizens.

To address this question, the panel brings together complementary perspectives on what “effective public leadership” entails when problems are cross-cutting, stakes are high, and authority is dispersed. Rather than assuming leadership resides in a single role or level, we take leadership as a set of practices that must work across institutional boundaries, reconcile competing public values, and remain politically robust under shifting priorities and scrutiny. We therefore structure the panel around three interrelated themes that speak to who leads, how leadership handles tensions and capacity needs, and how leadership operates when political uncertainty becomes a persistent condition:

  1. Leadership multiplicity for grand challenges: Move beyond dyadic leader–follower models to understand how leadership is distributed, negotiated, and enacted among multiple actors across levels, organizations, and sectors to generate public value in challenging conditions.
  2. Paradoxical, value-balancing, and ethical leadership capacity: Examine how public leaders cope with tensions and paradoxes (e.g., stability vs. risk-taking, efficiency vs. innovation) while respecting diverse public values (integrity, inclusion, legitimacy, transparency, safety) and building coordinating capacity to sustain high-quality service delivery under uncertainty.
  3. Leading under political uncertainty and scrutiny: Grand challenges place public leaders in politically charged environments where priorities shift, legitimacy contested, and administrative action is scrutinized by elected officials, media, stakeholders, and the public. How do public leaders make sense of turbulent conditions, communicate across political and administrative boundaries, and preserve public value, accountability, and trust while navigating these competing demands?

We invite both theoretical and empirical contributions, with a range of well-substantiated methodologies.

Topics could include, but are not limited to, papers on:

  • The role, processes and impact of public and political leadership in responding to polycrisis, wicked societal problems, and grand challenges, e.g. how leaders evolve, coordinate, and build capacity under conditions of uncertainty.
  • Public and political leadership and effective, efficient, value-based and ethical public service delivery in contemporary complex and uncertain conditions, e.g. how leadership navigates paradoxes and tensions across levels and sectors to ensure high-quality public service delivery.
  • Shared and distributed public leadership across organizational jurisdictions (e.g., transversal leadership, boundary spanning), organizational levels and units within the same organization (e.g., social capital or relational leadership), and of volunteers and civil society.
  • Leadership of and within networks and teams across organizational levels contributing to public value creation.
  • How public and political leaders can uphold democratic values and demonstrate ethical leadership, or the exact opposite: the role, processes and impact of unethical leadership in an increasingly uncertain, insecure and unsafe world.
  • Leadership transitions, turnover, and temporal instability in public organizations, including how leaders build continuity, capacity, and relational infrastructure under changing (and challenging) political mandates.

References

Akerboom, M., Groeneveld, S., & Kuipers, B. (2024). Leadership in public sector interorganizational networks: a synthesis of the literature and propositions based on a multiple case study. Perspectives on Public Management and Governance, 7(4), 113-123. https://doi.org/10.1093/ppmgov/gvae007

Callahan, R. F. (2025). Teaching democracy seriously: A public administration challenge. Journal of Public Affairs Education, 31(4), 413-419. https://doi.org/10.1080/15236803.2025.2478765

Cannaerts, N., Steijn, B., & Duijn, M. (2025). Public managers, drivers of ambidexterity in public service delivery. The perceived impact of red tape and PSM on ambidexterity. International Journal of Public Sector Management. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPSM-04-2024-0120

Döring, M., Pihl-Thingvad, S., & Vogel, R. (2025). Time to rediscover task-oriented leadership? A multi-source, time-lagged study on leadership and well-being in public service jobs. Public Management Review, 27(6), 1675–1700. https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2024.2411631

Hartley, J. (2018). Ten propositions about public leadership, International Journal of Public Leadership, 14(4), 202-217. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPL-09-2018-0048

Jackson, B. & Lasthuizen, K. (2024). Ethical Leadership. In: Allison, S.T., Beggan, J.K. & Goethals, G.R. (Eds.) Encyclopedia of Heroism Studies, 542-547, Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-48129-1_9

Jakobsen, M.L. & Tønnesvang, J. (2026). A Proposal for an Integrative Public Leadership Framework. International Public Management Journal 29 (3): 249–66. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPSM-03-2024-0093

Jakobsen, M. L, Kjeldsen, A. M. & Pallesen, T. (2023). Distributed Leadership and Performance-Related Employee Outcomes in Public Sector Organizations. Public Administration, 101(2), 500–521. https://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12801

Jensen, U. T., & Thomsen, M. K. (2023). Can Managerial Communication Reduce Ambiguity Among Service Professionals About Volunteer Roles in Coproduction? An Experimental Test. The American Review of Public Administration, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/02750740231191286

Kuipers, B. S., & Murphy, J. (2023). A Multi-Level Leadership Spectrum for Collective Good. Journal of Change Management, 23(4), 323-336. https://doi.org/10.1080/14697017.2023.2278772

Lasthuizen, K., van Eeden Jones, I., & Vivier, E. (2025). The value of ethical leadership (is) in its context. Administrative Sciences, 15(3), 112. https://doi.org/10.3390/admsci15030112

Metz, R., & Plesz, B. (2025). The irresistible allure of charismatic leaders? Populism, social identity, and polarisation. Politics and Governance, 2025(13). https://doi.org/10.17645/pag.9017

Van Osch, L., Groeneveld, S., & Kuipers, B. (2025). Creating public value in frontline teams: An empirical exploration of shared leadership behaviour by frontline officials. Public Management Review, 27(8), 1987-2006. https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2024.2343078

Description of the type of abstracts you are soliciting to ensure suitable submissions for your panel

We invite both theoretical and empirical contributions, with a range of well-substantiated methodologies. Paper abstracts should include a short description of the research question(s), the applied theory and method, and an indication of the findings or expected findings (empirical paper). The word limit for abstracts submitted to the panel is 500, excluding a brief list of key references.

We are committed to organizing the panel as an offline/physical event in Trondheim. We propose that the panel will feature traditional paper presentation sessions (120 mins) as well as one roundtable about public leadership in the context of current challenges (75 mins), and/or one open session about future directions of public leadership research (75 mins). This will enable the panel to bring together a range of diverse views and traditions on the panel topic of public leadership under pressure.

Paper presentation sessions (up to 3 per day) will last 2 hours and, depending on the number of submissions, will provide room for 4 to 5 paper presentations. The invited presenting authors, including co-authors of the accepted papers, will be asked to act as discussants – i.e. to engage with, comment, and ask questions about the paper that will be assigned to them before the Conference by the Panel Chairs.

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