Jørgen Skovhus Haunstrup

Leadership can play a vital role in motivating and guiding employees towards the realization of organizational goals. Public organizations invest heavily in leadership training but often face challenges in terms of inducing substantial changes in leadership behaviors. This dissertation introduces a novel approach through an integration of leadership training with digital leadership tools, which are designed to influence leaders’ daily work behavior. These tools are categorized as static or dynamic. Dynamic tools offer interactive support like automatic reminders, process tracking, task overviews and automated report generation, whereas static tools operate without adaptability and feedback mechanisms. The dissertation focuses on transformational leadership training and emphasizes goal-oriented development dialogues as a core element to enhance vision communication and increase satisfaction of employee psychological needs. A field experiment involving 34 Danish municipalities, 226 public managers, and 4,500 employees tested the effects of an intervention based on transformational leadership training with static and dynamic leadership tools for goal-oriented development dialogues. The results show that the intervention increases employee-perceived transformational leadership behavior and satisfaction of psychological needs among employees. While dynamic tools appear more effective in enhancing satisfaction of the need for meaning and perceived prosocial impact, this dissertation does not detect a significant impact on citizen outcomes. The dissertation advances the understanding of leadership training by emphasizing the integration of training with daily work practices, introduces a new model for vision communication, and highlights the impact of dynamic IT tools in the public sector on manager and employee outcomes.

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