Mads Pieter van Luttervelt

Public managers are central actors in turning policy into reality and in providing public service to citizens. They take on a dual role because they are subject to political leadership whilst they are also themselves granted the responsibility to lead their organizations and employees to achieve politically formulated goals. This dissertation examines the credibility of public managers. Through both theoretical and empirical inquiry, it investigates what role leader credibility plays in the efforts of public managers to influence their employees through leadership and the challenges public managers may face in order to build and maintain credibility in the eyes of their followers. The findings indicate that leader credibility matters for the effects of leadership depending on the organizational context, the type of leadership exercised and the character of the employee outcome in question. The findings also suggest that public managers can gain credibility by acting consistently over time and making investments in their leadership initiatives. The dissertation develops a theory that outlines how public managers can handle their dual role and what they can do to retain credibility in situations where they confront their employees with a decision to deviate from their stated course of action. The findings suggest that public managers can use certain communication strategies to preserve leader credibility in such situations, but the viability of these strategies, the dissertation argues, depends on the managers’ own investments in their leadership and whether the distribution of preferences and information between managers and their superiors and subordinates.

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