After privatization: The public management of private employment services

This study aims at evaluating the situation that occurs after privatization, when public leaders face new contracting relationships with private employment services. The central question of this chapter is: Has public leadership been capable of creating a new market with competition and innovation, where core public values are effectively managed? Studying this question contributes to the theme of this book in two ways. First, the emphasis in the literature on public leadership has usually been on isolated individuals in formal leadership positions in public organizations (Denis et al. 2005: 425). This study shows how public leadership evolves in a complex set of relationships, where public managers are dealing with private business for political endeavours. It will illustrate how leadership is negotiated in the new relationships, where public and private managers adhere to various - sometimes competing - values in a dynamic political environment. Second, public leadership is usually thought to focus on strategic change, while public management is for normal times (Hefetz and Warner 2004; Wallace et al. 2011). Whereas public leadership has not often been evaluated in its daily practices (Denis et al. 2005), this study shows that management is a crucial part of public leadership, since it is in the implementation of strategic change that leadership is accomplished. In studying the implementation process, this study shows that old problems in public services tend to persist in the new governance arrangements with private actors.