Associated Doctoral Researchers

In his doctoral thesis, Dominik Vogel addresses antecedents of leadership behavior in the public sector. Besides generating descriptive evidence about the nature and focus of leadership behavior in the German public sector, it aims to identify the factors influencing these behaviors.

The thesis is based on statistical analyses of self-collected survey data. The data set consists of 64 leaders of three selected public organizations and 464 followers. By setting up an advanced coding mechanism, followers and leaders can be grouped. A multilevel regression analysis is used to estimate the effects of four different groups of antecedents. These are (1) characteristics of the leaders, (2) expectations and interest of supervisors, (3) characteristics of followers, and (4) organizational characteristics.

Assessing antecedents of leadership behavior in the public sector is of particular interest for the scientific community and also for practitioners. The results will give insights into the driving forces of leadership behavior in the public sector and leads to an understanding of why different leaders focus on different aspects of their leadership role. It also sheds light on the leadership behavior of public sector leaders in Germany. So far, very little is known about this topic.

Practical implications are addressed by identifying possible drivers for specific leadership behaviors. These can be used to improve the work of leaders in the public sector.

The initial results of the thesis have been presented at the 2014 Annual Conference of the European Group for Public Administration (EGPA) in Speyer (Germany) and the 2015 Annual Conference of the International Research Society for Public Management (IRSPM) in Birmingham (UK).