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8 - The role of leadership in knowledge creation and transfer for organisational learning and improvement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 July 2011

By
Jean Hartley  and
Lyndsay Rashman
Edited by
Kieran Walshe ,
Gill Harvey  and
Pauline Jas
Jean Hartley
Affiliation:
University of Warwick
Lyndsay Rashman
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
Kieran Walshe
Affiliation:
Manchester University
Gill Harvey
Affiliation:
Manchester University
Pauline Jas
Affiliation:
University of Nottingham
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Summary

Introduction

Over the last decade, there has been renewed interest in leadership as a means to achieve organisational performance, across both public and private sectors (e.g. Hartley and Allison 2000; Storey 2004; Parry and Bryman 2006). In the public sector, leadership has been almost a mantra but without clear evidence (Hartley 2010). There are three issues which need addressing in order to understand whether and how leadership contributes to public service improvement. First, leadership is a multifaceted concept and so it is important to be clear about the term. Second, the evidence of a relationship between leadership and organisational performance is more often asserted than demonstrated and so evidence is needed which examines both leadership and improvement. Third, there is a need to better understand the dynamics of how leadership may have an impact on performance (as well as how performance may influence perceptions of leadership).

In understanding how leadership has an impact on improvement, this chapter examines how leadership fosters and sustains knowledge creation and transfer through organisational and inter-organisational learning. The value of organisational knowledge for creating strategic advantage in firms is well established (Nahapiet and Ghoshal 1988; Nonaka 1994), but its importance for public organisations has been underemphasised in both the policy and academic literature until recently. Since then, research has been undertaken in healthcare (Bate and Robert 2002; Nicolini et al. 2008) and in local government (Rashman and Hartley 2002; Hartley and Benington 2006).

Type
Chapter
Information
Connecting Knowledge and Performance in Public Services
From Knowing to Doing
 , pp. 145 - 172
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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