Chapter 2: Political Discontinuity and Perceived Uncertainty: A Behavioral Analysis of Public Top Managers in Italy

Political system in Italy has known over the years frequent government turnovers, making the government average institutional life very short (Mele & Ongaro, 2014). Horovitz, Hoff, and Milanovic (2009) define political instability as “a basic source of variation in institutions and practices (… whose) frequency and character depend on voter preferences, political institutions, and salient events and issues” (p. 107). In our study, we propose an organizational behavioral perspective that could provide useful analysis tools to understand the behavior and the competencies of public leaders working in changeable and uncertain contexts—like the Italian one (Ongaro, Ferré, Galli, & Longo, 2013). We draw from the literature on change uncertainty (Bordia et al., 2004a; Milliken, 1987) with the aim of investigating how government instability generates perceived environmental uncertainty affecting the behavior and the competencies of individuals who work more in touch with the high spheres of public policy, i.e. public top managers. Our study counts because it deepens the knowledge on the subject by providing a review of the literature on the issue of perceived uncertainty and by identifying how political instability and organizational change show consequences on public management knowledge.