Leadership in public services and the private sector: a comparison and the implications for handling crises and emergencies

Recent criticism of the UK's public sector has rekindled the debate about public service leadership in comparison with the private sector, particularly in the context of the financial austerity we face for years ahead. This article first reviews recent research on leadership and compares the public and private sectors, finding both commonalities and differences. The article then considers the kind of leadership required of public service leaders in the present economic climate and to handle crises and emergencies. The place of individual leadership and collective leadership and consensus is discussed, with a suggestion that charismatic individual leadership may play a more important role in the public sector than it typically has done in less turbulent times in the past. The public sector is becoming more like the private sector in this respect. The article ends with key implications of the analysis for leadership in practice.