Managing change, or changing managers? Challenging the role of line management in UK public services

Gatenby, Mark, Truss, Katie, Rees, Chris, Soane, Emma and Alfes, Kerstin (2014) Managing change, or changing managers? Challenging the role of line management in UK public services. Public Management Review.

Abstract

Under successive regimes since the early 1980s, UK governments have called upon line managers to play a pivotal role in the development and enactment of public service reform. However, there is little empirical evidence from line managers themselves showing how the tensions and complexities inherent within modern public service reform agendas are experienced in practice. Drawing upon qualitative research involving line managers in three case study organizations, we suggest that rather than a wholesale shift towards an undifferentiated change agent role, line managers are in practice balancing three predominant, and often conflicting, roles as ‘entrepreneurial leader’, ‘government agent’ and ‘diplomat administrator’. Isomorphic pressures and persistent bureaucratic forms serve to limit the scope for line managers to contribute to service reform at much more than an operational level.

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