The Diffusion of Global Models of Appropriate Leadership Behavior: Explaining Changing Leadership Priorities of High Ranking Public Managers

The question posed is whether and how public senior managers’ perceptions of what is important in
performing their roles have changed from the beginning of the 1990s to the end of the 2000s.
The theoretical approach to the analysis is based on a macro-phenomenological institutional
perspective, which emphasizes the importance of diffusion and translation of global models of
legitimate behavior.
The hypothesis is that certain globally legitimated notions of good leadership gradually became
more widespread among municipal senior managers from the start of the 1990s to the end of the
2000s.
The empirical analyses are based on multivariate regression analyses of survey data generated
among Danish municipal senior managers in 1992, 2006 and 2008.
The study clearly indicates that a change has taken place in leadership orientation among Danish
municipal senior managers towards globally legitimated models of good leadership. Municipal
senior managers orient themselves more towards leadership priorities that are recommended in the
international literature on leadership. They have generally become more oriented towards
production, development of relations, innovation and attention to the external environment. During
the same period the classic administrator role has been given a lower priority