Teelken, C., Ferlie, E. and Dent, M. (eds) Leadership in the Public Sector: Promises and Pitfalls, Abingdon/New York: Routledge. 2013. xvi+262pp £85 (hbk) ISBN: 978‐0‐415‐59174‐4

What are we to make of today's widespread quest for leaders and leadership in the public sector? Hardly a week goes by in the health field without another advertisement for a ‘turn-around’ specialist who can deliver transformational change, a new leadership programme, a conference, a workshop or a masterclass on leadership. Academic publications mount. Is this the stand out book with new insights into a phenomenon so much of our times? Is it indeed the book that will demolish leadership as myth? Christine Teelken and her colleagues present work from the European Group for Organisation Studies (EGOS) for this new collection of essays. Drawing on the turmoil that has engulfed the public sector in many countries over the last decade, and singling out leadership, the editors have gathered together 10 international contributions, and with a final review. The four chapters that deal directly with health will be of particular interest to readers of this Journal. The UK and Canada provide the context for two of these; two and four country comparisons are offered in the others. Three very different papers on universities, one drawing on employment services and one on central and local government, add stimulating comparative insights. ‘Leaderism’ is a concept that will be welcomed by those uneasy about today's heavy reliance on better leaders as the remedy for multiple ills. Using the tools of critical discourse analysis O'Reilly and Reed take a detailed look at policy documents from the New Labour era in the UK, linking leadership talk to narratives of public service reform. This is an important scene-setter for the book as a whole. The concept of ‘leaderism’ is used by other contributors; although less so than one might have hoped. However, it is picked up to some extent both in Noordegraaf's insistence on the rhetorical promise and ultimate ambiguity of leadership and in the concluding overview. ‘Distributed leadership’ sits uneasily alongside ‘leaderism’ rhetoric, yet distributed — and one might add perhaps ‘relational leadership’ — emerges strongly as a route to change in the case of the NHS (Fitzgerald et al) as well as in the case of UK universities, where Deem points to its significance - albeit as a less glamorous concept. All this links well to debates about new public management/new public governance shifts, pulled together usefully in the conclusion. Contradictions emerge repeatedly in the idea of agency in leadership. Is there scope for a leader to lead in a visible way in public organisations caught up in a political project? Sometimes the answer appears to be ‘yes’, as suggested by the useful concept of ‘political space’ (Contandriopoulos and Denis); but often no. Leader legitimacy is a key issue in professionally dominated public organisations. Clinician leaders get consideration and there is much in this collection that moves debates on professionalisation forward. Dent's attention to reconfigurations varying by national context sits well alongside Jasperson's look at the differential involvement of doctors in the quality agenda in trajectories in Sweden and Denmark. Noordegraaf treats leadership, with its skills and competences, as a professionalising project in its own right, tantalisingly suggesting a myth of being ‘in control without really being really in control’ (p.232) Nor is there much room for leaders to lead, as illustrated by Nicolette van Gestel's case study, which traces some of the results of the privatisation of employment services in the Netherlands. She does not rehearse the familiar polarised and deeply politicised argument about the outcomes of a move to the market. Instead, using documentary sources and interviews with both public and private sector managers she asks if public leadership has created ‘a new market with competition and innovation, where core public values are effectively managed’ (p.91). Three key problems emerge: tendering may stifle the innovation it aims to create; perverse outcomes may result from targets and incentives; and top-down control and state regulation may increase rather than being diminished. Where, then, does all this leave leaderism and leadership? Ferlie's final summing-up is more cautious than one might expect. One could observe that the idea of leaderism is handy in terms of providing someone to blame and to fire, but is silent on the way that roles are shifting to create change on the ground. This is a book, however, that will repay close study by all those who engage in teaching and research on leadership in public organisations and who seek to create and support leaders. It may not be quite the breakthrough we need but it, nevertheless, cuts through loose leadership talk and contains very many of the ingredients that may ultimately enable that breakthrough to take place.

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