Seeing the forest for the trees: The role of growth-oriented leadership in shaping public servants’ work experiences in the post-NPM environment

Authors

Esme Franken, Edith Cowan UniversityFollow
Aglae Hernandez Grande, Edith Cowan UniversityFollow
Ben Farr-Wharton, Edith Cowan UniversityFollow
Fleur Sharafizad, Edith Cowan UniversityFollow
Tim Bentley, Edith Cowan UniversityFollow

Author Identifier

Esme Franken: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6869-3155

Aglae Hernandez Grande: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2437-7297

Ben Farr-Wharton: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9987-934X

Fleur Sharafizad: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2495-4381

Tim Bentley: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4721-8405

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Title

Public Personnel Management

Publisher

Sage

School

School of Business and Law

Comments

Franken, E., Hernandez Grande, A., Farr-Wharton, B., Sharafizad, F., & Bentley, T. (2025). Seeing the forest for the trees: The role of growth-oriented leadership in shaping public servants’ work experiences in the post-NPM environment. Public Personnel Management, 54(1), 130-154. https://doi.org/10.1177/00910260241278378

Abstract

In recent years, growth-oriented leadership (GOL) has come to the fore as a salient predictor of positive employee outcomes in public sector contexts. This empirical paper examines the role of GOL in shaping perceptions of quantitative demands as a product of an evolved New Public Management (NPM) context and the subsequent impact on stress and well-being for 419 local government employees working in Western Australia. While latent in previous GOL-oriented studies, this paper is the first to explore the intersection of GOL and quantitative demands, noting that the former has an established positive effect on employee wellbeing, and the opposite case for the latter. Drawing on the challenge-hindrance framework, this article argues that GOL helps to shape employees’ primary appraisals of demands as challenges, rather than hindrances, in the post-NPM environment. The results indicate strong, direct negative relationships linking GOL with quantitative demands and stress, and a strong positive relationship between GOL and well-being. This study establishes GOL as a relevant capability for public leaders in supporting employees to deal effectively with public service demands and subsequently grow. Understanding how leadership capability, and particularly GOL, can shape the employee experience is important in ensuring the effective delivery of public services.

DOI

10.1177/00910260241278378

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License