Leadership strategies and internal communication in public organizations

Abstract

PurposeLeadership can cultivate shared understandings of goals within organizations. Transformational leaders engage in vision-sharing, whereas transactional leaders apply contingent rewards and sanctions. To set the stage for better performing organizations, public managers could lead in ways to improve the communication that flows internally in public organizations, defined as the internal communication performance. Previous studies have linked transformational leadership with internal communication performance in public organizations, but no studies have considered the broader array of leadership strategies and their combination. The purpose of this study is to assess the strength of the relationship between different forms of leadership (transformational and transactional) and internal communication.Design/methodology/approachThe study is based on a balanced panel dataset of 751 employees.FindingsThe analysis corroborates the existing findings of a relationship between transformational and internal communication, and it identifies a relationship between transactional leadership through verbal rewards and internal communication.Originality/valueIn so doing, the study brings new insights to our understanding of how leaders in public organizations can improve the internal communication in their organizations, which has been linked to, among others, how employees themselves perceive the red tape and performance within public organizations.