The relationship between the professional, social, and political experience and leadership style of mayors and organisational culture in local government. Empirical evidence from Poland.

Aldona Podgórniak-Krzykacz,Rogis Baker

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0260647

Abstract

This paper aims to identify the organisational culture profiles of Polish municipalities and examine the influence of the professional, social and political experience and place-based leadership style of mayors on municipalities’ organisational culture profiles. The Organisational Culture Assessment Instrument was selected due to its suitability in assessing the organisation’s underlying culture. In the study, 917 mayors of municipalities in Poland, completing an on-line questionnaire. It was found that most of the Polish municipalities’ organisational culture is characterised by a clan type which is reflected in how employees are managed, how the organisation is held together, and how the organisation’s strategy is defined. The leadership style and the organisation’s success are hierarchy-focused, while the dominant characteristic is market type. The ANOVA and UNIANOVA analysis results suggest that the type of organisational culture depends on the type of municipality. The clan culture is dominant in rural municipalities. In urban municipalities, market culture and adhocracy are stronger than in rural municipalities, while clan culture is weaker. There is also an association between the dominant type of organisational culture and the mayors’ work experience in local administration and their membership in an NGO. The length of the mayor’s seniority in local government administration differentiates the importance of hierarchy culture, while his experience in the NGO sector strengthens the clan characteristics of the organisational culture of the office he heads. These findings provide important implications for the initiation and implementation of cultural change in local government administration and cooperation projects and local experiments. A cultural change is difficult to implement, and a change of mayor is not enough to initiate it. It requires planning and management. Cultural change may contribute to the increase of municipalities’ activity in cooperation’s projects and experiments. There is a need for more research on this topic to determine to what extent the organisational culture supports local cooperation projects.

Highlights

Organisational culture is an important determinant for collaborative, citizen-centred governance and co-production of public services [1, 2]
The importance of organisational culture in the hybrid coordination of city organisations is considered by Leixnering et al [7], and they prove that cultural coordination, rooted in the network mode, complements structural coordination, which is associated with hierarchy and market
I seek answers to the following questions: (1) Do municipalities with different types and administration sizes differ in terms of organisational culture? (2) Is there an association between the type of organisational culture of municipal administration and the professional, social, and political experience of mayors acting as managers of local administration? (3) Is there an association between the municipal administration organisational culture and the mayors’ preferred place leadership style? The article presents the first research results on the importance of individual factors for the organisational culture of municipalities

Summary

Introduction

Organisational culture is an important determinant for collaborative, citizen-centred governance and co-production of public services [1, 2]. The article aims to diagnose the types of organisational culture in Polish municipalities. The survey on this topic was carried out in 917 Polish municipalities. (2) Is there an association between the type of organisational culture of municipal administration and the professional, social, and political experience of mayors acting as managers of local administration? (3) Is there an association between the municipal administration organisational culture and the mayors’ preferred place leadership style? The article presents the first research results on the importance of individual factors (professional, social, and political experience of mayors and preferred municipal leadership style) for the organisational culture of municipalities. The organisational-administrative factors such as municipality type and administration size are control variables

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion