The New Role of Parenting in Leadership in a Public Administration Setting - Bridging the Gap For a Better Bureaucracy

ISBN-13: 9783836428088 / Angielski / Miękka / 2007 / 72 str.

Andrea Franco-Cook

Opis

This work seeks to determine whether the act of being a parent influenced apublic administrators leadership style, or in contrast, whether leadership influencedones parenting style. Although there has been considerable researchin both fields as independent disciplines, there is minimal information on potentialrelationships between the two subjects. This is surprising becauseparents are the first leaders each of us are introduced to throughout childhood.Similar to leaders, parents must use their experiences as a guide forleading their children, inspire and lead by example, and set clear goals tomaintain order within the household. Similar to the way a parent must putthe needs of their child before self interests, leaders must remain mindful ofthe importance of their duty to meet their constituents best interest whilefulfilling the needs of the organization they serve. However, the paucity ofpublished research on the interconnectedness of leadership and parentingleads one to conclude that the role of parenting is historically undervalued asa leadership skill that could be used within the workplace. This study soughtto explore the gap between leadership and parenting by asking the primaryresearch question, does a relationship exist between these two subjects,especially in a public administration setting? This project uncovered manyinteresting findings such as, cross cultural differences in leadership styles betweenorganizations, gender differences in leadership and parenting styles,situational influences on decision making with leadership and parenting rolesand the importance of the roles of leadership and parenting to public administration.This work will be of interest to professionals and managers in thefields of public administration, social work, education, and psychology.Additionally, it is directed towards researchers and students of leadershiptheories.