Whose Outcome is it Anyway? Leadership Development: A Consumer Perspective

Abstract

This paper is about purpose… or, rather, the confusion of purposes. If we are to continue to invest in ‘leadership development’ in public services, what's the reason? How will we know, in respect of outcomes, that spending money on selected individuals will result in public value?‘Value for money’, ‘best value’, ‘service excellence’, ‘patient/client‐centred’; the phrases spill out comfortingly, especially at leadership conferences or on management and professional development programmes. Are these mere words, or part of something big and important? Are they jargon and tokenism, or a positive, meaningful set of aspirations and goals that inform public leadership at the beginning of the 21st Century? ‘Yes’ and ‘Yes’.

Citation

Sang, B. (2005), "Whose Outcome is it Anyway? Leadership Development: A Consumer Perspective", International Journal of Leadership in Public Services, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 9-16. https://doi.org/10.1108/17479886200500003