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The design of participation processes influences their effectiveness. In light of processes which include both mandated and non-mandated direct participation and take place in collaboration with other actors, adequate leadership roles are an indispensable but challenging process element. The purpose of this paper is to analyze how mayors exercise leadership roles in such processes and how this relates to effective participation processes.

Applying a qualitative comparative case study design (n=7), this study investigates mayors’ leadership roles relative to other actors’ roles in the process of establishing a community-owned wind farm. Data collection relied on 21 semi-structured interviews, triangulated with documentary analyses and nine field-level expert interviews.

Findings reveal mayors’ exclusive roles of guarantor, formal convener, facilitator, and sponsor based on authority. Mayors’ various shared roles relate primarily to non-mandated participation. Mayors face tensions in their role exercise due to citizens’ expectations and their personal involvement. They experience a positive impact of shared leadership on the effectiveness of the participation process.

Mayors need to exercise specific leadership roles relative to other actors to effectively manage participation processes. Adequate role exercise relates to sensitization and mobilization for the issue, weakened opposition, and project adjustment to citizen demands. A strategic approach to process design can support mayors in their leadership efforts.

This paper adds to the knowledge on mayors’ leadership roles in participation processes and concretizes tensions and effectiveness of collaborative leadership. The paper reflects on the inference of findings for administrators as compared to mayors.

Philosophers and political scientists have a long history of dealing with the difficult puzzle of leadership, and how it is to be distinguished from management and administration. The purpose of this paper is to explore the question of whether the innovative role of elected executive mayor in England can be considered as leader or manager. The paper critically assesses the concept of leadership before using empirical evidence to come to conclusions about the current role of elected mayor, an office with an uncertain history and unclear future in English public sector leadership.

The paper draws from the authors’ qualitative interviews with mayors from the inception of the office to the recent past.

The study finds that elected executive mayors are both leaders and managers, but that the notion of leadership in the local public sector remains contested as the mayor is a part of a bureaucratic structure of administration which limits the exercise of leadership as outlined in the existing literature.

As central government continues to advocate the expansion of the office of mayor, not least as part of English regional devolution, the study relates to future practice and to overall understanding of just what elected mayors do.

The paper provides useful insight into the forthcoming expansion of the mayoral system into the new Combined Authorities.

The paper provides original evidence about the faltering progress of the mayoral system in the English public sector.

The paper aims to compare the office of directly elected mayor in England, Germany and the USA. Proposing and applying a conceptual model of government, governance and allegiance, it assesses the leadership role of the elected mayor in the three countries.

Qualitative interviews were conducted with a sample of mayors in each country over a period of 11 years. These formed part of the authors' continuing research into local leadership and political management, which has also included interviews with ex‐mayors, elected representatives and senior officials.

The operation and success of the elected mayor in specific countries is influenced by formal variables (e.g. state constitutions, formal requirements) and informal relationships (e.g. with officials), represented in the distinction between structure and agency. The role of the individual mayor also varied in the light of local party affiliations. The paper considers the impact of these variables on the government, governance and allegiance functions of the elected mayor.

In providing an analytical framework and in the discussion of original research, a basis is provided for the further study of the office of elected mayor in different national contexts. This is likely to prove valuable as the future of sub‐national government is subject to continuity scrutiny.

The adoption and growth of the elected mayoral system may be considered as an example of lesson drawing. This has both positive and negative implications. Positively, much can be learned from comparative experience. Mayoral systems have resulted in quicker decision making. The mayor provides a very visible form of local leadership and accountability. However, dangers lie in the over‐concentration of powers in the office of mayor and, in England especially, the failure of the mayoral system to enhance public engagement in local government.

The discussion will be of value to practitioners, policy‐makers and academic researchers who are concerned with the future of the elected local state and its office holders.

The purpose of this empirical case study is to study and explain the role of public leadership in the expansion of municipal climate action in Canada.

In 2017 and 2018, the authors conducted13 semi-directed interviews with municipal staff and elected officials from three municipalities, a documentary analysis of primary and secondary sources. Interviews and documentation collected were also coded using the software NVIVO 12. The authors compared three municipal case studies: the City of Toronto (Ontario), the City of Guelph (Ontario), and the Town of Bridgewater (Nova Scotia).

The authors found that leadership is a prominent factor explaining the expansion of municipal climate action in Canada. Municipal climate action is initiated and championed by an individual, elected officials or municipal staff, who lead and engage in the development of policy instruments to mitigate and/or adapt to climate change. These leaders facilitate the formulation and implementation of instruments, encourage a paradigm shift within the municipality, overcome structural and behavioural barriers, and foster collaboration around a common vision. Optimal municipal climate leadership occurs when the leadership of elected officials and municipal is congruent, though networks play a significant role by amplifying municipal sustainability leadership. They support staff and elected officials leadership within municipalities, provide more information and funding to grow the capacity of municipalities to develop instruments, to the point that conditions under which municipalities are driving climate action are changing.

This paper hopes to contribute to better understand under what conditions municipalities drive change.

There is an international scholarly recognition that municipalities should be further explored and considered important actors in the Canadian and international climate change governance. Gore (2010) and Robinson and Gore (2015) highlighted that we are yet to understand the extent to which municipalities are involved in climate governance in Canada. This article directly addresses this gap in the current scholarly literature and explores the expansion of climate municipal leadership with the aspects of interviews.

Leadership theorists have attempted over the years to encapsulate the mystique, the magic ingredient of what makes leadership successful into a formula or model. The most widely‐held view of leadership during the 1980s and 1990s seems to be that derived from Burns’ work in 1978, which contrasts “transforming” leadership with “transactional” leadership. To explore the relationship between gender, success as a mayor in local government leadership and Burns’ theory, New Zealand’s women mayors were interviewed about their perceptions of leadership and their responses were linked to the concept of transforming leadership. The results suggest that women mayors do judge success as a leader in terms that are closely allied to transformational rather than transactional leadership.

This paper aims to present the case of Jón Gnarr's leadership as he served as a mayor of Reykjavík, the capital of Iceland. The authors’ view is that his leadership style illustrates a case study of how a “new” leadership style can emerge in times of crisis. Iceland was significantly affected by the financial crisis in 2008, which led to political and economic crises, which were fuelled by the public's anger and lack of trust. In 2010, Jón Gnarr and his new party, the Best Party, were unexpectedly elected. Before he became known as an unorthodox leader, he worked as a comedian. However, he influenced the discourse in politics in the country and raised trust in the system again while empowering the public managers and simplifying the system while downsizing it. This paper explores and sheds light on the leadership abilities that crises can birth.

This research uses qualitative methods. Seven in-depth interviews were conducted, and the interviewees included Jón Gnarr, three key political leaders who were in office at that time and three executive-level leaders from the city administration.

Evidence suggests that Jón Gnarr and his political party became a part of the political arena due to extreme social and economic factors, which might indicate the factors that can give rise to an unorthodox leader. At the same time, the research portrays the image of a leader that closely matches the theories of authentic leadership, and his leadership style at the time made a lasting impact. When Gnarr stepped into the role of mayor of Reykjavík, he used novel tactics. His political discourse was different; his manner with the public as well as within the system was different. When he became mayor, he demonstrated trust, respect and care as his underlying values. His unorthodox political behaviour appears to have empowered public officials. Thus, gradually, he inspired his followers to change their own communication style. He also addressed traditional political issues such as downsizing, mergers and financial undertakings.

Its limitation is that it is difficult to generalize based on one case.

The case can shed a light on how unorthodox leadership style can unlock the potential of empowering and trust in a traditional political system. Leaders who dare to be different can raise awareness of those who work within the system as well as the public.

This paper contributes to the understanding of authentic and unconventional leadership as an efficient vehicle in unusual circumstances in a public leadership position.

This study aims to investigate the brand-oriented leadership of a city’s mayor and city online brand communication as brand management-related antecedents of residents’ city brand commitment. It thus examines if city brand managers can apply internal branding concepts from the corporate branding domain in a city branding context.

The relationships between the brand management-related antecedents and the internal city branding (ICB) objective are tested through structural equation modeling using cross-sectional survey data of 414 residents of a German city.

Both the brand-oriented leadership of the mayor in terms of acting as a role model by living the city brand and its identity and by showing commitment to the brand and the city’s online brand communication in terms of its quality have positive effects on residents’ city brand commitment. Moderation analyses reveal no significant differences between the path estimates for age, place of birth, duration of residency and education. However, the results differ significantly for gender.

As this study’s sample is limited to only one city in Germany, further research needs to investigate the relationships in different cities and other countries to ensure the generalizability of the results. Future studies might also include other aspects of city brand communication, as well as cognitive and behavioural ICB objectives.

To increase residents’ city brand commitment, city brand managers should ensure that a city’s online brand communication is adequate, complete, credible, useful and clear. Furthermore, through creating awareness for the importance of a mayor’s brand-oriented leadership and through educating and training the mayor to engage in this specific form of brand-oriented transformational leadership, city brand managers can increase residents’ emotional attachment with the city brand.

This study integrates internal branding research from the corporate branding domain with place and city branding research. It confirms that certain aspects of internal branding (i.e. brand-oriented leadership, brand communication and brand commitment) are applicable not only in the corporate branding domain but also in other branding contexts such as city branding if adapted properly.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate factors affecting budget implementation among local governments in Indonesia, where rules are relatively strict and risks of facing corruption charges are high.

This study employs regression analyses using a sample of 1,151 local government-years.

This study finds that the level of budget implementation is affected by the leadership factors (i.e. mayors’ term, tenure and age) and the proportion of capital expenditures. The level of budget implementation is relatively lower when the mayor is in the second term, is in the early years of the five-year tenure and is over 60 years old. Higher proportion of capital expenditures also reduces the level of budget implementation.

This study contributes to the literature by presenting empirical evidence as to what factors explain the variations in the level of budget implementation among local governments especially under strict rules and a risky environment.

This study examines the influence of spiritual leadership toward spirituality, conscientiousness, job satisfaction and reduction of deviant behavior.

The method of data analysis used is a structural model based on WarpPLS (Solimun et al., 2017), with the first-order factor analysis based on variables with reflective indicators.

The research findings indicate that the sustainability of workplace spirituality and conscientiousness can stimulate the employees' job satisfaction, which eventually leads to the reduction of workplace deviant behavior (WDB). Accordingly, the direct influence of workplace spirituality on WDB is quite major ( 0.296), this indicates the importance of workplace spirituality for employees in working so that it can reduce the WDB. Conscientiousness had a negative influence on WDB. However, the interesting part about this study is the indirect influence of workplace spirituality on WDB through job satisfaction, which also has a major value ( 0.208) and almost equal to the direct influence. This circumstance depicts how workplace spirituality influences WDB as well as the importance of the improvement of employees' job satisfaction.

The originality of this study is primarily placed on the causal relationship between the variables of spiritual leadership and WDB; other than the direct influence, there is also an indirect influence that has a big value, which is the path of spiritual leadership toward WDB through workplace spirituality (−0.248). In other words, WDB is not only influenced directly by spiritual leadership but also by workplace spirituality.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of spiritual leadership toward spirituality, job satisfaction and reduction of deviant behavior.

A structural model based on WarpPLS (Solimun et al., 2017) is used for data analysis, with the first-order factor analysis based on variables with reflective indicators.

The research findings show that the sustainability of workplace spirituality can stimulate employees’ job satisfaction. Accordingly, the direct influence of workplace spirituality on workplace deviant behavior (WDB) is quite major (0.296); this indicates the importance of workplace spirituality for employees in working so it can reduce the WDB. An interesting part about this study is the indirect influence of workplace spirituality on workplace deviant behavior through job satisfaction, which also has a major value (0.208), almost equal to direct influence. This circumstance depicts how workplace spirituality influences workplace deviant behavior, as well as the importance of the improvement of employees’ job satisfaction.

The originality of this study is primarily placed on the causal relationship between the variables of spiritual leadership and WDB, other than the direct influence; there is also an indirect influence that has a big value, which is the path of spiritual leadership toward workplace deviant behavior through workplace spirituality (−0.248). In other words, workplace deviant behavior is not only influenced directly by spiritual leadership but also by workplace spirituality.