The Importance Of Executive Leadership

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According to Kettl (2015, p. 137), “Politics and performance become intertwined in charting what agencies do, how they do it, and how they might work better.” There are three organizational values which tend to determine how agencies operate: neutral competence, executive leadership, and representativeness. Both executive leadership and neutral competence are repeatedly displayed throughout the case study. Executive leadership is described by Kettl as (2015, p. 137), “The quest for executive leadership calls for a strong elected executive…and strong and loyal department heads, all political chosen. It also calls for a strong hierarchy that ensures the responsiveness of organizational units to the elected executives policy priorities.” Strong …show more content…

She was chosen by the Mayor to achieve a specific set of goals which included developing better relations with customers, handling environmental controls more efficiently, and overall making the department a more professional environment to work (Brock, 1996a, p. 1). Taking the initiative to conquer the goals at hand by conducting an investigation to ensure that regulations were being followed by her employees, Reardon was efficiently responding to the Mayor’s imminent priorities. This bureaucracy also displayed neutral competence as it had not let any outside interference undermine what Reardon had been trying to accomplish. The mayor allowed for Reardon to do what she felt to be necessary, while also reframing from commenting to the press about the situation. Reardon had not let any outside or external pressures influence her, thereby allowing her the opportunity to communicate openly and honestly with her employees of the circumstances and conduct a reasonable and fair …show more content…

Presently, in the United States, there are four administrative reforms which can be utilized when trying to address change in an organization. These four basic approaches are downsizing, reengineering, continuous improvement, and transparent performance. The continuous improvement reform focuses on a continuous, steady, bottom-up approach in order to motivate employees to produce better results. In the case study, Reardon wants to clean up the department and provide better results to the citizens. Nevertheless, given the continuous misconduct from managers prior to her arrival, many of her employees were quite frustrated. In order to bring about change within her organization, Reardon focused her attention on the continuous improvement approach. As Al Gore did in the National Performance Review, Reardon sought out information internally from rank and file employees about the possible allegations and solutions to their internal problems. According to Brock (1996a, p. 3), “For Reardon, looking the other way was not a sufficient response…In this instance, she felt, from some visits she had made to the troops, that the line employees also wanted more objective standards applied to everyone’s work assignments.” To be more responsible as a whole organization,

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