Leadership and Management in Public Administration

All organisations in modern society require professional management. Public organisations, which due to their public mission are obliged to take care of the common good, are facing special challenges. Proper management of public sector organisations by leaders with leadership qualities determines the level of public values they achieve. In the knowledge society age, the primary role of leadership in public sector organisations is to achieve high standards in the areas of knowledge acquisition, knowledge sharing, implementation of innovative solutions and an ability to adapt to rapid changes in the environment. Leadership also means creating the cultural identity of the organisation, which is an important element connecting the mission of the organisation with its human resources in order to work out the best standards of providing public services to the inhabitants of a given community.


Introduction
In the light of the theory of organisation and management, and especially the praxeological material-attribute definition of Kotarbiński (1986, p. 239), in the practice of managing the whole, the efficiency and effectiveness of its parts are important. This is confirmed by the contemporary economists, e.g., Zawicki (2011, p. 11) believes that in classical terms, the economy is made up of two sectors -private and public, although, as Hausner (2001, 101-109) points out, when discussing the systemic nature of the economy and its limits, economists treat the economy as a single organism in which the division into private and public sectors is highly conventional. The importance of the public sector for the effective development of the entire economy cannot be assessed. This is emphasised by Koźmiński (2010, p. 226), who says that "a poorly organised, inefficient and unstable public sector is a fundamental obstacle to further modernisation of the country". As Kieżun (2013, p. 308) notes, this path "encounters many uncertainties and statutory inconsistencies, but it is possible to create a controlling model to improve its functioning and effective implementation of tasks (…)". Following this idea, one should extend a 19th century 'Fayolian' picture of the state as a big company, where the role of the management was to prepare and implement a plan and to check the results of its implementation, with a modern European approach to controlling management and a clear role of leadership in the public sphere.
Due to different economic contents of the processes taking place in the activities of a private enterprise that uses own financing, and public administration units that use budgetary funds, it is not possible to strictly mirror market solutions in public institutions. As Koźmiński (2010, p. 226) rightly points out, "in order to meet its tasks, this sector must go down the same path of modernisation and development of management functions as the private sector is going through", i.e., it is not only about the implementation of controlling processes, but above all about the search for managers -leaders who would be able to effectively implement current and future tasks and involve their subordinates. Bittel (1998, p. 71) defined leadership as "an aspect of management that allows a manager to persuade others to pursue certain goals enthusiastically".
In the face of the crisis of values of traditional Old Public Administration, the 1980s turned out to be a breakthrough in the theory and practice of public sector functioning across the world and initiated New Public Management. Improved in the 1990s, it brought the expectation that managers in the administration would expand their leadership influence on subordinates to improve work efficiency and service quality. This resulted in the adaptation of leadership models developed in the field 115 EDUCATION OF ECONOMISTS AND MANAGERS • Volume 55, Issue 1, March 2020 Michał Zubek • Leadership and Management in Public Administration • 153-166 of business, as well as the implementation of management through objectives, outsourcing, process management, measurement of effects and achievements of the organisation (Szczupaczyński, 2014, p. 19).
Along with the transfer of business solutions to the public sector, organisational culture, whose role in the effective and efficient functioning of public organisations has been recognised, should be considered an important element of increasing the effectiveness of public organisations. It is also important that shaping the right cultural profile of officials, i.e., active and conscious shaping of attitudes and behaviours resulting from the public service ethos, significantly reduces the risk of failure in managing organisations.
The purpose of this article is to demonstrate: • whether the Polish public administration implements world-tested solutions functioning within the framework of New Public Management and models stemming from its participatory variant -Public Governance, especially the innovative model based on the leadership role of a leader-manager; • whether there exists a cultural awareness among managers/managers of public organisations, how it is transferred to subordinates in order to implement internal processes in the organisation and to build relations with the office's environment.

Leadership in managing a public sector organisation
In the literature, the concept of 'leadership in the public sphere' is understood differently depending on the nature of the organisation, and so the definition of leadership in a political institution differs from its definition in broadly understood public administration, and even from non-governmental organisations. However, each definition of leadership compares specific competencies, goal orientations and individual styles of action, the value of which is verified by their usefulness in achieving the goals of a specific organisation. Focusing on public administration organisations at the local government level, the leadership function should be directed both at the internal processes of public administration offices and their external environment, i.e., citizens, entrepreneurs operating in the administered area, and other stakeholders.
Leadership implemented according to the New Public Management doctrine introduced to public administration in the 1980s, both in its managerial version and its improved participatory version, Public Governance, functioning since the mid-1990s, carries some risk in the psychological sphere. Managers of an existing traditional bureaucratic public organisation face a new challenge, i.e., they have to find themselves as a manager and then as a leader. Bugdol (2008, pp. 156-160)  notes that in order to meet this challenge, "there is a temptation to use simple social engineering instead of working to become a person who will attract workers or residents". Not every person acting as mayor, or president can find himself in such a reality and become a leader. According to Daniel Goleman's leadership theory, an effective leader is distinguished by Emotional Intelligence (IE), which means an ability of a leader to manage himself/herself and his/her relationships with others efficiently. According to this concept, emotional intelligence consists of the factors listed in Table 2.

Table 2. Factors that make up emotional intelligence according to Goleman
Factor-characteristic Description Self-awareness and confidence Self-awareness provides an ability to make a realistic assessment of the situation, and self-confidence is a source of courage to implement change Emotional intelligence not only has to do with leadership. As Goleman proves, it is the sine qua non condition of successfully leading others. Goleman, in his leadership theory, which is based on the research of business organisations but certainly also applicable in the public sphere, has identified six leadership styles listed in Table 3. As in any organisation, the process of transforming tangible and intangible resources, in particular human capital at the disposal of the municipal office, into results should correspond to classical criteria of organisational rationality, first of all efficiency and effectiveness of teamwork. Van Wart (2013, p. 553) describes public sector leaders as the ones who hold positions in the civil service, excluding political or policy-making leadership. The question is whether a formal manager (team leader) is also a leader. Practice shows that a leader is not always a person with only formal authority. This is a zero level of the art of leadership. The subordinates do what a manager with an autocratic (commanding) style of management dictates, but he/she is not a leader. Szczupaczyński (2014, p. 13) defines leadership in a most traditional, well-established in management sciences way, as the implementation of the management function consisting in motivating employees, building organisational bonds and resolving conflicts. New content related to public governance is the result of dynamic global change and technological development. They require not only organisational changes, but above all a change of the existing methods of thinking, free from archaisms, stereotypes, and outdated solutions. It becomes necessary to think ahead openly about what is 'new', to be aware of the essence and importance of organisational culture and development. The quality of human resources is cont. not without significance in the processes of completing public sector tasks, especially since, as confirmed by the Kuc and Żemigała's studies (2010), at least 30% of the surveyed managerial staff in public administration offices is not suited to perform professional roles, not to mention real leaders, who unfortunately are few in public administration. The leadership zone deficits in the Polish public sector derive from: • personality deficits, public administration employees; • lack of strong, ethical leadership (which is easier said than implemented); • lack of managerial competence in the sphere of strong charismatic leadership, i.e., an ability to manage change, flexibility and concentration on long-term action.

Leadership in public administration in a knowledge-based society
By diagnosing the differences between the civilization order that functioned until the end of the 1960s and the new social and economic order shaped by information and telecommunications technologies, especially universal access to the Internet, we can conclude that the knowledge-based economy forces the necessity of changes at the level of perception of reality and application of modern solutions in the area of comprehensive management of public organisations. The new order is the information processing era or knowledge management era. In the age of electronic economy (e-economy), which has a variety of ICT devices at its disposal, also in relation to the public sector, one speaks about: • e-management as a new quality of management aimed at supporting activities through the use of new ICT technologies, i.e., computer and telecommunications networks that allow organisations and societies for network communication; • e-managers -leaders who face bigger and more numerous challenges in the new electronic economy than in the 'old' one.
The operation of public administration in the knowledge-based society results from the broadly understood idea of public service, especially in the areas of sharing knowledge and adapting to dynamic changes in the environment. Szczupaczyński (2014, p. 22) recalls the idea of public service, going beyond the standards of effective management. He finds it in the concept of servant leadership created by Greenleaf (1977), whose starting point is a diagnosis of the crisis of the public institutions authority, as well as a postulate to change moral patterns of interpersonal relations, especially those concerning power and responsibility for public affairs. The primary duty of a leader should be, in Greenleaf's view, to serve others, understood as helping, caring for the quality of life and meeting the needs. The author of the concept thinks that only individuals who meet this criterion will be recognised in a leadership role and will be able to effectively promote the necessary changes in the world of routinised institutions, deprived of the ability to look to the future with vision. For a leadership mission to be accomplished, a leader must gain trust as a 'guardian', 'servant' of his/her followers. This requires staff members of public organisations to search for new forms of leadership for employee teams in the organisational processes of transformation, which Szczupaczyński (2014, pp. 13-14) defined as: • The technological changes that the information society is forcing. The most spectacular expression of this is the concept of electronic public administration; • Social problems that the administration has to deal with; • Increase in the expectations of the public opinion concerning the standards of administration operation: quality of services, transparency of procedures, accessibility to information resources, impartiality and professionalism; • New shape of the political environment of public administration, inter alia, supranational integration processes, increase in the importance of nongovernmental organisations, new forms of business activity (e-business). A modern leader, not only in business, has at his/her disposal a set of modern methods and techniques to support information and knowledge management (Kiełtyka, 2010, p. 308). He or she can use the following tools: • in the areas of knowledge acquisition, he/she uses the Internet, Intranet, e-learning systems offering internet training, systems for analysing information from the company's market environment (e.g., in Poland these are ZUS, US, financial institutions), employee experiences, databases available on the Internet; • in the areas of knowledge collection and selection requiring consolidation and codification, he/she uses data warehouses, document management systems and their content; • in the areas related to knowledge transfer and diffusion, he/she uses: corporate portals, SWD, expert systems, Business Intelligence systems, workflow systems, group work support systems, document management systems, knowledge maps, e-linguistics, video conferences. In the age of the knowledge society, the primary role of leadership in public sector organisations is to achieve high standards in the areas of knowledge acquisition, knowledge sharing, implementation of innovative solutions and an ability to adapt to rapid changes in the environment.
EDUCATION OF ECONOMISTS AND MANAGERS • Volume 55, Issue 1, March 2020 Michał Zubek • Leadership and Management in Public Administration • 153-166 Managing the public sphere in the context of organisational culture Organisational culture is a social creation, it is created and maintained by a group of people who form an organisation. It can be defined as the norms and values that are shared and observed by all or most of the organisation's members, which give direction and purpose to a given action (Stańczyk, 2008, pp. 19-22).
The definition of organisational culture proposed by Schein should be considered adequate for the public sector. He defines organisational culture as a set of: values, norms, rules established in the organisation as a result of solving problems with internal integration and external adaptation, which turned out to be so good that they are indicated as a proper way of thinking and acting in the social process (Schein, 2004, p. 17).
Leadership also means creating the cultural identity of an organisation, which is an important element connecting the mission of the organisation with its human resources in order to work out the best standards of providing public services to the inhabitants of a given community. Creating organisational cultural identity occupies an important place in the functional model of leadership analysis in a public sector organisation presented in Table 1 of this article.
The low organisational culture of public institutions may prove to be a barrier to the practical implementation of the mission of any organisation, including the public sector's one. Internal factors determining the organisational culture are not only the vision, mission, strategy, size and structure of the organisation, but above all the people who create this culture with their values and attitudes, their needs, education, life and work experience, emotional bonds and relationships between them. Within the internal aspects of the culture of a public organisation, based on the values indicated, the ethos of a public administration officer should be considered important. The ethics of a public officer focused on professionalism, predictability and continuity of existing solutions accumulates such values as: honesty, punctuality, high personal culture, ethics, equality and loyalty. The external adaptation of the self-government organisation is influenced by external factors aimed at strengthening social legitimacy of the administration's activities. The influence of the environment on the organisational culture of local government units is defined by socio-cultural variables such as tradition, demography, lifestyles of a region's inhabitants, as well as economic and legal conditions. Cooperation with institutions and bodies that influence the public perception of public administration and its cultural identity (media, organisations dealing with EDUCATION OF ECONOMISTS AND MANAGERS • Volume 55, Issue 1, March 2020 Michał Zubek • Leadership and Management in Public Administration • 153-166 codification of standards of public administration, educational institutions educating administration staff, etc.) is important. A particularly vital external factor, in the era of changing environment of public organisations in the context of technology development and growing importance of information is cooperation with educational institutions educating staff for public administration.
Moreover, within the framework of external adaptation, apart from explicitly identified and normatively assigned tasks, the role of public organisations is to shape adequate civic awareness and attitudes among stakeholders, and this requires functioning in specific cultural conditions and a subjective approach to different stakeholder groups.
The requirements of the contemporary market, shaped by the cultural development of its clients, cause an employee, also of a public organisation, to be somebody more than just a blind executor of orders, legal regulations or quality standards (Siemiński, Krukowski, 2011), and in the face of the challenges brought by the needs of clients, citizens and stakeholders, the substantive employees of public services should be knowledge workers. Factors affecting the performance of knowledge workers were diagnosed by Drucker (2009, pp. 152-159) as follows: • an employee is responsible for his or her own performance, which implies responsibility for the level of knowledge he or she possesses, assuming at the same time a considerable degree of autonomy; • innovation is the responsibility of the knowledge worker; • knowledge-based work requires constant personal development and improvement; • in order to improve employee productivity, the employer must view employees as assets (fixed assets), not as costs. A knowledge worker is a sustainable human capital which, when properly managed, i.e., developed and multiplied, determines the success of an organisation. By fulfilling these responsibilities, employees will enrich the organisation, contribute to the creation of new resources and effectively meet the expectations of its stakeholders.
Although more than 20 years have passed since the Act of 24 July 1998 on the introduction of the three-tier division of the state, experts in the subject consider the shaping of the desired cultural model to be a continuous activity which is the most important challenge and a key function of the leaders-managers. They believe that the functioning of the public sector is so imperfect, and as a remedy for these shortcomings, they point to the concept of cultural course correction, while providing its methods (Czerska, 2003, p. 102).
EDUCATION OF ECONOMISTS AND MANAGERS • Volume 55, Issue 1, March 2020 Michał Zubek • Leadership and Management in Public Administration • 153-166 Siemiński and Krukowski (2011, p. 94) rightly emphasise that the concept of cultural course correction in relation to public organisation seems to be implementable, although one should take into account the limitations, especially in terms of awareness and knowledge of managers. The changing conditions of self-government functioning cause a move away from the bureaucratic model, towards the model of management through results, and the key management processes in administration and business sector do not differ. Bugdol (2008, p. 120) confirms that a new concept of administration management is being created as a result of the integration of quality management systems, process management, human resource management and knowledge management.

Conclusion
The public sector is a significant part of the national economy, dealing with the provision of goods and services to the state and citizens in dynamically changing socio-economic conditions. Białas (2007) notices increased interest in the issue of management of public entities, both from the scientific community and practitioners, public managers who demand a modern view on public organisations. Although the experience of Polish enterprises in the implementation and application of e.g., controlling solutions that could be implemented in the public sphere is not common and impressive, some experience can be successfully transferred to public entities.
Opportunities for using common areas in the private and public spheres exist, but the question is whether they are used. According to the World Bank's assessment, in the area of public sphere management Poland has considerable difficulties in 'making up for the lost time'. Aside from the mistakes made during the political transformation, the World Bank's Report on the Quality of Governance, published by Ziębicki (2014, p. 151), informs that "despite a quarter of a century of EDUCATION OF ECONOMISTS AND MANAGERS • Volume 55, Issue 1, March 2020 Michał Zubek • Leadership and Management in Public Administration • 153-166 implementing changes, Poland continues to achieve low standards in all dimensions of good governance, including, above all, the transparency of the public sphere, the quality of the law, its observance and enforcement, as well as the effectiveness and efficiency of public tasks. According to this Report, a particular problem of the Polish administration is still the high level of corruption, which not only translates into a negative image of the administration, but above all reduces the opportunities for economic and social development". Koźmiński (2010, p. 226) poses an open question: Why is the public sector in Poland so reluctant to implement solutions dictated by international experience? Answering this question, as well as the questions arising from the purpose of the article, bearing in mind the current cultural code of both Polish public sector employees with its internal aspects influencing officials, it is necessary to immediately start the process of implementation of the cultural course with regard to both public sector employees and citizens, as well as the institutionalised environment of local government institutions being the stakeholders of public sector organisations.
The conclusions that emerge from the literature research and from our own observations and professional experience are as follows: • The Polish public sector at both government and local government level 'makes up for the lost time'; • Globalisation processes and patterns of societies not burdened with a difficult history are an opportunity for Polish public and political elites, responsible for deficits in the areas of public sphere management, to radically change the management of the public sphere using the concept of cultural course correction; • Modern public administration, although equipped with many effective tools implemented from the business sphere, still does not work perfectly; • Leadership deficits in the Polish public sector are a result of: personality deficits, public administration employees, a lack of strong, ethical leadership (which is easier to talk about than to implement); a lack of managerial competence in the sphere of strong charismatic leadership, i.e., an ability to manage change, flexibility and concentration on long-term action; • Despite the identification of sources of deficits, theoretical recognition of concepts and methods of introducing new instruments of public services management and even gradual practical implementation of new solutions in many public organisations, it is necessary to agree with an accurate assessment by Koźmiński (2010, p. 226) that "the reason for low efficiency and effectiveness of the public sector in Poland is the legalistic and political logic of operation, consisting solely in administrating, which is dealt with by lawyers and political scientists, hence purely managerial analyses are rare"; EDUCATION OF ECONOMISTS AND MANAGERS • Volume 55, Issue 1, March 2020 Michał Zubek • Leadership and Management in Public Administration • 153-166 • The low quality of human resources remains an important factor in the processes of implementing public sector tasks, while in the era of a knowledge-based society, skills such as an ability to learn, share, innovate and adapt to rapid changes in the environment are a basic requirement for an organisation to operate efficiently and effectively; • Not every person in the position of mayor or president is able to find himself or herself in such a 'reality based on the challenges of the knowledge era' and become a leader with an ability to manage himself/herself and his/her relationships with others efficiently; • Responsibility for such a state of affairs is sought, on the basis of research in the literature on the subject, but above all, on the basis of own observations made during direct participation in the processes of managing a public organisation, in the underdeveloped sphere of motivation to learn 'what is new', getting rid of old habits not only by employees of public organisations, but by the general public in all spheres of life, starting from the education of the youngest generations of Poles.

Michał Zubek
PhD at SGH Warsaw School of Economics, Collegium of Business Administration, Institute of Human Capital. His main interests relate to human action. Furthermore, his scientific interests focus on management: use of controlling tools in business operations, especially personnel controlling, human resource management and financing the development of business. e-mail address: mzubek@sgh.waw.pl