Top managers in public organizations: A systematic literature review and future research directions

Abstract

Despite increasing attention, top management research has been heavily dominated by a focus on private companies with much less emphasis on the top managers in public organizations. We present a systematic literature review of 212 studies focused on public sector top managers published between 2005 and 2020. First, the paper provides descriptive results suggesting that the empirical focus on top managers in the public sector is increasing, though still limited compared to research on upper echelons in private firms. Second, we develop an empirically based “systems” model illustrating the role and function of top managers in public organizations. We use the model to show that the components of top management are interdependent, adaptive, and embedded in complex relationships in the system, and to identify avenues for future research.

Writing impactful reviews to rejuvenate public administration: A framework and recommendations

“…As you might have guessed, their results suggest academic research lacks relevance to practice agendas. Huang and Villadsen (2023) offer a systematic review of studies focused on public sector top managers published between 2005 and 2020. Their descriptive results suggest that the empirical focus on top managers in the public sector is increasing, though limited in comparison to their counterparts in private firms.…”

Examining factors associated with emergency managers' collaborative planning with health departments prior to and during the COVID‐19 pandemic

“…Recent systematic reviews suggest that management strategies and trust are central contextual and individual determinants of collaboration broadly (Costumato, 2021) and within emergency management specifically (Olszewski & Siebeneck, 2021;Rauhaus et al, 2023). However, despite the manager-level focus of CPM, some argue that research on collaboration has focused less extensively on the individual characteristics of the top manager (Esteve et al, 2013;Huang & Villadsen, 2023). Thus, we specifically examine individual, local EM characteristics, primarily of those at the top of their organization, and how they are related to the propensity to collaborate with local public health departments.…”