What Makes a Leader? Leadership Identity and Leadership Behavior among Highly Professionalized Public Leaders

ABSTRACT

The development of a leadership identity has been argued to be an important determinant for what leaders do. For leaders in highly specialized work environments, the development of a leadership identity has been regarded both in absolute terms and in relation to their professional identity. This study investigates the extent to which leadership identity in absolute and relative terms explains various types of leadership behaviors. Based on panel survey data from clinical directors in Danish hospital departments, the findings show that the absolute leadership identity predicts transformational, transactional, and professional development leadership, whereas no correlations are found between relative leadership identity and leadership behavior. The study supports the expectation that leadership identity is, in its own right, an important precondition for leadership behavior.

KEYWORDS:

• Leadership identity
• public leadership
• manager job satisfaction
• leadership behavior

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the reviewers and the editor for constructive feedback in the review process. We would also like to thank The Crown Prince Frederik Center for Public Leadership and Overlægeforeningen for their help and support in the research process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/01900692.2022.2150775

Notes

1. Appendix 1 is based on a data report from September 2020. The data report also gives a thorough descriptive analysis of the dataset from this study. Read more at: https://pure.au.dk/portal/files/158777707/LID_Ledende_overlaeger_Datarapport.pdf

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Novo Nordisk Foundation [28278].