Leadership in Administration

This article discusses the nature and practice of leadership in public administration, from an explicitly American perspective and for the specific setting of democratic and constitutional government. It draws on some classic literature as framework and then discusses leadership principles and practices distilled, independently from differing views and experiences, by Colin L. Powell and Rudolph W. Giuliani. The purpose here is to highlight varying approaches to the vital role of leadership in administrative processes. The article then considers the moral foundation of leadership judgments. The public interest is the defining responsibility of the government official. The essence of leadership is moral judgment—which principles of action should embed. That the public interest is difficult to define, and subject to political controversy, does not detract from the moral basis of official duty and responsibility. What happens when ethics and morality are neglected manifests in the recent corporate scandals in the U.S.