© 2008 THE AUTHORS JOURNAL COMPILATION © 2008 CIPFA

Leadership change is a topic of great importance because most people expect new leaders to make a difference to an organization, for better or worse. Yet, little is known about top management turnover in the public sector. In this article, we analyse senior management turnover in English local authorities. First, we provide an overview of the potential sources of leadership change, in particular the organizational environment, organizational politics and organizational performance. Then we introduce our measures of senior management turnover and the external and internal correlates of turnover. Next we present and discuss our findings and draw conclusions for policy and practice