Change leadership and change embeddedness in public organizations: Connecting macro-level reform to micro-level implementation

Governments initiate major public sector reforms for various reasons. Although change leadership appears crucial, its role in implementing reforms in public organisations receives scant attention. Insights from public administration and change management literature help to bridge the gap between these macro- and micro-level perspectives. Our multilevel study of two youth care organisations addressing public sector reform explores how leadership behaviour – and in interaction between top and middle managers – contributes to the concept of what we call change embeddedness among front-line employees. The use of leadership behaviours during the reform that are leader centric (shaping) appear to be associated with greater ambiguity and worse change embeddedness. However, leadership focused on engaging employees and boundary spanning with external organisations seems to support the embeddedness of the reform, especially when these behaviours are connected to a clear sense of purpose around the change