Leadership as a public good: exploring the problem/solution space

This paper incorporates the work of John Dewey into a developing concept of wicked leadership. We suggest that wicked leadership is essential for the public good. We focus on Dewey’s concepts of publics, where for Dewey (1927), the consequences of an act might impact significantly not only on the interests of those directly participating in the act but also on others affected by the act. The interests of the direct participants are said to be private, whereas those of the others are public, and these publics, therefore, have a shared concern with an act’s consequences. As wicked problems have no uni-linear end solution, we argue that they do not require an ‘an outcome-based private interest leadership approach.’ Rather, wicked, and all post-normal, problems will require ‘public interest leadership.’ The paper will suggest that in dealing with wicked problems, rather than a leader creating a space that allows them (the leader) to ‘ask the right questions’ (Grint, 2005), it is the organisation ― embodying multiple public interests, some known to the organisation and others unrecognised ― that becomes the problem-setting space. In viewing the organisation as comprised of a problem-setting space (or spaces), wicked leadership may then be about disempowering private interest leadership and embracing the absence left. Drawing on examples from post-normal science and post-normal healthcare, the paper concludes by suggesting that the issue becomes the reconceptualization of organisation using the concept of wicked leadership to become a space(s) within which a problem(s) can reside. It follows, then, that in wicked leadership, an absence or ‘lack’ must be embraced no matter how uncomfortable for some, since therein may reside public good.