Effekter af ledelseskommunikation på frontpersonales implementering af reformer

Despite the abundance of research on implementation and street-level bureaucracy, our knowledge of the importance of leader communication in fostering implementation of policy reforms among street-level bureaucrats remains limited. Theories of change management and transformational leadership focus on leader communication as a key to organizational change and effectiveness. In contrast, studies of self-other agreement and communication highlight the limitations of leader communication because leaders’ communication is perceived differently by leaders and their employees. Using an unprecedented five-year-panel of more than 200 school leaders and 2,000 teachers collected during the implementation of a major Danish public school reform, we show that teachers’ perceptions of leader communication are related to teachers’ implementation behavior. However, leaders’ perception of their own communication is not correlated with teachers’ perceptions of the communication nor with their implementation behaviors. The lack of self-other agreement is not only due to biases among leaders but also among teachers. Teacher perceptions of leaders also do not correlate with their colleagues’ perceptions. These novel findings have both substantial and methodological implications for future research.