title: Going to the movies: effective leadership in the public interest in times of crisis.
Creators: name: Sullivan, Tim
Publisher: name: The Australian National University
Year: 2025

description: Prominent scholars on the practice of leadership have attributed high-profile failures of leadership that have damaged public and private interests to moral and ethical failures in leadership decision-making. They have pointed to shortcomings in leadership development (LD) programs that pay insufficient attention to engaging with the humanities, particularly in ethical and moral decision making, and in developing a concept of the public interest. This dissertation demonstrates a stronger relationship between theorising on leadership effectiveness and awareness of the public interest as a philosophical concept and a political commitment than is evident in the literature. In contrast to recent work in the field, I argue that understanding leadership effectiveness is derived from closer attention to the function of leadership than to contrasting styles of leadership. Focusing on the function of leadership reveals the crucial nexus between purpose and power. Power is delegated to leaders to perform tasks that are purposeful, that is, protecting the interests of the organisations they lead and promoting its purposes. I contend that in contemporary society, leaders are accountable not only for the interests of those who are intended beneficiaries of leadership action, but also to the publics outside the organisations they lead and whose interests are affected by the leadership action whether its consequences are intended or unintended. Consequently, effective leadership in the public interest must have a working concept of the public interest, and the obligations embedded in it. I further contend that leadership is more deeply institutionalised to protect the public interest than is recognised in the extant literature, that is, the power of leaders is constrained by the system of bureaucratic and political checks and balances intended to prevent the abuse and misuse of power. That institutionalising of leadership in the public interest exists in two distinct domains: the bureaucratic and the political. The bureaucratic comprises the mechanisms used by government agencies and of governance structures that test the compliance of leadership decisions with legal statutes, codes of conduct and best practice, together with nuanced judgements of societal values and attitudes. The political comprises the institutions that represent the collective interests of the people, and the power exercised by political players over the bureaucratic processes and institutions. The framework of ethical and moral decision-making in this dissertation is based on Arendt's idea of representation, that is, of consistently and consciously bringing to mind the interests of others in decision-making. The principles presented in this dissertation are illustrated in a selection of movies interpreting leadership action relating to the US presidency in moments of crisis across four different domains of power: institutional, executive, corporate, and popular movement. The significance of this work is in establishing principles that forge a stronger understanding of the relationship between the function of leadership and effective decision-making and the concept of the public interest as a primary concern of leadership ahead of sectional or private interests.