2024/05/14 by Mads Pieter van Luttervelt, Anders Barslund Grøn, Mikkel Skov Benthem · 1 voice
Business, Management and Accounting · #Job Satisfaction and Organizational Behavior #Organizational Learning and Leadership #Management and Organizational Studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/10967494.2024.2344544
openalex publication_date 2024/05/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
When changing course, public managers often risk losing credibility in the eyes of their employees.A key question, therefore, is how a manager's presentational strategy regarding a change in initiatives influences employees' judgments of the manager's credibility, especially when substantial investments were made in the prior initiative.We develop a typology of presentational strategies to probe how public managers can navigate such situations.In a preregistered and scenario-based survey experiment, we expose 499 occupational therapists employed in Danish municipalities to video-vignettes that manipulate a manager's presentational strategy and investment in a leadership initiative.Taking responsibility for the decision increases loss of credibility and engagement compared to the control group.Blaming politicians retains credibility and engagement in cases of low initial commitment but less so for high commitment.These findings show that the way in which decisions are presented matters for credibility and engagement when managers change leadership initiatives.