ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the contents of the human-centred approach to public leadership. Building upon—and partly contrasting—humanistic traditions of leadership, this chapter contains an overview of public sector leadership theory and practice, as well as public management systems, and makes explicit the essence of human values in public sector leadership. The adoption of the human-centred leadership approach brings about the shift from vertical to horizontal accountability, focusing on the employee and service user perspectives. This chapter explores the role of public organisations’ physical appearance and its relation to human-centredness. Partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic and partly due to changing ideas around notions of expert work, the traditional public office (as a physical space) is in the process of dissolution and is, to a certain extent, vanishing. Co-working workplaces are now emerging and at least partly replacing the idea of traditional public office. Research on public leadership is plentiful but needs re-calibration. New cornerstones for public leadership as a science comes from understanding the logic of leadership practice as well as introducing translational research to explore in depth the varieties of human-centredness in public leadership.
