In recent decades, public administration has taken a great interest in leadership. However, this interest has been met with concerns that the effects of leadership are overestimated compared to other relevant organizational factors. In this article, we explore the relative importance of formal, vertical leadership, specifically transformational leadership, and horizontal relations, that is, the internal team relations, for different employee outcomes and user satisfaction. We argue that both factors may work through public service motivation (PSM). Based on survey data collected in Danish nursing homes linked with a user satisfaction survey and employee sickness absence data, we find that the internal team relations have the strongest association with some outcome measures, whereas others are more substantially related to vertical leadership. We further find that the relationship between transformational leadership and these outcome measures is fully mediated by PSM, whereas this is not the case with the internal team relations.

在最近的几十年中，公共管理对领导力产生了极大的兴趣。但是，与其他相关组织因素相比，人们对领导作用的影响被高估了，这引起了人们的关注。在本文中，我们探讨了正式，纵向领导，尤其是转型领导和横向关系（即内部团队关系）对于不同员工成果和用户满意度的相对重要性。我们认为这两个因素都可能通过公共服务动机（PSM）起作用。基于在丹麦养老院中收集的调查数据以及用户满意度调查和员工缺勤数据，我们发现内部团队关系与某些成果指标之间的关联最强，而其他方面与纵向领导力之间的联系更为密切。