Dispersion of Distributed Leadership in Public Organizations: Can Inclusive Leadership Contribute to Diverse Employee Engagement in Leadership Activities?

Distributed leadership entails that multiple actors located across the organization perform leadership activities. However, there is still limited understanding regarding how distributed leadership unfolds within public organizations, and how formal managers can support diverse employee engagement in leadership activities. This paper identifies varying levels of employee engagement in leadership dependent on gender and seniority and explores to which extent inclusive leadership contributes to engagement in leadership activities from all employees. We propose that employees with greater organizational seniority engage more in leadership, with male employees focusing on change- and task-oriented activities and female employees on relation-oriented activities. Inclusive leadership, aiming at supporting employee participation through exchange, discussion, and integration of diverse perspectives, likely enhances diverse employee engagement in leadership. Relying on a cross-sectional survey of Danish upper secondary school teachers (N = 1,132), we find that female teachers engage more in change- and relation-oriented leadership activities whereas male teachers engage in administrative ones. Moreover, seniority is positively associated with engagement in all types of leadership activities, and inclusive leadership supports the distribution of leadership among all employees. These findings highlight how inclusive leadership can contribute to employee engagement in leading public organizations, thus ensuring better use of the pool of human resources.