ACADEMIC PAPER Transdisciplinary public leadership theory: Between the extremes of “traditional public administration” and “new public management” Emmanuel Yeboah‐Assiamah 1 | Kwame Asamoah 2 | Samuel Adams 3 1 School of Public Leadership, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa 2 Department of Public Administration & Health Services Management, University of Ghana Business School, Accra, Ghana 3 School of Public Service and Governance, Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration, Accra, Ghana Correspondence Emmanuel Yeboah‐Assiamah, School of Public Leadership, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa. Email: yimmanuel@yahoo.com The 21st century public organization is faced with complex problems, informed stake- holders, and information flows, which necessitate a corresponding open system view of leadership. The traditional notions of public administration and new public manage- ment had been structured by strict bureaucratic rules and managerial flexibility, respectively. This paper begins by theorizing two hypothetical constructs (helicopter and deadbeat leadership), which engage in extreme micromanagement/surveillance and negligence/indifference, respectively. Those form basis for designing an optimal (transdisciplinary) leadership, which forges synergistic link between leaders, subordi- nates, and external actors in codesigning objectives and strategies to address societal problems. Strategies to promote transdisciplinary leadership are discussed. 1 | INTRODUCTION The public leadership literature had mainly been underpinned by Weberian bureaucracy and Taylor's scientific management theory (Bingham, O'leary, & Carlson, 2014; Frederickson, Smith, Larimer, & Licari, 2015), which had maintained that mechanistic organizational control remains more appropriate to stable organizational environ- ments (Lawrence & Lorsch, 1967). Rational calculation (excessive con- trol), rules (precision) associated with these theories tended to reduce leaders and workers into a bureaucratic machine and behaved as “a cog in a wheel.” In other words, ingenuity, initiative, and context‐ dependent decision making appeared largely inhibited (Torsteinsen, 2012). Observing the structural constraints and practical limitations associated with the regime, new public management (NPM) theorists rose in the 1980s and 1990s to advance a need for flexibility, innova- tion, managerialism, and responsiveness in the public sector, which challenged the basic tenets of bureaucratic/mechanistic organizational forms (Miles, Snow, Matthews, & Coleman, 1997). The 21st century public sector is faced with complex social prob- lems mostly ill‐defined and “wicked” in nature (Geyer & Rihani, 2012; Innes & Booher, 2010). Public organizations and officials are faced with challenging goals exacerbated by limited resources flanked by complex and informed stakeholders, alert media, advances in informa- tion technology (IT), and information flow (Head & Alford, 2015; Thomas, 2013). That regard, subordinates or external actors may be well‐informed on a prevailing issue at times even more than manage- ment or the so‐called “experts” (Von Krogh, Nonaka, & Rechsteiner, 2012). Public organizations have multiple departments or units and stakeholders. Each of these entities has a peculiar goal (solving societal problems) to make lives better for their clients (citizens), at times, man- date or goals may overlap. Thomas (2013) contends “today's public managers face a public far more complex than their predecessors encountered. This public is more complex in its numbers, with more organizations and more people, and more complex in the interests those organizations and individuals represent, ranging from the con- cerns of traditional business and labor groups to those of citizen and public interest groups” (p. 1). This calls for a shift in the organizational leadership approach toward a one that strives for an interplay between leaders, organizational members, and external constituents in a more participatory and consultative manner. Assessment of literature reveals that theories of leadership mainly emanate or are determined by the nature of interaction between leaders and their subordinates (House & Aditya, 1997). They posit “to this day, the dominant proportion of … studies is primarily con- cerned with the relationship between leaders and followers” (p. 409). A missing link has been an apparent neglect of the cultural context within, which leaders operate, the interaction between leaders and their external constituencies. Scholars (Brown & Eisenhardt, 1998) propose the chaos and complexity theories to recommend a new focus on the leadership literature and discourse. This current study Received: 4 October 2018 Accepted: 13 October 2018 DOI: 10.1002/pa.1887 J Public Affairs. 2019;19:e1887. https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1887 © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa 1 of 10