Establishing causal evidence in public leadership research

The public administration literature has witnessed a turn towards stronger emphasis on causal inference and the use of experiments, and this also increasingly characterizes the public leadership literature. Particularly in leadership research, field experiments can be a necessary step for establishing causal evidence and at the same time maintain external validity of the studies. However, leadership is also difficult to manipulate as it is a processual concept that involves interaction and interference between people. But what are the gains from experimental leadership? How can leadership be manipulated in a real-world setting? And which effects can be realistically be estimated? Departing in three examples of large field experimental leadership studies of 1) leadership in recruitment, 2) development of leadership competencies, and 3) development of leadership collaboration, this talk presents examples and discusses these questions in relation to potentials and caveats of doing field experimental public leadership research.