Promoting work engagement in public administrations: the role of middle managers’ leadership

This study aims at exploring the role of middle managers’ leadership style in promoting work engagement in public administrations. Building on leadership theory, the work engagement literature and change management research, the study develops and empirically tests a model envisaging the impact of leadership on engagement as partially mediated by leaders’ support for key aspects of public sector reforms. An empirical study carried out on 2721 Italian local government workers shows that transformational leadership is positively linked to work engagement both directly and indirectly. Mixed results emerge for the other leadership styles.