Crisis, confidence and collectivity: Responding to the new public leadership challenge

The paper argues that the public sector context in the UK is characterized by a reform that focuses on 'delivery' with an unprecedented obsession with measurement. It examines whether the time is right to move from new public management (NPM) to new public leadership (NPL) and supports its argument by reference to literature and a content analysis of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) seminar series papers and the subsequent edited volume (The New Public Leadership Challenge [NPLC]) that set a public leadership challenge. The paper endorses the view that the focus on NPM has resulted in a culture of 'counting what can be counted rather than what counts' (McKee, 2004) and proposes a frame of reference that has potential for supporting the development and evaluation of new public leadership. © The Author(s) 2011.