Leading frontline enforcers: How supervisors’ leadership style impacts inspectors’ enforcement style

Abstract

This article analyzes the relation between leadership style of managers and the enforcement style of street-level bureaucrats. We also studied the influence of organizational culture. The analysis is based on a survey among 549 inspectors of the Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA) in The Netherlands. Studying transactional leadership and servant leadership the findings show that contrary to the general assumptions in leadership literature the influence of leadership style on enforcement behaviour of inspectors is only very limited. Organization culture has more influence on how inspectors enforce rules in their interactions with inspectees.