Date
8-29-2025
Department
Helms School of Government
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy in Public Administration (PhD)
Chair
Debera Neville
Keywords
Legitimacy, social exchange, leader-member exchange, sound relationship house, small-size municipal departments, medium-size municipal departments
Disciplines
Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration
Recommended Citation
Bovee, Dustin, "The Leader and Employee: A Public Administration Study on Legitimacy in Small to Medium-Sized Municipal Governments" (2025). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects. 7356.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/7356
Abstract
The purpose of this empirical study was to investigate how municipal government administrative leaders’ effectiveness, value creation, innovation, ethical behavior, fairness, contributions, role alignment with duty expectations, trust, and support influence their employees’ perceptions of leader legitimacy. The target population consisted of public service employees working in two county governments and four city governments in Western Colorado. The theory guiding this study is the Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) theory, which offers a nuanced framework for examining factors influencing employees’ perceptions of legitimacy for their leaders. The study explored the factors that influence employees’ perception of leader legitimacy within municipal government departments. This quantitative study used descriptive statistics and multiple-regression analysis to examine leadership factors that shape perceptions of their legitimacy. A cross-sectional research design with purposive sampling was used to collect survey data from the participants. The use of descriptive statistics and multiple regression analysis allowed for a comprehensive understanding of trends and relationships between variables. The findings found that pragmatic, moral, and cognitive legitimacy, along with Leader-Member Exchange, significantly predicted municipal employees’ perception of leader legitimacy (p <.001), confirming the multidimensional nature of legitimacy in municipal government. Moral legitimacy was determined to be the most influential factor, while gender and education significantly moderated how employees perceived leadership, indicating that legitimacy is interpreted differently across demographic groups. The results suggest that public administrators should consider an inclusive leadership approach to build trust and legitimacy with employees.
