There is also a wider notion of administrative leadership across the public service — a service-wide responsibility to assist and integrate government policy approaches. But how does administrative leadership manifest itself across the service as a whole? There have been competing patterns and expressions of leadership shown in the service in different eras, and vestiges remain to this day. We can think of these competing traditions as ranging from adversarial and pluralistic forms of competition for influence to orchestrated collaboration across and between agencies. Such patterns are significant in defining what administrative leadership means — it is a potent blend of individual careers, institutional power and policy ends.

In the early eras of the APS, Roland Wilson (in Edwards 2006: 83) made it clear to Arthur Tange that it was

Departmental power and inter-agency rivalry, in other words, were the order of the day for earlier versions of the APS. Today, the leadership emphasis is on interdepartmental cooperation and whole-of-government collaboration. Departmental heads and senior executives are meant to operate as a team and to build trust and across-agency networks to facilitate smooth policy making. The APS with its largely graduate intake and generic responsibilities for facilitating and overseeing policies and programs is now far more homogenous than in former times, thereby making the service more amenable to a leadership focus than ever before (Gourley 2007). Competition is more about individual recognition and career progression than policy rivalry or institutional reputation. This is especially so given the move to enterprise bargaining which places the terms and conditions of employment with respective agency ‘leaders’ rather than with a centralised arbitration system (Henderson 2007).

The past internal rivalry between departments for the ear of government has also become superseded by the ability of ministers to source alternative policy advice from external parties. Nowadays, ministers have an amazing array of advisers ranging from their extensive political advice structures (Tiernan 2007) through to think tanks and direct contact with service providers, as well as sophisticated polling mechanisms that connect them to their constituencies (Stone 1996). The sharing of international experience and best practice as well as policy learning and the wide array of media sources has also heightened ministerial options and discretion. Public officials are no longer the sole purveyors of information or advice. Carving out a niche market in advice relevancy and usefulness is now a distinct aspect to the job of a public official rather than relying on monopoly positions once taken for granted.

The shift is a double-edge sword. Notions of generic administrative leadership have shifted in emphasis away from mere technical proficiency to greater attention to competence, managing to the bottom line, and operational fitness. At the same time, however, officials are having to become more responsive to the (expedient) policy directives of the government of the day, making it challenging to contribute much in the way of strategy or vision without being seen to be ‘interfering’ (Gallop 2007). There are other paradoxes. Public officials appear now to pay more attention to interdepartmental cooperation and horizontal alignment. They are meant to work in dynamic partnership with private and non-governmental organisations, to show initiative and take calculated risks to achieve exemplary social outcomes (Shergold 2007; Kane 2007). All this at the same time as they are supposed to be responsive to community demands and have been placed under strict accountability regimes that demand almost excessive process requirements (Shergold 2004). Engaged in such complex intra and extra-governmental relationships, it is not surprising that secretaries find their relationship with ministers can be fraught with less trust.