The negative relationships between employee resilience and ambiguity,complexity, and inter-agency collaboration

Employee resilience (ER) is often needed to face demands inherent in public sector work. Some types of demands, however, may hinder its development, rather than provide the type of challenging adversity from which resilience can develop. Public sector job demands have been a long-standing issue for public workplaces and employees but are also growing in salience as organisations face an increasingly variable, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment. Drawing on the Job Demands–Resources model and the challenge/hindrance stress literature, this multi-level study of Aotearoa New Zealand civil servants (n = 11,533) in 65 public sector organisations shows that ER is negatively affected by demands such as job insecurity, unclear job and organisational goals, and inter-agency collaboration. However, organisational resource constraints are positively associated with ER. This study identifies core PA job and organisational demands that hinder ER and offers practical implications and suggestions for further research.

Points for practitioners

• Job role ambiguity, job insecurity, unclear organisational goals, and inter-agency collaboration are common job and organisational demands in public sector workplaces.
• For employees, these demands are stressors that employees do not feel they control, and may therefore hinder employee resilience: the ability to learn, adapt, and leverage networks in the face of challenges.
• Surprisingly, resource constraints, where employees have to ‘do more with less’, might help employees develop ER.
• While inter-agency collaboration has potentially many benefits, it appears to have negative spillover effects on employees unaware of it or not involved in it.
• To encourage ER, agencies should clarify both organisational and job goals, and assure job security, control, competency development, and supervisor support.

     

Livelihood strategies and performance of Ghana's health and education sectors: exploring the connections

The public sector in Africa is riddled with widespread ineffectiveness. Although some countries have implemented various reform programmes with the support of international development agencies, the results so far have been disappointing. One reason for the failure is that the policies have focussed more on achieving macroeconomic stability than making the organisations effective. This article explores a fundamental problem of the policies—the need to focus on the human component of organisational performance. Using education and health organisations in Ghana as examples, the article advances a hypothesis that the livelihood strategies of public sector employees and the performance of their organisations are interconnected. Specifically, it is argued that as public sector employees have become more dependent on multiple sources of income, they have developed multiple social identities, which influence the culture of their organisations. The organisational culture may have encouraged employee effectiveness in some cases, but for most organisations, it has resulted in practices that perpetuate inefficiency and poor performance. To be successful, public sector reform policies must therefore involve deliberate efforts to change organisational cultures. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Family‐Friendly Human Resource Policy: Is It Still Working in the Public Sector?

The balance between work and family plays a pivotal but evolving role in human resource policy. Ensuring that human resource policy responds to rapidly changing American family demographics, particularly the recent sharp increase in single unmarried Americans, is a major challenge. Compensation policy long has focused on family‐oriented values by promising increased capacity to provide for a family in exchange for higher work performance. Now, employees are voicing concerns about matters such as quality time with family, and, in turn, employers are responding by implementing more benefits to achieve a better work–family balance. Strong counterarguments against human resource goals targeted only at families advocate personal policies that emphasize work–life balance for all employees. How well has personal policy kept pace with the shifting compensation preferences of public employees? Results suggest that implementation policies are keeping pace with employee satisfaction. However, levels of employee satisfaction often differ widely by demographic characteristics.     

The impact of employee perception on the successful institutionalisation and implementation of performance management systems in developing countries: The perspective from Ghana's public service

Performance management (PM) has become a key instrument in the quest to ensure optimal operations by organisations in the public sector. Some scholars, though, believe that PM has failed because of employees' negative perception and management's exclusion of employees from its development. Studies on the relationship between employee perception of PM and its effectiveness in the public sector are limited. We argue that management must value employee perception more highly than they do at present because it is unlikely employees would be willing to take an active part in implementing a change with which they disagree or that they see as having no value. This study examines the effect of employees' perception on the institutionalisation and implementation of PM in developing countries, with specific reference to Ghana.     

Cutback Management and the Paradox of Publicness

Cutback management in the public sector poses unique problems. More than 30 years ago, Charles Levine illustrated these problems by discussing the paradoxes of cutback management in public organizations. Building on Levine's work on cutback management and developments in publicness theory, the author provides a contemporary perspective on cutback management. He asserts that publicness creates paradoxical tensions in different domains such as organizational goals, employee motivation, and organizational performance. These tensions need to be embraced in both theoretical discussions of and practical engagement with cutback management. Instead of a short‐term, reductionist approach to cutback management, a holistic and long‐term perspective is necessary.     

Do Australian public sector employees have the type of culture they want in the era of new public management?

New public management theory proposes that public sector organisations should be managed more like private sector organisations. It is therefore expected that public sector managers will have preferences for an organisational culture that will reflect the culture of private sector organisations, with an external rather than internal orientation. The current research investigated the idea that managers' perceptions of ideal organisational culture would be different to the bureaucratic model of culture (internally oriented), which has traditionally been associated with public sector organisations. Responses to a competing values culture inventory were received from 925 public sector employees. Results indicated that the bureaucratic model is still pervasive; however, managers prefer a culture that is more external, and less control focussed, as expected. Lower level employees expressed a desire for a culture that emphasised human relations values.     

Zone of Acceptance under Performance Measurement: Does Performance Information Affect Employee Acceptance of Management Authority?

Public sector employees have traditionally enjoyed substantial influence and bargaining power in organizational decision making, but few studies have investigated the formation of employee acceptance of management authority. Drawing on the “romance of leadership” perspective, the authors argue that performance information shapes employee attributions of leader quality and perceptions of a need for change in ways that affect their acceptance of management authority, conceptualized using Simon's notion of a “zone of acceptance.” A survey experiment was conducted among 1,740 teachers, randomly assigning true performance information about each respondent's own school. When employees were exposed to signals showing low or high performance, their acceptance of management authority increased, whereas average performance signals reduced employee acceptance of management authority. The findings suggest that performance measurement can alter public sector authority relations and have implications regarding how public managers can use performance information strategically to gain acceptance of management authority and organizational change.     

Understanding Employee Motivation to Innovate: Evidence from Front Line Employees in United States Federal Agencies

In a period of ongoing public sector reform in the United States (US), federal government agencies have been pushed to find new ways of performing their public functions more effectively and efficiently. Frontline public sector employees are a particularly vital source of innovations in organisational function and form. This study seeks to identify factors that motivate front line employees in the US federal bureaucracy to engage in innovative behaviour. The empirical analysis is based on data from the 2006 Federal Human Capital Survey. The results show that a constellation of factors encourage bottom‐up innovation, including the expectancy of innovation being rewarded, employee training and development, employee empowerment and involvement in decision‐making, and high‐exchange dyadic relationships with supervisors.     

Strategic Human Resource Practices: Introducing Alternatives for Organizational Performance Improvement in the Public Sector

Can public sector organizations increase productivity through competition in spite of inherent limitations, such as budget constraints? This study addresses that question by examining the impact of four factors that contribute to employees’ expectations regarding competitive work environments on organizational performance in terms of overall quality of work and client satisfaction. The four factors measured include rewards for merit such as salary and benefits, opportunities, organizational rules, and the capacity to deal with risks as perceived by employees. Using data on public and nonprofit sector employees, expectations for merit rewards were positively related to employees’ perception of organizational performance when the conditions of performance‐based organizational rules and risk‐taking behaviors were also satisfied. Moreover, employees’ perceptions of organizational performance tended to increase when they felt that organizational rules were oriented toward performance plus organizational members and top leaders exhibited greater risk‐taking behaviors. However, no correlation was evident between employees’ expectations of opportunities and perceived organizational performance.     

A Job Demands–Resources Approach to Public Service Motivation

This article uses job demands–resources theory to build a model of public service motivation (PSM). Public service motivation determines how employees in the public sector deal with their daily job demands and resources. Highly motivated public servants are able to deal with their job demands and prevent exhaustion. Additionally, because of their sense of calling, they are motivated to mobilize their job resources to stay engaged and perform well. However, if job demands are consistently high and job resources are consistently low, highly motivated public servants will lose their psychological resources, resulting in lower PSM. Reduced PSM, as a consequence, may strengthen the loss cycle of job demands and exhaustion and weaken the gain cycle of job resources and engagement. Public service managers and employees may use this model to optimize their work environment on a day‐to‐day basis.     

The role of authentic leadership on healthcare Street-Level Bureaucrats’ well-being during the pandemic

This study uses Conservation of Resources Theory, to explain Street-Level Bureaucrats’ (SLBs) workplace behavioural responses to threats to their well-being. We examine whether authentic leadership within street-level organisations positively impacts employee well-being by increasing SLBs’ perception of personal resources, and reducing their perceptions of work harassment. The research design comprises a survey that solicited quantitative and qualitative data from 163 healthcare SLBs working in Australian hospitals during the pandemic in April 2020. Analysis of the means indicates low levels of satisfaction with leadership and low levels of well-being for SLBs. The structural equation modelling findings show that poor leadership is associated with higher levels of work harassment and lower levels of employee well-being. Qualitative data support these findings. As healthcare workers were already listed as over-represented in the stress-related workers compensation statistics, one strategy may be to improve the level of organisational support by upskilling managers in authentic leadership behaviours with the aim of increasing their perception of support so as to increase employee well-being. This will benefit employees and their families, and the community they service.

Points for practitioners

• Street-Level Bureaucrats (SLBs) have been increasingly experiencing the public sector gap (demand outstripping supply of resources) because of the dominance of the austerity-driven managerialist paradigm.
• The recent COVID-19 crisis amplified the severity and impact of the public sector gap causing increased perceptions of work harassment and reductions in SLBs’ well-being.
• However, SLBs with high levels of Psychological Capital had a natural buffer in place to protect their well-being, and as such, they perceived less work harassment and erosion of their well-being.
• The way forward is to complement the austerity-driven managerialist paradigm in management decision-making with authentic leadership behaviours focused on maximising the well-being of SLBs and the public.

     

Work redesign in development perspective: An empirical study of multitasking among civil servants in Malawi

Civil servants in many developing countries are increasingly faced with multitask situations at work to improve the efficiency of public sectors. Although multitasking might boost employee productivity, its potentially negative impact on other areas of employees’ lives has been ignored. Drawing upon the conservation of resources theory, our research aims to investigate whether, how, and when multitasking at work decreases the subjective well-being of employees in the public sector. Using a two-wave survey of 164 civil servants in Malawi, our findings showed that multitasking at work was positively related to employees’ negative affect and negatively related to their satisfaction with life and positive affect through emotional exhaustion. Moreover, the study found that polychronicity, which refers to one's preference to handle more than one task at the same time, moderated the relationship between multitasking and emotional exhaustion, such that the association described above was weaker when an employee's polychronicity was higher. Finally, the indirect impact of multitasking on positive affect through emotional exhaustion was also moderated by polychronicity. These findings provide some theoretical and managerial implications for public sector in developing countries on how to focus on employee well-being while using multitasking work design.     

Examining the Effects of Social Media Use on Job Satisfaction in the Australian Public Service: Testing Self-Determination Theory

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between social media usage for work purposes and employee job satisfaction in the public sector. Because social media is a relatively recent phenomenon, the ways in which it affects employee attitudes such as job satisfaction are not well-known. Using self-determination theory (SDT) as a framework, this study tests whether perceived competence, relatedness, and autonomy mediate the relationship between social media usage for work purposes and employee job satisfaction. Data were obtained from the Australian Public Service Commission (APSC). Overall, results generated from the structural equation models support SDT, suggesting that employees using social media for work purposes have higher self-determination and higher self-determination increases their job satisfaction. In particular, the effect of competence to job satisfaction is very high. However, while social media usage for work purposes can enhance employees’ need for autonomy and competence, it does not have any statistical effect to employees need for relatedness. In addition, social media does not have any statistical and direct effect to job satisfaction. The results suggest that social media has an indirect effect to job satisfaction. This article discusses the implications of these findings.     

An Analysis of Differences in Work Motivation between Public and Private Sector Organizations

This study contributes to our understanding of the differences in work motivation between the public and private sectors. Data from a survey of 3,314 private sector and 409 public sector employees in Belgium strongly confirm previous research showing that public sector employees are less extrinsically motivated. Differences in hierarchical level are more important determinants of work motivation than sectoral differences. In addition, most observed differences can be wholly or partially explained by differences in job content, not by the sector itself. Evidence is presented to show that motivational differences can be explained by a positive choice of work–life balance.     

From Uniformity to Diversity? Reinventing Public Sector Industrial Relations in New Zealand

Since 1988 industrial relations in New Zealand's public sector have changed significantly. This paper discusses the changing roles of the State Services Commission and chief executives in bargaining with public sector employees, and how these changing roles have affected union representation and wage rates. While the Employment Contracts Act, 1991 resulted in changes to bargaining, generally its effect was minimal in the public sector with respect to bargaining outcomes. However, one of the more significant changes as a result of the Employment Contracts Act has been a move to direct employer — employee negotiations. Bargaining in New Zealand's public sector has moved, in the last nine years, from uniformity to diversity, but to what extent?     

Motivated to Adapt? The Role of Public Service Motivation as Employees Face Organizational Change

Researchers concerned with organizational change have consistently emphasized the role that the work environment plays in employee acceptance of change. Underexamined in the public management literature, however, is the role that employee values, particularly public service motivation (PSM), may play in employee acceptance of change. Some scholars have noted a positive correlation between employee PSM and organizational change efforts; this article extends this work by attempting to isolate the mechanisms that explain this relationship. Using data from a survey of employees in a city undergoing a reorganization and reduction in workforce, the authors find that only employees who scored high on a single dimension of PSM—self‐sacrifice—were more likely than others to support organizational change. Rather than support changes for their potential to improve public service, this finding suggests that employees with higher PSM may simply be less likely to resist changes that might disadvantage them personally.     

Introduction: The State of State Employment

Public sector industrial relations is a somewhat neglected field of investigation. The relative neglect by industrial relations scholars is surprising given that public sector employees in Australia are much more likely to be unionised and work within larger organisations with formalised industrial. Moreover, it has been within public sector environments where the efficacy of public policy directions in industrial relations have been tested. Public sector environments are more likely to be characterised by structured bargaining and policy testing than much of the private sector. One of the purposes of this symposium, then, is to remedy this relative neglect of public sector industrial relations.     

Goal Setting and Performance Management in the Public Sector

ABSTRACT

The public sector in North America as well as parts of Europe is increasingly adopting a performance management system that includes goal setting, coaching, and the evaluation of an employee on goal attainment. The purpose of this article is three-fold. First, the extant literature on goal setting for individual employees is summarized in terms of its applicability to the public sector. Second, the importance of context to goal setting and performance management in the United States and Italy is discussed. Third, coaching techniques, based on theory and empirical evidence, for increasing the probability of goal attainment by public sector employees are examined.     

A Comparison of the Values and Commitment of Private Sector, Public Sector, and Parapublic Sector Employees

This study investigated differences in general values, work values and organizational commitment among 549 private sector, public sector, and parapublic sector knowledge workers. No differences in general values were observed across sectors, although five significant work value differences were revealed: parapublic employees value work that contributes to society more than public servants, who value it more than private sector employees; parapublic employees value opportunities for advancement less than both public and private sector employees; public servants value intellectually stimulating and challenging work more than parapublic employees; and private sector employees value prestigious work more than public servants. Private sector employees displayed greater organizational commitment than the employees in the other two sectors. Overall, the findings suggest only limited value differences among employees of the various sectors. The finding of some work value differences between employees in the public and parapublic sectors suggests that these two groups merit separate consideration in comparative studies such as this one.     

Organisational reputation and impact on employee attitude: A case study of MTN Ghana limited and Vodafon Ghana Limited

The impact organisational reputation has on employee attitude is very crucial to the fortunes of any organisation, and employees are the fuel that runs the engine of the organisation, and it is believed that their attitude towards the organisation creates a positive performance for the organisation. This study, therefore, sought to determine organisational reputation and the impact on employee attitude by determining the contribution of employee in achieving the reputation of the organisation. The type of research design was a survey, and it relied on secondary information such as reviewing available literature and primary data through the dissemination of questionnaires. The findings suggests that employees contribute earnestly and effectively to organisations reputation, and this creates an enabling environment for creativity and growth, as employees see themselves as stakeholders who play part in the achievement of organisations reputation to the market. It was also revealed that when employees are taken for granted, they become dissatisfied and apathetic, which is likely to adversely affect organisational performance and goes a long way to drag the image of the organisation into the mud. It is recommended that employees' feelings are sought on matters that affect their lives and work, and they should work under conducive and healthy environments as this would give employees the feeling that their employers are concerned about their wellbeing, and this builds a positive attitude to work within employees who in turn work to achieve the goals of their organisation. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.