Documentation Requirements,Intrinsic Motivation,and Worker Absence

ABSTRACT

Command systems are widely used to monitor public service provision, but little is known about unintended effects on individual workers’ motivation and work effort. Using insights from motivation crowding theory, we estimate a SEM model that captures how Danish childcare assistants and social/healthcare assistants perceive documentation requirements. We analyze how this perception relates to intrinsic motivation measured in a survey and sickness absence as reported in administrative registers, and find that individuals who perceive documentation requirements as controlling have lower intrinsic motivation and higher sickness absence. The association is statistically significant, but very small in substantive terms. The result is nevertheless consistent with the expectation in motivation crowding theory and contributes to the literature by including a new, reliable behavioral variable—sickness absence—and by drawing attention to possible downsides of command-and-control. Even though command systems can also have positive disciplining effects, knowledge about potential drawbacks is important for public managers.     

Public Service Motivation,Task, and Non-task Behavior: A Performance Appraisal Experiment with Korean MPA and MBA Students

ABSTRACT

Appraisals of public employees are important for a host of reasons, and particularly so with the increasing emphasis on pay-for-performance systems and performance-based management in the public sector. However, managerial appraisals of employees can be somewhat subjective and our understanding of the appraisal process in the public sector is largely U.S.-centric. In this study, we explore whether characteristics of managers, like a rater's public service motivation (PSM), affect appraisal outcomes for their subordinates. Using a mixed experimental design, we analyze these dynamics in a non-U.S. context with MBA and MPA students enrolled in one of Korea's top universities. We find that rater PSM moderates the influence of both task and non-task behavior on an employee's performance appraisal.     

Coproduction and Equity in Public Service Delivery

Public managers and researchers devote much attention to the benefits of coproduction, or the mixing of the productive efforts of public employees and citizens in public service design and delivery. One concern, however, is the distributional consequences of coproduction. This article proposes that disadvantaged citizens may be constrained by a lack of knowledge or other resources necessary to contribute to and benefit from the coproduction process. From this assumption, the authors develop the theoretical argument that if coproduction programs were designed to lift constraints on disadvantaged citizens, they might increase both efficiency and equity. This claim is tested using a field experiment on educational services. A coproduction program providing immigrant parents with knowledge and materials useful to their children's early educational development had a substantial positive impact on the educational outcomes of disadvantaged children, thereby diminishing inequity. Economically, the program was more efficient than later compensation of low‐performing children.     

Professional development leadership in turbulent times: Public administration symposium: Robust politics and governance in turbulent times

Intense turbulence means that parameters change, interdependencies unexpectedly become critical, and public organizations experience unpredictable tempo shifts. Existing studies have explored how public managers can exercise leadership specifically aimed at obtaining dynamic resilience, but more knowledge about leadership and turbulence intensity is needed. Combining existing theoretical knowledge about robust governance in turbulent times and in-depth analysis of 31 interviews, we examine how public managers exercise professional development leadership in situations where events, demands, and support interact in variable, inconsistent, unexpected, and unpredictable ways. We find it highly relevant for public managers to both develop and (de)activate professional norms and knowledge in such situations, implying that professional development leadership is important in turbulent times.     

Silent innovation: corporate strategizing in early nanotechnology evolution

Nanotechnology offers a rare opportunity to study the early evolution of a new generic technology in real time. This paper suggests focusing more on the market formation side, rather than technology generation, when seeking to explain technology evolution. Applying an evolutionary capabilities perspective, the paper examines how firms organize innovation in the early embryonic stages of a technology and how the market as a selective device undergoes qualitative change as part of economic evolution. The traditional Danish window chain is used as a case. A model of nanotechnology evolution is proposed which suggests that nanotechnology commercialization is significantly driven by small and medium-sized firms based on their internal knowhow, with larger firms as important suppliers of know how. These smaller firms are adept at addressing social needs which appear to be key factors in the nano-commercialization process. A taxonomy of nine enterprise strategies for entry into nanotechnology is suggested. The paper identifies a marked shift in marketing strategizing among the nanotechnology innovative companies, from being “loud” around the turn of the millennium to becoming increasingly “silent” at the present time, illustrating the unconsolidated stage of the current nanotechnology market.     

Suicide after deployment in UN peacekeeping missions--a Danish pilot study

This pilot study looks at the frequency of suicide among Danish soldiers who took part in the UN mandated forces (UNMF) during the 1990's. In a contingent of nearly 4000 Danish UN soldiers four suicides were documented, two of whom committed suicide less than one month before deployment and two who committed suicide within a year after discharge from mission. Contributing factors, prevention strategies, and implications for future research are discussed.     

The Scandinavian Welfare Model in Crisis? Achievements and Problems of the Danish Welfare State in an Age of Unemployment and Low Growth

The "Scadinavian welfare model" is often considered vulnerable to mass unemployment. The Danish welfare state provides and opportunity to examine the capacities of the "Scandinavian model" to adapt to this situation. This article explores a number of alleged crisis problems of th welfare state, ground into budgetary pressures, incentive problems and legitimacy problems. It is conclude that most of these problems have been exasggerated and that the rrreal threats to the economic foundations of the welfare state should be found in political steering and incentive problems rather thant in the exogenous pressures from the social and economic system, or in pressure from th unintended side effects of welfare arrangement. It is furthermore argued that one of the main achievements of the Danish welfare state has been so prevent unemployment and labor market marginalization from developing into a broad-ranged social marginalizaton and a political po-larization which could undermine citizenship and solidarity in society.     

Transparency and Openness: A Reform or Education Policy?

Current policies are developed through complex and dynamic historical processes and conflicts originating in these processes. In 2002 a new Act on Transparency and Openness in education was put into effect in Denmark. The Act is a formalised system of performance measurement, and introduced a new feature to the governing of the Danish education system. All educational institutions are obliged to publish on the Internet average grades of final examinations. The historical institutional concept of path dependency shows how the outline of the Act is made at an earlier stage. The Act is layered as a new institutional arrangement on top of pre-existing institutions. By focusing on how institutional and political processes interact and are combined, new contributions to historical institutionalism are further developed without considering institutional reproduction and innovation as opposites. It is elaborated how the Act, with respect to certain dimensions, respectively reproduces, breaks with and combines two formerly outlaid paths of education policy and reform policy.