Position Paper Assignment

Law

PLEASE SEE ATTACHMENT 10-12 scholary source , Paper should be 7–8 double-spaced pages of content in length (this does not include title page or reference pages) APA format,Headings should be included and must conform to the content categories listed (i.e., Statesmanship Model, Interpersonal and Organizational Leadership,

Discuss the link between interpersonal leadership and organizational leadership and how
effective public administration statesmanship engages in key organizational communication best
practices. In essence, this paper should be a synthesis among the evolving statesmanship model,
interpersonal and organizational leadership, and organizational communication best practices.
INSTRUCTIONS
Paper should be 7–8 double-spaced pages of content in length (this does not include title
page or reference pages).
Paper should be in current APA format.
Headings should be included and must conform to the content categories listed
(i.e., Statesmanship Model, Interpersonal and Organizational Leadership, etc.

Don't use plagiarized sources. Get Your Custom Essay on

Position Paper Assignment

Just from $13/Page

Order Essay

Change Communication Strategies in Public Child Welfare Organizations: Engaging the Front Line.

Authors:

Cao, Yiwen

1 (AUTHOR)
cao.225@osu.edu

Bunger, Alicia C.

1 (AUTHOR)

Hoffman, Jill

1 (AUTHOR)

Robertson, Hillary A.

1 (AUTHOR)

Source:

Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership & Governance

. Jan/Mar2016, Vol. 40 Issue 1, p37-50. 14p.

Document Type:

Article

Subject Terms:

Child welfare

Organizational change

Social workers

Government communication systems

Job involvement

Geographic Terms:

United States

Author-Supplied Keywords:

child welfare

communication

organizational change

Abstract:

In public child-welfare agencies, successful organizational change depends on effective internal communication and engagement with frontline workers. This qualitative study examines approaches for communicating planned organizational change among frontline child-welfare workers. Five, 90-minute focus groups were conducted with 50 frontline workers in an urban, public child-welfare agency. Consistent with prior research on change communication in business organizations, two broad categories of communication strategies were described: programmatic (top-down) and participatory approaches. Results suggest that participatory communicative strategies emphasizing employee engagement might be most effective in combination with programmatic approaches that communicate targeted messages about the change.

[ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership & Governance is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder’s express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Author Affiliations:

1College of Social Work, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA

ISSN:

2330-3131

DOI:

10.1080/23303131.2015.1093570

Accession Number:

112814407

Translate Full Text:

Change Communication Strategies in Public Child Welfare Organizations: Engaging the Front Line.

This content may contain URLs/links that would redirect you to a non-EBSCO site. EBSCO does not endorse the accuracy or accessibility of these sites, nor of the content therein.

Contents

COMMUNICATING ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE WITH CHILD-WELFARE WORKERS

Organizational-Change Communication Approaches

Study Purpose

METHODS

Study Context

Participants

Data Collection

Data Analysis

FINDINGS

10.

Applied Organizational Change Communication Strategies

11.

Programmatic Communicative Approaches

12.

Use of Programmatic Communicative Approaches

13.

Workers’ Reactions Toward Programmatic Communication Approaches

14.

Participatory Communicative Approaches

15.

Use of Participatory Communicative Approaches

16.

Symbolic Versus Legitimate Use of Participatory Strategies

17.

Desired Change Communication Approaches

18.

Involve Relevant Workers

19.

Service- and Outcome-Driven Communication

20.

Preference for Well-Organized Communication

21.

DISCUSSION

22.

Commonly Used Programmatic Approach and Its Limitations

23.

Preference for Genuine Participatory Approaches

24.

Bridging Role of Supervisors

25.

Practice and Research Implications

26.

CONCLUSION

27.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

28.

FUNDING

29.

REFERENCES

Full Text

Keywords: child welfare; communication; organizational change

Public child-welfare agencies encounter constant pressure to change with new policies, best practices, and evolving client needs (Collins-Camargo, [13]). Successful implementation of these changes requires timely and effective communication to engage employees, especially those on the front line. Prior research suggests the importance of clear communication within human service organizations for mitigating workers’ job stress and intention to leave (Boyas, Wind, & Ruiz, [11]; Devine, [15]; Kim & Lee, [23]). However, little is known about how change is communicated and what specific strategies can effectively communicate information and knowledge about change in public child-welfare agencies.

To fill this gap and inform change leadership and management within child-welfare agencies, this exploratory study focuses on strategies for communicating planned practice changes among frontline child-welfare workers in an urban, public child-welfare agency. Specifically, we (

) describe workers’ perceptions about and reactions toward strategies commonly used in their agency to communicate change efforts and (

) identify their preferences for future communication and engagement in organizational change efforts. Next, we review findings from extant literature on change and communication within child-welfare agencies and consider the applicability of findings on change communication from the broader organizational literature. Afterwards, we present the methods and findings of our study, examining change communication strategies, and conclude by discussing implications of our findings for communicating change to frontline workers for administrators and leaders in public child-welfare agencies.

COMMUNICATING ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE WITH CHILD-WELFARE WORKERS

Child-welfare systems experience pressure to change to ensure safety, permanency, and well-being of children and families. Needs of clients and within communities drive child-welfare agencies to adapt their services and practices, and call for adoption and implementation of evidence-based practices in children’s services, such as Title IV-E Child Welfare Demonstration projects, individualized or wraparound, family group conferencing, and alternative response. (Barth, [

]; Collins-Camargo, [13]; Horwitz, Chamberlain, Landsverk, & Mullican, [22]). Legislative and policy reforms, such as the Child and Family Services Improvement and Innovation Act ([42]), also prompt responses at the state and agency levels to reshape the delivery of child-welfare services. Exploring how to implement change in child-welfare agencies is important for maximizing benefits to children and families amidst constant pressures to adapt to changing policies and new best practices.

Child-welfare workers play a key role in carrying out leaders’ vision and translating the change on the front line. Although leaders and managers often design and steer change efforts, frontline child-welfare workers engage directly with children and families to deliver services and carry out the change efforts. Implementation success substantially depends on caseworkers’ motivation and perceived acceptability of innovations (Aarons & Palinkas, [

1
]). Workers on the front line may also reject changes that conflict with what they believe to be best practices or the practices most appropriate for people they serve (Powell, Hausmann-Stabile, & McMillen, [36]). As a result, inconsistencies emerging between the change envisioned by agency administration and the change as implemented by workers limit potential benefits of the innovation (Sandfort, [39]; Smith & Donovan, [41]). Hence, in child-welfare agencies, strategies encouraging open communication and worker inclusion in decision making facilitate the change process.

Inclusionary strategies that feature well timed and open communication benefit the overall functioning of the agency and smooth the change process. Strategies emphasizing worker engagement help cultivate open and participatory decision making in the organization and also promote workers’ well-being, job satisfaction, commitment, and intention to stay or leave the agency (Mor Barak, Levin, Nissly, & Lane, [31]). Well-planned strategies encourage workers to communicate their experiences within the agency back to the administration. Strategies that solicit workers’ feedback, build employee buy-in, impact change planning, and provide motivation to adopt the change help promote positive outcomes for children and families involved with the child-welfare system (Austin & Claassen, [

]; Collins-Camargo, [13]; Lee & Austin, [24]; McCrae, Scannapieco, Leake, Potter, & Menefee, [28]; Wells, [43]). Hence, timely and open communication strategies are important for engaging workers in the change process.

Although it is well recognized that more communication about and involvement in the design and implementation of change is preferable (Bolman & Deal, [10]), little research specifically explores communication strategies and worker engagement amidst organizational change in child welfare. Workforce studies found that communication with supervisors reduces job-related stress or burnout among child-welfare workers (Boyas et al., [11]; Kim & Lee, [23]). Literature on general organizational change processes also stresses the importance of identifying established communication channels from the beginning of implementation to gain workers’ acceptance and understanding, thus mitigating uncertainty and anxiety inevitably brought about by organizational change (Mildon & Shlonsky, [29]; Pipkin, Sterrett, Antle, & Christensen, [35]). McCrae et al. ([28]) suggested that tailoring appropriate communication strategies to different groups of employees and addressing various types of needs among employees also matters in terms of engaging workers. Communication with frontline workers who are champions for an innovation or new practice helps to promote adoption and implementation of planned change (Blome, Bennett, & Page, [

]).

To our knowledge, no studies have been solely dedicated to exploring change communication in child-welfare organizations. Although prior literature points to the utility of participatory approaches to communicating change in human services, exactly how child-welfare agencies use these approaches is unclear (Blome et al., [

9
]). What strategies are effective in communicating the change remains unknown, even though the importance of communicating with workers is implied in literature (Packard, [33]). This limits child-welfare administrators and leaders’ ability to engage workers in change efforts, slowing down change or even inhibiting change success altogether. Given the paucity of change-communication research in child-welfare literature, we draw from the larger organizational change-communication literature to inform the analysis and data interpretation.

Organizational-Change Communication Approaches

Communication plays a crucial role in ensuring successful implementation of a change effort. Lewis and Seibold’s ([26]) seminal work highlights the key role of communication in organizational change particularly in the planning stage but contains limited empirical investigation of the communicative processes within organizations. Communicative activities, such as engaging stakeholders, change-information dissemination, and staff training are intended to help alleviate uncertainty and anxiety that change inevitably creates among organizational members.

However, high-quality communication can effectively mitigate uncertainties and anxieties. Quality of communication, referring to timeliness, accuracy, and perceived usefulness, is key in gaining employees’ positive reactions toward the change. High-quality communication affects employees’ attitudes toward the change, as well as their willingness to participate in an organizational change (Miller, Johnson, & Grau, [30]; Nelissen & Van Selm, [32]). High-quality communication also equips employees with necessary information to deal with the change, as well as increases employees’ sense of control in the change (Hobman, Jones, & Callan, [21]). Therefore, administrators and managers need to employ a range of approaches to achieve high-quality communication.

Russ ([37]) synthesizes extant literature on communication strategies into an integrative framework intended to guide organizational practitioners’ efforts. This framework highlights two major approaches to change communication: programmatic and participatory. The programmatic communicative approach is characterized by a top-down, one-way flow of the administrators’ desired vision about the change to employees. Programmatic strategies intended to gain stakeholder compliance or to stimulate positive attitudes or beliefs about the planned change. Participatory change communication highlights the involvement of most or all stakeholders via solicitation of their views and perspectives in the implementation process. One fundamental difference between these two frameworks is the level of stakeholder collaboration, including frontline employees in the agency (Russ, [38]).

Literature has long emphasized the benefits of managers’ appropriate use of various communicative approaches to engage organizational members and minimize uncertainties and anxieties associated with the introduction of organizational change. Applying a participatory approach to deal with negative feedback and feelings is beneficial for engaging employees in the change, because open and fair evaluation of negative consequences of the change process prevents painting an overly positive picture that does not accurately match organizational members’ reality (Lewis & Russ, [25]; Smeltzer, [40]). Participatory approaches, characterized by employee participation also gives employees a sense of control over the impact of the change on their daily jobs, minimizes employee resistance, and increases employee satisfaction (Hobman et al., [21]; Lewis & Russ, [25]).

While participatory approaches are important, a singular communicative approach does not suffice for navigating the complexity involved in bringing about a change in an organization. Thus, blending and tailoring different approaches are critical in meeting employees’ diverse needs and addressing various types of uncertainties (Armenakis & Bedeian, [

]; Peus, Frey, Gerkhardt, Fischer, & Traut-mattausch, [34]; Smeltzer, [40]). For instance, middle managers are key in tackling job-related uncertainties for they are more likely to directly interact with frontline employees, while agency leaders are critical for alleviating anxieties arising from strategic aspects of the change effort (Hobman et al., [21]). Thus, a cascading approach is recommended; agency leadership should communicate strategic change information, and simultaneously, direct supervisors should engage employees by communicating job- or task-related change information (Allen, Jimmieson, Bordia, & Irmer, [

2
]).

Study Purpose

The purpose of this study is to explore public child-welfare frontline workers’ perceptions of communication strategies used to communicate change. Specifically, we (

1
) describe workers’ perceptions about and reactions to strategies commonly used in their agency to communicate change efforts and (

2
) identify their preferences for future communication and engagement in organizational change efforts. As a starting point for exploring change communication approaches used in public child-welfare agencies, we apply Russ’s conceptual framework to understand the communication approaches used in a public child-welfare agency and inform how managers communicate change to frontline child-welfare workers.

METHODS

Study Context

This study took place within a large (approximately 700 employees), county-based, public child-welfare agency in an urban county of one midwestern U.S. state. The study was conducted to inform planning for an agencywide initiative to improve children’s access to behavioral health services by implementing new behavioral health screening, assessment, and referral procedures. Five focus groups were convened to elicit workers’ perspectives on planning and communicating change within the workers agency. To inform planning for this future initiative, the research team asked workers in each focus group to reflect upon their experiences with previous change efforts. Similar to many public child-welfare agencies, the study agency had a history of change initiatives that covered a broad array of administrative and practice changes including structural changes to work units, implementation of new programs or practices (e.g., alternative response), and records systems transformations. Thus, the data and themes related to change communication generated in this study reflect retrospective accounts and opinions formed in response to these prior efforts at this agency.

Participants

Fifty case workers from the public child-welfare agency participated in one of five focus groups comprising 9 to 11 participants. Most participants were female (88%), held a bachelor’s degree (63%); the individuals had worked at the agency for 10 years, on average. The research team developed the recruitment criteria and asked the agency leadership team to purposively recruit workers based on their knowledge, experience, and expertise in connecting children to behavioral health issues. Given their tenure with the child-welfare agency (average of 10 years), participating workers had experienced several prior change efforts in the agency to reflect upon during conversation. Nearly all (89%) workers recruited for the focus groups consented to participate after being informed of the study benefits and risks. Group composition was homogeneous in terms of worker function (three groups for intake workers and two groups with ongoing, referral, case review, and adoptions workers) to allow for exploration of similarities and differences in workers’ perceptions.

Data Collection

Focus groups were conducted by external evaluators to minimize bias, obtain honest responses, and protect confidentiality. The research team comprised one facilitator (consistent across all groups), a co-facilitator, and at least one notetaker. Groups lasted 90 minutes and were conducted onsite in agency offices. Focus group discussions followed a semistructured interview guide, developed in collaboration with the agency partner and covering four broad topics. The fourth topic, and the focus of this paper, examined desired strategies for engaging workers in organizational change. Each group was asked, “As this project moves forward and plans are developed, what is the best way that the agency can engage you in the planning?” This question was followed by probes related to strategies used in past change efforts, workers’ reactions to these strategies, and their preferences. All focus groups were audio recorded and professionally transcribed. To protect workers’ privacy and the confidentiality of their responses, all names were removed from transcripts and identifying information was not linked with any quotes. Although recruitment was conducted by agency leadership, neither participant names nor individual comments were shared with the agency. In addition, the beginning of every focus group included a discussion about the ground rules for conversations. During this time, participants were asked to keep their colleagues’ opinions and thoughts confidential. This work was approved and overseen by the Institutional Review Board at the authors’ home institution.

Data Analysis

Transcripts were managed and coded in Atlas.ti 6. A grounded theory approach was applied to analyze the data (Corbin & Strauss, [14]). First, four coders reviewed field notes and transcripts and developed an initial codebook. Then, two coders independently applied the codebook to one focus group transcript. Coding discrepancies were discussed and the initial codebook was modified. Afterwards, at least two coders analyzed each remaining transcript and another coder resolved disagreements, reaching an 80% to 90% level of intercoder agreement for each transcript. After the first round of open coding, a refined codebook on organizational-change communication was developed by two coders analyzing texts in response to the fourth question on how to best engage frontline child-welfare workers in the change process. The codebook was applied and then further refined through discussion and a third researcher resolved coding discrepancies. Researchers reached above 90% intercoder agreement for each transcript. Quotes presented in the findings were selected to illustrate major themes; some were edited to preserve participants’ privacy and to enhance readability.

FINDINGS

Analyses of focus group discussions present two overarching themes: applied and desired organizational-change communication strategies. Workers’ observations reveal that participatory and programmatic communication activities are used within the child-welfare organization. Workers also shared desired change communication strategies that they believed would better engage them in the change process.

Applied Organizational Change Communication Strategies

Workers’ discussions on communicative activities are consistent with Russ’s ([37], [38]) definitions of programmatic and participatory approaches. They spoke about how each approach was used in the agency and their reactions toward each type of approach.

Programmatic Communicative Approaches

Use of Programmatic Communicative Approaches

Workers described how the agency administration disseminated information about new projects. Communication primarily occurred via
presentations at all staff meetings and
interpersonal communication networks, whereby information informally trickled downward in the organization.

Workers described how they learned of the new project through planned presentations using slideshows: “We have … seen the slide show [on the new project], I don’t know how many times in the past year.” The agency leadership planned presentations that contained deliberately crafted messages about the purpose of the project and leadership team’s vision and briefly presented the information to all staff. As a result, workers had a basic understanding of the planned changes.

At the time of the focus groups, the agency leadership team was engaging in more-detailed planning efforts that were not yet ready to be disseminated to staff. However, workers did receive specifics and details of the project via interpersonal networks, largely limited by the location of workers’ units or by workers’ responsibilities involving offsite tasks. As one worker discussed, “You just hear about it from cubicle to cubicle.” Overreliance on informal communication networks could generate rumors and distorted reality regarding the change content and influence, which might potentially jeopardize the successful implementation of the innovation (Smeltzer, [40]). Unequal access to accurate change information is another risk resulting from sole dependence on interpersonal communication networks: “Where I am … we’ve heard it to no end, and there’s other people that have just now hearing about it. So that sort of shows you the communication problems [in our agency]”. Workers whose cubicles were in closer physical proximity to administrators’ offices tended to hear information about the change in a timely manner. Otherwise, offsite workers or those away from the administrative offices did not have access to the administrative source of change information. Thus, workers’ knowledge of the project varied. Overall, workers’ discussions suggest a more programmatic communicative approach, which highlights a top-down distribution of information and limited employee participation. Workers described the top-down and hierarchical nature of communication within the agency with very little direct contact with agency management and leadership. One worker shared, “You mean the people at the top who make the decisions? I don’t know, I don’t ever sit down with … [agency leaders] or anybody other than like my supervisor or associate.” Rather, child-welfare workers directly communicated with supervisors and their peers. The top-down approach assumed workers to be passive recipients of change information, and workers were granted limited opportunities to pose questions and provide feedback directly to the administration.

In addition, workers’ discussions reveal how employees’ participation in change planning and communication was quite limited, another characteristic of the programmatic approach. Workers perceived that the agency could have more actively engaged the real frontline experts, as illustrated by the following quote,

What happens very often [in the agency] is new things come out, and the [workers] that are involved with that aspect of the job are responsible for it. They’re not asked or a part of any conversation as to how it’s going to work. It’s decided upon by whoever. Here, we’re going to start doing this, and then you’re looking and going, this isn’t going to work this way, because no one even consulted with us.

Workers’ Reactions Toward Programmatic Communication Approaches

Generally, workers showed unfavorable attitudes toward more administratively programmed communication activities. Worker discussions suggest that programmatic communication approaches resulted in the feeling of having little of control over the change process and an organizational culture that discourages workers’ input.

Workers expressed this feeling of a lack of control over the change process. They felt powerless due to programmatic communication strategies emphasizing “telling and selling.” Workers were considered “doers” and not involved in the initiation and conceptualization stages of the change. In a discussion about how to best engage frontline workers, one worker stated, “Well, I think of it’s just communication, once the change has been made, that this is what it is.” This worker perceived herself not playing any role in initiating or conceptualizing the change but only as a passive recipient of the change from the administration. Workers’ discussions noted how they had little control over the decision-making process regarding what change to make and how to bring about change, which may lead to resistance to organizational change. Workers also shared major communication barriers with administrators—specifically, workers did not feel comfortable expressing their thoughts to the administration. In a discussion about setting up a meeting with the administration to talk about project-related ideas, one worker reported that “I don’t think that a lot of people [workers] feel comfortable doing that.”

Participatory Communicative Approaches

Use of Participatory Communicative Approaches

Workers noted the use of two commonly applied participatory communicative activities:
surveys and
focus groups. Generally, workers expressed a strong sense of resistance to using surveys to solicit their opinions, because of heavy workloads and time constraints: “People aren’t going to look at [surveys]. They don’t have time.” Although workers seemed resistant toward agency surveys, workers acknowledged that agency administrators sometimes use the results to inform change planning and implementation. However, workers may not always be aware of how their input and response are used for change planning—several months or years may pass after workers are surveyed before detailed project plans are revealed. Workers might not recall being asked for input or began working for the agency after ideas were solicited. One worker described a time that the agency implemented a change based on workers’ suggestion in a survey though a time lag existed: “Well, and I think that they [agency administrators] have tried to make things [happen], like from the survey, they have said this [the new program] is what’s come from the survey. We did the survey 2 years ago.”

Though more time consuming than surveys, focus groups were generally considered to be a more favorable means of engaging workers, because they conveyed the intention from the administration to include workers in change planning. Specifically, workers associated focus groups with a sense of ownership and empowerment in the agency.

Symbolic Versus Legitimate Use of Participatory Strategies

Workers also described situations in which agency administrators solicited worker input, but workers did not believe this information was used meaningfully, suggesting that workers can distinguish between legitimate and symbolic use of participatory approaches. These situations were characterized by no follow-up with employees, no acknowledgment of worker input, and no true integration of worker feedback into change planning after surveys were sent out or focus groups were conducted. Workers expressed dissatisfaction, noting that these types of approaches signified a lack of sincere interest in employees. Though focus groups were preferred by workers because they offer intimate space to encourage open sharing, the lack of follow-up on workers’ suggestions generated negativity toward this approach and uncertainty in the change process, as these two workers discussed:

· Worker One: Because I know I’ve been in a couple focus groups, and I don’t always see or hear of anything back from it. And that is like kind of, you know, I was up in the air about coming to this one. Like, hmm, I don’t know.

· Worker Two: When you have somebody come out and sit on a focus group, it would be nice just to hear some follow-up about it. You know what I mean? And to know what we took away from the focus group, and this is our next step, so we kind of know.

Focus group discussions highlight workers’ frustration that their voices were not genuinely heard, as well as workers’ apathy toward the current initiative due to negative feelings, accumulated over time, associated with the change. The key feature of participatory approach is that employees have a voice in the change process, which is not reflected in what workers perceived to be the communicative approach used in the agency, ” … the ones who ask for our feedback about half the time … it doesn’t get considered.” It takes more than solicitation of workers’ feedback to truly gain workers’ buy-in, which requires appreciating, considering and reciprocating workers’ input. As one worker put it, “I think if we as workers felt like our voices were being heard and appreciated and we actually seen some things getting put in place that we are suggesting, then I think that that would help as a whole.”

Over time, the symbolic use of focus groups would generate negative feelings among workers that accumulate and create feelings of apathy toward the current change; this can potentially jeopardize any ongoing or future change efforts. I feel like we do a lot of focus groups or come … And then it’s like nothing [afterwards]. Like [the new project], this new thing is probably going to roll out, be the same,” said one worker.

Meanwhile, focus group discussions highlight workers’ appreciation and anticipation of administrators’ response to their inputs. Providing timely follow-up is particularly crucial in using participatory communicative approaches that emphasize the iterative process whereby employees’ voices are heard and considered in the change process.

Desired Change Communication Approaches

Workers noted three communication tactics they believed would encourage worker engagement: (

1
) involve relevant workers, (

2
) engage in service- and outcome-driven communication, and (

3
) organize communication efforts.

Involve Relevant Workers

Focus group discussions emphasize workers’ desire to be involved and informed of the progress of the change effort. As expressed by one worker, “So I guess if the agency is going to move forward with this, we would like to be a part of the process.” Consensus was reached in worker discussions that those whose daily work activities and job functions closely relate to the purpose of change efforts should be involved as much as possible. For example, given that the current change project is to facilitate behavioral health screening, assessing and referring processes for children in the child welfare system, referral workers were considered to be key workers to consult with, as illustrated by this exchange:

· Worker One: So I think involving the people [workers] that are going to be doing the referrals and the work, I think would be instrumental, having them part of the process.

· Worker Two: I think it’s definitely that it’s workers that are making the referrals, so I definitely think workers need to be a part of that …

· Worker Three: They need to be involved.

· Worker One: Yeah, definitely, the how is it going to work? How is it going to flow? What needs do we as workers have?”

Service- and Outcome-Driven Communication

Workers constantly stressed the importance of communicating that the change will drive and impact service provision and delivery to motivate and engage workers in the change process. The transmission of service-driven messages is particularly critical in applying the programmatic approach, which requires clear and specific top-down flow of information from organizational leadership.

I think workers have to be sold on the fact that this is going to go somewhere, that it’s really going to help them to get somewhere with families and with kids and drive, I mean, it’s meant to drive service. It’s meant to drive how the case is going to go. And I think if people are sold on the fact that this really is going to help things, it’s going to be huge.

Equally important, workers appreciated knowing the link between the change and its effects on the well-being of children and families. Public workers are mission driven and motivated by the impact and outcomes their job has on the families and communities at large (Wright, Christensen, & Isett, [44]). Focus group discussions emphasize two types of information about the outcome workers desired:
success stories or
statistical proof, with respect to how change efforts have influenced children and families.

Preference for Well-Organized Communication

Generally, workers preferred well-organized communication in small group discussions or through supervisors for feedback solicitation. Workers preferred small group discussions such as focus groups or within-unit meetings, which create a more intimate and egalitarian atmosphere for voicing their opinions and concerns.

Settings like this [focus group] would be beneficial and then have a representative, you know, report to, after they collected the information … and go to one of their, I don’t know, [management] meetings that they have.

Furthermore, workers considered supervisors to be crucial for relaying their inputs to organizational leadership. Workers felt comfortable having supervisors represent them in front of the upper management rather than voicing their own opinions in a large-group setting.

DISCUSSION

This study explored frontline workers’ perceptions, reactions toward, and preferences for change-communication strategies within child-welfare contexts. In this study, workers described how planned changes in this agency setting are primarily communicated using a top-down programmatic approach through which administrators told and sold their vision and plans for change to frontline workers. However, over-reliance on programmatic approaches may limit workers’ awareness of and buy-in for planned change efforts. Instead, workers expressed a preference for participatory approaches that engage the frontline in change planning and implementation. Genuine participatory approaches could enhance workers’ ownership of and gain worker buy-in with regard to the change process. Findings also highlight the bridging role of supervisors to mediate communication and information sharing between frontline workers and agency leaders within a large, complex organizational structure.

Commonly Used Programmatic Approach and Its Limitations

Programmatic activities were more frequently applied in this organization than participatory approaches, which are consistent with related literature (Russ, [37]). According to workers’ perceptions, the organization applied a programmatic approach that predominantly relied on the complex and hierarchical organizational structure in the child-welfare agency to communicate change information. Sole reliance upon presentations at staff meetings and interpersonal communication networks appeared to result in variations in workers’ access to information and knowledge of the change, which is particularly problematic in engaging workers who oftentimes work offsite and are not closely interacting with the upper management (McCrae et al., [28]). Hence, top-down programmatic approaches alone in a large and complex organizational structure can limit achieving high-quality communication and generate negative consequences such as employees’ low sense of control over the change and an organizational culture discouraging workers to share thoughts with the administration. Therefore, using multiple strategies is necessary to facilitate the spread and reach of change information among workers within the organizational hierarchy. Finally, findings suggest that the programmatic approach communicated the general purpose of the change effort but did not explicate the job-related repercussions on frontline workers’ daily work, which is more likely to be actualized through participatory approaches.

Preference for Genuine Participatory Approaches

Findings suggest that workers preferred participatory approaches that engaged workers in planning and communicating the change. However, workers could detect the superficial use of participatory approaches. For instance, although the agency solicited worker input via surveys and focus groups, workers did not perceive that their input was actually used because there was little follow-up or response from the management; when the management did follow up, it was often too late, as workers may no longer remember providing their input. Being able to observe how one’s input is used is important for worker engagement—for example when management implements workers’ suggestions (when appropriate) of conveys to workers that their opinions are valued and respected; such practices can build consensus and buy-in. Therefore, greater effort by administrators and leaders is necessary to truly engage frontline workers in the change process.

However, genuine use of participatory approaches is challenging in a hierarchical setting (Martin, Jones, & Callan, [27]; Nelissen & Van Selm, [32]). Participatory communication is important for generating positive and supportive organizational social context (Hemmelgarn, Glisson, & James, [20]). Positive culture and climate is important for implementing change and, ultimately, effective service delivery (Glisson & Green, [18]; Glisson & Schoenwald, [19]). But workers’ input and suggestion may not always be feasible or actionable. For example, in other conversations about improving children’s access to behavioral health services, workers consistently advocated for improving the agency’s response to parents and caregivers with mental health service needs. However, this input will not be integrated into the project plans because it falls outside of the project scope and funding. Therefore, more effort is required on the part of administrators and leaders to bridge the barriers in truly engaging frontline workers in the change process and at the same time discern the feasibility and applicability of workers input and suggestion.

Bridging Role of Supervisors

One key to bridging communication barriers is maximizing the role of supervisors in linking the frontline with the leadership in a complex organization like a child-welfare agency. Findings highlight the role of supervisors as the preferred sources of implementation-related and job-relevant information, which is consistent with previous studies (Allen, Jimmieson, Bordia, & Irmer, [

2
]; Birken, Lee, & Weiner, [

]; Fernandez & Rainey, [17]; McCrae et al., [28]). In the context of human service agencies, in which most frontline workers are trained professionals, the supervisor was considered the “architect of change” to best communicate the vision at the unit or group level (Austin & Hopkins, [

]). This study further reveals that workers prefer that supervisors communicate their feedback to the leadership team. Supervisors could play a crucial role in implementing a participatory approach to engage workers, which stresses the importance of interpersonal interaction between workers and supervisors.

Though not reflected in the workers’ discussion, the agency relied upon the supervisor to communicate change information among pilot unit workers. In the on-going project, the pilot unit workers communicate any barriers and facilitators to their units and then the unit supervisors bring workers’ concerns to the attention of the upper management at bi-monthly (twice per month) project meetings or through other means. It is worthwhile to explore workers’, supervisors’, and administrators’ perceptions of this communication approach in future work.

Practice and Research Implications

Our findings have practice implications for leaders and administrators in child welfare and other similar organizations. Results highlight the limitations of using programmatic or participatory strategies alone, suggesting that leaders should use both approaches in strategic and deliberate ways when implementing change. Programmatic approaches maximize fair dissemination with high efficiency and demonstrate leadership support for the change effort, but this type of approach limits employee participation and might lead to disengagement from the organizational change. On the contrary, participatory approaches encourage employee participation and boost employee commitment, but they require substantial investment in terms of time, funds, and personnel (Russ, [38]). This type of approach, therefore, may result in low efficiency. When not employed legitimately, this approach would be disingenuous and generate distrust and disengagement. Therefore, it is crucial for leaders and managers to acknowledge the limitations and benefits of both approaches and balance the limitations while leading the change.Our findings also reveal that workers in this study relied on supervisors and middle managers for information and to relay their input to senior leaders and administrators. These findings support the role of worker-supervisor and supervisor-manager relationships in implementation and indicate that points for intervention could target the supervisory level as well as the supervisor-manager relationship, which is consistent with the broad literature on organizational development and change (Austin, [

]; Cohen & Austin, [12]; Doueck & Austin, [16]).Results also suggest several helpful tactics to engage workers, such as linking change efforts to services and outcomes especially when programmatic communicative approaches were used, soliciting input from frontline workers who are responsible for carrying out change efforts, following up with workers in a timely manner after soliciting their input. Managers and leaders in child-welfare agencies could benefit from applying these tactics to better communicate the change information and engage workers.Several implications are suggested for future research. First, future observational studies are needed to identify strategies and tactics commonly used in public child-welfare agencies. Second, exploration of why and how leaders use programmatic and participatory strategies would be helpful to understand potential factors that may impact the decision-making process, such as leadership style/skills, organizational culture/climate, or nature of the change (externally vs. internally driven). Third, in this study, we did not probe the assumption that open communication and inclusion facilitates organizational change. Future research could explicitly ask about this assumption among participations. Finally, it would be beneficial to test the effectiveness of communication approaches for different types of change efforts (e.g., administrative changes, EBPs implementation) and to examine which approach is more effective and under what circumstances certain approaches work best.The findings of this study should be interpreted in light of several limitations. First, the study is focused on communication within one child-welfare agency, and findings may not be generalized to other agencies or service sectors. In particular, changes within child-welfare agencies are often mandated by new federal and state laws. Caution should be taken when generalizing our findings to other service sectors that are less impacted by the policy environment. Second, it is important to note that our study reflects on change efforts generally. Workers’ preferences and reactions to these change efforts may vary depending upon specific features of a change effort. Third, our study only reports frontline workers’ perceptions and preferences for change communication. Managers and leaders may have different perspectives and rationales for how change is communicated and for how worker input is used when planning change efforts. Fourth, the selection of participants is highly biased due to the involvement with agency leaders, which makes interpreting the workers’ opinions more difficult. Furthermore, workers may not have felt comfortable sharing their opinions due to the presence of other colleagues in the focus group setting. Though the research team took measures to protect workers’ privacy and keep their comments confidential, we could not guarantee that other focus group members preserved the confidentiality of the conversation. This might give rise to more conformity than divergence in workers’ opinions. For instance, workers tended to agree with each other across five focus groups. Lastly, these focus groups were conducted during the beginning planning stages of the intervention, which is being introduced using a staged roll-out. Several units were selected to participate in the pilot units and workers in these units may have communicated more about the impending agency changes than those in the comparison units.

CONCLUSION

To ensure successful implementation of sustained change efforts, continuous involvement of frontline child-welfare workers is paramount. Genuine calls for frontline employee participation and truly valuing worker inputs will enhance worker buy-in and potentially bring about successful implementation. Programmatic approaches may achieve high efficiency in the short run, but organizations must implement long-term change to survive in an outcomes-driven environment. To achieve this goal, the use of participatory methods, in combination with programmatic approaches, is more desirable than overreliance on programmatic approaches.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors wish to thank their child-welfare agency partners and the case workers who shared their experiences and ideas. A version of this paper was presented at the 2015 meeting of the Society for Social Work and Research.

FUNDING

This work was supported by the Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children, Youth and Families, Children’s Bureau (Grant #90CO1104). The findings and discussion do not represent the official view of Children’s Bureau.

REFERENCES

Aarons, G. A., & Palinkas, L. A. (2007). Implementation of evidence-based practice in child welfare: Service provider perspectives. Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research, 34(4), 411–419. doi:10.1007/s10488-007-0121-3

Allen, J., Jimmieson, N. L., Bordia, P., & Irmer, B. E. (2007). Uncertainty during organizational change: Managing perceptions through communication. Journal of Change Management, 7(2), 187–210. doi:10.1080/14697010701563379

Armenakis, A. A., & Bedeian, A. G. (1999). Organizational change: A review of theory and research in the 1990s. Journal of Management, 25(3), 293–315. doi:10.1177/014920639902500303

Austin, M. J. (1989). Managing Up. Administration in Social Work, 12(4), 29–46. doi:10.1300/J147v12n04_03

Austin, M. J., & Claassen, J. (2008). Implementing evidence-based practice in human service organizations: Preliminary lessons from the frontlines. Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work, 5(1–2), 271–293. doi:10.1300/J394v05n01_10

Austin, M. J., & Hopkins, K. (2004). Supervision as collaboration in the human services: Building a learning culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Barth, R. P. (2005). Parent-training programs in child welfare services: Planning for a more-evidence-based approach to serving biological parents. Research on Social Work Practice, 15(5), 353–371. doi:10.1177/1049731505276321

Birken, S. A., Lee, S.-Y. D., & Weiner, B. J. (2012). Uncovering middle managers’ role in healthcare innovation implementation. Implementation Science, 7(1), 28. doi:10.1186/1748-5908-7-28

Blome, W. W., Bennett, S., & Page, T. F. (2010). Organizational challenges to implementing attachment-based practices in public child welfare agencies: An example using the Circle of Security® Model. Journal of Public Child Welfare, 4(4), 427–449. doi:10.1080/15548732.2010.526904

Bolman, G. L., & Deal, E. T. (2008). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley.

Boyas, J. F., Wind, L. H., & Ruiz, E. (2013). Organizational tenure among child welfare workers, burnout, stress, and intent to leave: Does employment-based social capital make a difference? Children and Youth Services Review, 35(10), 1657–1669. doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2013.07.008

Cohen, B. J., & Austin, M. J. (1994). Organizational learning and change in a public child welfare agency. Administration in Social Work, 18(1), 1–19. doi:10.1300/J147v18n01_01

Collins-Camargo, C. (2007). Administering research and demonstration projects aimed at promoting evidence-based practice in child welfare: Challenges and rewards. Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work, 4(3–4), 21–38. doi:10.1300/J394v04n03_03

Corbin, J., & Strauss, A. (2008). Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Devine, C. M. (2010). Participation in organizational change processes in human services organizations: The experiences of one group of frontline social workers. Administration in Social Work, 34(2), 114–134. doi:10.1080/03643101003608679

Doueck, H. J., & Austin, M. J. (1986). Improving agency functioning through staff development. Administration in Social Work, 10(2), 27–37. doi:10.1300/J147v10n02_03

Fernandez, S., & Rainey, H. G. (2006). Managing successful organizational change in the public sector. Public Administration Review, 66(2), 168–176. doi:10.1111/puar.2006.66.issue-2

Glisson, C., & Green, P. (2011). Organizational climate, services, and outcomes in child welfare systems. Child Abuse & Neglect, 35(8), 582–591. doi:10.1016/j.chiabu.2011.04.009

Glisson, C., & Schoenwald, S. K. (2005). The ARC organizational and community intervention strategy for implementing evidence-based children’s mental health treatments. Mental Health Services Research, 7(4), 243–259. doi:10.1007/s11020-005-7456-1

Hemmelgarn, A. L., Glisson, C., & James, L. R. (2006). Organizational culture and climate: Implications for services and interventions research. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 13(1), 73–89.

Hobman, E., Jones, E., & Callan, V. J. (2004). Uncertainty during organizational change: Types, consequences, and management strategies. Journal of Business and Psychology, 18(4), 507–532.

Horwitz, S. M., Chamberlain, P., Landsverk, J., & Mullican, C. (2010). Improving the mental health of children in child welfare through the implementation of evidence-based parenting interventions. Administration and Policy in Mental Health, 37(1–2), 27–39. doi:10.1007/s10488-010-0274-3

Kim, H., & Lee, S. Y. (2009). Supervisory communication, burnout, and turnover intention among social workers in health care settings. Social Work in Health Care, 48(4), 364–385. doi:10.1080/00981380802598499

Lee, C., & Austin, M. J. (2012). Building organizational supports for knowledge sharing in county human service organizations: A cross-case analysis of works-in-progress. Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work, 9(1–2), 3–18. doi:10.1080/15433714.2012.635473

Lewis, L. K., & Russ, T. L. (2011). Soliciting and using input during organizational change initiatives: What are practitioners doing. Management Communication Quarterly, 26(2), 267–294. doi:10.1177/0893318911431804

Lewis, L. K., & Seibold, D. R. (1998). Reconceptualizing organizational change implementation as a communication problem: A review of literature and research agenda. In M. E. Roloff (Ed.), Communication Yearbook 21. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Martin, A. J., Jones, S. E., & Callan, J. V. (2006). Status differences in employee adjustment during organizational change. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 21(2), 145–162. doi:10.1108/02683940610650758

McCrae, J. S., Scannapieco, M., Leake, R., Potter, C. C., & Menefee, D. (2014). Who’s on board? Child welfare worker reports of buy-in and readiness for organizational change. Children and Youth Services Review, 37, 28–35. doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2013.12.001

Mildon, R., & Shlonsky, A. (2011). Bridge over troubled water: Using implementation science to facilitate effective services in child welfare. Child Abuse & Neglect, 35(9), 753–756. doi:10.1016/j.chiabu.2011.07.001

Miller, V. D., Johnson, J. R., & Grau, J. (1994). Antecedents to willingness to participate in a planned organizational change. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 22(1), 59–80. doi:10.1080/00909889409365387

Mor Barak, M. E., Levin, A., Nissly, J. A., & Lane, C. J. (2006). Why do they leave? Modeling child welfare workers’ turnover intentions. Children and Youth Services Review, 28(5), 548–577. doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2005.06.003

Nelissen, P., & Van Selm, M. (2008). Surviving organizational change: How management communication helps balance mixed feelings. Corporate Communications: An International Journal, 13(3), 306–318. doi:10.1108/13563280810893670

Packard, T. (2013). Organizational change: A conceptual framework to advance the evidence base. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 23(1), 75–90. doi:10.1080/10911359.2013.739534

Peus, C., Frey, D., Gerkhardt, M., Fischer, P., & Traut-mattausch, E. (2015). Leading and managing organizational change initiatives. Management Review, 20(2), 158–175.

Pipkin, S., Sterrett, E. M., Antle, B., & Christensen, D. N. (2013). Washington state’s adoption of a child welfare practice model: An illustration of the getting to outcomes implementation framework. Children and Youth Services Review, 35(12), 1923–1932. doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2013.09.017

Powell, B. J., Hausmann-Stabile, C., & McMillen, J. C. (2013). Mental health clinicians’ experiences of implementing evidence-based treatments. Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work, 10(5), 396–409. doi:10.1080/15433714.2012.664062

Russ, T. L. (2008). Communicating change: A review and critical analysis of programmatic and participatory implementation approaches. Journal of Change Management, 8(3–4), 199–211. doi:10.1080/14697010802594604

Russ, T. L. (2010). Programmatic and participatory: Two frameworks for classifying experiential change implementation methods. Simulation & Gaming, 41(5), 767–786. doi:10.1177/1046878109353570

Sandfort, J. R. (2000). Moving beyond discretion and outcomes: Examining public management from the frontlines of the welfare system. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 10(4), 729–756. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.jpart.a024289

Smeltzer, L. R. (1991). An analysis of strategies for announcing organization-wide change. Group & Organization Studies, 16(1), 5–24. doi:10.1177/105960119101600102

Smith, B. D., & Donovan, S. E. F. (2003). Child welfare practice in organizational and institutional context. Social Service Review, 77(4), 542–563.

Child and Family Services Improvement and Innovation Act, H.R. 2883, Pub. L. 112–34, codified as amended at 112th Cong. (2011). Retrieved from ProQuest Congressional Database.

Wells, R. (2006). Managing child welfare agencies: What do we know about what works? Children and Youth Services Review, 28(10), 1181–1194. doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2005.11.009

Wright, B. E., Christensen, R. K., & Isett, K. R. (2013). Motivated to adapt? The role of public service motivation as employees face organizational change. Public Administration Review, 73, 738–747. doi:10.1111/puar.2013.73.issue-5

~~~~~~~~

By Yiwen Cao; Alicia C. Bunger; Jill Hoffman and Hillary A. Robertson

Reported by Author; Author; Author; Author

LEADERSHIP BEHAVIORS AND TRUST IN LEADERS: EVIDENCE FROM THE U.S. FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

Asencio, Hugo

;

Mujkic, Edin

Public Administration Quarterly

; Randallstown

Vol. 40, Iss. 1,

(Spring 2016): 156-179.

PDFDownload PDF

CiteCite

All Options

Document Section options

Current viewFull text

Full text – PDF

Abstract/Details

72Cited by

Content area

Abstract

Translate

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

This study contributes to our knowledge about the effectiveness of different leadership behaviors in building interpersonal trust within public organizations. It employs survey data on U.S. federal employees to investigate the relationship between employee perceptions of transactional and transformational leadership behaviors and employee perceptions of trust in leaders. Findings from OLS multivariate regression analysis indicate that both transactional and transformational leadership behaviors are positively related to employee trust in leaders. On average, transformational leadership behaviors were found to build higher levels of interpersonal trust. Thus, given the fundamental differences between private and public organizations, this study suggests that public sector leaders need to emphasize transformational leadership behaviors to build higher levels of interpersonal trust within their organizations. Since doing so is crucial for motivating employees and thus for increasing organizational performance, in their leadership development programs, public agencies-particularly those managed by transactional leaders-need to invest more in improving the transformational leadership competencies of their executives, managers, and supervisors.

Full Text

Translate

Top of Form
Bottom of Form

Headnote

ABSTRACT

Keywords: transactional leadership; transformational leadership; trust; federal employees; United States

INTRODUCTION

Interpersonal trust is fundamental for ensuring effectiveness within organizations (Cook & Wall, 1980). Although some scholars dispute the extent to which employee trust in leaders affects employee performance (see, Bachmann & Akbar, 2006, for discussion), it can be said that trust in leaders is an essential factor that motivates employees to spend more time on required tasks and to perform beyond standards (Knovsky & Pugh, 1994; Von Krogh, Ichizo, & Nonaka, 2000). This is important because when employees believe they cannot trust in their leaders, they will spend more time “covering their backs” which in turn can affect their performance (Mayer & Gavin, 2005). In fact, the existing empirical evidence suggests there is a positive link between employee trust in leaders and employee motivation and performance (Dirks & Ferrin, 2002; Konovsky & Pugh, 1994; Gillespie & Mann, 2004).

Leaders can be said to play a key role in developing and sustaining trust within organizations (Shaw, 1997). Scholars have already found a positive relationship between different leadership behaviors and employee trust in leaders in private organizations (Gillespie & Mann, 2004; Bradberry & Tatum, 2002; Greenberg, 2003; Jung & Avolio, 2000; Kirkpatrick & Locke, 1996; Podsakoff, McKenzie, Moorman, & Fetter, 1990; Pillai, Schriesheim, & Williams, 1999). Although leadership is considered to be an important factor in public organizations (Fernandez, 2005; Moynihan & Ingraham, 2004; Van Wart, 2005), in recent years-with the exception of Park’s (2012) work-very few empirical studies on the relationship between leadership and trust have been reported in the public administration literature (Park, 2012).

In an effort to address this gap in the literature, this study utilizes data from the 2010 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey conducted by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to answer the following research question: what is the relationship between employee perceptions of transactional and transformational leadership behaviors and employee perceptions of trust in leaders within public organizations? Answering this question is important for a few reasons.

First, to the authors’ knowledge, as mentioned above, this is one of the few recent empirical studies to investigate the relationship between leadership and trust within government agencies. Since researchers have already found a positive relationship between different leadership behaviors and trust in private sector settings, it is important to validate these findings within public organizations.

Second, there is a need for empirical evidence, especially from large-scale studies, on the effectiveness of different leadership behaviors in building interpersonal trust within public agencies. This is particularly important since the fundamental differences between private and public organizations (see, Perry & Rainey, 1988; Rainey & Bozeman, 2000, for reviews) require that public sector leaders emphasize certain leadership behaviors over others (Hansen & Villadsen, 2010) within their organizations. After all, there is already evidence to suggest that public leaders need to focus more on certain leadership competencies to drive results within their organizations (Hansen & Villadsen, 2010; Thach & Thompson, 2007).

Third, federal employees’ trust in their supervisors (OPM, 2012) and in higher-level leaders has declined in recent years (MSPB, 2009). This is a reason for concern since interpersonal trust is a key factor that affects performance within organizations (Dirks, 1999). Thus, to the extent that leaders play a significant role in developing and sustaining trust, it is important to understand what leadership behaviors are more effective in doing so within federal agencies.

The following section reviews the relevant literature on the relationship between transactional and transformational leadership and employee trust in leaders. Next, a description of the data and method is provided. The results of the statistical analyses are then presented. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of the findings, acknowledging the limitations of the study, and making suggestions for future research.

LITERATURE REVIEW AND HYPOTHESES

Trust in Leaders

Trust in leaders is a multidimensional construct (Rousseau, Sitkin, Burt, & Camerer, 1998). It has been widely defined as “a psychological state comprising the intention to accept vulnerability based upon positive expectations of the intentions or behavior of another” (Rousseau et al., 1998, 395). Trust has to do with the level of confidence one has in others to behave in a fair and predictable manner (Luhmann, 1982).

In this study, Cook and Wall’s (1980) definition of trust is adopted. Thus, trust in leaders is said to be: (1) faith in the intentions and (2) confidence in the actions of leaders. Cook and Wall argue that both of these dimensions of trust yield ascriptions of capability and reliability.

Transactional Leadership and Trust

Transactional leadership is a process of exchange between leaders and subordinates. Leaders recognize subordinate’s needs and then provide financial incentives and organizational recognition to motivate employees (Bass, 1990, 1998) and obtain from them desired behaviors (Daft, 2002), such as improved performance (Bass & Avolio, 1990). In this way, both employees’ needs and leaders’ expectations are met (Bass, 1985). Transactional leaders focus on task completion and rely on rewards and punishments to secure employee compliance (Tracey & Hinkin, 1998).

The two dimensions of transactional leadership are contingent reward and management by exception (Bass, 1985; Bass & Avolio, 1990). Leaders engage in contingent reward when they reward subordinates for acceptable behavior, such as improved performance (Bass & Avolio, 1990), and penalize them for unacceptable behavior (Bass, 1998). Leaders who engage in management by exception only take corrective action when there is a problem or when standards are not met (Bass, 1985). Further, depending on their level of involvement, leaders engage in active or passive management by exception (Hater & Bass, 1988). Active management by exception involves actively monitoring followers’ performance to anticipate deviations from standards and taking corrective action (Hater & Bass, 1988). Passive management by exception involves taking corrective action only when problems arise (Avolio, Bass, & Jung, 1999).

It can be argued that when leaders engage in transactional leadership behaviors, employees will develop trust in them-i.e., they will develop faith in their leaders’ intentions and confidence in their actions. In other words, when leaders consistently reward employees for their performance-i.e., contingent reward-and take corrective actions when problems arise-i.e., management by exception-both high and low performing employees will feel confident that their leaders will continue to consistently reward improved performance and punish underperformance. The empirical evidence supports these claims as several researchers find that leaders who exhibit transactional leadership behaviors when managing organizations are likely to be more trusted among followers (Greenberg, 2003; Pillai et al., 1999; Bradberry & Tatum, 2002).

Hypothesis 1: Employee perceptions of transactional leadership behaviors are positively related to employee perceptions of trust in leaders within public organizations.

Transformational Leadership and Trust

Transformational leadership “occurs when leaders broaden and elevate the interests of their employees, when they generate awareness and acceptance of the purposes and mission of the group and when they stir their employees to look beyond their own self-interest for the good of the group” (Bass, 1990, p. 21). Transformational leaders promote organizational commitment by aligning followers’ values, beliefs, and motives with those of the group, the leader, and the organization’s vision and goals (Bass, 1985; Bass, 1998; Bass & Avolio, 1990; Howell & Avolio, 1993; Barling, Weber, & Kelloway, 1996; Yammarino & Bass, 1990). Transformational leaders build commitment among followers to achieve organizational goals by making them aware of the importance of task outcomes, orienting them toward performing beyond standards, activating higher-order intrinsic needs, and focusing on their empowerment rather than in their dependence (Bass, 1985; Judge & Piccolo, 2004). The four dimensions of transformational leadership are: idealized influence (charisma), inspirational motivation (vision), intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration (Avolio, Waldman, & Yammarino, 1991; Judge & Piccolo, 2004).

It can be said that when leaders display transformational leadership behaviors, employees will develop trust in them. A few reasons can be given to explain this relationship. When leaders role model ethical behavior-i.e., idealized influence-, they show they can be trusted by employees (Gillespie & Mann, 2004). When they communicate attainable goals-i.e., inspirational motivation-, leaders motivate employees to attain such goals, which in turn can facilitate the development of trust (Bennis & Nanus, 1985). Leaders who encourage employees to view issues from new perspectives-i.e., intellectual stimulation-, coach their employees, and by doing so, they show that they are committed to their development which in turn builds trust (Gillespie & Mann, 2004). When leaders show concern for their employees’ needs and welfare-i.e., individualized consideration-, they show they care about their employees, and thus, that they can be trusted (Bass, 1985; Jung & Avolio, 2000). The existing empirical evidence validates these claims as several researchers find that leaders who engage in transformational leadership behaviors are likely to build greater trust among subordinates (Bradberry & Tatum, 2002; Greenberg, 2003; Gillespie & Mann, 2004; Jung & Avolio, 2000; Kirkpatrick & Locke, 1996; Podsakoff et al., 1990; Pillai et al., 1999).

Hypothesis 2: Employee perceptions of transformational leadership behaviors are positively related to employee perceptions of trust in leaders within public organizations.

Transactional vs. Transformational Leadership and Trust

While the literature reviewed thus far suggests that leaders who engage in both transactional and transformational leadership behaviors build interpersonal trust in the workplace, the magnitude of the effects needs to be evaluated (Dirks & Ferrin, 2002). This, since some scholars argue that compared to transformational leadership, transactional leadership does not require a high level of trust between leaders and employees (Bass, 1985; Jung & Avolio, 2000). In addition, some researchers argue that transactional leadership behaviors do not build the level of trust needed to unleash a workforce’s full potential (Jung & Avolio, 2000). To do so, transformational leadership behaviors are needed (Gillespie & Mann, 2004).

Further, given the fundamental differences between private and public organizations (see, Perry & Rainey, 1988; Rainey & Bozeman, 2000, for reviews), it can be said that leaders’ transformational leadership behaviors are more important (and potentially more effective) in building interpersonal trust in the public sector. While scholars agree that certain leadership competencies are appropriate across the private and public sectors (Thach & Thompson, 2007), being inspirational, which is a competency displayed by transformational leaders, has been found to be more important for public sector leaders (Thach & Thompson, 2007). Conversely, engaging in employee performance management-a behavior displayed by transactional leaders-has been found to be less important for public managers (Thach & Thompson, 2007).

Hypothesis 3: Compared to employee perceptions of transactional leadership behaviors, employee perceptions of transformational leadership behaviors have a higher positive impact on employee perceptions of trust in leaders within public organizations.

DATA AND METHOD

Data

To answer the research question and test the hypotheses in this study, analyses of recent survey data on U.S. federal employees were conducted. The data come from the 2010 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (hereafter: FedView Survey) conducted by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (hereafter: OPM). These data are available to the public through OPM’s website.

The FedView Survey measures employee perceptions “of whether, and to what extent, conditions that characterize successful organizations are present in their agencies” (OPM, 2010, p. 23). It contains questions on topics, such as: organizational performance, leadership, employee satisfaction, compensation and benefits, and family-friendly flexibilities, among others. Demographic questions were also asked of survey participants, including the agency that they worked for, their supervisory status, ethnicity, gender, and age. The survey included 89 individual questions, many of which were used to measure the variables in this study.

OPM distributed the survey electronically to a probability sample of full-time, permanent employees in federal agencies between February and March of 2010. OPM invited all small and independent agencies to participate and 53 of them chose to do so (OPM, 2010). Per their request, the survey was also administered to 13 Departments/large agencies (OPM, 2010). The participating agencies comprise approximately 97 percent of the federal workforce (OPM, 2010).

OPM used the lists of employees in participating agencies as the sampling frame. In some cases, agencies requested the survey to be administered as a census. “Employees were grouped into 1066 sample subgroups corresponding to agency, subagency, and supervisory status reporting requirements” (OPM, 2010, p. 23). In total, 504,609 employees in 82 agencies within the executive branch of the U.S. federal government were sent the survey (OPM, 2010). 263,475 employees returned the survey, resulting in a 52% response rate (OPM, 2010).

Participation in the FedView Survey was completely voluntary. Participants were informed that their answers would be confidential and only reported to their agencies as aggregate data (OPM, 2010). They were given an identification and password to log in to the survey website. Accommodations were also made for those who preferred a paper version of the survey, as well as for employees with disabilities.

OPM weighted the data collected from survey respondents. “The weights … take into account the variable probabilities of selection across the sample domains, nonresponse, and known demographic characteristics of the survey population” (OPM, 2010, p. 24). In the end, “the final data set reflects the agency composition and demographic makeup of the Federal workforce within plus or minus 1 percentage point” (OPM, 2010, p. 24).

Of these 263,475 respondents, 27,338 (10.4%) were managers/executives, 43,872 (16.7%) were supervisors, 179,462 (68.1%) were non-supervisors/team leaders, and the rest did not respond. Also, 118,378 respondents (44.9%) were females and 131,629 (50%) were males; 81,188 (30.8%) belonged to a minority group and 163,684 (62.1%) did not; and 126,210 (47.9%) were 50 years or older, 109,811 (41.7%) were 30 to 49 years, and 12,057 (4.6%) were under 29 years.

Measures

Dependent variable. To measure employee trust in leaders the following item was used: “I have trust and confidence in my supervisor”. Although Cook and Wall (1980) measure two dimensions of trust in leadership: (1) faith in the intentions and (2) confidence in the actions (of leaders), the FedView Survey only contains one item similar to the six they used to measure their construct. Responses to the item were coded from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree.

Independent Variables. This study measured the following transactional leadership behaviors: (1) contingent reward and (2) active management by exception. It also measured the following transformational leadership behaviors: (1) idealized influence (charisma), (2) inspirational motivation (vision), (3) intellectual stimulation, and (4) individualized consideration. To measure these leadership behaviors, a similar procedure employed by Trottier, Van Wart, and Wang (2008) was followed. The leadership literature also provided the basis for item selection. Appendix 1 provides the list of items used to measure these leadership behaviors.

Although some studies (e.g., Avolio et al., 1999; Trottier et al., 2008) include individualized consideration as one of the elements of transactional leadership, in this study, Bass’ (1985) original conceptualization of transformational leadership was employed. Thus, individualized consideration is considered to be an element of transformational leadership.

Originally, additive indices were developed to measure the above transactional and transformational leadership behaviors. All the survey items used to measure these leadership behaviors were entered into a factor analysis. The varimax rotation method was employed, and the analysis extracted three factors (see Appendix 1).

Specifically, these were the factors extracted. (1) Idealized influence, inspirational motivation, and intellectual stimulation loaded on the same factor-labeled transformational leadership-, explaining 22.88% of the variance (eigenvalue = 4.35; Cronbach’s alpha = .91). (2) Contingent reward and active management by exception loaded on the same factor-labeled transactional leadership-, explaining 24.84% of the variance (eigenvalue = 4.72; Cronbach’s alpha = .92). These results are consistent with previous findings in the literature suggesting that: contingent reward and management by exception (Tepper & Percy, 1994) and idealized influence, inspirational motivation, and intellectual stimulation (Avolio et al., 1999; Wright & Pandey, 2010) may be best characterized as single factors. (3) The items used to measure individualized consideration did load on the hypothesized leadership construct, explaining 24.06% of the variance (eigenvalue = 4.57; Cronbach’s alpha = .92).

In light of the aforementioned results, the factor loadings were converted into factor scores and used as independent variables in the regression analysis.

Control variables. The following control variables for characteristics of employees were measured in this study: supervisory status, gender, ethnicity, work location, and job tenure. Details about the operationalization of these variables are included in Appendix 2 and the correlation matrix is provided in Table 1.

Previous research suggests that these characteristics have an effect on employees’ trust in leaders. For instance, Cho (2008) suggests that supervisors are likely to express more positive views about their organizations than individual employees. Thus, it can be said that supervisors will hold more positive perceptions about their leaders’ trustworthiness than non-supervisors. Also, given Eagly’s (1987) work suggesting that women have a stronger tendency than men to avoid risk in interpersonal relations, it is plausible to assume that women are less likely to have trust in their leaders than men (Cho, 2008). Given historical patterns of discrimination, Jackson and Alvarez (1992) argue that minority employees are less likely to have trust in their leaders than non-minority employees. Further, employees who work in the field can be said to have less trust in their leaders, given the difficulties-e.g., lack of resources-they experience when implementing public policies (Cho, 2008). Last, the amount of time an employee has spent at an organization can be said to affect the judgments he makes about his leaders’ trustworthiness; this, since the longer his length of service, the more an employee knows about an organization’s values, principles, and procedures (Carnevale & Wechsler, 1992) and the more stable his relationship is with his leaders (Cho, 2008).

Model Specification

In order to test the hypotheses in this study, an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression model predicting employee trust in leaders was specified.

Employee trust in leaders = f (leadership behaviors, control variables)

Independent variables: transactional leadership, transformational leadership, individualized consideration.

Control variables: supervisory status, gender, ethnicity, work location, job tenure.

RESULTS

A review of the means and standard deviations revealed some interesting patterns. On average, federal government employees perceive their managers to be “trustworthy” (Mean = 3.80, SD = 1.20, 1-5 range). From among 263,475 total valid observations, 175,250 employees (66.5%) agreed to strongly agreed with the item used to measure employee trust in leaders; 39,981 (15.2%) disagreed to strongly disagreed; and 15.8% neither agreed nor disagreed.

The OLS multivariate regression results are presented in Table 2. The results indicate that, together with the controls, the three leadership variables had a significant impact on employee trust in leaders, explaining 73% of the variance. The results indicate that all three leadership variables are positively and statistically related to employee trust in leaders at the P < 0.01 level.

Specifically, the results are as follows. When leaders display transformational leadership-i.e., when they role model ethical behavior (idealized influence); communicate attainable goals (inspirational motivation); and encourage employees to view issues from new perspectives (intellectual stimulation)-, employees are likely to report higher levels of trust in their leaders (β = .30). Also, when leaders engage in individualized consideration-i.e., when they show concern for their employees’ needs and welfare-, employees are likely to have more trust in their leaders (β = .74). Further, when leaders engage in transactional leadership-i.e., when they consistently reward employees for their performance (contingent reward) and take corrective actions when problems arise (management by exception)-employees are likely to have more trust in their leaders (β = .28). These results lend support to Hypotheses 1 and 2.

Regarding the magnitude of the effects of transactional and transformational leadership behaviors on employee trust in leaders, the findings suggest that, compared to transactional leadership-i.e., contingent reward and management by exception (β = .28), transformational leadership- i.e., idealized influence, inspirational motivation, and intellectual stimulation (β = .30); and individualized consideration (β = .74)-are likely to build higher levels of employee trust in leaders. These results lend support to Hypotheses 3.

The results of the control variables show interesting patterns. Non-supervisors are likely to have more trust in their leaders than supervisors. Females are likely to have less trust in their leaders. Minority status is marginally negatively related to employee trust. Job tenure is likely to have a negative effect on employee trust in leaders.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

This is one of the few recent large-scale studies reported in the public administration literature on the relationship between leadership and trust. It makes an empirical contribution by offering evidence on the relationship between employee perceptions of transactional and transformational leadership behaviors and employee perceptions of trust in leaders within public organizations. Specifically, the research findings suggest that both transactional and transformational leadership behaviors are likely to build employee trust in leaders. These results are consistent with previous findings in the leadership literature suggesting that both transactional (Greenberg, 2003; Pillai et al., 1999; Bradberry & Tatum, 2002) and transformational leadership behaviors (Bradberry & Tatum, 2002; Greenberg, 2003; Gillespie & Mann, 2004; Jung & Avolio, 2000; Kirkpatrick & Locke, 1996; Podsakoff et al., 1990; Pillai et al., 1999) build trust among followers.

Also, this study offers empirical evidence on the effectiveness of different leadership behaviors in building interpersonal trust within public agencies. The findings in this study suggest that, on average, transformational leadership behaviors are likely to build higher levels of interpersonal trust, which confirms that leaders who are more effective are more transformational than transactional (Avolio & Bass, 1991). Further, these results suggest that in the context of the federal government “care and concern perceived in the relationship” (Dirks & Ferrin, 2002, p. 614) between leaders and employees- which is the emphasis of transformational leaders-appear to be more important than being “seen as fair, dependable” (Dirks & Ferrin, 2002, p. 614) when rewarding and correcting employees.

These results also confirm that given the fundamental differences between private and public organizations (see, Perry & Rainey, 1988; Rainey & Bozeman, 2000, for reviews), public sector leaders need to emphasize certain leadership behaviors over others (Hansen & Villadsen, 2010; Thach & Thompson, 2007) within their organizations. This may be because compared to private organizations, the social purpose of public organizations is more important (Thach & Thompson, 2007), and thus, leaders need to “stir their employees to look beyond their own self-interest for the good of the [public]” (Bass, 1990, p. 21). In addition, being inspirational may be more important for public managers since they experience more difficulties when motivating employees (Cho & Lee, 2011); this is because compared to their counterparts in the private sector, they are more constrained in the use of extrinsic rewards (Rainey & Bozeman, 2000).

The findings in this study have several implication for executive leaders, managers, and supervisors in the public sector. Leaders need to be aware of the important role that different leadership behaviors play in building interpersonal trust within their organizations. Also, they need to recognize that they cannot solely rely on transactional leadership to motivate employees and thus to build employees’ trust in them.

Further, since federal employees’ trust in their supervisors (OPM, 2012) and in higher-level leaders has declined in recent years (MSPB, 2009), leaders in the federal sector need to be particularly aware of the key role that different leadership behaviors play within their organizations to build interpersonal trust. After all, employee trust in leaders is crucial, as the more they trust in their leaders, the more motivated they are, the more time they spend on required tasks, and the more they perform beyond standards (Knovsky & Pugh, 1994; Von Krogh et al., 2000).

It is important, therefore, that in their leadership development programs, federal agencies-particularly those managed by transactional leaders-invest more in improving the transformational leadership competencies of their executives, managers, and supervisors. In this way, interpersonal trust will developed within federal agencies and thus employees will be more motivated and productive when serving the public. After all, transactional leadership behaviors do not build the level of trust needed to unleash a workforce’s full potential (Jung & Avolio, 2000). To do so, transformational leadership behaviors are needed (Gillespie & Mann, 2004).

LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH

A main limitation of this study is the presence of common-source bias. This is because the variables in this study are drawn from the same survey. Thus, it is possible for common-source bias to inflate (but not invalidate) the relationships found (Crampton & Wagner, 1994). While some researchers find that the impacts of common-source bias are minimal (Doty & Glick, 1998), the reader should still be cautious when interpreting the results in this study.

Also, given the limitations in the FedView Survey data, multiple dimensions of trust in leaders were not explored in this study. The measure developed for this construct only included one survey item. Thus, future studies should use a measure of trust that taps into multiple dimensions of the construct.

Last, given the cross-sectional nature of this study, claims about causality cannot be made. Other researchers should extend this research topic by studying longitudinal trends and linking employee trust in leaders to employee motivation and organizational performance. Other studies should also investigate how employee trust in leaders mediates the relationship between leadership and organizational outcomes within public agencies.

References

REFERENCES

Avolio, B. J., & Bass, B. M. (1991). The full range leadership development programs: Basic and advanced manuals. Binghamton, NY: Bass, Avolio and Associates.

Avolio, B. J., Bass, B. M., & Jung, D. I. (1999). Re-examining the components of transformational and transactional leadership using the multifactor leadership questionnaire. Journal of Occupational & Organizational Psychology, 72, 441-462.

Avolio, B. J., Waldman, D. A., & Yammarino, F. J. (1991). Leading in the 1990s: The four Is of transformational leadership. Journal of European Industrial Training, 15, 9-16.

Bachmann, R., & Akbar, Z. (2006). Handbook of trust research. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Barling, J., Weber, T., & Kelloway, E. K. (1996). Effects of transformational leadership training on attitudinal and financial outcomes: A field experiment. Journal of Applied Psychology, 81, 827-832.

Bass, B. M. (1985). Leadership and performance beyond expectations. New York: Free Press.

_____. (1990). From transactional to transformational leadership: Learning to share the vision. Organizational Dynamics, 18, 19-31.

_____. (1998). Transformational leadership: Industrial, military and educational impact. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

Bass, B. M., & Avolio, B. J. (1990). Developing transformational leadership: 1992 and beyond. Journal of European Industrial Training, 14, 21-27.

Bennis, W., & Nanus, B. (1985). Leaders: The strategies for taking charge. New York, NY: Harper and Row.

Bradberry, T., & Tatum, B. (2002, July). Seeking justice in organizations: The time is now. Symposium presented at the Second Biannual International Conference on Personal Meaning: Freedom, Responsibility, and Justice. Vancouver, British Columbia.

Carnevale, D. G., & Wechsler, B. (1992). Trust in the public sector: Individual and organizational determinants. Administration & Society, 23, 471-494.

Cho, Y. J. (2008). Trust in managerial leadership within federal agencies: Antecedents, outcomes, and contextual factors. Retrieved from ProQuest Digital Dissertations. (UMI 3331254)

Cho, Y. J., & Lee, J. W. (2011). Perceived trustworthiness of supervisors, employee satisfaction and cooperation. Public Management Review, 13, 941-965.

Cook, J., & Wall, T. (1980). New work attitude measures of trust, organizational commitment and personal need nonfulfillment. Journal of Occupational Psychology, 53, 3952.

Crampton, S., & Wagner, J. (1994) Percept-percept inflation in microorganizational research: An investigation of prevalence and effect. Journal of Applied Psychology, 79, 67-76.

Daft, R. L. (2002). The leadership experience. Mason, Ohio: Southwestern Publishing.

Dirks, K. (1999). The effects of interpersonal trust on work group performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 84, 445-455.

Dirks, K., & Ferrin, D. (2002). Trust in leaders: Meta-analytic findings and implications for research and practice. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 611-628.

Doty, H. D., & Glick, W. H (1998). Common methods bias: Does common methods variance really bias results? Organizational Research Methods, 1, 374-406.

Eagly, A. H. (1987). Sex differences in social behavior: A socialrole interpretation. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Fernandez, S. (2005). Developing and testing an integrative framework of public sector leadership: Evidence from the public education arena. Journal of Public Administration Research & Theory, 15, 197-217.

Gillespie, N., & Mann, L. (2004). Transformational leadership and shared values: The building blocks of trust. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 19, 588-607.

Greenberg, J. (2003). Creating unfairness by mandating fair procedures: The hidden words of a pay-for-performance plan. Human Resources Management Review, 13, 41-57.

Hansen, J. R., & Villadsen, A. R. (2010). Comparing public and private managers’ leadership styles: Understanding the role of job context. International Public Management Journal, 13, 247-274.

Hater, J. J., & Bass B. M. (1988). Supervisors’ evaluation and subordinate’s perceptions of transformational and transactional leadership. Journal of Applied Psychology, 73, 695-702.

Howell, J. M., & Avolio, B. J. (1993). Transformational leadership, transactional leadership, locus of control, and support for innovation: Key predictors of consolidated business unit performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 78, 891-902.

Jackson, S. E., & Alvarez, E. B. (1992). Working through diversity as a strategic imperative. In S. E. Jackson & E. B. Alvarez (Eds.), Diversity in the workplace: Human resources initiatives (pp. 13-29). New York: The Guilford Press.

Judge, T. A., & Piccolo, R. F. (2004). Transformational and transactional leadership: A meta-analytic test of their relative validity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89, 755-768.

Jung, D. I., & Avolio, B. J. (2000). Opening the black box: An experimental investigation of the mediating effects of trust and value congruence on transformational and transactional leadership. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 21, 949-964.

Kirkpatrick, S. A., & Locke, E. A. (1996). Direct and indirect effects of three core charismatic leadership components on performance and attitudes. Journal of Applied Psychology, 81, 36-51.

Konovsky, M. A., & Pugh, S. D. (1994). Citizenship behavior and social exchange. Academy of Management Journal, 37, 656-669.

Luhmann, N. (1982). Trust and power. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons Inc.

Mayer, R. C., & Gavin, M. B. (2005). Trust in management and performance: Who minds the shop while the employees watch the boss? Academy of Management Journal, 48, 874-888.

Moynihan, D. P., & Ingraham, P. W. (2004). Integrative leadership in the public sector: A model of performance information use. Administration and Society, 36, 427453.

Park, S. M. (2012). Toward the trusted public organization: Untangling the leadership, motivation, and trust relationship in U.S. federal agencies. The American Review of Public Administration, 42, 562-590.

Perry, J. J., & Rainey, H. G. (1988). The public-private distinction in organization theory: A critique and research strategy. Academy of Management Review, 13, 182-201.

Pillai, R., Schriesheim, C., & Williams, E. (1999). Fairness perceptions and trust as mediators for transformational and transactional leadership: A two-sample study. Journal of Management, 25, 897-933.

Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B., Moorman, R. H., & Fetter, R. (1990). Transformational leader behaviors and their effects on followers’ trust in leaders, satisfaction, and organizational citizenship behaviors. Leadership Quarterly, 1, 107-142.

Rainey, H. G., & Bozeman, B. (2000). Comparing public and private organizations: Empirical research and the power of the a priori. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 10, 447-469.

Rousseau, D. M., Sitkin, S. B., Burt, R. S., & Camerer, C. (1998). Not so different after all: A cross discipline view of trust. Academy of Management Review, 23, 393-404.

Shaw, R. B. (1997). Trust in the balance: Building successful organizations on results, integrity, and concern. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Tepper, B. J., & Percy, P. M. (1994). Structural validity of the multifactor leadership questionnaire. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 54, 734-744.

Thach, E., & Thompson, K. J. (2007). Trading places: Examining leadership competencies between for-profit vs. public and non-profit leaders. Leadership and Organization Development Journal, 28, 356-375.

Tracey, J. B., & Hinkin, T. R. (1998). Transformational leadership or effective management practices? Group and Organization Management, 23, 220-236.

Trottier, T., Van Wart, M., & Wang, X. (2008). Examining the nature and significance of leadership in government organizations. Public Administration Review, 68, 319333.

U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board. (2009). Managing for engagement – communication, connection, and courage: A report to the President and the Congress of the United States by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board. Retrieved from http://www.mspb.gov/netsearch/viewdocs.aspx?docnum ber=437591&version=438697&application=ACROBAT

U.S. Office of Personnel Management. (2010). Results from the 2010 federal employee viewpoint survey. Retrieved from http://www.fedview.opm.gov/2010/Published/.

_____. (2012). 2012 federal employee viewpoint survey results: Employees influencing change. Retrieved from http://www.fedview.opm.gov/2012files/2012_Governme nt_Management_Report.PDF.

Van Wart, M. (2005). Dynamics of leadership in public service: Theory and practice. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.

Von Krogh, G., Ichizo, K., & Nonaka, I. (2000). Enabling knowledge creation: How to unlock the mystery of tacit knowledge and release the power of innovation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Wright, B. E., & Pandey, S. K. (2010). Transformational leadership in the public sector: Does structure matter? Journal of Public Administration Research & Theory, 20, 75-89.

Yammarino, F. J., & Bass, B. M. (1990). Long-term forecasting of transformational leadership and its effects among naval officers: Some preliminary findings. In K. E. Clark & M. B. Clark (Eds.), Measures of leadership (pp. 151- 171). West Orange, NJ: Leadership Library of America.

AuthorAffiliation

HUGO ASENCIO

California State University, Dominguez Hills

EDIN MUJKIC

University of Colorado Colorado Springs

AUTHORS’ NOTE

We wish to thank Donald Klingner and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on previous drafts. Any remaining errors of fact or interpretation remain our responsibility. Please address correspondence to Hugo Asencio, California State University, Dominguez Hills, Department of Public Administration, 1000 E. Victoria St., Carson, CA, 90747, email: hasencio@csudh.edu.

Appendix

(ProQuest: Appendix omitted.)

Word count:
5594

Policy Positions of Bureaucrats at the Front Lines: Are They Susceptible to Strategic Communication?

Simon Calmar Andersen
,

Morten Jakobsen

First published: 26 May 2016

https://doi-org.ezproxy.liberty.edu/10.1111/puar.12584

Citations:

Get It at Liberty

Related Content:

Olesen (PAR

January/February 2017

)

Sections

PDF

Tools

Abstract

It is well established that bureaucrats’ implementation of policies is influenced by their own policy positions, that is, their attitudes toward the given policies. However, what affects the policy positions of bureaucrats? This article focuses on whether the policy positions of bureaucrats at the front lines of government are susceptible to frames and cues embedded in communication. Based on the notion that bureaucrats often adhere to certain professional norms when developing their attitudes toward policies, the authors hypothesize that communication frames and cues that align policies with such norms move bureaucrats’ policy positions in favor of the policy. Results of four studies in European and American settings among mid- and street-level bureaucrats show support for the hypothesized effect. They also show that aligning policies with dimensions outside professional norms is ineffective, possibly even producing opposite effects.

Practitioner Points

The way a new policy is presented to street-level bureaucrats and middle managers directly affects their attitudes toward the policy.

· Emphasizing aspects of the policy that are in accordance with professional norms of serving clients and building policies on research-based evidence are likely to make bureaucrats more sympathetic—or less negative—toward the policy.

· Emphasizing other considerations such as client satisfaction surveys and economic concerns may cause bureaucrats to be more hostile toward the policy.

· Managers and other decision makers must strategically consider how they communicate about new programs and policies.

The implementation of policies by street-level bureaucrats is deeply affected by their own positions on the policy issues in question (i.e., their attitudes toward the given policies). This insight dates back to classic studies by Kaufman (

1960

) and Lipsky (

1980

) and has been confirmed by a number of more recent studies (Brehm and Gates

1997

; Keiser and Soss

1998

; May and Winter

2009

; Stensöta

2012

: Tummers et al.

2012
). This poses a fundamental question about what affects the policy positions of bureaucrats. Bureaucrats arrive at their jobs with experiences and individual personality traits, which are likely to influence them throughout their work life. They are also affected by long-term socialization and organizational influences in various ways after they are recruited for their job (Oberfield

2010

). However, much less is known about how bureaucrats’ policy positions, that is, their attitudes toward specific policies and programs, are influenced by strategic communication emphasizing different perspectives.

In this article, we center on whether “frames” and “cues” embedded in communication affect the policy positions of bureaucrats working at the front lines of government. Framing refers to emphasizing one subset of considerations rather than others when describing an object, for example, emphasizing a certain aspect of a policy. A cue is a piece of information (e.g., expert advice) that enables individuals to make simplified evaluations without analyzing extensive information (Druckman et al.

2010
). Communication is an inevitable part of organizations, and it surrounds every policy implemented by bureaucrats. From extensive research on public opinion formation in political science, we know that the attitudes of citizens toward a policy are susceptible to the way that policy is communicated. Communication impacts attitudes in terms of how policies are framed as well as by cues allowing citizens to form opinions based on smaller pieces of information (Druckman et al.

2010
; Nelson, Oxley, and Clawson

1997
).

Based on the notion that bureaucrats often adhere to certain professional norms when developing their attitudes toward policies, we hypothesize that communication that aligns policies with such norms moves the policy positions of bureaucrats in favor of the policy. In contrast, communication that connects policies with dimensions outside the professional norms is expected to be ineffective, or it may even produce negative attitudes toward the policy. The theoretical claim is developed in the next section by combining contributions from the public opinion literature (in particular, the conceptualizations of communication frames and cues) with classic insights on bureaucrats and the role of communication in organizations.

We use four large-
n survey experiments of frontline bureaucrats in the United States and

Denmark

to test the hypotheses. The policy area of our testing is the education system. This administrative area is important in most countries, and it provides a good case area because it is dominated by professionally trained workers. The test cases include policies concerning standardized testing, student background, and economy of schools, which are salient issues in the public administration of schools across the world (Phelps

2003

The experiments confirm that frames and cues that align policies with professional norms rooted in bureaucracy have a consistent impact on policy positions among street-level bureaucrats across different administrative contexts. One of our experiments, which is able to separate the effects of frames and cues, shows that both frames and cues have the potential to affect the policy positions of bureaucrats. Yet this experiment also shows that even a cue that aligns a policy with professional norms is ineffective if it is combined with a frame that does not fit the professional norms. It is important to note that the experiments are designed to examine shifts in policy positions, which is the object of our study (not bureaucrats’ behavior); hence, the implications of the test results concern our knowledge about how the policy positions of street-level bureaucrats develop. We elaborate on this in the final part of the article.

The next section develops the theoretical hypotheses on which we build the research. This section also includes the conceptualizations of policy position, professional norms, and communication. We then present the design of four studies that test the hypotheses in different contexts. The results are then presented, and we conclude by discussing how the results increase the understanding of the political process that leads from political decisions to their implementation and the role of communication in that process.

Bureaucrats’ Policy Positions and Communication Effects

Numerous studies have shown that the manner in which bureaucrats implement political decisions is often influenced by “opinions, values, preferences, and their own interpretations of the world” (Kaufman

1960
, 80), bureaucratic ideology (Stensöta

2012
), and values institutionalized in standard operating procedures (Keiser and Soss

1998
; Lipsky

1980
), as well as by more immediate attitudes toward specific policies (Brehm and Gates

1997
; May and Winter

2009
). We distinguish between bureaucrats’ policy positions—that is, preferences for specific policies—and more fundamental norms, values, or ideologies. Whereas the latter represent more generic views of what is good, right, or acceptable, we define policy positions as attitudes related to specific policies. Hence, a bureaucrat’s policy position indicates whether he or she favors (i.e., displays a positive attitude toward) or disfavors a policy.

Bureaucrats’ policy positions are important for their behavior. Psychologists debate what moderates the relationship between attitudes and behavior and whether the interests of the individual are more important than attitudes. However, despite limited consensus about how exactly attitudes influence behavior, there seems to be general agreement that attitudes
can influence behavior and often do (for a review and discussion, see Ajzen and Fishbein

2000

). The transition of attitudes into behavior is assumed to take place in a cognitive process in which beliefs about what is expected of a person are important for that person’s behavior. This resonates very well with some of the prominent organizational theories on behavior, for example, March and Olsen’s (

2006

) theory on the logic of appropriateness. Thus, attitudes are influenced by what is expected of the individual, and attitudes are themselves more likely to influence behavior if they are in keeping with what is expected of the individual. In sum, despite little consensus about how exactly attitudes influence behavior, research in public administration and psychology suggests that understanding the attitudes of bureaucrats toward a given policy (i.e., their policy position) is important for understanding their implementation of that policy.

Research on public opinion formation has repeatedly shown that citizens with the same values, norms, ideologies, and preferences may hold very different attitudes on specific issues, depending on how the issue is communicated strategically (for a review, see Chong and Druckman

2007

). However, whether bureaucrats are susceptible to communication on policies that they implement—that is, in their own field of expertise—is a different question. Bureaucrats are likely to be predisposed toward certain positions on the policies they implement because they are usually experts in their field, their work is affected by the policies they are asked to implement, and they are bound by norms that influence their policy positions. Strong predispositions are likely to render people more resistant to communication effects (Chong and Druckman

2007
). Yet, as we argue later, bureaucrats may be susceptible to some types of communication. To unfold our argument, we start by outlining the conceptualization of communication that we apply.

Bureaucrats are likely to be predisposed toward certain positions on the policies they implement because they are usually experts in their fi eld, their work is aff ected by the policies they are asked to implement, and they are bound by norms that infl uence their policy positions.

Simon (1997, 208) defines communication in the bureaucratic process as the transmission of decisional premises from one member of an organization to another. Decisions are based on not one but several premises that are given different weight and attention. This is akin to the conventional model of attitude formation in public opinion research. This model states that an attitude toward an object is the sum of the evaluations of the object on different dimensions—and with different weights attached to those dimensions (Ajzen and Fishbein

1980
; Nelson, Oxley, and Clawson

1997
; Price and Tewksbury

1997
). The idea is that communication influences attitudes by affecting the weighting of the dimensions and the evaluations of the object on the different dimensions (Druckman et al.

2010
; Slothuus

2008

In the study of bureaucrats, this means that, on the one hand, bureaucrats’ policy positions depend on how they evaluate a policy along dimensions such as its impact on the clients they serve and its effect on the influence of other stakeholders. On the other hand, the policy position depends on how each of these dimensions is weighted, and communication may influence how bureaucrats evaluate and weigh these different concerns when generating their policy position.

In accordance with the conceptualization of communication in the public opinion literature, we distinguish between communication frames and cues. Framing is defined as emphasizing one subset of considerations rather than others when describing an object (Druckman et al.

2010
). In our study, this object is the policy the bureaucrats are asked to implement. We use the term “cue” to denote a piece of information that enables individuals to make simplified evaluations without analyzing extensive information (see Druckman et al.

2010
). One prime example of such a cue is expert advice.

In the inventory of what makes a strong frame in public opinion research, we find frames that resonate in a credible manner with and invoke strong consensus values (Gamson and Modigliani

1989

; Pan and Kosicki

2001

) and back them up with reference to credible sources (Druckman

2001
). Strong consensus values mean that most people share the same positive (or negative) value on specific dimensions. Therefore, by acquiring a theoretical understanding of the dominating values and norms in an audience, it should be possible to deduce which frames and cues will have a strong effect on policy position and which will not.

What types of frames and cues would we expect to be effective with regard to changing the policy positions of bureaucrats? Bureaucrats are, in many respects, a heterogeneous group (DeHart-Davis

2007
; O’Leary

2010
). Nevertheless, based on the literature on professions, we suggest that there are some norms that bureaucrats (on average) are likely to share.

Professions have been characterized by specialized knowledge bases, a strong service ethic in the sense of commitment to meeting clients’ needs, and collegial versus bureaucratic control over entry, performance evaluations, and retention in the profession (Etzioni

1969

; see also Hargreaves

2000
; Hargreaves and Goodson

1996

; Talbert and McLaughlin

1994

). There are two sides of this, though. One side has to do with the status and compensation of the profession. The other side has to do with the ethics or norms that guide professionals’ behavior (Darling-Hammond

1990

; Hargreaves and Goodson

1996
). The latter aspect, which is our focus, “outlines a view of practice that is
client-oriented and
knowledge-based” (Darling-Hammond

1990
, 25).

These two characteristics of professional norms are also central to Wilson, who defines a professional as “someone who receives important occupational rewards from a reference group whose membership is limited to people who have undergone specialized formal education and have accepted a group-defined code of proper conduct” (1989, 60). He further specifies that highly professional bureaucrats usually seek to serve clients and follow the procedures recommended by experts within a profession, such as professors and experienced members of the profession. He does not claim that personal interests or other incentives do not affect professionals but that they “receive some significant portion of their incentives” from such norms shared by organized groups of fellow practitioners (Wilson

1989
, 60). Similarly, Simon (1997) sees expertise and identification with others in the organization as two strong influences on the premises of bureaucrats’ decision making. In his study of street-level bureaucrats, Lipsky (

1980
, 201–2) also emphasizes the service of clients as a professional norm that is guided by university experts.

Who the clients are depends on the profession. For teachers, the clients are typically students; for physicians, the clients are typically patients. Notably, serving clients does not necessarily mean serving clients’ choices or own expressed wishes; it means doing what the profession perceives as valuable to clients (Freidson

2001
, 122). Professionals are educated at professional schools, and they generally see the schools and studies within their profession as professionally significant. Consequently, they recognize recommendations from research-based studies as authoritative (see also Freidson

2001
; Tummers et al.

2012
). The professional schools codify and refine the profession’s understanding of how to serve clients independently of the values of clients or other stakeholders (Freidson

2001
, 123; Wilson

1989
). In this way, the profession uses norms strategically as a means to secure influence.

By adhering to certain professionally based norms, behavior and decision making do not depart from what is in the interest of the profession and its members.

We do not claim that professionals always act in accordance with the norms of their profession. Self-interests and pressure from interest groups might obviously influence bureaucratic behavior, and any individual bureaucrat may diverge from the majority. However, appealing to professional norms should on average have an influence on the attitudes among bureaucrats toward specific policies. Referring implicitly to these norms, we argue, will tend to make bureaucrats more favorable to the policy.

Based on this, we suggest that policies that benefit clients—although not necessarily the clients’ own requests—will be evaluated more positively by bureaucrats (on that dimension) because of a common value of client orientation. Consequently, frames emphasizing the benefits of a policy for clients will shift the policy positions of bureaucrats in favor of the policy. Similarly, policies rooted in research or expert knowledge will be evaluated more positively by bureaucrats because of a norm of basing decisions on research-based knowledge. Thus, cues that provide information that positively connects a policy with research-based knowledge will also make bureaucrats more sympathetic to the policy. Furthermore, if a cue links this research to a renowned professional school (i.e., an institution of higher education), we would expect it to have an even stronger effect on the bureaucrats because they are often educated at such institutions.

Other legitimate considerations, such as the expressed wishes of clients and other stakeholders, are not usually part of the professional norms. Consequently, we do not expect frames emphasizing dimensions such as benefits to other stakeholders to move bureaucrats’ policy positions in favor of the policy.

To sum up, our general hypothesis is as follows:

Hypothesis 1: Communication that emphasizes the coherence between a given policy and professional norms will move policy positions in favor of the policy.

Following our discussion, we may specify a number of hypotheses that extend the general hypothesis. First, we expect both frames and cues to affect policy positions:

Hypothesis 2: Communication frames emphasizing professional values of client service will move policy positions in favor of the policy.

Hypothesis 3: Communication cues referring to research-based evidence will move policy positions in favor of the policy.

Furthermore, the source of the provided expert/research knowledge is also expected to matter:

Hypothesis 4: Communication cues referring to a professionally accepted source will move policy positions in favor of the policy.

Experimental Tests on Street-Level Bureaucrats in the United States and Denmark

Testing the hypotheses requires a method that (1) includes measures of exposure of communication to bureaucrats, (2) holds everything but the communication constant, (3) includes measures of bureaucrats’ policy positions, (4) reduces the pressure felt by some bureaucrats to state policy positions that are in accordance with official policies or the policy positions of peers, and (5) is replicable in different settings. Survey experiments are able to do all of this. Survey experiments can be used to expose bureaucrats to different communication cues and frames. Bureaucrats can answer anonymously, which reduces the pressure bias. Moreover, pressure bias and other confounding variables are held constant through the randomization procedure. Additionally, survey experiments can include a large number of bureaucrats and offer good potential for replicating the study in different contexts. Because of such advantages, survey experiments are extensively used in research on public opinion formation, and they have been increasingly used in public administration research as well.

However, it is important to note some of the limitations of survey experiments. First, they usually identify effects on policy positions, knowledge, intentions, and so on, not behavior (whereas field experiments typically study effects on behavior). Second, they measure immediate, short-term effects but do not reveal whether these effects are persistent. Third, the survey experiment is somewhat artificial because it occurs in the survey. We cannot be sure that the found effects would be exactly the same in a nonexperimental situation. The survey experiment estimates the effect of communication when it is isolated from all other factors happing in an organization.

We conducted four experimental tests in the education sector in U.S. and European contexts using individual bureaucrats as subjects in the analysis. Education is a key policy area in most countries. Moreover, in both the American and European contexts, the education system is part of a developed political bureaucracy that includes a vast number of professionally trained bureaucrats. This renders the education sector a good test case for our purpose.

Using the education sector as test case, a relevant question is whether professional norms of client orientation and knowledge-based practice pertain to teaching as an occupation. The profession has developed over time to become more guided by collective norms than private practice (Hargreaves

2000
). Our claim is not that teacher behavior is only guided by professional norms of client orientation and knowledge-based practice. In her discussion of teacher professionalism, Darling-Hammond states, “Professionalization is not a dichotomous event or a state of grace into which an occupation clearly falls or does not. Rather, it describes points along a continuum representing the extent to which members of an occupation share a common body of knowledge and use shared standards of practice in exercising that knowledge on behalf of clients” (1990, 32). Our claim is that the professional norms are strong enough among teachers on average that their attitudes will be affected by strategic communication that appeals to these norms.

This study focuses on mid- and street-level bureaucrats, as they have great influence on how policies are implemented—not least in the education sector (Honig

2006
; Weatherley and Lipsky

1977

). In order to strengthen the basis of our conclusions, we replicated our tests in four studies of very different contexts. The contexts differ with respect to client group (preschoolers, primary school students, and secondary school students), hierarchical organizational level (mid- and street-level bureaucracy), and the general political system. The political systems in the studies vary between the market-based education system in the traditionally conservative state of

Texas

and the universal welfare state-based system in Denmark, which is more liberal and social democratic. Table

provides an overview of the four studies. The purpose of varying the context is not to examine how the context moderates the effects of communication but rather to demonstrate that the same kinds of communications have similar effects in very different contexts.

Table 1. Overview of the Four Studies

Street level

Testing students

Denmark

Testing students

Street level

Denmark

Bureaucratic Level

Client Group/ Organization

Policy

Political System

Hypotheses Tested

Study 1

Street level

Preschools

Testing students

Denmark

586

Study 2

Elementary and middle schools

926

Study 3

Middle manager

Elementary, middle, and high schools

Texas

1,386

Study 4

High schools

Admission to high school

H2, H3, H4

3,739

Each of the four studies used a specific policy case to test the hypotheses. In the survey experiments, we presented a likely policy proposal to the bureaucrats along with different types of communications about the policy. We then asked the bureaucrats to state their position on the policy proposal, that is, the extent to which they were in favor of or against the policy. In three of the studies (1, 2, and 3), the applied policy case concerned the issue of standardized test taking among students, that is, the extent to which students should be tested in school. In study 4, the policy case focused on the strictness of admission to upper secondary schools.

These cases have several features that render them suitable for our experiments. First, the included policy proposals about standardized testing (studies 1, 2, and 3) are highly salient, familiar to the bureaucrats, and the subject of intense debate in the given contexts. “Standardized testing has been an ever-expanding, albeit controversial, part of education in the United States throughout the 20th century” (Linn

2001
, 29). Phelps (

2003
) analyzes in particular the debate about standardized testing in Texas (one of our empirical sites), describing the conflict as a “war” between policy makers and educators. A key part of the conflict is the question of political control over the bureaucracy (Wang, Beckett, and Brown

2006
). Similarly, in Denmark (our other empirical site), standardized testing has been a key conflict in education politics, both between political parties and currently between politicians and teachers (Gustafsson

2012
). If the policy positions of bureaucrats can be moved in an area as controversial and salient as this, they may also be amendable in less controversial areas.

The case in study 4, entry requirements, is also controversial but probably less so than standardized testing. Entry requirements were a center of prevailing political debate when the study was conducted. Besides the ideological conflict about access to education between left- and right-wing parties, entry requirements represents a classic conflict between politicians who want more young people to get an education and teachers defending themselves against the workload related to teaching students who are less prepared for secondary school. The teachers do so, for instance, by trying to move away from schools with a demanding student composition (Bonesrønning, Falch, and Strøm

2005

). The variation in terms of how controversial this policy is compared with the highly controversial standardized testing provides some leverage in terms of the generalizability of the results along this dimension.

Second, the cases are salient not only in the U.S. and Danish contexts. Although mostly used in developed countries, standardized testing in education is a widespread and growing phenomenon in virtually all global regions (Kamens and McNeely

2010
). Third, it was possible to include realistic policy proposals in the case studies. Fourth, in all four studies, identifying communication that connected the policy proposal with norms of the bureaucracy was rather straightforward.

Our first aim was to test the causal effect outlined by the main hypothesis in dissimilar contexts. For this purpose, we conducted studies 1, 2, and 3 (which examine hypothesis 1, the general hypothesis). Our second aim was to disentangle the different cue and framing effects (i.e., to test hypotheses 2, 3, and 4). Study 4 was conducted for this purpose. Next, we introduce the general design of studies 1, 2, and 3. Then we introduce the design and policy case of study 4.

General Design of Studies 1, 2, and 3

The experiments in studies 1, 2, and 3 each included three experimental conditions. The first condition (the control condition) included no other communication than the description of the policy case. The second condition (the nonprofessional norm condition) included a stimulus consisting of communication about the policy that was not in alignment with the professional norms of the bureaucratic context. The third condition (the professional norm condition) included communication about the policy that was in strong alignment with the professional norms, that is, communication that presented the policy as beneficial to the clients, connected the policy with research-based knowledge, and connected the knowledge to a credible source such as a specific professional school (e.g., a specific university). This enabled us to estimate the effect of the communication in strong alignment with norms by comparing the professional norm condition with the nonprofessional norm condition and the control condition, respectively.

We measure policy position by asking the bureaucrats to indicate the extent to which they agree or disagree that the policy proposal is a good idea (response categories: strongly agree, agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree, strongly disagree). Thus, policy position ranges from 1 to 5, where 1 is the most negative attitude toward the policy and 5 the most positive. Table A1 in the supplementary appendix (available in the online version of this article) shows the full text of all three experiments.

In studies 1, 2, and 3, the communication in the nonprofessional norm condition frames the policy in light of requests or wishes from parents. Specifically, the policy is reasoned with parent surveys showing that a large majority of parents request more testing. Such a frame is not expected to be particularly persuasive in any of the contexts in studies 1, 2, and 3. Even though parents are in some sense clients in the education system, adhering to the clients’ own choices is not part of the professional norm. The professional norm emphasizes the profession’s independent understanding of what serves the clients (Freidson

2001
, 121–23). Hence, this reasoning may even be an argument for some bureaucrats to turn against the policy, as it may be perceived as populist or as increasing the influence of other stakeholders (i.e., parents) on their practice. Therefore, we only expect the nonprofessional norm condition to produce a limited change in favor of the policy.

In the three studies, the communication in the professional norm condition emphasizes that the policy proposal is beneficial to those the professional norms of the contexts perceive as the main clients: the students.

The professional norm condition also includes cues referring to research-based knowledge that backs up the policy and professional schools as sources of this knowledge. Thus, research-based knowledge and the research sources are expected to be credible in the context of the education system in both Texas and Denmark.

Research-based knowledge and education institutions are part of the education system, and bureaucrats employed in this system are usually educated through professional schools.

In this way, the professional norm condition is in alignment with the professional norms of bureaucracy. Hence, we expect this communication to have a strong influence on policy positions in favor of the policy. Details of study 1, 2, and 3 are presented in the supplementary appendix.

Research-based knowledge and education institutions are part of the education system, and bureaucrats employed in this system are usually educated through professional schools.

Study 4: Disentangling Cue and Frame Effects

In studies 1, 2, and 3, the professional norm condition includes both a frame emphasizing that the policy is beneficial to the main clients as well as cues referring to knowledge and credible sources of this knowledge. The aim of study 4 was to disentangle the effects of the different cues and frames. Therefore, we split the three conditions included in studies 1, 2, and 3 into nine separate conditions in order to disentangle the effects of communication that (1) presents the policy as beneficial to the clients, (2) connects the policy with research-based knowledge, and (3) connects this knowledge to a credible source.

The study includes 3,739 secondary school teachers surveyed in December 2012.

The policy case is whether secondary schools should lower their entry requirements (thereby increasing the intake of students). This issue has been subject to considerable debate. Schools have an incentive for a high intake of students (schools are paid per student through activity-based budgeting), and politicians would like to see more people enrolled in secondary schools. However, a high intake may compromise education quality and the demands placed on the teachers as the number of students with lower qualifications increases.

We combine three frame conditions and three cue conditions in a 3 × 3 design. The phrasing of all nine conditions is outlined in table A2 in the supplementary appendix. We included three types of framing. First, we included conditions with no additional framing. Second, a frame not in alignment with the professional norms of the teachers was included. This frame emphasizes the potential economic payoff that the school may experience from increasing the intake of students (the schools are partly financed by activity-based budgeting). Economic prosperity may be of importance to other stakeholders of the organization, namely, the governing board. However, this does not align very well with the predominant professional norms, which privilege the consideration of students. Although not in alignment with professional norms, some teachers may react to the economic interest in the frame, which can reduce the difference between this frame and the frame that is in strong alignment with professional norms. This makes the test of difference between nonprofessional norm frames and the professional norm frame harder. Third, we included frames in strong alignment with professional norms. As in the previous studies, these emphasize the benefit of the policy proposal to the main client: the students. In particular, the frames in strong alignment with the norms emphasize the benefits for less advantaged students, as they are often those who would benefit most from the policy.

We also included three cue conditions. First, we included stimuli with no additional cues. Second, we included a cue type providing information that a study supports the policy (a knowledge cue). This cue is in alignment with the norm of professionally based knowledge. Third, we included a cue that not only provides information that a study supports the policy but also that the source of this knowledge is Aarhus University (Andersen and Thomsen

2011

), a well-known university in the Danish context that educates many secondary school teachers. In addition to including the three types of frames and three types of cues, we included all of the interactions between the frames and cues. Hence, the experiment uses a full 3 × 3 factorial design, that is, nine experimental conditions. The policy position measure is similar to that of studies 1, 2, and 3.

Testing the General Hypothesis in Different Contexts: Results of Studies 1, 2, and 3

The general hypothesis of the study (hypothesis 1) stated that communication emphasizing the coherence between a given policy and professional norms of client orientation and expert advice will move bureaucrats’ policy positions in favor of the policy. Figure

1
presents the results of testing this hypothesis in the three different contexts of studies 1, 2, and 3. The bars in figure

1
show the bureaucrats’ mean policy position by experimental group. The significance tests are calculated using linear random effects models (see the supplementary appendix). Using ordered logistic regression does not change the conclusions.

Figure 1

Open in figure viewer

PowerPoint

Effects of Communication on Bureaucrats’ Policy Position, Studies 1, 2, and 3, Mean Policy Position by Experimental Group

Note: *
p < .05; ** p < .01, two-tailed significance test comparing the nonprofessional and professional norm conditions, respectively, with the control condition. + p < .05; ++ p < .01, two-tailed significance test comparing the professional norm condition with the nonprofessional norm condition. A high value indicates a more positive attitude toward the policy. N = 586 in study 1, 926 in study 2, and 1,389 in study 3.

In study 1, the communication that coheres strongly with the norms (the professional norm condition) increases the mean policy position from 2.49 to 2.92 on the absolute scale, corresponding to an increase of 17 percent or 0.32 standard deviation of the policy position. Thus, not only are bureaucrats’ policy positions amenable to communication, but also the professional norm condition has a substantial effect in the predicted direction. We also notice that attitudes are not so volatile that any and all kinds of arguments in favor of the policy will change them: communication that does not correspond with the norms cannot change the attitudes (the difference between the control condition and the nonprofessional norm condition is not statistically significant). Only communication emphasizing coherence between the policy and professional norms changes the attitudes in favor of the policy. This supports the general hypothesis (hypothesis 1).

We find similar results when examining the reactions toward the proposal of increased testing in primary schools in study 2. The communication in strong coherence with norms increases the mean policy position from 1.86 in the control condition to 2.14 in the professional norm condition, or approximately 15 percent in favor of the policy, which is significantly different from both the control condition and the nonprofessional norm condition. Moreover, the nonprofessional norm condition is not significantly different from the control condition. Study 2 replicates the results in a similar national context in which we should expect similar results but with different respondents in a different data collection and another bureaucratic setting (schools versus preschools). This shows that the results of study 1 are robust across different settings, cases, experimental wording, and data collections in the Danish context.

In study 3, we change the context radically. It is still within the education system, which is why we would expect the professional norms of client service and research-based knowledge to be predominant. However, the broader context—the universal welfare state in Denmark versus the more conservative, market-oriented state of Texas—is radically different. We also change respondents from street-level bureaucrats to managers or mid-level bureaucrats who might have many other considerations than the needs of the clients. Figure

1
shows that, despite these contextual differences, we still find a strongly significant effect of the communication that connects the policy with norms. Thus, the effect size of the professional norm condition is similar to those in studies 1 and 2; the relative increase in policy position is approximately 11 percent or 0.22 standard deviation of the policy position compared with the control condition,
p < .01.

Moreover, we find that the nonprofessional norm condition (i.e., framing the policy as a request from the parents) triggers an opposite effect: presented with this communication, the share of principals in favor of the policy drops by 27 percent. Based on the underlying theoretical argument of our main hypothesis, there are at least two plausible explanations of the opposite effect. First, emphasizing a dimension outside the professional norms may be not only ineffective, it may produce more negative attitudes toward the policy because bureaucrats can be expected to work against policies that do not correspond to the professional norms. Second, framing the policy as a request from parents may not seem credible among the Texas principals because (in contrast to the Danish cases) a lot of parents in Texas expressed negative feelings about testing around the time of the experiment. Hence, if the communication is not perceived as credible, it may trigger a boomerang effect. Regardless of the cause, study 3 shows that under some circumstances, cues and frames may even reduce support for a policy. In all, the general hypothesis is supported in all three studies. We turn to study 4 to disentangle the effects of cues and frames.

Disentangling the Cue and Framing Effects: Results of Study 4

Study 4 uses a 3 × 3 factorial design to separate the effect of frames and cues, which are combined in the treatments in studies 1–3. We also isolate the effect of adding a source of the expert/research knowledge. Thus, we are able to test hypotheses 2, 3, and 4. We show the results of study 4 in table

and figure

2
. Table

2
presents different regression analyses on the effects of frames and cues, and figure

2
displays the mean policy position of each of the nine experimental conditions.

Table 2. Frame and Cue Effects

0.26** (0.04)

3,739

Independent Variable	Model I: Main Effects	Model II: Interaction Effects
Nonprofessional norm frame	−0.22** (0.04)	−0.03 (0.06)
Professional norm frame		0.26** (0.04)	0.31** (0.06)
Research cue	0.18** (0.04)	0.28** (0.06)
Research source cue	0.42** (0.06)
Nonprofessional norm frame * Research cue	−0.26** (0.09)
Nonprofessional norm frame * Research source cue	−0.32** (0.09)
Professional norm frame * Research cue	−0.02 (0.09)
Professional norm frame * Research source cue	−0.14 (0.09)
Constant	1.62** (0.04)	1.54** (0.05)
N

· Note: *
p < .05; ** p < .01, two-tailed significance test based on linear random effects models. Standard errors in parentheses. Reference group in models I and II: control condition (no frame and no cue).

Figure 2

Open in figure viewer

PowerPoint

Effects of Cues and Framing on Bureaucrats’ Policy Position, Study 4, Mean Policy Position by Experimental Group

Notes: *
p < .05; ** p < .01, two-tailed significance test comparing each condition with the control condition (no frame and no cue). Significance tests of the differences between each of the nine conditions are reported in the supplementary appendix. A high value indicates a more positive attitude toward the policy. N = 3,739.

We start by evaluating the cue effects. Model I in table

2
presents the average effects of the frames and cues, that is, the effects of frames and cues compared with the control condition across all of the experimental conditions. We see that the research cue (“support in recent studies”) has a positive and significant effect (controlling for the frames). The effect of 0.18 corresponds to an increase of about 11 percent or 0.19 standard deviation of the policy position. Bureaucrats move their policy position in favor of the proposal merely by being told that some study supports it—without knowing which study it is or which standards or outcomes it measured. They seem to use the knowledge cue as a heuristic to evaluate the proposal. We also see that the research source cue (“from Aarhus University”) adds a small additional effect on top of the effect of the knowledge cue. In other words, the cues have positive effects on the policy positions across frames.

We can also examine the effect of cues when no frame (other than the case) was added to the communication. We do so by comparing the three conditions that did not include a frame, which are presented on the left side of figure

2
. Here, the research cue (“support in recent studies”) and the research source cue (“support in studies from Aarhus University”) have substantial, positive effects on the bureaucrats’ policy positions. The research cue moves the policy position from 1.52 to 1.81 (
p < .01), corresponding to a relative change of 19 percent (0.31 standard deviation of the policy position). As expected, the research source cue moves the position even further, from 1.52 to 1.94 ( p < .01) or 28 percent (0.45 standard deviation of the policy position). The difference between the research cue and the research source cue is statistically significant at the 0.05 level. In sum, there is a substantial effect of cues on bureaucrats’ policy position.

We also find support for effects of frames in table

2
and figure

2
. Model I in table

2
shows that the frame, in alignment with professional norms (“thereby helping more disadvantaged people to get an education”), has a positive and significant effect when controlling for the cues. We also see a substantial and statistically significant effect of the frame in strong alignment with professional norms when the research and research source cues are not included. As seen in figure

2
, the professional norm frame moves the policy position from 1.52 (no frame/no cue) to 1.84 (no cue/professional norm frame). The effect is significant at the 0.01 level. The frame in strong alignment with the professional norms is also significantly different from the frame that is not in alignment with norms (“thereby increasing the activity-based budget”). Indeed, the nonprofessional norm frame again produces a boomerang effect (see table

2
, model I), suggesting that bureaucrats react with opposition if the policy is made for the sake of the economy—a frame that connects poorly with norms and may be seen as influence over practice by other stakeholders such as the governing board. In sum, as stated in hypotheses 2 and 3, both frames and cues are able to move the policy positions of the bureaucrats in the predicted direction.

However, when used in combination, the effect of frames and cues are contingent on one another. This becomes evident in model II in table

2
, which presents the interaction effects between frames and cues. While no significant interaction is seen between the professional norm frame and the cues, a negative interaction effect is seen between the nonprofessional norm frame and the cues. To help interpret this result, we turn to the three bars in the middle of figure

2
, which show the effect of cues when the nonprofessional norm frame is included in the communication. None of the nonprofessional norm frame conditions are significantly different from each other, nor are they significantly different from the control group (no frame/no cue). In other words, cues that are otherwise effective become ineffective if they are combined with the nonprofessional norm frame. Hence, if the frame is not in alignment with professional norms, the bureaucrats seem to be impervious to the cues. This provides strong evidence of the importance of providing communication in- or outside of the professional values.

The strongest influence on the policy positions is found when the professional-norm frame is combined with the research or research-source cues. In this case, the policy position is moved from 1.52 in the control group (no frame/no cue) to 2.10 (
p < .01), which is a 38 percent increase or an increase of 0.63 standard deviation of the policy positions.

Conclusion

The policy positions of bureaucrats at the front lines of government are important for their implementation of those policies. This calls for attention to what affects the policy positions of bureaucrats. We argue that bureaucrats’ policy positions are susceptible to communication despite the fact that they are likely to be predisposed toward certain policy positions, which might render them more resistant to communication effects. However, not any kind of argument will persuade bureaucrats. The effectiveness of communication is related to the professional norms of the bureaucrats. We hypothesized that communication that emphasizes the coherence between a given policy and professional norms will be more effective in moving the policy positions in favor of the policy than communication that aligns the policy with dimensions outside of the professional norms. When observing some of the main professional norms of bureaucrats across different professions and contexts, successful appeals to the needs of the clients and to research-based knowledge from credible sources are expected to move bureaucrats’ policy positions in favor of the policy.

The article presented four experimental tests of the effect of strategic communication on bureaucrats’ policy positions. The high internal validity of the survey experiments leaves us confident that in these settings bureaucrats’ attitudes are affected in predictable ways by strategic changes in the cues and frames used to present policy proposals. Policy positions are not turned around completely from negative to positive but are moved in favor of the policy, as predicted. The teachers and school principals studied were generally negative about the policies outlined in the experiments; however, the strategic communication made them, on average, less negative. At the same time, the consistent replication of the study in very different contexts and with bureaucrats at different levels of the organizations speaks for the external validity of the effects. Furthermore, the nonexistent or negative effects of alternative frames help narrow down the kind of norms to which bureaucrats respond.

Th e teachers and school principals studied were generally negative about the policies outlined in the experiments; however, the strategic communication made them, on average, less negative.

It is not possible to use this study to determine the degree to which these norms are distinctive to bureaucrats in the education system or whether they are shared more broadly among bureaucrats and citizens in general. For example, the norm of adhering to expert and research-based knowledge may very well be appealing, not only to professionals but to citizens in general as well. Thus, our argument does not claim that the studied communication effects are solely applicable to bureaucrats. In addition, the duration of the effects of communication and effects on bureaucratic behavior needs to be established in other ways than through a single survey measure. Furthermore, our tests are done within one type of policy (education), and therefore they do not provide evidence on hypothesized effects in other policy areas. We should also mention that we did not test whether effects are symmetrical in the sense that strategic communication emphasizing that a policy is violating professional norms will reduce bureaucratic support, even though this would be a clear prediction based on the theory.

Despite these limitations, the results hold important lessons for public managers. Whether they endorse the idea of manipulating bureaucrats’ policy positions through strategic communication or not, the results presented here demonstrate that the way new policies are presented is not a neutral choice. Emphasizing aspects of a policy that are in accordance with professional norms such as serving clients and using research-based evidence moves bureaucrats in favor of the policy compared with not emphasizing these aspects. On the other hand, emphasizing other concerns such as client satisfaction or economic considerations may even reduce bureaucratic support. This means that the presentation of new policies always involves a choice of whether to use specific frames and cues.

The results trigger a number of questions for further exploration. Will we find communication effects in policy areas that are less (or more) professionalized than education? We might also speculate that the credibility of the frame or cue moderates the communication effect. In particular, the sender of communication is likely to be important. We argue that the use of survey experiments may offer a fruitful way of providing parts of the answer to such questions and thereby advance our understanding of what affects the policy positions at the front lines of government.

Notes

 1 In the empirical tests, we do not examine whether the psychological mechanism is a change in the weight of different dimensions or a change in the content of these beliefs.

 2 Teachers’ perceptions of students as the main clients are easily seen from, for example, the “Ideals of the Profession” adopted by the Danish Union of Teachers (Folkeskolen 2002).

 3 The experiment was part of a web survey of all secondary school teachers in Denmark. The experiment was included for a subset of the teachers. The response rate for this subset was 52 percent.

 4 Significance tests of the differences between the nine conditions are reported in the supplementary appendix. We refer to some of these when presenting the results of figure

2
.

Biographies

·
Simon Calmar Andersen is professor in the Department of Political Science and Government, Aarhus University, Denmark, and leader of TrygFonden’s Centre for Child Research. He serves on the Advisory Research Board of the Danish National Centre for Social Research, the International Advisory Board for the Public Management Evidence Lab, City University of Hong Kong, and the board of directors of the Danish Evaluation Institute.
E-mail:

simon@ps.au.dk

·
Morten Jakobsen is associate professor in the Department of Political Science and Government, Aarhus University, Denmark. His research interests include citizen–state interactions, public employees, communication in bureaucracy, and political participation. He has published in leading public administration journals, including
Public Administration Review, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, and
International Public Management Journal.
E-mail:

mortenj@ps.au.dk

Supporting Information

References

Supporting Information

A supplementary appendix may be found in the online version of this article at

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.ezproxy.liberty.edu/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1540-6210

Citing Literature

Volume77, Issue1

January/February 2017

Pages 57-66

Figures

References

Information

Recommended

Policy Communication

Heather E. Canary

Julie L. Taylor

The International Encyclopedia of Organizational Communication, [1]

Street-level bureaucrats and policy entrepreneurship: When implementers challenge policy design

Nissim Cohen

Neomi F. Aviram

Public Administration

Policy Communication

Heather E. Canary
,

Julie L. Taylor

The Handbook of Applied Communication Research, [1]

Government Communication Effectiveness and Satisfaction with Police Performance: A Large-Scale Survey Study

Alfred Tat-Kei Ho

Wonhyuk Cho

Public Administration Review

Penetrating the Performance Predicament: Communication as a Mediator or Moderator of Organizational Culture’s Impact on Public Organizational Performance

James L. Garnett

Justin Marlowe

Sanjay K. Pandey

Public Administration Review

Download PDF

From Leadership to Citizenship Behavior in Public Organizations: When Values Matter

Show all authors

Adrian Ritz
,

David Giauque
,

Frédéric Varone
, …

First Published February 4, 2014 Research Article

https://doi-org.ezproxy.liberty.edu/10.1177/0734371X14521456

Article information

Abstract

After decades of management reforms in the public sector, questions on the impact of leadership behavior in public organizations have been attracting increasing attention. This article investigates the relationship between transformational leadership behavior and organizational citizenship behavior as one major extra-role outcome of transformational leadership. Referring to a growing body of research that shows the importance of public service values and employee identification in public administration research, we include public service motivation and organizational goal clarification as mediating variables in our analysis. Structural equation modeling is applied as the method of analysis for a sample of 569 public managers at the local level of Switzerland. The findings of our study support the assumed indirect relationship between leadership and employee behavior and emphasize the relevance of public service values when analyzing leadership behavior in public sector organizations.

Keywords

public sector leadership
,

transformational leadership
,

organizational citizenship behavior
,

public service motivation
,

public values

Introduction

Against the background of demographic change, it becomes more and more difficult for public sector organizations to keep turnover intentions low and motivation for effective performance high (

Ingraham, Selden, & Moynihan, 2000
). Not only keeping public employees’ motivation high but also increasing followers’ motivation to perform beyond what is written in the employment contract is a primary task of leadership (

Bass, 1997
). Therefore, superiors need to motivate public employees so they contribute to organizational performance in ways that shape the organizational, social, and psychological context that serves as a catalyst for task activities and processes.

Regarding such contextual performance, the degree of employee behavior that is intended to benefit the organization and that goes beyond existing role expectations is a relevant indicator of performance for public sector organizations. Even though it is well known that performance measurement in public sector organizations is one of the most challenging tasks and no broadly accepted measures exist, public management research did not make use of the insights from organizational behavior research about the importance of contextual performance. But decades of public management reforms and their not very convincing results concerning an increase of public service performance at either the organizational or the individual level (

Pollitt, 2006
) may open the doors for other perspectives on public service performance. The mostly liberalization- and market-driven management approaches have had an impact on organizational culture and leadership (

Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2004
). The range of leadership skills for public managers is growing, especially in a competitive environment (

Bass, 1985
) and leadership is a source of extra-role behaviors that reflect contextual performance (

Borman & Motowidlo, 1997
). Thus, it is of great interest if leadership behavior in public organizations shows the expected effect on contextual performance.

Many types of leadership in the public sector have been discussed extensively like, for example, leadership in policy positions and in community settings (

Van Wart, 2003
). However, leadership within public administration “… has received scant attention and would benefit from a research agenda linking explicit and well-articulated models with concrete data in public sector settings” (

Van Wart, 2003
, p. 214). This article picks up Van Wart’s claim to further explore the relationship between leadership and extra-role behavior as an embodiment for contextual performance in public sector organizations, which has not been the focus of public management research yet. The following research question is at the heart of this article: To what extent does leadership behavior directly foster contextual performance like organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) in the public sector and to what extent is it mediated by employee attitudes and perceptions like public service motivation (PSM) and goal clarity?

This research question is important for two complementary reasons. First, it is linked to distinctive behavioral and attitudinal concepts that are very relevant from a theoretical and empirical viewpoint when it comes to the debate on the effectiveness of leadership behavior in organizations (

Purcell & Hutchinson, 2007
). In public organizations, the measurement of performance is a difficult task and no broadly accepted measures exist (

Boyne, Meier, O’Toole, & Walker, 2007
;

Brewer & Selden, 2000
). Therefore, contextual performance as measured in this study is a relevant but still insufficiently researched way to assess individual performance in public organizations. Second, due to a growing body of research on distinct motives of public service employees and the relevance of values within effective leadership in public sector settings (

Paarlberg, Perry, & Hondeghem, 2008
;

Perry & Wise, 1990
;

Rainey, 1982
), this research is related to one of the most challenging practical questions regarding recent public management reforms: Does the strengthening of transformational leadership in public sector organizations foster performance related behavior of public employees? In answering these questions, we expect to contribute substantially to the current debate on administrative arguments in a time of growing demand for management reforms and leadership discretion that strengthen the performance of public organizations.

To answer our research question, first, we conduct a literature review discussing the main variables and the underlying assumptions of our study. Second, the research design and method will be presented as well as the data source. Following this, we test the theoretical model using structural equation modeling (SEM), drawing on a sample of municipal employees in Switzerland. The survey generated answers from 3,754 public employees from 279 municipalities and uses employee perceptions as a measure of the named latent constructs. Finally, the main findings are discussed and the paths for future research are presented in the conclusion.

Literature Review

Transformational Leadership and Contextual Performance

This study investigates the link between transformational leadership behavior and contextual performance in public administration. Transformational leadership as a leadership concept developed by the political scientist

Burns (1978)
characterizes leadership behavior that inspires followers to achieve extraordinary outcomes by changing their attitudes and values through the provision of both meaning and understanding and through the alignment of organizational mission and goals (

Bass & Riggio, 2006
). Four components define transformational leadership: idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration (

Bass, 1985
). Research has shown that those four leadership behaviors influence the followers’ assessment of their work environment as well as the activation of intrinsic values. (

Burns, 1978
;

House, 1977
;

Shamir, House, & Arthur, 1993
). Thus,

Bass (1985)
states that transformational leadership behaviors “stimulate followers to perform beyond the level of expectations” (p. 32) and explain individual, group, and organizational outcomes like extra-role contributions (

Bass & Avolio, 1990
). Contextual performance characterizes such extra-role behavior of employees that contributes to organizational performance in ways that shape the organizational, social, and psychological context that serves as the catalyst for task activities and processes. Contextual activities are not formally part of the job and describe discretionary behaviors such as volunteering, helping, and cooperating with others in the organization to get tasks accomplished (

Borman & Motowidlo, 1993
). Organizational research has identified diverse concepts of work behaviors that contribute to contextual performance but are often overlooked by traditional measures of work performance, such as OCB, interpersonal citizenship behavior, and pro-social behavior (

Borman & Motowidlo, 1997
;

Brief & Motowidlo, 1986
;

Organ, 1988
,

1997
;

Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Moorman, & Fetter, 1990
;

Settoon & Mossholder, 2002
;

Van Dyne, Graham, & Dienesch, 1994
). OCB is used in our research as the measure of extra-role behavior leading to contextual performance; it characterizes individual behavior that maintains and enhances the context of work that supports task performance, for example, through some form of interpersonal helping with an organizationally relevant task or problem. Such behavior, when aggregated, promotes the effective functioning of the organization and goes beyond individual role expectations (

Katz, 1964
;

Smith, Organ, & Near, 1983
).

Contextual performance such as OCB is stimulated by transformational leadership behavior because it emphasizes social exchange between leaders and followers in the form of a psychological contract (

Boerner, Eisenbeiss, & Griesser, 2007
;

Podsakoff et al., 1990
). This contract is based on meaning and identification with goals and problems of an organization and is provided by the leader. Organizational goals and team objectives, therefore, become the basis of a shared social identity enabling organizational members or “citizens” to help each other, to overlook obstacles at work in the interest of the common goal, and to engage in functions that are not primarily related to the task fulfillment (

Kark, Shamir, & Chen, 2003
;

Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Paine, & Bachrach, 2000
). Empirical evidence on the positive relationship between leadership and OCB is found by several studies (

Ilies, Nahrgang, & Morgeson, 2007
;

Podsakoff, MacKenzie, & Bommer, 1996
;

Podsakoff et al., 1990
;

Truckenbrodt, 2000
).

Although these concepts belong to some of the most prominent theories of organizational behavior research, its application within a public sector context needs to be discussed. Contextual performance is described in the introduction as one suitable approach for measuring performance in public organizations. Performance of public organizations is a widely discussed phenomenon and a common understanding does not exist yet (

Boyne et al., 2007
;

Boyne, Walker, & Brewer, 2010
). Due to the lack of objective data, most measures of organizational performance in public organizations such as outcome data from a performance management regime or policy evaluations include subjective interpretation of data and can make perceptual measures of extra-role behaviors such as OCB appropriate for public organizations (

Brewer, 2006
;

Wall et al., 2004
).

Kim (2005)
and

Koys (2001)
report empirical evidence for a positive relationship between organizational citizenship and perceived performance measures. In addition, OCB is particularly important in organizations without clear measures of output and outcome and can be seen as a process measure of performance for behaviors that lead to a given output or outcome (

Ouchi, 1979
). However, such approaches cannot serve as a proxy for the whole phenomenon of performance. Rather, they help to understand and measure one facet of the performance of a public organization, which is the goal of this article.

Transformational leadership builds, for example, on motivation through articulation of a vision and long-term goals. Public organizations are particularly characterized by ambiguous, multiple, conflicting, and vague goals (

Rainey, 1993
;

Wildavsky, 1979
). Under the assumption of greater goal ambiguity in public organizations, the relevance of contextual performance increases. Employees work and behave in an environment with less clear, sometimes contradictory and not long-term oriented objectives. Against the background of

Wilson’s (1989)
analysis of public agencies, immediate tasks have a stronger influence on individual behavior than organizational goals and public employees’ tasks might outweigh the influence of goal ambiguity to some extent (

Daft, 2010
;

Rainey, 1993
). Thus, extra-role behavior such as OCB can be a corrective in ambiguous and vague situations because individuals benefit from each other’s support and task activities get accomplished better. Furthermore, extra-role behavior in public organizations should be regarded as a construct that not only benefits the individual (e.g., helping others), but even more so it is directed toward the organization and its stakeholders. For example, whistle-blowers adhere to their public service ethic and willingly put themselves at risk to preserve the common good and further the public interest (

Brewer & Selden, 1998
) or employees promote the welfare of the organization by rule breaking, for example, to provide good customer service (

DeHart-Davis, 2007
;

Morrison, 2006
).

The Mediating Role of PSM and Goal Clarity

While some empirical research shows that leadership behavior directly influences extra-role behavior (

Ilies et al., 2007
;

Podsakoff et al., 1996
), other research indicates an indirect leadership-OCB link, mediated by employee reactions such as followers’ trust in their leaders (

Podsakoff et al., 1990
). Such employee reactions on leadership behavior can be subdivided into reactions concerning affective or attitudinal outcomes, reactions building cognitive skills, and those affecting behavior seen in discretionary behavior and task behavior (

Purcell & Hutchinson, 2007
;

Purcell, Kinnie, Hutchinson, Rayton, & Swart, 2003
). Measuring a direct relationship between transformational leadership and OCB does not include the interplay between perceived leadership behavior and affective or attitudinal employee reactions. The emphasis of transformational leadership is on the motivational potential of an organization’s mission and, thus, in the activation of attitudinal employee reactions. While transformational leadership influences extra-role behavior by changing employees’ attitudes and values through the provision of both meaning and understanding of an organization’s mission (

Burns, 1978
;

House, 1977
;

Shamir et al., 1993
), the relationship between leadership behavior and OCB in public sector organizations is assumed to be mediated by employee attitudes regarding the service and community oriented values of public organizations. PSM as an individual attitude toward specific public service values that go beyond self-interest and organizational interest (

Perry & Porter, 1982
;

Perry & Wise, 1990
;

Vandenabeele, 2007
) can therefore be characterized as an intrinsic type of motivation that gets strengthened by transformational leadership (

Wright & Pandey, 2010
). In a public sector setting, transformational leaders are value oriented in the sense that they get employees to put their interest to serve “… a community of people, a state, a nation, or humankind” (

Rainey & Steinbauer, 1999
, p. 23). Above all, the PSM dimensions commitment to the public interest, compassion, and self-sacrifice are linked to the effects that transformational leaders have on followers. The reward for public employees is primarily the satisfaction of work activities for the public good itself and that is part of a transformational leader’s inspirational motivation in a public environment (

Park & Rainey, 2008
). Thus, transformational leaders exhibit values that transcend the individual’s self-interest, such as social justice, equality, and benevolence (

Avolio & Gardner, 2005
;

Paarlberg et al., 2008
); have an impact on employee morale (

Bass, 1998
;

Dvir, Eden, Avolio, & Shamir, 2002
); and positively influence followers to engage in civic virtue (

Podsakoff, MacKenzie, & Bommer, 1996
). Such leadership behavior motivates followers “to sacrifice their own self-interest by showing followers that their self-interests are fulfilled or linked to community or higher-order needs” (

Rainey, 2009
, p. 329).

The term of citizenship, in particular, reflects the historic roots of OCB. Organ’s “good soldier syndrome” shows the similarity with civic and democratic virtues—values that form the basis of a well functioning social entity (

Denhardt & Denhardt, 2007
). Based on research finding that shows positive associations between pro-social motivation and citizenship behavior (

Coyle-Shapiro & Kessler, 2003
;

Rioux & Penner, 2001
), PSM is assumed to be positively associated with OCB. Helping co-workers and serving the organization above written role expectations can be seen as serving a community of people within the organization.

Coyle-Shapiro and Kessler (2003)
explicitly state that public service motives should be further explored as explanatory variables of OCB. The relationship between PSM and OCB has so far been tested only twice. In his research among 1,739 employees of local government agencies in the Republic of Korea,

Kim (2005)
finds a significant positive relationship between the two constructs and

Pandey, Wright, and Moynihan (2008)
show that PSM has a positive impact on helpful behaviors typically associated with OCB in their study among 173 state personnel agency employees in the United States. Other researchers have reported empirical evidence for the fostering of citizenship behavior outside the organization through PSM (

Brewer, 2003
;

Houston, 2006
).

In our model, we therefore hypothesize the following:
·
Hypothesis 1: Transformational leadership has an indirect, positive effect on OCB through its influence on public service motives.

Our second variable mediating the relationship between transformational leadership and contextual performance is goal clarity. As shown in

Rauch and Behling’s (1984)
definition of leadership, “the process of influencing the activities of an organized group toward goal achievement” (p. 46), scholars have included clear goal setting and the support of subordinates’ goal attainment in their different suggestions for effective leadership (e.g.,

Sperry, 2002
;

R. W. Terry, 2001
;

Yukl, 2008
;

Yukl & Lepsinger, 2004
). Transformational leadership as one form of effective leadership can provide greater goal clarity because leaders play an important role in the management of information and meaning by clearly communicating the mission of an organization (

Piccolo & Colquitt, 2006
) and help followers view work goals as congruent with their own values (

Bono & Judge, 2003
). Transformational leaders are able to translate their visions into tangible contributions that can be made by followers through the goal-setting process (

Whittington, Goodwin, & Murray, 2004
). Thus, leadership that can communicate effectively and model the mission of public organizations is able to align organizations and employees as well as influence those public organizations toward the achievement of their goals (

Paarlberg et al., 2008
). Due to the effect of transformational leadership behavior on employees’ understanding of an organization’s mission and its relationship with individual goals, we use goal clarity at the followers’ level as mediating variable between transformational leadership and contextual performance in our study.

OCB shows individuals’ primary goal to improve the situation of another person with an organizationally relevant task or problem. Clearer goals can contribute toward a helping behavior that supports co-workers because employees see therein a contribution to the overall goals. But research on the antecedents of OCB (

Organ, Podsakoff, & MacKenzie, 2006
;

Podsakoff et al., 2000
) does not provide results for the relationship between goal clarity and OCB. However, according to

Rainey (1993)
, one can expect OCB to be positively influenced by goal clarity while mediated through goal ambiguity. And from a perspective of social exchange theory, goal setting is a source of perceived organizational support (

Hutchison & Garstka, 1996
) that has shown to be an antecedent of OCB (

Moorman, Blakely, & Niehoff, 1998
;

Shore & Wayne, 1993
;

Wayne, Shore, & Liden, 1997
). Thus, goal clarity can be seen as one of several “positive, beneficial actions directed at employees by the organization and/or its representatives contribute to the establishment of high-quality exchange relationships that create obligations for employees to reciprocate in positive, beneficial ways” (

Settoon, Bennett, & Liden, 1996
, p. 219).

This leads us to the next hypothesis:
·
Hypothesis 2: Transformational leadership has an indirect, positive effect on OCB through its influence on goal clarity.

There is no empirical evidence for the relationship between goal clarity and PSM so far. But goal theory points to the importance of goal setting and goal commitment for the enhancement of work motivation and can be regarded as an effective motivational technique for public sector organizations (

Perry & Porter, 1982
;

Wright, 2001
,

2004
). According to

Rainey’s (1993)
theory of goal ambiguity in public organizations, goal clarification through leadership helps to reduce goal ambiguity and has an indirect positive effect on employee motivation. Thus, clearer goals “… increase the degree to which employees will incorporate the organization’s goals into their sense of identity and find meaning and self affirmation from the organization’s work” (

Moynihan, Pandey, & Wright, 2009
, p. 9). According to various definitions of PSM (

Brewer & Selden, 1998
;

Perry & Wise, 1990
;

Rainey & Steinbauer, 1999
;

Vandenabeele, 2007
), the term “service” in combination with “public” emphasizes an ethical component of service to the community based on public values. Therefore, goal clarification in direction of public values and organizational goals should strengthen this component in the identity and self-concept of public employees.

This leads to the third hypothesis:
·
Hypothesis 3: Goal clarity has a direct, positive effect on PSM.

Data and Method

Data Collection and Sample Characteristics

The data for this study were collected in a national survey of civil servants at the Swiss municipal level. Switzerland has 2,636 municipalities per January 1, 2009. A total of 1,736 municipalities in the German- and French-speaking areas were contacted by mail inviting them to take part in a national survey on the motivation of Swiss public servants. This means that, apart from the municipalities in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland, virtually all Swiss municipalities were addressed. To raise participation, the municipal authorities were promised a standardized benchmark report containing the survey’s key results. Of the municipalities contacted, 279 participated in the survey. This is only 16% of all municipalities contacted. The low response rate can be explained by the demanding request of our project. In a first step, the representative of each municipality had to respond if the municipality wants to participate and he also had to deliver first information about the employee situation within the municipality. In a second step, each representative had to deliver the questionnaires to the employees. Due to the dependency on the municipal representatives, the employees might have been empowered to participate unequally (or not empowered at all). In addition to that, Swiss municipalities are frequently surveyed, for example, by two other research projects within the same period. Thus, the rather low response rate of 16% is comprehensible. Depending on their preferences, the survey was administered online or paper-based. The municipalities were responsible for the distribution of the questionnaire to the civil servants and for reporting back to the authors on how many people the questionnaire was given. This information was important to determine the response rate accurately.
The survey was given to 9,852 civil servants. A total of 3,754 questionnaires were returned, yielding a response rate of 38.1%. Due to the fact that respondents report perceived transformational leadership, only high level managers were selected for this study, which reduced the original sample to a sample of 569 respondents. On one hand, this allows excluding low level employees whose supervisors do not have enough room for maneuver to show transformational leadership behavior. On the other hand, the superiors of high level managers in Swiss municipalities are either chief municipal managers or political appointees leading municipal departments. These are the managerial roles where transformational leadership can be expected to take place and where the origin of the concept actually comes from (

Burns, 1978
).

The representativeness of the sample for Swiss municipalities cannot be determined definitely because population characteristics for administrative employees of Swiss municipalities do not exist. However, the participating municipalities show a big variety regarding population characteristics. On one hand, the biggest city included in the sample has a total of approximately 70,000 inhabitants and 1,670 public employees. The smallest municipalities have around 50 to 100 inhabitants and employ only one public employee who is the municipal manager responsible for the municipal administration and serving the executive council. On the other hand, the 279 municipalities employ 53% men and 47% women. Fifteen percent of all employees have a middle or top management function. In our sample, there are 79% male and 21% female, which shows the overrepresentation of men in supervisory functions when compared with the full sample that has a total of 46% women and 54% men (see

Table 1
). The full sample also represents the supervisory function in the population very well with a share of 15% of all employees having a middle or top management function.

Table 1. Sample Characteristics (
N = 569).

View larger version

The average age was 47 years. The vast majority of participants hold a college or university degree including higher professional school diploma (74.6%), whereas 40.1% of these held a higher professional diploma. This shows the more professional rather than university oriented educational background in municipal administrations. As to the separation of the German-speaking and the French-speaking parts of Switzerland, an adequate measure is the respondent’s survey language. About 83.0% of the respondents used the German questionnaire and 17%, the French version. The data from 2000 about the relative distribution of languages among all inhabitants of Switzerland are as follows: 64% were German-speaking and 20% French-speaking inhabitants (

Lüdi & Werlen, 2005
). The comparison of the geographical location of the municipalities in the sample showed that 79% of the respondents worked in a Swiss German municipality and 21% in the French region whereas 72% of the Swiss population lives in the German region and 24% in the French region (

Lüdi & Werlen, 2005
). Concerning the language of municipal employees, no accurate data are available, but the comparison shows an accurate representation of respondents according to the language of the population of the country.

Measures

The following measures consist of items with response options on a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 =
strongly disagree to 5 =
strongly agree. A complete list of the items used in each measure is provided in

Appendix A
.

Transformational leadership

We used three items adapted from the transformational leadership scale (

Bass & Avolio, 1990
) relating to the “core” transformational leadership activities of developing a vision and getting employees to put the interest of the organization above their self-interest, which has been identified in earlier research (

House, 1977
). The scale reliability coefficient (Cronbach’s α) for the reduced three-item scale of transformational leadership is .87 and above the suggested threshold of .70 (

Kline, 2000
). All standardized lambda estimates range above 0.61.

PSM

The various conceptualizations of PSM have resulted in different operational definitions. In this study,

Perry’s (1996)
multidimensional measure is taken as a baseline. He developed a list of 24 items measuring four distinct subscales of PSM (Attraction to Policy Making, Commitment to the Public Interest, Compassion, and Self-Sacrifice). For the purpose of this study, we reduced the set of items to a 14-item scale that includes items for all four PSM dimensions. The 14 items were chosen based on previous research on the psychometric testing of the PSM scale (

Coursey & Pandey, 2007a
;

Coursey, Perry, Brudney, & Littlepage, 2008
;

Kim, 2008
;

Vandenabeele, 2007
) and face validity in the specific context. After model respecification, we used 6 items for the second-order construct with its dimensions of commitment to the public interest, compassion, and self-sacrifice. The attraction to public policy dimension was omitted due to low factor loading below 0.4. This is in line with

Perry et al. (2008)
, who point this out—“Also, in the few PSM confirmatory studies to date, this dimension [i.e. APM] has not fared as well as others” (p. 450)—and other authors who call this dimension insufficient, ambiguous, and value-laden (

Coursey & Pandey, 2007b
;

Kim, 2008
). For the dimension of the latent variable PSM, we conducted a confirmatory factor analysis, of which the results confirmed a three first-order and one second-order factor structure, with 2 items for each first-order factor. The fit indices fell within an acceptable range (χ2 = 19.30,
df = 6, root mean square error of approximation [RMSEA] = 0.06; comparative fit index [CFI] = 0.99; Tucker–Lewis index [TLI] = 0.96; for commitment to the public interest, compassion, and self-sacrifice, αs = .69, .51, and .54, respectively). All standardized first-order and second-order lambda estimates range above 0.62.

Organizational citizenship behavior

For this latent variable, we used measures for OCB according to

Williams and Anderson (1991)
and

Smith et al. (1983)
. The latent construct is defined by five variables of OCB directed toward individuals and toward the organization. The scale reliability coefficient (Cronbach’s α) for this latent variable is .74 and all standardized lambda estimates range above 0.41.

Goal clarity

Based on the work by

Rainey (1993)
and

Wright (2004)
, a three-item measure for goal clarity of the organization was developed. The scale reliability coefficient (Cronbach’s α) for the latent variable goal clarity was .74 and standardized lambda estimates range above 0.61.

To perform meaningful analysis of the causal model, the measures used need to display certain empirical properties. First, convergent validity, which is the degree to which individual questionnaire items measure the same underlying construct, was tested by significance of the standardized coefficient of the individual item (greater than twice its standard error;

Anderson & Gerbing, 1988
).

Appendix B
shows that all coefficients exceed twice their standard error and are highly significant. Second, discriminant validity of the factors ensures adequacy of the measurement model indicating that groups of variables measure different latent constructs. The test of interfactor correlations (see

Table 2
), which are not approaching 1.0, indicates discriminant validity. Furthermore, discriminant validity was measured by a confidence interval test for each factor, which revealed that all of the confidence intervals (correlation estimates ± two standard errors) were in between 0.066 and 0.497 and did not contain 1.0 (

Anderson & Gerbing, 1988
).

Table 2. Descriptive Statistics, Reliabilities, and Correlations.

View larger version

Data Analysis

The statistical method applied in this study was SEM using Mplus Version 6 (

Muthén & Muthén, 1998-2010
). Given the Likert-type ordinal items, the estimation is based on a weighted least square parameter (WLSMV) using a tetrachoric correlation matrix and a weight matrix together, which is particularly appropriate because it is distribution free. WLSMV is a diagonally weighted least squares (DWLS) estimation method (

Hox, Maas, & Brinkhuis, 2010
) as applied for ordinal scales in other studies (

Coursey & Pandey, 2007b
;

Vandenabeele, 2008
).

The handling of missing data can affect results of the analysis in a serious way. On one hand, missing data can reduce sample size. On the other hand, results based on data with a non-random missing data process could be biased. Only one variable had up to 1.2% missing values and only 2% of all 569 cases had missing values above the 10% threshold (

Hair, Black, Babin, & Anderson, 2009
). Therefore, we did not need to worry much about risking a high reduction of the sample size and listwise deletion of missing values was applied.

Model fit is assessed by inferential chi-square and several descriptive goodness-of-fit indices. Because the chi-square statistic is known to be inflated for samples with
n > 200 (

Kelloway, 1998
), chi-square is referred here as descriptive information rather than as a strong inferential test on which a model is accepted or rejected. In addition to chi-square, RMSEA, CFI, and TLI are consulted as fit indices. In SEM, a strict confirmatory approach has often to be given up, because the initially set up and tested model is usually rejected due to low fit.

1
Therefore, models are often modified and tested again using the same data. Except for the above mentioned modification of the 14-item scale of PSM, no further model respecification was necessary.

Results

The bivariate correlations between OCB and the three latent variables transformational leadership, goal clarity, and PSM as listed in

Table 2
(
rs = .15, .28, .39;
p < .01) provided preliminary evidence to support Hypotheses 4 and 5, which state that the latter two variables have positive relationships with OCB. The comparatively low correlation between transformational leadership and OCB gives preliminary evidence for the non-hypothesized relationship between the two variables. Supporting Hypotheses 1, 2, and 3, transformational leadership has positive relationships with PSM and goal clarity ( rs = .20, .28; p < .01) as does goal clarity with PSM ( r = .20; p < .01). The structural equation model tests the hypothesized relationships by estimating the overall fit of the model as well as the estimates of all individual parameters. The overall model fit of the hypothetical model was tested according to the generally accepted thresholds for a good model fit ( Brown & Cudeck, 1993 ; Hu & Bentler, 1999 : χ2/ df < 2.5; RMSEA < 0.06; CFI > 0.95; TLI > 0.95). The results for the hypothetical model showed good fit to the data (χ2 = 250.82;
df = 110, RMSEA = 0.05; CFI = 0.98; TLI = 0.97).

Figure 1
shows the structural model with its parameter estimates. We found the hypothesized relationships among transformational leadership, PSM, and goal clarity, as well as among PSM, goal clarity, and OCB. The coefficient of the path from transformational leadership to PSM was significant (β = .20,
p < .01), as were the coefficients of the paths from transformational leadership to goal clarity (β = .33, p < .001), from goal clarity to PSM (β = .29, p < .001), from PSM to OCB (β = .55, p < .001), and from goal clarity to OCB (β = .25, p < .001). All in all, OCB is explained by 45% of the variance. Transformational leadership and goal clarity explain 16% of PSM, and 11% of the variance of goal clarity is explained by the leadership dimension. Figure 1. Results of structural equation modeling. ** p < .01. In summary, these results support all five hypotheses. Statistically significant and positive coefficients for the direct paths from PSM and goal clarity to OCB, from transformational leadership to PSM and goal clarity as well as from goal clarity to PSM were found. In contrary to the preliminary results from bivariate correlations, the structural equation model reveals a full mediation effect of transformational leadership on OCB by the two intermediate latent variables. There is no direct effect of transformational leadership on OCB. The relationship between transformational leadership and OCB is mediated by PSM and goal clarity. Indirect effects on OCB can be observed from transformational leadership through PSM (0.11), through goal clarity (0.08), and through goal clarity and PSM (0.05). Thus, the total indirect effect via PSM and goal clarity is 0.24. Discussion This study was a response to the call to investigate leadership within public organizations using concrete data in public sector settings ( Van Wart, 2003 ). In the light of management reforms in public organizations during the last decades, the interest in leadership behavior, which is directed more toward an entrepreneurial role of supervisors, has risen. We analyzed the relationship of transformational leadership and extra-role behavior in public administrations using a sample of 569 public managers at the municipal level in Switzerland. Therefore, a structural equation model that comprehends the exogenous latent variable transformational leadership and the endogenous latent variables PSM, goal clarity, and OCB was developed. An examination of our study results shows that the stated hypotheses are confirmed. The direct, positive impacts of transformational leadership on PSM and goal clarity, as well as those from goal clarity on PSM and OCB and from PSM on OCB, go along with the assumed theoretical links based on literature research. The strongest links exist among PSM and OCB. This supports the results reported by Pandey et al. (2008) and Kim (2005) . The higher the employee’s attitudes toward public service, the more they are willing to maintain and enhance a psychological work context that supports task performance. Although this study did not measure task performance, the results lead to further investigation of the PSM-performance link. Perry and Wise (1990) argue that highly PSM motivated employees would embrace work characterized by attributes such as high task significance and this would lead to higher individual performance ( Perry, Hondeghem, & Wise, 2010 ). Our study contributes to the increasing amount of research regarding PSM and its impact on performance bearing in mind the highly important differentiation between individual and organizational performance. As stated by Perry et al. (2010) , research clarifying the link between PSM and collective performance is needed. Therefore, this study contributes to a better understanding of how PSM affects the citizenship behavior of employees and can thus influence the values and culture of a team or a work group. If this is the case, future research should investigate whether there are differences at the organizational level in regard to an organization’s level of PSM. And thus the question arises whether a higher level of PSM within a workforce leads to higher task performance of individuals as proposed by the work on contextual performance or whether it could even be that a more PSM heterogeneous workforce might have positive effects on outcome variables such as organizational performance as discussed by Petrovsky and Ritz (2010) . The second contribution of our research is related to the significance of public values and the constraints of organizational characteristics for transformational leadership in public organizations. If “… the current trend that government leaders and managers manage by contract and network—a significant departure from leading large, centralized, hierarchically arranged institutions in which the leader guides followers who are employees of their organization” ( Van Slyke & Alexander, 2006 , p. 364) is taken into account. The range of relationships increases and symbolic and value oriented forms of leadership behavior might become more effective when compared with hierarchical leadership behavior. This study contributes important insights into the causal relationships when it comes to the leadership-employee behavior link within public organizations. Public values underlying transformational leadership behavior and extra-role behavior could strengthen the relationship of both variables. Referring to Organ and Ryan (1995) , morale can be seen as one of the best predictors of extra-role contributions. In our study, Organ and Ryan’s so-called “m” factor can be explained by PSM, but more empirical evidence needs to be brought forward concerning a leader’s influence on extra-role behavior within public sector settings with specific legal and structural constraints. In relation to this issue, the rather low direct impact of transformational leadership on OCB raises questions regarding transformational leadership within a public sector setting. A reason for that could be the specific public context encompassing public employees that does not give enough room for transformational leaders to influence followers’ extra-role behavior ( Ruscio, 2004 ). Powerful forces beyond the control of individual leaders, and contextual constraints as well as political and administrative processes, may have an important influence on transformational leadership behavior, which leads to further research ( Rainey, 2009 ; L. D. Terry, 1995 ). A recently published study by Wright and Pandey (2010) shows mixed results concerning the impact of structural constraints such as red tape on transformational leadership and raises the important issue that leadership behavior might not be affected by constraints set by external authorities as much as expected. This leads us to the third contribution of this study: the enlargement of our understanding of the role of leadership when it comes to the development of culture in public organizations. Perry (2000) and Moynihan and Pandey (2007) show that institutions can foster PSM. The latter, for example, state the impact of red tape and the organization’s reform orientation toward PSM. Our study does not measure the impact of diverse organizational variables on PSM and OCB; only the leadership dimension is investigated. However, leadership behavior is one important factor, negative or positive, when discussing the influence of organizations and organizational culture on employee behavior ( Rainey, 2009 ). Leadership in public sector organizations, which develops a vision and gets employees to accept it, is therefore closely related to public service values and the development of an organizational culture infused by such values. “[S]ome of these values are also obviously relevant to public sector employees because organizational values alone will not do. The staff also has to think and act inspired by values” ( Beck Jørgensen & Bozeman, 2007 , p. 367). Our results show that transformational leadership behavior strengthens both the motivation of public employees toward institutional values such as public service values and the perception of goal clarity of the organization, which itself fosters PSM. Employees who report their leaders to be more inspirational, stimulating, and challenging for the overall job goals and whose leaders clarify organizational goals feel more bound to the public institution and to its values. And this, finally, results in higher levels of citizenship behavior of employees. From a broader perspective, this result has to be seen in relationship with the importance of cultural bases in public organizations when it comes to bureaucrats’ behavior. The value base of transformational leadership and its positive influence on employee motivation and behavior challenges the rational choice theory of bureaucracy and classical principal agent theorists who “… have missed his [Chester Barnard’s] crucial points about the efficacy of social and moral rewards in building and sustaining what are now generally referred to as ‘strong culture organizations’” ( DiIulio & DiIulio, 1994 , p. 283). Leaders can create and sustain a culture of beliefs and values that support cooperation in the name of the institution among employees because they identify with the institution and sacrifice some aspects of themselves for it ( Levitt & March, 1989 ). This study supports ways of characterizing organizations in which employee behavior is based more on social and moral rewards and values than on a narrow perspective of self-interest. Limitations and Conclusions Before concluding our study, its limitations have to be mentioned. The results of this single study with a mono-method approach, using perceived subjective data and not the full original measurement scales, should be viewed with caution. Concerns about possible common method bias in our results are justified, although the extent of common method bias in survey research is not clear ( Bagozzi & Yi, 1990 ; Doty & Glick, 1998 ; Glick, Jenkins, & Gupta, 1986 ; Spector, 1987 , 1994 ). A further developed research design with different measurement sources that distinguishes the evaluation of supervisor’s and of employee’s behavior would be more appropriate. Because of the width of our study design, with more than 1,700 municipalities having to be convinced to participate, we were not able to use more than one questionnaire. However, with our sample of 279 organizations, we could reduce bias resulting from common measurement context. Furthermore, we used empirically tested and validated scales to prevent item ambiguity and the respondents’ anonymity was protected by giving evidence that the data collection was fully accomplished by an external organization ( Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Jeong-Yeon, & Podsakoff, 2003 ). In addition, due to missing information in the questionnaire, it was not possible to identify the role of the leaders’ supervisors exactly. It would be of interest to know more about the impact of political and administrative leadership behavior on citizenship behavior. However, under these circumstances, the use of the concept “transformational leadership” is appropriate because it characterizes one type of leadership behavior that is used within research looking at political and administrative leaders. Furthermore, it can be argued that employee behavior predicts employee attitudes such as PSM or employee attitudes predict the perception of leadership behavior and not vice versa. Therefore, we tested several models to analyze whether our reported model holds our theoretical assumptions. However, due to the aforementioned mono-method approach, it is not possible to exclude interaction between these variables absolutely. Therefore, we judge our results as preliminary results for future research in the field of public sector leadership. Our research calls for more specific leadership research, especially empirical research, regarding the particular role of the public context when assessing concepts of generic and established leadership research. There are different views and a-priori expectations among scholars. One promising future research path is the in-depth investigation of the overall extent of transformational leadership in administrative settings, including comparisons with private sector organizations. A second path could further analyze what kind of specific values, for example, in regard to the work of Beck Jørgensen and Bozeman (2007) , can be transformed by transformational leadership behavior in public organizations with their contextual constraints. A third important research task is the inquiry into the relationship between leadership behavior and extra-role behavior using different samples for subordinates and followers. Finally, how do these results advance our understanding of leadership in the current debates on public management and governance research? To improve government performance, it may be necessary to make changes in governance within a comprehensive framework designed to change core values and commitments ( Lynn, Heinrich, & Hill, 2000 ). One reason for this, as our study shows, is that extra-role behavior supporting task performance increases primarily when public service values and organizational goals get fostered as an outcome of leadership behavior. Or like Paarlberg et al. (2008) put it very concretely as a tactic for administrative practice, “[e]ncourage and reward the development of leaders who communicate and model public service values” (p. 282). That does not mean that structural constraints or new managerial attempts such as strategic planning will get in the way of effective leadership ( Wright & Pandey, 2010 ). But it claims more for transformational leaders who take advantage of these management concepts and integrate them within the context of public organizations to clarify vision, strategies, and goals for followers ( Rainey & Watson, 1996 ) and strengthen a culture of beliefs and values that support cooperation in the name of the institution. Appendix A Questionnaire Items: Transformational Leadership: · My supervisor speaks enthusiastically about what has to be achieved. · My supervisor communicates a vision that motivates me. · My supervisor proposes new ways how tasks can be approached. Public Service Motivation: · It is important to me to unselfishly contribute to my community (Commitment to the public interest). · I consider public service my civic duty (Commitment to the public interest). · Most social programs are too vital to do without (Compassion). · I am often reminded by daily events about how dependent we are on one another (Compassion). · I am one of those people who would risk personal loss to help someone else (Self-Sacrifice). · It is important that people give back to society more than they get from it (Self-Sacrifice). Goal Clarity: · It is easy to explain the goals of this organization to outsiders. · The mission of this organization is clear to everybody who works here. · This organization has objectives that are clearly defined. Organizational Citizenship Behavior: · I adapt my time schedule to help other co-workers. · I try hard to help others so they can become integrated in my organization. · I read and keep up actively with developments of my organization. · I attend functions that are not required but help the company image. · I make innovative suggestions how to improve the functioning of my organization. Appendix B Factor Models Factor Models View larger version Declaration of Conflicting Interests The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Funding The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The article is based on research financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation (Project No. 100012-116083). Notes 1.First, we checked whether our analysis needed to meet the following requirements: a non-significant chi-square test for the whole model (for a perfect model), significant and high factor loadings, no modification indices (for a perfect model), a good explanation of variance, and fit indices within threshold levels. In this sense, analyzing fit indices is only one part of the overall evaluation of the model. References Anderson, J. C., Gerbing, D. W. (1988). Structural equation modeling in practice: A review and recommended two-step approach. Psychological Bulletin, 103, 411-423. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Avolio, B. J., Gardner, W. L. (2005). Authentic leadership development: Getting to the root of positive forms of leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 16, 315-338. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Bagozzi, R. P., Yi, Y. (1990). Assessing method variance in multitrait-multimethod matrices: The case of self-reported affect and perceptions at work. Journal of Applied Psychology, 75, 547-560. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Bass, B. M. (1985). Leadership and performance beyond expectations. New York, NY: Free Press. Google Scholar Bass, B. M. (1997). Does the transactional–transformational leadership paradigm transcend organizational and national boundaries? American Psychologist, 52, 130-139. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Bass, B. M. (1998). Transformational leadership: Industry, military, and educational impact. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Google Scholar Bass, B. M., Avolio, B. J. (1990). The Implications of transactional and transformational leadership for individual, team, and organizational development. In Pasmore, W., Woodman, R. W. (Eds.), Research in organizational change and development (pp. 231-272). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Google Scholar Bass, B. M., Riggio, R. E. (2006). Transformational leadership. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Google Scholar | Crossref Beck Jørgensen, T., Bozeman, B. (2007). Public values: An inventory. Administration & Society, 39, 354-381. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI Boerner, S., Eisenbeiss, S. A., Griesser, D. (2007). Follower behavior and organizational performance: The impact of transformational leaders. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 13(3), 15-26. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals Bono, J. E., Judge, T. A. (2003). Self-concordance at work: Toward understanding the motivational effects of transformational leaders. Academy of Management Journal, 46, 554-571. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Borman, W. C., Motowidlo, S. J. (1993). Expanding the criterion domain to include elements of contextual performance. In Schmitt, N., Borman, W. C. (Eds.), Personnel selection in organizations (pp. 71-98). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Google Scholar Borman, W. C., Motowidlo, S. J. (1997). Task performance and contextual performance: The meaning for personnel selection research. Human Performance, 10, 99-109. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Boyne, G. A., Meier, K. J., O’Toole, L. J., Walker, R. M. (2007). Public service performance: Perspectives on measurement and management. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Boyne, G. A., Walker, R. M., Brewer, G. A. (2010). Public management and performance: Research directions. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Brewer, G. A. (2003). Building social capital: Civic attitudes and behavior of public servants. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 13, 5-26. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Brewer, G. (2006). All measures of performance are subjective: more evidence on US federal agencies. In Boyne, G. A.. (Eds.), Public service performance: perspectives on measurement and management (pp. 35-54). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Brewer, G. A., Selden, S. C. (1998). Whistle blowers in the federal civil service: New evidence of the public service ethic. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 8, 413-440. Google Scholar | Crossref Brewer, G. A., Selden, S. C. (2000). Why elephants gallop: Assessing and predicting organizational performance in federal agencies. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 10, 685-711. Google Scholar | Crossref Brief, A. P., Motowidlo, S. J. (1986). Prosocial organizational behaviors. Academy of Management Review, 11, 710-725. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Brown, M. W., Cudeck, R. (1993). Alternative ways of assessing model fit. In Bollen, K. A., Long, J. S. (Eds.), Testing structural equation models (pp. 445-455). Newbury Park, CA: SAGE. Google Scholar Burns, J. M. (1978). Leadership. New York, NY: Harper and Row. Google Scholar Coursey, D. H., Pandey, S. K. (2007a). Content domain, measurement, and validity of the red tape concept: A second-order confirmatory factor analysis. The American Review of Public Administration, 37, 342-361. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI Coursey, D. H., Pandey, S. K. (2007b). Public service motivation measurement: Testing an abridged version of Perry’s proposed scale. Administration & Society, 39, 547-568. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI Coursey, D. H., Perry, J. L., Brudney, J. L., Littlepage, L. (2008). Psychometric verification of Perry’s public service motivation instrument: Results for volunteer exemplars. Review of Public Personnel Administration, 28, 79-90. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI Coyle-Shapiro, J. A. M., Kessler, I. (2003). The employment relationship in the U.K. public sector: A psychological contract approach. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 13, 213-230. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Daft, R. L. (2010). Organization theory and design. Cincinnati, OH: South Western Publisher. Google Scholar DeHart-Davis, L. (2007). The unbureaucratic personality. Public Administration Review, 67, 892-903. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Denhardt, J. V., Denhardt, R. B. (2007). The new public service: Serving, not steering. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Google Scholar DiIulio, J. D., DiIulio, J. J. (1994). Principled agents: The cultural bases of behavior in a federal government bureaucracy. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 4, 277-318. Google Scholar Doty, H. D., Glick, W. H. (1998). Common methods bias: Does common methods variance really bias results? Organizational Research Methods, 1, 374-406. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI Dvir, T., Eden, D., Avolio, B. J., Shamir, B. (2002). Impact of transformational leadership on follower development and performance: A field experiment. Academy of Management Journal, 45, 735-744. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Glick, W. H., Jenkins, J. G. D., Gupta, N. (1986). Method versus substance: How strong are underlying relationships between job characteristics and attitudinal outcomes? Academy of Management Journal, 29, 441-464. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Hair, J. F., Black, W. C., Babin, B. J., Anderson, R. E. (2009). Multivariate data analysis. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Google Scholar House, R. J. (1977). A 1976 theory of charismatic leadership. In Hunt, J. G., Larson, L. L. (Eds.), Leadership: The cutting edge (pp. 189-207). Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press. Google Scholar Houston, D. J. (2006). “Walking the walk” of public service motivation: Public employees and charitable gifts of time, blood, and money. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 16, 67-86. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Hox, J. J., Maas, C. J. M., Brinkhuis, M. J. S. (2010). The effect of estimation method and sample size in multilevel structural equation modeling. Statistica Neerlandica, 64, 157-170. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Hu, L.-T., Bentler, P. M. (1999). Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: Conventional criteria versus new alternatives. Structural Equation Modeling, 6, 1-55. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Hutchison, S., Garstka, M. L. (1996). Sources of perceived organizational support: Goal setting and feedback. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 26, 1351-1366. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Ilies, R., Nahrgang, J. D., Morgeson, F. P. (2007). Leader-member exchange and citizenship behaviors: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92, 269-277. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | ISI Ingraham, P. W., Selden, S. C., Moynihan, D. P. (2000). People and performance: Challenges for the future public service—The report from the Wye River Conference. Public Administration Review, 60, 54-60. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Kark, R., Shamir, B., Chen, G. (2003). The two faces of transformational leadership: Empowerment and dependency. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88, 246-255. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | ISI Katz, D. (1964). The motivational basis of organizational behavior. Behavioral Science, 9, 131-133. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline Kelloway, K. E. (1998). Using LISREL for structural equation modeling: A researcher’s guide. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Google Scholar Kim, S. (2005). Individual-level factors and organizational performance in government organizations. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 15, 245-261. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Kim, S. (2008). Revising Perry’s measurement scale of public service motivation. The American Review of Public Administration, 39, 149-163. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI Kline, P. (2000). The handbook of psychological testing. London, England: Routledge. Google Scholar Koys, D. J. (2001). The effects of employee satisfaction, organizational citizenship behavior, and turnover on organizational effectiveness: A unit-level, longitudinal study. Personnel Psychology, 54, 101-114. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Levitt, B., March, J. G. (1989). Chester I. Barnard and the intelligence of learning. In Williamson, O. (Ed.), Organization theory: From Chester I. Barnard to the present and beyond (pp. 11-37). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Lüdi, G., Werlen, I. (2005). Sprachenlandschaft in der Schweiz: Eidgenössische Volkszählung 2000 [Languages in Switzerland: Federal census 2000]. Neuchatel, Switzerland: Bundesamt für Statistik. Google Scholar Lynn, L. E., Heinrich, C. J., Hill, C. J. (2000). Studying governance and public management: Why? How? In Heinrich, C. J., Lynn, L. E. (Eds.), Governance and performance: New perspectives (pp. 2-34). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Google Scholar Moorman, R. H., Blakely, G. L., Niehoff, B. P. (1998). Does perceived organizational support mediate the relationship between procedural justice and organizational citizenship behavior? Academy of Management Journal, 41, 351-357. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Morrison, E. W. (2006). Doing the job well: An investigation of pro-social rule breaking. Journal of Management, 32, 5-28. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI Moynihan, D. P., Pandey, S. K. (2007). The role of organizations in fostering public service motivation. Public Administration Review, 67, 40-53. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Moynihan, D. P., Pandey, S. K., Wright, B. E. (2009, June 7-9). Pulling the levers: Leadership, public service motivation and mission valence. Paper prepared for the International Public Service Motivation Research Conference, Bloomington, IN. Google Scholar Muthén, L. K., Muthén, B. O. (1998-2010). Mplus user’s guide (6th ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Author. Google Scholar Organ, D. W. (1988). Organizational citizenship behavior: The “good soldier” syndrome. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books. Google Scholar Organ, D. W. (1997). Organizational citizenship behavior: It’s construct clean-up time. Human Performance, 10, 85-97. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Organ, D. W., Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B. (2006). Organizational citizenship behavior: Its nature, antecedents, and consequences. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Google Scholar | Crossref Organ, D. W., Ryan, K. (1995). A meta-analytic review of attitudinal and dispositional predictors of organizational citizenship behavior. Personnel Psychology, 48, 775-802. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Ouchi, W. G. (1979). A conceptual framework for the design of organizational control mechanisms. Management Science, 25, 833-848. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Paarlberg, L. E., Perry, J. L., Hondeghem, A. (2008). From theory to practice: Strategies for applying public service motivation. In Perry, J. L., Hondeghem, A. (Eds.), Motivation in public management: The call of public service (pp. 268-293). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Pandey, S. K., Wright, B. E., Moynihan, D. P. (2008). Public service motivation and interpersonal citizenship behavior in public organizations: Testing a preliminary model. International Public Management Journal, 11, 89-108. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Park, S. M., Rainey, H. G. (2008). Leadership and public service motivation in U.S. Federal Agencies. International Public Management Journal, 11, 109-142. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Perry, J. L. (1996). Measuring public service motivation: An assessment of construct reliability and validity. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 6, 5-22. Google Scholar | Crossref Perry, J. L. (2000). Bringing society in: Toward a theory of public-service motivation. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 10, 471-488. Google Scholar | Crossref Perry, J. L., Brudney, J. L., Coursey, D., Littlepage, L. (2008). What drives morally committed citizens? A study of the antecedents of public service motivation. Public Administration Review, 68, 445-458. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Perry, J. L., Hondeghem, A., Wise, L. R. (2010). Revisiting the motivational bases of public service: Twenty years of research and an agenda for the future. Public Administration Review, 70, 681-690. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Perry, J. L., Porter, L. W. (1982). Factors affecting the context for motivation in public organizations. Academy of Management Review, 7, 89-98. Google Scholar | Crossref Perry, J. L., Wise, L. R. (1990). The motivational bases of public service. Public Administration Review, 50, 367-373. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Petrovsky, N., Ritz, A. (2010, July 16). Do motivated elephants gallop faster? Testing the effect of public service motivation on government performance at the individual and organizational levels. Paper presented at International Workshop Public Service Motivation and Public Performance in a Globalized World, Wuhan/Xi’an, China. Google Scholar Piccolo, R. F., Colquitt, J. A. (2006). Transformational leadership and job behaviors: The mediating role of core job characteristics. Academy of Management Journal, 49, 327-340. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B., Bommer, W. H. (1996). Transformational leader behaviors and substitutes for leadership as determinants of employee satisfaction, commitment, trust, and organizational citizenship behaviors. Journal of Management, 22, 259-298. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B., Jeong-Yeon, L., Podsakoff, N. P. (2003). Common method biases in behavioral research: A critical review of the literature and recommended remedies. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88, 879-903. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | ISI Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B., Moorman, R. H., Fetter, R. (1990). Transformational leader behaviors and their effects on followers’ trust in leader, satisfaction, and organizational citizenship behaviors. The Leadership Quarterly, 1, 107-142. Google Scholar | Crossref Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B., Paine, J. B., Bachrach, D. G. (2000). Organizational citizenship behaviors: A critical review of the theoretical and empirical literature and suggestions for future research. Journal of Management, 26, 513-563. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI Pollitt, C. (2006). Performance management in practice: A comparative study of executive agencies. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 16, 25-44. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Pollitt, C., Bouckaert, G. (2004). Public management reform: A comparative analysis (2nd ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Purcell, J., Hutchinson, S. (2007). Front-line managers as agents in the HRM-performance causal chain: Theory, analysis and evidence. Human Resource Management Journal, 17, 3-20. Google Scholar | Crossref Purcell, J., Kinnie, N., Hutchinson, S., Rayton, B., Swart, J. (2003). Understanding the people and performance link: Unlocking the black box. London, England: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Google Scholar Rainey, H. G. (1982). Reward preferences among public and private managers: In search of the service ethic. The American Review of Public Administration, 16, 288-302. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals Rainey, H. G. (1993). Toward a theory of goal ambiguity in public organizations. In Perry, J. L. (Ed.), Research in public administration (pp. 121-166). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Google Scholar Rainey, H. G. (2009). Understanding and managing public organizations (4th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Google Scholar Rainey, H. G., Steinbauer, P. (1999). Galloping elephants: Developing elements of a theory of effective government organizations. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 9, 1-32. Google Scholar | Crossref Rainey, H. G., Watson, S. A. (1996). Transformational leadership and middle management: Towards a role for mere mortals. International Journal of Public Administration, 19, 763-800. Google Scholar | Crossref Rauch, C. F., Behling, O. (1984). Functionalism: Basis for an alternate approach to the study of leadership. In Hunt, J. G., Hosking, D. M., Schriesheim, C. A., Stewart, R. (Eds.), Leaders and managers: International perspectives on managerial behavior and leadership (pp. 45-62). Elmsford, NY: Pergamon Press. Google Scholar | Crossref Rioux, S. M., Penner, L. A. (2001). The causes of organizational citizenship behavior: A motivational analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86, 1306-1314. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | ISI Ruscio, K. P. (2004). The leadership dilemma in modern democracy. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. Google Scholar Settoon, R. P., Bennett, N., Liden, R. C. (1996). Social exchange in organizations: Perceived organizational support, leader–member exchange, and employee reciprocity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 81, 219-227. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Settoon, R. P., Mossholder, K. W. (2002). Relationship quality and relationship context as antecedents of person- and task-focused interpersonal citizenship behavior. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 255-267. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | ISI Shamir, B., House, R. J., Arthur, M. B. (1993). The motivational effects of charismatic leadership: A self-concept based theory. Organizations Science, 4, 578-594. Google Scholar | ISI Shore, L. M., Wayne, S. J. (1993). Commitment and employee behavior: Comparison of affective commitment and continuance commitment with perceived organizational support. Journal of Applied Psychology, 78, 774-780. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | ISI Smith, C. A., Organ, D. W., Near, J. P. (1983). Organizational citizenship behavior: Its nature and antecedents. Journal of Applied Psychology, 68, 653-663. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Spector, P. E. (1987). Method variance as an artifact in self-reported affect and perceptions at work: Myth or significant problem? Journal of Applied Psychology, 72, 438-443. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Spector, P. E. (1994). Using self-report questionnaires in OB research: A comment on the use of a controversial method. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 15, 385-392. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Sperry, L. (2002). Effective leadership: Strategies for maximizing executive productivity and health. New York, NY: Brunner-Routledge. Google Scholar Terry, L. D. (1995). Leadership of public bureaucracies: The administrator as conservator. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Google Scholar Terry, R. W. (2001). Seven zones for leadership: Acting authentically in stability and chaos. Palo Alto, CA: Davies-Black Publishing. Google Scholar Truckenbrodt, Y. B. (2000, Summer). The relationship between leader-member exchange and commitment and organizational citizenship behavior. Acquisition Review Quarterly, pp. 233-244. Google Scholar Vandenabeele, W. (2007). Towards a public administration theory of public service motivation: An institutional approach. Public Management Review, 9, 545-556. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Vandenabeele, W. (2008). Development of a public service motivation measurement scale: Corroborating and extending Perry’s measurement instrument. International Public Management Journal, 11, 143-167. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Van Dyne, L., Graham, J. W., Dienesch, R. M. (1994). Organizational citizenship behavior: Construct redefinition, measurement, and validation. Academy of Management Journal, 37, 765-802. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Van Slyke, D. M., Alexander, R. W. (2006). Public service leadership: Opportunities for clarity and coherence. The American Review of Public Administration, 36, 362-374. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI Van Wart, M . (2003). Public-sector leadership theory: An assessment. Public Administration Review, 63, 214-228. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Wall, T. D., Michie, J., Patterson, M., Wood, S. J., Sheehan, M., Clegg, C. W., West, M. A. (2004). On the validity of subjective measures of company financial performance. Personnel Psychology, 57, 95-118. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Wayne, S. J., Shore, L. M., Liden, R. C. (1997). Perceived organizational support and leader-member exchange: A social exchange perspective. Academy of Management Journal, 40, 82-111. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Whittington, J. L., Goodwin, V. L., Murray, B. (2004). Transformational leadership, goal difficulty, and job design: Independent and interactive effects on employee outcomes. The Leadership Quarterly, 15, 593-606. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Wildavsky, A. (1979). Speaking truth to power. Boston, MA: Little, Brown. Google Scholar Williams, L. J., Anderson, S. E. (1991). Job satisfaction and organizational commitment as predictors of organizational citizenship and in-role behaviors. Journal of Management, 17, 601-617. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI Wilson, J. Q. (1989). Bureaucracy: What government agencies do and why they do it. New York, NY: Basic Books. Google Scholar Wright, B. E. (2001). Public-sector work motivation: A review of the current literature and a revised conceptual model. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 11, 559-586. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Wright, B. E. (2004). The role of work context in work motivation: A public sector application of goal and social cognitive theories. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 14, 59-78. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Wright, B. E., Pandey, S. K. (2010). Transformational leadership in the public sector: Does structure matter? Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 20, 75-89. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Yukl, G. (2008). How leaders influence organizational effectiveness. The Leadership Quarterly, 19, 708-722. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI Yukl, G., Lepsinger, R. (2004). Flexible leadership. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Google Scholar Author Biographies Adrian Ritz is a professor at the Center of Competence for Public Management, University of Bern, Switzerland. His research focuses on leadership, motivation and performance of public employees, human resources management, and performance management. David Giauque is a professor at the University of Lausanne, member of the Institute of Political and International Studies. His research mainly concerns sociology of organizations and public administrations, public management, motivation and values, reforms, and their consequences in the public sector. Frédéric Varone is a professor of political science at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. His research focuses on comparative policy analysis, program evaluation, and public sector reforms. Simon Anderfuhren-Biget obtained a PhD in political science and is currently a lecturer at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. His research interests include human resource management, organizational behavior, and value-laden work motivation in the non-profit sector, public administrations, and international organizations.

Communication in Public Organizations

Shalom and welcome to our presentation for week 3. In PAD 6, ten. This week’s presentation will be on communication and public organizations. And bow from a formal and informal communication channel, as well as how we manage conflict within organizations. So what’s communication? It is the process by which information is exchanged and how it’s understood by two or more people. So you have the sender of the communication and the receiver. And the intent of communication is to motivate or influence how people behave during and after that information that is exchanged. Herbert Simon says without communication, there can be no organization. The administration of organizations continuous and its function. Communication is to sustain this continuity. So one other important questions that we must ask when we analyze communication structures. One, How’s that information passed to each of the structures? How does the communication process affect affect the outcome of that communication? Who has direct access to that information that’s being communicated? Do our members involved in that communication channel have an equal role in transmitting that information. And what are the advantages and disadvantages? Advantages of each structure in the process. So let’s look at communication, the classical organization. What I mean by that is communication. Within a bureaucratic, traditional bureaucratic organization. From theoretical standpoint, the content usually of communication in this classic bureaucratic public organization, a task-based, it’s done for maintaining the organization and keeping it running. The direction of communications normally downloaded from top-level manager, public managers to employees below. The communication. That is written is the pervasive channel that’s used through memos, through e-mails, through policy documents and so forth. The style of communication is very formal and it’s very distant since it is downward and it is not person, that person, but it is Bye. Written form. In this traditional model of communication, it’s rational, task-oriented, and usually written, the social side of the communication is less important. What’s more important is the content in the communication itself. Structured roles defined the expectation that everyone has a certain role in that communication. And those expectations are determined by the person’s position, whether they’re a manager or an employee. At a lower level. Much of the feedback from employees and the use of the grapevine forms a big part of a great part of the communication pattern in the human relations model. So what does the Bible tell us about communication? There are many verses that, that tell us Ephesians 429 states, Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth. But that which is good to the use of edifying that may minister grace onto the heart’s. Hebrews 412 states, Word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword. Piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the joints and marrow of the Cerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. James 119, very important. Wherefore my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak. So the RAF, I guess that’s why the Lord gave us two ears and one mouth. He was trying to tell us something. Colossians, let your speed, speech always be with grace, season with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer every man. So we need to look toward the Bible because that can give us a way that we should be treating others during communication. The human resources model, as we discussed, is more behavioral and it’s more team-oriented. And information. And the feedback that’s delivered is both done up and down the communication channel and it’s done freely. Communication is not just formal, it can be informal as well. And that in order to perform in this model of communication, it requires great communication skills by all those involved and assist more of a systems model. The communications really influenced by the situation. And there must be greater flexibility in the systems model of human creation. The transformational model is more horizontal communication. It’s more like a matrix organization, where it’s also upward and downward. And much communication as electronic through email. As we said, that communication can be both upward and downward as well. Depending on the type of model that you use in the class at bureaucratic organization, unfortunately, as we said, the communication model that’s used is one where it’s more downward from the leader. And very little is unstructured. It’s very formalized. So let’s look at McGregor’s Theory X and Y. Under a theory X. Douglas McGregor states that message has traveled downward. That’s, as I said, traditional bureaucratic formalized model. There’s much fear and distress of the management, which there should be because it’s only one way. Communication is always downward. There’s no evidence or opportunity to communicate back the other way. Decisions are always made by top management. There is no involvement or participatory management involved. And in that model, theory X, McGregor’s Theory Y is much more important. Under Theory Y, messages travel up and down and at decisions are shared. And based on input at all levels. And that feedback, feedback is very much encouraged. This much confidence and trust among public leaders in the organization and the employees. The downward messages that are sent a very much since the employees are involved, very much satisfied their needs. And that as I said, this decision-making is at all levels. Formal communication is based, as we said, is based on rent rolls. And it’s really the, the central core feature of public administration. Much of it is involved in the administrative hierarchy. As Max Weber talked about, what a bureaucracy is. And that’s one of the characteristics of communication and the bureaucracy. Nonverbal communication is when messages are sent through human actions and behavior rather than through words. And this usually happens face-to-face as well. And his model or theory of communication, stay safe. Administration of government is very complex. And as a result, that this administration increases with time and requires a great deal of involvement from those at all levels of the bureaucracy. People that are involved in this communication have to be prepared to communicate. Otherwise, communication will not be effect. As you know, in public organizations, groups are very important, whether it’s teams, committees, and so forth, or other types of group structures. The group formation can either be voluntary or involuntary. Managers often create these committees or, or teams to work on projects or the solve problems. Groups are also involuntary, whether the employees themselves will form groups. To improve their, their effectiveness and to work on projects or problems. French and Raven in 1968 came up with a topology about groups. There is a coercive power, reward power, legitimate power, referent power, and expert power. We know that as groups form, that there are standards that develop within those groups which in turn influence group behavior. So it’s just part of the theory of groups that no matter whether informal groups are formal groups, we know that there’ll be some format that’ll be established to guide those groups. The groups can actually outperform the individuals within groups. And sometimes the dynamics of those groups can motivate individuals. Groups are effective because they can foster knowledge and creativity. However, effective leaders can have an impact on group behavior and foster that knowledge and that creativity. Groups can also stifle individual opinions on that, something called groupthink. There’s often conflict in public organizations. That conflict can be good conflict, that conflict, conflict can cause or how about from poor communication. The way out of that conflict is to effectively communicate between public leaders and employees. So as a public administration administrator, rather, your job is to help and work through those very complex communication channels and to help solve those conflicts using those communication channels. There’s a conflict is inevitable, unexpected, and that conflict should be healthy conflict. There’s much political competition and policy dilemmas in organization that cause conflict. As you know, agencies vie for resources they buy for funding, a five for legislation. And there are turf battles which creates conflict. Also just the Constitution itself separates the powers of government. And as a result, these checks and balances, this causes conflict as well. Not only is there a conflict between individuals that can be conflict within an individual as well? The conflict can be horizontal and it can be vertical. It can be between employees. Between public managers or between managers and employees. There are different reasons for conflict. Different goals, different values, different cultures, different priorities. We know that public organizations are very diverse and people have different backgrounds and characteristics and the result, it causes conflict. And not only that, but the public that they serve also as different many ways. And this can cause conflict. To develop policy and programs to to help serve the public. All these changes in not only public organization, but also in the public itself is healthy and needs to be solved. The best form of communication as face-to-face and public managers must practice management by walking around and you can sit in your office and communicate with people electronically. Too much use of e-mail is becomes the norm and the public organization and can cause many problems in terms of conflict and communication. Conflicts within those organizations. So what are the barriers to communication? One barrier is an interpersonal barrier, which includes problems with emotions and perceptions that employees whole. Another barrier is using wrong channel to send the message. Maybe an informal channel is better than the formal channel. Semantics, how one expresses that message and maybe sending inconsistent keys that can occur when you’re sending nonverbal messages. There are also organizational barriers, status and power differences between different levels in the organization, between different needs and goals that maybe the employees, the public leader, or a public administrator and the public itself does can be in conflict and form a barrier to communicating effectively. There may not be formal channels to communicate. So communication has to be done informally. So how do we overcome communication barriers? One is through individual skills, how we communicate to one another. Another one is through active listening. Rather than speaking, we should listen to what the other person has to say and act on it. Another way is through selecting the appropriate channel for the message. Using an appropriate channels can heighten the conflict beyond repair. The other way is to understand each other’s perspective not only between employees but between managers and employees. Employee sometimes to understand the public managers perspective and what he or she has to deal with in terms of making their decisions. So by communicating those between those two groups that can prevent barriers from occurring. Now otherwise, your organizational actions, changes in the organization making it less formal, making it less bureaucratic, more involvement from employees, more groups. In terms of involvement from groups and decision-making. Creating trust and openness in the organization is another way as well. To overcome these barriers and encouraging use a multiple channels, both formal and informal. Making sure that the organizational structure fits the communication needs. And that ends our presentation on communication. There are some articles that are available for you to read. Here are some of the sources where this information was derived.

Interagency Communication Networks During Emergencies: Boundary Spanners in Multiagency Coordination

Naim Kapucu

First Published June 1, 2006 Research Article

https://doi-org.ezproxy.liberty.edu/10.1177/0275074005280605

Article information

Abstract

This article examines the problem of effective interagency communication among organizations and the role of information technologies to achieve effective communication and decision-making goals in emergencies. It explores what factors contribute to effective interorganizational communication and decision making and what factors inhibit their development. The theoretical framework draws on the literature of emergency communication and social capital, with a particular focus on communication and decision making under conditions of uncertainty. The study applies this framework to study the relationships that emerged among public, private, and non-profit organizations following the World Trade Center disaster on September 11, 2001, in New York City. The article indicates the importance of developing a strong communication system with other organizations before a disaster occurs to establish appropriate communication in which effective interagency coordination will take place at the time of a disaster.

Keywords

interorganizational communication

emergency communication

social capital

boundary spanners

network organizations

crisis and emergency management

Adams, D. (1969). Emergency actions and disaster reactions: An analysis of the Anchorage public works department in the 1969 Alaska earthquake. Columbus: The Ohio State University, Department of Sociology Disaster Research Center.

Google Scholar

Agranoff, R. , & McGuire, M. (1998). The intergovernmental context of local economic development. State and Local Government Review, 30(3), 150-164.

Google Scholar
|

SAGE Journals

Agranoff, R. , & McGuire, M. (2003). Collaborative public management: New strategies for local governments. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

Google Scholar

Axelrod, R. , & Cohen, M. D. (1999). Harnessing complexity: Organizational implications of a scientific frontier. New York: Free Press.

Google Scholar

Berry, F. S. , Brower, R. S. , Choi, O. S. , Goa, W. X. , Jang, H. , & Kwon, M. (2004). Three traditions of network research: What the public management research agenda can learn from other research communities. Public Administration Review, 64(5), 539-552.

Google Scholar
|

Crossref

Bloomberg, M. R. , & Bruno, J. F. (n.d.) Keeping New York prepared: An overview of the New York City Office of Emergency Management (NYCOEM). Retrieved February 18, 2004, from the official New York City Web site:

http://www.nyc.gov/html/oem/pdf/oem_briefing_document

Google Scholar

Borgatti, S. P. , Everett, M. G. , & Freeman, L. C. (2002). UCINET (Version 6.0) [Computer software]. Harvard, MA: Analytic Technologies.

Google Scholar

Brown, T. M. , & Miller, C. E. (2000). Communication networks in task-performing groups: Effect of task complexity, time pressure, and interpersonal dominance. Small Group Research, 31(2), 131-157.

Google Scholar
|

SAGE Journals

Burt, R. S. (1992). Structural holes: The social structure of competition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Google Scholar
|

Crossref

Carley, K. M. (1999). On the evolution of social and organizational networks. In S. B. Andrews & D. Knoke (Eds.), Research in the Sociology of Organizations: Vol. 16. Networks in and around organizations (pp. 3-30). Stamford, CT: JAI.

Google Scholar

Cohen, S. , Eimicke, W. , & Horan, J. (2002). Catastrophe and the public service: A case study of the government response to the destruction of the World Trade Center. Public Administration Review, 62, 24-32.

Google Scholar
|

Crossref

Coleman, J. (1990). Foundations of social theory. Cambridge, MA: Belknap.

Google Scholar

Comfort, L. K. (1999). Shared risk: Complex systems in seismic response. New York: Pergamon.

Google Scholar

Comfort, L. K. , & Kapucu, N. (in press). Interorganizational coordination in extreme events: The World Trade Center attack, September 11, 2001. Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards.

Google Scholar

Dynes, R. R. , & Quarantelli, E. L. (1977). Organizational communications and decision making in crisis. Columbus: The Ohio State University, Department of Sociology Disaster Research Center.

Google Scholar

Everett, M. G. , & Borgatti, S. P. (1999). The centrality of groups and classes. Journal of Mathematical Sociology, 23(3), 181-201.

Google Scholar
|

Crossref

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) . (1999). Federal Response Plan. Washington, DC: Author. Available from FEMA Web site:

http://www.fema.gov

Google Scholar

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) . (2001, September to October). National situation updates. Washington, DC: Author. Available from FEMA Web site:

http://www.fema.gov/emanagers/2001/

Google Scholar

Fitzpatrick, C. , & Mileti, D. S. (1994). Public risk communication. In R. R. Dynes & K. J. Tierney (Eds.), Disasters, collective behavior, and social organizations (pp. 71-84). Newark: University of Delaware Press.

Google Scholar

Fountain, J. E. (2001). Building the virtual state: Information technology and institutional change. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.

Google Scholar

Graber, A. D. (2003). The power of communication: Managing information in public organizations. Washington, DC: CQ.

Google Scholar
|

Crossref

Granovetter, M. (1973). The strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78, 1360-1380.

Google Scholar
|

Crossref

Haddow, G. D. , & Bullock, J. A. (2003). Introduction to emergency management. Newton, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann.

Google Scholar

Hardin, R. (1982). Collective action. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press for Resources for the Future.

Google Scholar

Kapucu, N. (2003). Public-nonprofit partnerships (PNP) in dynamic context: The World Trade Center attack in New York City, September 11, 2001. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, PA.

Google Scholar

Kettl, D. F. (2004). System under stress: Homeland security and American politics. Washington, DC: CQ.

Google Scholar

Kickert, W. J. M. , Klijn, E-H. , & Koopanjan, J. F. M. (Eds.). (1997). Managing complex networks: Strategies for the public sector. London: Sage.

Google Scholar

Knuth, R. (1999). Sovereignty, globalism, and information flow in complex emergencies. The Information Society, 15(11), 11-19.

Google Scholar
|

Crossref

Levinson, J. , & Granot, H. (2002). Transportation disaster response handbook. New York: Academic Press.

Google Scholar

Mandell, M. P. (Ed.) (2001). Getting results through collaborations: Networks and network structures for public policy and management. Westport, CT: Quorum.

Google Scholar

National Research Council . (2002). Making the nation safer: The role of science and technology in countering terrorism. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Google Scholar

Nohria, N. , & Eccles, R. (Eds.). (1992). Networks and organizations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

Google Scholar

Peterson, K. (2003, August 20). Kansas City develops Internet-based security system. Retrieved December 17, 2003, from

http://www.ncsl.org/terrorism/kansas.htm

Google Scholar

Quarantelli, E. L. (1997). Problematic aspects of information/communication revolution for disaster planning and research: Ten nontechnical issues and questions. Disaster Prevention and Management Journal, 6(2), 94-106.

Google Scholar
|

Crossref

Rethmeyer, K. R. (2005). Conceptualizing and measuring networks. Public Administration Review, 65(1), 117-121.

Google Scholar
|

Crossref

Rice, R. E. (1990). From adversary to diversity: Applications of communication technologies to crisis management. Advances in Telecommunications Management, 3, 91-112.

Google Scholar

Scott, J. (2000). Social network analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Google Scholar

Scott, W. R. (2001). Organizations: Rational, natural, and open systems. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Google Scholar

Seeger, M. W. , Sellow, T. L. , & Ulmer, R. R. (2003). Communication and organizational crisis. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Google Scholar

Thompson, J. D. (1967). Organizations in action: Social science bases of administrative theory. New York: McGraw Hill.

Google Scholar

Wasserman, S. , & Faust, K. (1994). Social network analysis: Methods and applications. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Google Scholar
|

Crossref

Waugh, W. (2000). Living with hazards, dealing with disasters: An introduction to emergency management.New York: ME Sharpe.

Google Scholar

Williams, P. (2002). The competent boundary spanner. Public Administration, 80(1), 103-125.

Google Scholar
|

Crossref

Wilson, J. Q. (1989). Bureaucracy: What government agencies do and why they do it. New York: Basic Books.

Google Scholar

Continue to order Get a quote

Calculate the price of your order

Type of paper needed:

Pages:

550 words

Academic level:

We'll send you the first draft for approval by September 11, 2018 at 10:52 AM

Total price:

$26

The price is based on these factors:

Academic level

Number of pages

Urgency

Basic features

Free title page and bibliography
Unlimited revisions
Plagiarism-free guarantee
Money-back guarantee
24/7 support

On-demand options

Writer’s samples
Part-by-part delivery
Overnight delivery
Copies of used sources
Expert Proofreading

Paper format

275 words per page
12 pt Arial/Times New Roman
Double line spacing
Any citation style (APA, MLA, Chicago/Turabian, Harvard)

Our guarantees

Delivering a high-quality product at a reasonable price is not enough anymore.
That’s why we have developed 5 beneficial guarantees that will make your experience with our service enjoyable, easy, and safe.

Money-back guarantee

You have to be 100% sure of the quality of your product to give a money-back guarantee. This describes us perfectly. Make sure that this guarantee is totally transparent.

Zero-plagiarism guarantee

Each paper is composed from scratch, according to your instructions. It is then checked by our plagiarism-detection software. There is no gap where plagiarism could squeeze in.

Free-revision policy

Thanks to our free revisions, there is no way for you to be unsatisfied. We will work on your paper until you are completely happy with the result.

Confidentiality Guarantee

Your email is safe, as we store it according to international data protection rules. Your bank details are secure, as we use only reliable payment systems.

Fair-cooperation guarantee

By sending us your money, you buy the service we provide. Check out our terms and conditions if you prefer business talks to be laid out in official language.

24/7 Support

Our specialists are always online to help you! We are available 24/7 via live chat, WhatsApp, and phone to answer questions, correct mistakes, or just address your academic fears.

See our T&Cs

Live Chat +1(978) 822-0999 Email WhatsApp

Position Paper Assignment

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Calculate the price of your order

Our guarantees

Money-back guarantee

Zero-plagiarism guarantee

Free-revision policy

Confidentiality Guarantee

Fair-cooperation guarantee

24/7 Support