Institutional theory posits that exposure to coercive, mimetic, and normative institutional pressures drives convergence in organizational forms and practices (Meyer & Rowan, 1977; DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). In this view, public organizations’ implementation of structural changes is intended to enhance legitimacy by conforming to key stakeholders' expectations (Ashworth et al., 2009). Although public management research emphasizes the importance of individual professionals' preferences, institutional theory's application to public sector organizational change remains limited to macro-level analyses (Bellé et al., 2019). This study examines the effects of coercive, mimetic, and normative isomorphic pressures on professional employees' change preferences, thereby advancing a micro-foundational perspective to inform situational mechanisms of new institutional theory (Hedström & Swedberg 1998). The research question is: How do coercive, mimetic, and normative isomorphic pressures affect public professionals' preferences for organizational change?

Observational research in public administration has only to a limited extent been able to empirically separate the presence and influence of distinct institutional pressures. This study makes a methodological contribution by using Discrete Choice Experiments (DCEs) to provide a highly internally valid test of the effects of coercive, mimetic and normative isomorphic pressures on public professionals’ preferences for organizational change. Our study presents the results of two experiments, which are identical in terms of attributes and attribute-levels of the DCE and public administration field – namely healthcare – and different in terms of DCE design and organizational setting. Public healthcare professionals in DCE1 work for an Italian regional government, whereas their counterparts in DCE2 work for a public teaching hospital located in a different regional government (N = 1,872 for DCE1 and N = 535 for DCE2). Both DCEs provide participants with hypothetical, pairwise comparisons of two organizational change initiatives. These concern descriptions of new organizational models that their organization may adopt, and vary according to the presence or absence of coercive, mimetic and normative isomorphic pressures. As a measure of the dependent variable, participants are asked in which of two situations they would be more in favor of adopting the new organizational model?

Comparing the robustness and appropriateness of a variety of statistical choice-modeling strategies, our findings indicate that exposure to coercive, mimetic as well as normative isomorphic pressures have statistically significant effects on public professionals’ preferences for change. Public professionals in particular prefer new organizational structures that are congruent with regional government guidelines (coercive isomorphic pressures) or that are favored by relevant professional associations (normative isomorphic pressures). Mimetic pressures have the smallest impact in both DCEs. We discuss the limitations of our study, as well as the implications of our findings for public administration research and practice.

In contrast to frequently studied concepts such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and turnover, little public management research has focused on explaining workplace relationships between management and employees. This is curious given the fact that strong workplace relationships frequently are noted to be an important determinant of the above-mentioned attitudes/behaviors. In contrast, business management scholars have examined an array of workplace relationships and their relevance to performance. It is this business-focused research that we turn to for guidance on which factors likely influence the quality of workplace relationships.

The research questions to be addressed in this project are: What is the perceived quality of management-employee relationships among public employees? How does the content of one’s job influence these relationships? Does employee control over when and how the work is done matter? How does the national context influence these workplace relationships? What do the findings imply for the type of human resource management policies that are likely to enhance management-employee relations?

Answers to the above stated questions provide guidance to public managers seeking to improve the well-being of their employees and creating a positive work environment. Recognizing the importance of national context has the potential to lead to a more flexible set of managerial recommendations than would a one-size fits all prescription. As such, the project fits squarely in the “people management” theme of Public Personnel Policies section of the EGPA 2023 Conference.

To answer the above questions, we will use data provided by the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) which is a collaboration of institutions that annually administer national surveys on topics of interest to researchers in the social sciences. The topical focus of annual modules rotates across a range of issues. Data contained in the 2015 Work Orientation IV module will be used. The module was administered to national samples in 37 countries, spanning 6 continents.

The dependent variable used in the estimated models is comprised of responses to the survey item: “In general, how would you describe relations at your workplace … between management and employees?” A five-category ordinal set of response options were provided that ranged from “very bad” to “very good.” Attributes of a respondent’s job will be used to explain perceptions of these relationships, including the nature of the work performed, control over when and where the work is done, and whether individuals are provided an opportunity to receive training to develop work-related skills. Socio-demographic characteristics will be included as additional individual-level variables.

The cross-national nature of the data permits considering the impact of national culture on perceptions of workplace relations. Two cultural dimensions identified by Geert Hofstede that have been posited to influence workplace relationships are individualism-versus-collectivism and power distance. Thus, these will be among the country-level correlates that will be included in the estimated models. Due to the nested nature of the data and the categorical dependent variable, multilevel logistic regression models will be estimated and reported.

A growing body of HRM literature recognizes that not all employees are the same (e.g., Becker & Huselid, 2006; Kehoe, 2021). This has important implications for people management (i.e., the combination of implementing HR practices and the leadership behavior by line managers (Purcell & Hutchinson, 2007; Knies, Leisink & Van der Schoot, 2020)). Kinnie, Hutchinson, Purcell & Swart (2005) show that different sets of HR practices affect the commitment of different employee groups. In particular, for professional employees, HR practices aimed at increasing involvement, communication, and performance appraisal are important, whereas, for industry workers, HR practices focused on openness and communication matter for their commitment. In addition, Liu, Lepak, Takeuchi & Sims Jr. (2003) stress that different employee groups also require different leadership styles to perform well. They indicate that professional employees, for example, prefer an empowering leadership style, whereas support staff likely benefits from a directive leadership style. These studies provide for the expectation that differences between employee groups matter for people management.

Based on various case studies, the HRM literature has adopted the view that professional employees form one of such distinct employee groups (e.g., Alvehus, 2018; Bévort & Poulfelt, 2015). The literature on professionalism supports this view: they describe professional employees in terms of their expertise knowledge and skills, and their discretionary power because of it (Trappenburg & Noordegraaf, 2018; Wilensky, 1964). Additionally, professional employees are driven by their unique professional logic that emphasizes a bottom-up approach for professionals to control their own working conditions and objectives themselves (Freidson, 2001; Schott, Van Kleef, & Noordegraaf, 2016). Arguably, these professional characteristics influence the extent to which people management affects employee attitudes and behaviors (e.g., Alvehus, 2018; Bévort & Poulfelt, 2015). However, there are two shortcomings to this conclusion. Firstly, even though studies indicate that professional employees may perceive people management differently compared to other employee groups, research to date has not systematically distinguished between the professional characteristics of employees. To correctly state that professional employees are a distinct group, it is necessary to systematically compare them with employee groups without these professional characteristics. Secondly, the professionalism literature describes a spectrum where professionalism takes shape in many forms and levels (Noordegraaf, 2015; 2020). This spectrum goes beyond a binary perspective of pure professionals on the one hand and non-professionals on the other and suggests that professional employees can embody different forms of professionalism, indicated by labels such as hybrid professionalism and connective professionalism (Noordegraaf, 2015; 2020). To date, this spectrum of professionalism is not considered in the studies that investigate the role of professionalism in HRM. This study aims to address these issues by answering the following research question: To what extent does the effect of people management perceptions on employees’ attitudes and behaviors differ for employees with different forms of professionalism?

This study contributes to the HRM literature by offering a theoretical explanation for why the relationship between people management perceptions and outcomes expectedly differ between employee groups in the same context. The effect of the professionalism spectrum is theorized drawing on insights from two streams of literature, i.e., the people management literature (e.g., Knies et al., 2020) and the professionalism literature (e.g., Noordegraaf, 2020)), which have so far mainly developed in isolation. Furthermore, we empirically test the relationship between perceived people management and attitudinal and behavioral outcomes for different employee groups in the same context, i.e., teachers and various support staff in secondary schools. This allows for making substantiated statements about the role of the professionalism spectrum for people management, without contaminating its presumed effect with other contextual features.

For this study, data collected from teachers and support staff of the “Spiegel Personeel en School” are used (approx. N=4000). This survey project among Dutch secondary schools evaluates the human resources policies of schools. The analysis looks at the effect of people management perceptions on work engagement and job satisfaction, and compares this relationship between teachers and support staff. Because of professional employees’ drive to control their own working conditions (Freidson, 2001; Schott et al., 2016), I expect that the more professional employee group will react less positively to people management by line managers compared to the less professional employee group. Therefore, I hypothesize that the professionalism spectrum moderates the effect of people management on employees’ attitudes and behaviors, in the way that the effect will be smaller for less professional employee groups (i.e., teachers) compared to less professional employee groups (e.g., support staff).

New Public Management reforms in public services across the world have enabled individuals to more seamlessly switch between private and public sector organisations. At the same time, these reforms have also created more favourable conditions for public sector employees to move between publicly owned organisations within or across different areas of the public sector (e.g. from local authorities to education).

This phenomenon has been particularly accentuated in the healthcare sector, where NPM reforms aimed - and in some cases like the English, Greek and Finnish healthcare systems, succeeded - to create an internal labour market in particular for managerial positions (Greer, Krachler and Umney, 2021). Following this trend, Italy has also seen the successful introduction of various market-oriented reforms in its healthcare system – Servizio Sanitario Nazionale (SSN).

Against this background, previous studies in public administration have particularly focused on the turnover - defined as the departure of an individual from his or her current position - of senior executives of public sector organisations. Although known to be a significantly disruptive event and frequently having a negative impact on organisational performance (McCabe et al, 2008), the antecedents of senior executive turnover in the public sector are still relatively understudied in the literature. Furthermore, we have a limited understanding of the implications of the turnover event for the careers of individuals at the pinnacle of public sector organisations (Petrovsky et al., 2017).

To fill this gap, through the lenses of board human capital theory (McDonald, Westphal, and Graebner, 2008; Sundarmurthy et al., 2014) we focus our attention on the turnover of senior executives in the Italian SSN. Specifically, the study investigates whether general, sector and firm-specific board human capital has any impact on the length of tenure of Italian hospital CEOs and their subsequent destination after the turnover has occurred. Organised along a regional model, the Italian SSN represents an ideal case study as it has long experienced reforms aiming to create a more flexible labour market at least for senior executives. The Italian healthcare systems is also characterised by a sizeable presence of private sector providers (21.8% out-of-pocket expenditure to total healthcare expenditure in 2021), making it easier to switch between sectors.

To conduct the analysis, we rely on a dataset composed of information on all hospital CEOs that were in the post between 2017 and 2021, including demographic characteristics (such as sex and age), educational background (graduated in medicine, law or other) and career patterns (like public healthcare sector experience or experience in the private sector). All these data were manually retrieved from individual curricula. Moreover, we gathered data on the political orientation of the regional government at the time of appointment and exit of a CEO from the relevant hospital to measure the potential effect of a CEO’s political affiliation.

Survival models with Cox proportional hazard ratios were employed to determine the cumulative risk of exit of each CEO. Subsequently, for those CEOs who exited during the period investigated, competing risk models were used to identify the likelihood of their exit destination. This was categorised as other healthcare public sector organisations, other public sector organisations, private sector organisations or retirement.

Preliminary results show that sector-specific board human capital and longer years of experience in the private sector significantly reduce the risk of the exit of the CEO. Therefore, these findings appear, prima facie, to support the importance of sector switching and sector experience to decrease the probability of CEO turnover.

Regarding the exit destination, the preliminary results show that CEOs with greater sector-specific (public healthcare) expertise have a lower probability of transitioning towards other healthcare organizations, while an increase in generic expertise increases the chances of exiting towards other public sector organizations outside the healthcare sector. Interestingly, having prior experience in the private sector seems to sensibly reduce the possibility of exiting towards the public sector, de facto negating one of the desired effects of NPM reforms.

Interestingly, political affiliation appears to have significant effect on the turnover event but not on exit destination.

REFERENCES

Krachler, N., Greer, I., & Umney, C. (2022). Can public healthcare afford marketization? Market principles, mechanisms, and effects in five health systems. Public Administration Review, 82(5), 876-886.

McCabe, B. C., Feiock, R. C., Clingermayer, J. C., & Stream, C. (2008). Turnover among city managers: The role of political and economic change. Public Administration Review, 68(2), 380-386.

McDonald, M. L., Westphal, J. D., & Graebner, M. E. (2008). What do they know? The effects of outside director acquisition experience on firm acquisition performance. Strategic management journal, 29(11), 1155-1177.

Petrovsky, N., James, O., Moseley, A., & Boyne, G. A. (2017). What explains agency heads’ length of tenure? Testing managerial background, performance, and political environment effects. Public Administration Review, 77(4), 591-602.

Sundaramurthy, C., Pukthuanthong, K., & Kor, Y. (2014). Positive and negative synergies between the CEO’s and the corporate board’s human and social capital: A study of biotechnology firms. Strategic Management Journal, 35(6), 845–868.

Paradoxes are common in public service delivery, which poses demands on frontline manager’s ability to navigate them. Public managers have to pursue many goals and satisfy multiple bottom lines at once (Boye et al., 2022; Boyne, 2002; Walker & Andrews, 2015), and a core task is to navigate the paradoxes caused by these differing goals and conflicting demands. The purpose of this article is to explore how frontline managers make sense of the paradoxes they face and understand how they navigate and balance them.

A paradox is defined as a “persistent contradiction between interdependent elements” (Schad et al., 2016, p. 11). In the context of public service delivery, frontline managers have to stay within the politically allocated budget, make sure that the right, high-quality services are delivered to service recipients, follow the rules and legislation, and support the basic needs satisfaction of their employees to not crowd out their motivation, to name a few. Our knowledge of how frontline managers experience paradoxes and how this shape their subsequent behaviour is limited in a public administration and public management context (Franken et al., 2020). This is an important mechanism to understand, because how public managers approach paradoxes is positively related to employee job satisfaction and work engagement (Backhaus et al., 2021).

The article builds on insights from interviews with 62 frontline managers from the healthcare sector and social services. The extensive interview material allows for an in-depth investigation of how frontline managers make sense of, navigate, and balance the paradoxes they face in public service delivery. Preliminary analysis indicate that frontline managers experience legal, financial, and professional considerations as paradoxical, and that they put great effort into explaining and translating these to their employees in order to accommodate and mitigate frustration of how to navigate the paradoxes. In this way, the article sheds novel theoretical and empirical light on how frontline managers experience and navigate the paradoxes they face, which is something that has received little attention in the public administration and public management literatures.

Backhaus, L., Reuber, A., Vogel, D., & Vogel, R. (2021). Giving sense about paradoxes: paradoxical leadership in the public sector. Public Management Review, 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2021.1906935

Boye, S., Risbjerg Nørgaard, R., Tangsgaard, E. R., Andreassen Winsløw, M., & Østergaard-Nielsen, M. R. (2022). Public and private management: now, is there a difference? A systematic review. International Public Management Journal, 1-34. https://doi.org/10.1080/10967494.2022.2109787

Boyne, G. A. (2002). Public and private management: What's the difference? [Article]. Journal of Management Studies, 39(1), 97-122. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6486.00284

Franken, E., Plimmer, G., & Malinen, S. (2020). Paradoxical leadership in public sector organisations: Its role in fostering employee resilience. Australian Journal of Public Administration, 79(1), 93-110. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8500.12396

Schad, J., Lewis, M. W., Raisch, S., & Smith, W. K. (2016). Paradox Research in Management Science: Looking Back to Move Forward. Academy of Management Annals, 10(1), 5-64. https://doi.org/10.5465/19416520.2016.1162422

Walker, R. M., & Andrews, R. (2015). Local Government Management and Performance: A Review of Evidence. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 25(1), 101-133. https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/mut038