The degree to which subordinates accept managerial authority is key if management is to be effective (e.g., Barnard 1938, Nielsen & Jacobsen 2018, Petersen 2020, Simon 1997). Even so, we still have sparse knowledge of what shapes frontline professionals’ acceptance of frontline managers’ managerial authority in public organizations (Nielsen & Jacobsen 2018). To improve this knowledge, this study combines insights from the work of Aghion & Tirole (1997) on formal and real authority (see also Dobrajska et al. 2015) with work on acceptance of managerial authority (e.g., Nielsen & Jacobsen 2018, Petersen 2020, Simon 1997) to answer the research question; how does formal and real managerial authority shape frontline professionals’ acceptance of frontline managers’ managerial authority.

Formal managerial authority results “from an explicit or implicit contract allocating the right to decide on specified matters to a member or group of members of the organization” (Aghion & Tirole 1997; 2) whereas real managerial authority is the “effective control over decisions” (ibid.). That is, formal authority does not necessarily confer real authority (Aghion & Tirole 1997; 2). Frontline managers can have more or less formal authority, dependent on the extent to which they have been delegated the formal right to make different types of managerial decisions, such as work scheduling, organizational goal setting, budgetary decisions etc. Real authority, on the other hand, depends on organizational factors such as the frontline managers’ span of control, number of adjacent managers, urgency in decision making and higher-level managers’ tendency to overrule the frontline manager’s decisions, as these factors determine whether the manager has the effective control over decisions (e.g., Aghion & Tirole 1997).

First, this study argues that factors of both formal and real authority shapes frontline professionals’ acceptance of frontline managers’ managerial authority, so that both more formal authority and more real authority increases frontline professionals’ acceptance of frontline managers’ managerial authority. Second, the study argues that factors of real authority have a larger impact on the acceptance of authority than factors of formal authority, with the argument being that an effective control over decisions is more important than the formal right to make decisions, when it comes to shaping frontline professionals’ acceptance of managerial authority.

I propose two studies that will be conducted in October 2023 to test the arguments. The first study will rely on multi-level survey data from a survey which will be distributed to all managing physicians and all managing nurses (n ~ 2000) employed at Danish public hospital departments and a survey distributed to a sample of these managers’ employees, who are physicians and nurses and thus frontline professionals (n ~ 6.000). This multi-level survey data will make it possible to investigate the association between, on the one hand, the frontline managers’ formal and real managerial authority and, on the other hand, the frontline professionals’ acceptance of the frontline managers’ managerial authority. Surveying both managers and employees will further alleviate some of the concerns related to common source bias, as it makes it possible to measure the independent and dependent variables from different sources (managers and employees). To substantiate the causal claim of the theoretical arguments, the second study will be a conjoint experiment among the frontline professionals, aimed at disentangling the extent to which the factors of formal and real authority indeed shape frontline professionals’ inclination to accept frontline managers’ managerial authority, as well as their relative impact on the inclination to accept frontline managers’ managerial authority.

This study aims to make at least two contributions. The first is theoretical, as it aims to improve our understanding of how factors of formal and real authority interact to shape frontline professionals’ acceptance of frontline managers’ managerial authority. So far, we have little understanding of what shapes frontline professionals’ acceptance of managerial authority, despite of its centrality in relation to effective management in organizations (e.g., Nielsen & Jacobsen 2018). The second contribution is practical, as the study aims to provide knowledge to top managers and decision-makers about how to organize public organizations in a way that can improve frontline professionals’ acceptance of managerial authority.

References

Aghion, P., & Tirole, J. 1997. Formal and real authority in organizations. Journal of Political Economy 105(1): 1‒29.

Barnard, Chester I. 1938. The Functions of the Executive, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Dobrajska, M., Billinger, S., Karim, S., 2015. Delegation within hierarchies: How information processing and knowledge characteristics influence the allocation of formal and real decision authority. Organization Science 26 (3), 687–704.

Nielsen, P.A. and Jacobsen, C.B. 2018. Zone of Acceptance under Performance Measurement: Does Performance Information Affect Employee Acceptance of Management Authority? Public Administration Review, 78: 684-693.

Petersen, N. B. G. 2020. Whoever Has Will be Given More: The Effect of Performance Information on Frontline Employees’ Support for Managerial Policy Initiatives. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 30(4): 533-547.

Simon, Herbert A. 1997. Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-Making Processes in Administrative Organizations (4th edition). New York, N.Y.: Free Press.

Abstract EGPA Conference 2023 – Panel III ‘Public Personnel Policy’

The management of professionals in public organizations has proven to be difficult due to the discretion that is evident in their daily work (Gassner and Gofen 2018; Van Berkel, De Vries, and Knies 2022). Discretion provides professionals with autonomy and flexibility, but it requires managers to trust the professional knowledge of their employees. Front-line managers are often studied as the key regulators for professionals’ discretion and their leadership behavior is important for shaping the discretionary space of professionals (Knies, Leisink, van der Schoot 2017; Keulemans and Groeneveld 2019; Lipsky, 2010).

However, front-line managers do not operate in a vacuum. In fact, public organizations are often characterized by multiple hierarchical layers, which all play an important role in managing professionals and their discretionary space (Knies and Leisink 2014; Jacobsen et al. 2021). Front-line managers, middle managers and top managers each differ in their organizational positions and roles, responsibilities and thereby interests and priorities (Gassner and Gofen 2018). In addition, leader intention and follower perception can differ substantially (Jacobsen and Andersen 2015), which may cause messages to ‘get lost in translation’ when traveling through the hierarchical layers of the organization.

We argue that the leadership behavior of public managers on all levels should be analyzed integrally in order to understand the management of discretionary space. Therefore, the central question of this paper is: How does leadership behavior of public managers at different hierarchical levels shape the management of discretion? We answer this question by focusing on the interplay of professional- and leadership identity of public managers of different hierarchical layers (Grøn and Andersen, 2023). The assumption is that the stronger their professional identity the more room they provide for discretion. In answering this question, this paper adds to earlier studies on managing professionals, which generally focus on one hierarchical level, mainly the leadership behavior of front-line managers (Knies, Leisink, van der Schoot 2017; Keulemans and Groeneveld 2019) and have so far overlooked the interaction between the multiple hierarchical layers.

Empirically, this qualitative study uses interviews (n=22) which have been conducted between March and May 2023, with managers from five hierarchical layers and executing professionals in the municipality of The Hague, the Netherlands. This qualitative approach allows us to consider the complexity of governmental organizations and to examine leadership behavior and its interactions on all hierarchical layers.

References

Berkel, van R., de Vries, J.P., Knies, E. (2022). Managing Street-Level Bureaucrats’ Performance by Promoting Professional Behavior Through HRM. Public Personnel Management, Vol. 51(2), 189–212.

Gassner, D. and Gofen, A. (2018). Street-Level Management: A clientele-Agent Perspective on Implementation. Journal of Public Administration and Theory, 551-568. Hebrew University.

Grøn, C.H. and Andersen, L.B. (2023). Developing Perceived and Experienced Identity: How Leadership Training Affects Leadership Identity. Review of Public Personnel Administration.

Jacobsen, C. B., Knies, E., Leisink, P., Andersen, L. B., Brewer, G. A., Jacobsen, C. B., & Vandenabeele, W. (2021). People management: Integrating Insights from Strategic Human Resource Management and Leadership In: Managing for Public Service Performance: How People and Values Make a Difference. Oxford.

Jacobsen, C.B., Andersen, L.B. (2015). Is Leadership in the Eye of the Beholder? A Study of Intended and Perceived Leadership Practices and Organizational Performance. Public Administration Review, Vol. 76(6), 829-841.

Keulemans, S. and Groeneveld. (2019). Supervisory Leadership at the Frontlines: Street-Level Discretion, Supervisor Influence, and Street-Level Bureaucrats’ Attitude Towards Clients. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Vol. 30 (2), 307–323.

Lipsky, M. (2010). Street-level bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the individual in public service. Russell Sage Foundation. Russell Sage Foundation, New York.

Knies, E, Leisink, P., Van de Schoot, R. (2017). People management: Developing and testing a measurement scale. The International Journal of Human Resource, Vol. 31 (6).

Knies, E. and Leisink, P. (2014). Leadership Behavior in Public Organizations: A Study of Supervisory Support by Police and Medical Center Middle Managers. Review of Public Personnel Administration. Vol. 24 (2), 108-127.

Many public managers are part of leadership teams. In a leadership team, formal authority over various management tasks can be assigned to individual managers, but an effective leadership team also needs to function more informally as a team. The literature on team environment argues that an effective team has a well-functioning internal team environment, which is reflected by the team’s ability to have shared purpose, social support, and voice (Carson et al., 2007).

Furthermore, the relevance of internal leadership team environment for both managers and frontline personnel has recently been demonstrated in relation to employee perceived leadership behavior among public managers (Grøn and Jacobsen, 2022). However, we still need to understand how the internal leadership team environment can be supported and how the formal distribution of managerial authority in the team can play a role for the internal leadership team environment. This study seeks to contribute with theoretical and empirical understanding of the interplay between the formalization of managerial authority within the leadership team and internal leadership team environment.

We focus on the role of formalization of managerial authority because formal organization can play an important role when organizing human interactions, as it endows people with different roles, responsibilities, and power to influence others (Gulick, 1937, Simon, 1997). By combining insights from the team environment literature (e.g., Carson et al., 2007) with insights from classic organizational literature, we argue, on the one hand, that formalization of managerial authority can support the internal leadership team environment, i.e. the managers’ experiences of shared purpose, social support, and voice, because it strengthens role clarity in the team. On the other hand, strong formalization can lead to team fragmentation, individualization, and functional division and thereby harm internal leadership team environment. Thus, we expect a u-shaped relationship between formalization of managerial authority and internal leadership team environment such that low and high levels of formalized managerial authority are less favorable than medium levels.

To explore the association between the formalization of managerial authority and internal leadership team environment, we propose a research design where we will study almost 500 relatively newly established leadership teams in public hospitals. Following a national reform of the management structure, the highly comparable teams consist of a clinical director and a group of managing physicians at Danish public hospitals. Central to the design of this study is that the teams were given extensive autonomy in terms of how much they wanted to formalize managerial authority within teams. Through a survey which will be fielded in October 2023, we will create a cross-sectional dataset, to investigate the association between formalization of managerial authority and the team members’ experience of shared purpose, social support, and voice. The multi-level data structure of the dataset will allow us to investigate team-level and individual levels of formalization of managerial authority in relation to experiences of internal leadership team environment.

Thus, this study aims to contribute to the nascent literature on formal leadership teams in the public sector (e.g., Grøn and Jacobsen, 2022) by drawing on principles from classic organizational literature (e.g., Gulick, 1937, Simon 1997) to improve our theoretical and empirical understanding of the extent to which the formalization of managerial authority in leadership teams is associated with internal leadership team environment.

References

Carson, J. B., Tesluk, P. E., & Marrone, J. A. (2007). Shared leadership in teams: An investigation of antecedent conditions and performance. Academy of Management Journal, 50(5), 1217–1234

Grøn, C.L.H & Jacobsen, C.B (2022),’ Love thy Neighbor? Leadership team environment and effective leadership behavior in public organizations’, presented at the 2022 PMRC conference, Phoenix, AZ.

Gulick, Luther (1937). Notes on the Theory of Organization (pp. 1-46) in Luther Gulick and L. Urwick (eds.). Papers on the Science of Administration. New York: Institute of Public Administration

Simon, Herbert A. (1997). Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-Making Processes in Administrative Organizations (4th edition). New York, N.Y.: Free Press.