Labor shortage in the public sector is high, particularly among professionals working in healthcare (European Union, 2022). This leads to experiences of work pressure, stress, and eventually burnout and turnover (Greenglass et al., 2001; Janssen et al., 2020). An impressive body of mainly quantitative research identifies the consequences of work pressure often using Bakker and Demerouti’s (2007) Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model as a theoretical lens.

This research helps to predict negative outcomes of work pressure, such as reduced employee well-being. However, we suggest that it is also important to study the topic of work pressure and related concepts by paying attention to (a) the changing work context of frontline professionals and (b) professionals’ reactions to them. Rather than being their own boss and having a lot of autonomy, status, and unique knowledge, today’s professionals often work in large-scale organizations, are confronted with well-informed, critical, and demanding clients, and have to apply more business-like management techniques (Schott et al., 2016). These transformations may present a threat to the identity of professionals, which may also explain why many professionals are unsatisfied with their work, experiencing high levels of work pressure, ultimately leaving their jobs.

We suggest that insights from identity work models are useful to get a better understanding of why many professionals have these experiences. This concept allows for including individual reactions to contextual changes into the analysis. Identity work describes individuals’ “active construction of identity in social contexts” (Pratt et al., 2006, p. 237) and can be used to explain how professionals make sense of changes in their working environment. For example, Kyratsis et al. (2017) studied how medical physicians respond to identity threats caused by a contested shift in the professional logic. This means identity work goes beyond often studied coping strategies. This study aims to analyze (a) how frontline professionals use identity work as a response to the changes that characterize their field and (b) whether (the lack of) identity work helps to explain negative work-related outcomes such as experiences of work pressure and burnout, dissatisfaction with their work and turnover intentions?

To reach this aim, we conducted an interview study with 28 midwives from the Netherlands. To gain insights from different perspectives, maximum variation sampling is used (Klassen et al., 2012). Dutch midwives work independently in the community, in group practices, or hospitals. They are the providers of crucial public services as they assist women during labor in a variety of facilities (e.g., at home, and in birthing centers). In more than 50 % of all births in the Netherlands, midwives are the sole caregivers (KNOV, 2022). Midwives work around the clock, on-demand, and regularly report to perceive high work pressure. Recent research shows that a substantive share of midwives consider leaving the profession and turnover is especially high among younger midwives across the world (for New Zealand: Dixon et al., 2017; for the Netherlands: Feijen-de Jong et al., 2022; for the UK: Hunter et al., 2019; for Germany: Paul et al., 2022). In addition, the midwifery profession is currently transforming tremendously, due to workforce shortages and efficiency needs, technological advancements, and better-informed patients with high expectations (Bloxsome et al., 2019; Borrelli, 2014; Catling et al., 2017; Newton et al., 2021).

This study is relevant for several reasons: First, we contribute to the literature on negative work-related outcomes (e.g. turnover intentions and burnout) by adding an identity work perspective. Second, we contribute to the literature on professionalism by responding to the call for more research on the role of individual subjectivity and interpretation in the assimilation of institutional norms (Blomgren & Walks 2015). Finally, our study is relevant for practice because it analyzes the resilience of healthcare professionals in times of an aging society, increasingly ill population, and staff shortage.

The identity of public managers concerns how they see themselves. The most relevant conceptualization distinguishes between professional identity and leadership identity (Knippenberg et al. 2024). Existing research finds that leadership identity is important for leadership behavior (Grøn et al. 2020; Cecchini et al. 2024) and motivation to lead (Guillén & Korotov 2015). Leadership identity is therefore a relevant concept for people management and public service performance. The overall contribution of this paper is to study development of leadership identity.

Ryan and Deci (2003) elaborate how identity develops through internalization of values and organizational practices. Still, the existing literature on how leadership identity develops (Kwok et al. 2018; Marichal et al. 2018, Miscenko et al. 2017) has several important gaps. First, most studies are cross-sectional, which decreases the usefulness for practitioners due to lacking causal inference. This can be partly remedied by studying leadership identity over time in the same organizational units. Second, Epitropaki et al. (2017) suggest that we should not only focus on leaders (as in Grøn & Andersen, 2024), but also include employee perceptions (Jacobsen & Andersen 2015). This implies that both self-reported and employee-perceived leadership identity are relevant. Third, there are no leadership identity studies of interventions that include both leaders and employees. We fill this gap by studying organizational development interventions, defined as programs designed to improve the functioning of an organizational unit through activities intended to change leadership, organizational structures, and/or behavioral patterns (French, Bell & Zawacki 1978). Such programs are expected to make the role of the leaders more visible and thus to strengthen their leadership identity. This effect might be stronger for more leader-centric organizational development, but our main focus is on the general effect of organizational development interventions across different variants.

The research question is: Can organizational development interventions affect leadership identity as perceived by employees and as reported by leaders?

Both theory and existing studies suggest that leaders and employees will experience that leaders have a more dominant leadership identity (compared to professional identity) after the organizational development interventions. This is tested as part of a field experiment with 128 units within Danish hospitals, employment services, social care, and police (128 public managers and 3,017 employees). The units were randomized into three intervention variants (goal-oriented leadership, distributed leadership or motivation enhancement). To test whether the interventions affect self-reported and employee-perceived leadership identity, we use data from pre- and post-intervention surveys, utilizing the panel structure to test the pre-registered hypothesis: All three intervention variants increase leader’s level of leadership identity.

References

Cecchini, M., Pedersen, L. D., Bech, M., Jacobsen, C. B., & Hansen, A.-K. L. (2024). What Makes a Leader? Leadership Identity and Leadership Behavior among Highly Professionalized Public Leaders. International Journal of Public Administration 47(7), 495–506.

Day, D. V., & Harrison, M. M. (2007). A multilevel, identity-based approach to leadership development. The Future of Leadership Development, 17(4), 360-373

Epitropaki, O., Kark, R., Mainemelis, C., & Lord, R. G. (2017). Leadership and followership identity processes: A multilevel review. The Leadership Quarterly, 28(1), 104–129.

Grøn, C. H., & Andersen, L. B. (2024). Developing Perceived and Experienced Identity: How Leadership Training Affects Leadership Identity. Review of Public Personnel Administration, 44(2), 268-294.

French, W. L., Bell, C. H., & Zawacki, R. A. (1978). Organization development : theory, practice, and research. Business Publ.

Grøn, C. H., Bro, L. L., & Andersen, L. B. (2020). Public managers’ leadership identity: Concept, causes, and consequences. Public Management Review, 22(11), 1696–1716.

Guillén, L., Mayo, M., & Korotov, K. (2015). Is leadership a part of me? A leader identity approach to understand the motivation to lead. The Leadership Quarterly, 26(5), 802–820.

Haslam, S. A., Gaffney, A. M., Hogg, M. A., Rast, D. E., & Steffens, N. K. (2022). Reconciling identity leadership and leader identity: A dual-identity framework. The Leadership Quarterly, 33(4), 1–15.

Haslam, S. A., Reicher, S. D., & Platow, M. J. (2010). The new psychology of leadership: Identity, influence, and power. Psychology Press. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203833896

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, 75(6), 829–841.

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Kwok, N., Hanig, S., Brown, D. J., & Shen, W. (2018). How leader role identity influences the process of leader emergence: A social network analysis. The Leadership Quarterly, 29(6), 648–662.

Marichal, K., Segers, J., Wouters, K., & Stouten, J. (2018). Investigating the Dynamism of Change in Leadership Identity. I N. Chatwani (Red.), Distributed Leadership: The Dynamics of Balancing Leadership with Followership (s. 53–84). Springer International Publishing.

Miscenko, D., Guenter, H., & Day, D. V. (2017). Am I a leader? Examining leader identity development over time. The Leadership Quarterly, 28(5), 605-620.

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2003). On assimilating identities to the self: A self-determination theory perspective on internalization and integrity within cultures. In M. R. Leary & J. P. Tangney (Eds.), Handbook of self and identity (pp. 253–272). The Guilford Press.

Recent scholarship has highlighted the relevance of an individual’s religiosity for work-related attitudes and behaviors in public organizations. In much of this literature, religious employees are generally regarded to be an asset to the organization. Little attention has been paid to the “dark side” of a worker’s religiosity. For instance, religion creates strong in-group ties that lead to those who are not members of the in-group being treated less generously. Such an effect could have negative consequences for the quality of workplace relationships. Furthermore, the impact of religiosity on the quality of workplace relationships may be moderated by the national context.

The research questions to be addressed in this project are: What is the relationship between religiosity and perceptions of the quality of workplace relationships among public employees? Is this relationship moderated by the national context? What implications do the findings have for management in the workplace?

To answer the above questions, we will use data provided by the International Social Survey Programme. The 2015 Work Orientation IV module will be used which includes 37 national samples.

Responses to the following survey item are used for the dependent variable in the analysis: “In general, how would you describe relations at your workplace … between workmates/colleagues?” A five-category ordinal set of response options was provided that ranged from “very bad” to “very good.” An individual’s religiosity will be measured using responses to the question: “Apart from such special occasions as weddings, funerals, etc., how often do you attend religious services?” Socio-demographic characteristics will be included as additional individual-level variables.

The cross-national nature of the data permits considering the impact of national context. In particular, government support and regulation of religion, level of religiosity in a country, and religious diversity in a country will be variables that represent the national context. Cross-level interaction terms will be created to determine how national context influences the relationship between an individual’s religiosity and their perceptions of workplace relationships. Due to the nested nature of the data and the categorical dependent variable, multilevel logistic regression models will be estimated. With the focus on cross-national variation in work-related attitudes and a consideration of the moderating effect of national context, the proposed research project directly contributes to the public personnel policies study group’s theme of “the importance of context for people management.”