Conference Agenda

Effective leadership communication is vital for facilitating organizational change in public

organizations (Husain, 2013; van der Voet, 2016). However, there is limited understanding of

how public sector leaders can craft messages that positively influence perceptions of change.

Behavioral research suggests that the effectiveness of messages increases when they align

with employees’ intrinsic motivations and cognitive orientations (Stam et al., 2010a). While

transformational leadership literature emphasizes public sector values and societal impact to

motivate employees (Bro & Jensen, 2020; Hassan et al., 2021), change communication often

focuses on personal benefits to enhance engagement (Armenakis & Harris, 2002; Fatima et al.,

2022). This raises the question of which beneficiary public sector leaders should prioritize to

foster positive perceptions of change.

This study integrates signaling theory (Guest et al., 2021) and public service motivation (PSM)

theory (Perry, 1996) to investigate how emphasizing different beneficiaries affects employee

receptiveness to change messages. Additionally, regulatory focus theory (Higgins, 2002) is

used to explore how the effect of beneficiary emphasis may differ based on employees’

regulatory orientation (promotion or prevention) within the change message (Stam et al.,

2010b).

A randomized survey-experiment is conducted with Belgian federal government employees

(data collection still going on). Participants are asked to report their level of PSM and

regulatory orientation and to evaluate a job applicant’s vision statement. The experiment

manipulates message orientation (promotion-focused, prevention-focused, or balanced) and the

primary beneficiary of change (organization, employees or citizens/society). Message

effectiveness is measured by participants’ perceptions of the applicant and the proposed change

vision. This study provides behavioral insights into how change messages should be designed

to enhance employee support for organizational change in public organizations.

Which cognitive coping mechanisms do street-level bureaucrats adopt during public service delivery? Which behaviors are associated with these mechanisms? What types of factors may explain them? We conducted a systematic literature review of the cognitive coping mechanisms street-level bureaucrats adopt during service delivery.

Based on 134 studies, our findings show that street-level bureaucrats adopt strategies such as empathy, compassion, cynicism, emotional detachment, carefulness, categorization and ‘othering’ clients, and moral licensing towards their clients. These are associated with different behavioral coping mechanisms such as rationing of service and aggression and are associated mostly with personal factors, rather than with organizational factors or environmental factors.

This review not only deepens our understanding of how street-level bureaucrats navigate complex client interactions, but it also connects cognitive mechanisms to their antecedent factors and the resulting behavioral outcomes. The study contributes to the broader literature on street-level bureaucracy by highlighting the psychological dimensions of service delivery and offering new insights into the adaptive strategies used by street-level bureaucrats to manage their demanding roles.

The literature on administrative burden has primarily focused on its role in shaping individuals' engagement with public services, particularly in terms of program take-up and compliance. However, a growing but still limited body of research explores the feedback effects of administrative burden, particularly its influence on political attitudes and behaviors. This study contributes to this emerging field by examining how experiences of administrative burden in digital interactions with public administration affect perceptions of the importance of public services and the likelihood of voting.

Using data from a nationwide survey in Spain in 2023 (N = 3,760), we conceptualize administrative burden in digital interactions as a latent construct comprising three dimensions: learning costs, compliance costs, and psychological costs, each measured by three indicators. These dimensions are modeled using structural equation modeling (SEM), allowing for a reliable estimation of their overall relationship with political attitudes while controlling for sociodemographic factors. To address potential endogeneity in measuring the relationship between administrative burden and political attitudes, we implement an instrumental variable (IV) approach within the SEM framework. As instruments, we use whether a municipality has implemented a text message appointment reminder system and the number of administrative procedures conducted digitally in the municipality. These variables are hypothesized to influence experiences of administrative burden with digital administration but not directly affect political attitudes, thus satisfying the exclusion restriction assumption.

Our findings indicate that higher levels of administrative burden are significantly associated with a lower perceived importance of public services and a reduced probability of voting. Specifically, standardized estimates suggest a moderate negative impact on perceptions of public service importance and a weaker but still significant negative effect on voting likelihood. This suggests that individuals who encounter greater bureaucratic frictions in accessing services tend to develop more negative attitudes toward public institutions and are less likely to participate in electoral processes. However, the weaker effect observed for voting likelihood highlights that while administrative burden may erode trust in government services, its direct impact on electoral participation is more limited. Both instrumental variables show a significant association with administrative burden experiences and not with the modeled attitudes, confirming their usefulness in addressing endogeneity.

This study extends administrative burden theory by providing empirical evidence of its political consequences, reinforcing the argument that bureaucratic inefficiencies and burdensome processes may alienate citizens from public institutions. These findings have policy implications for government agencies seeking to enhance civic engagement: reducing bureaucratic obstacles could foster greater public trust and potentially enhance democratic participation.

In recent decades, civil servants have increasingly faced political pressures that conflict with their agencies’ institutional missions. When political agendas deviate from these missions, bureaucrats are forced to choose between loyalty to political superiors and adherence to the organizational mission. These dilemmas are especially pronounced in politicized agencies, where abusive supervision and personal threats toward bureaucrats are more common.

While prior research has explored the strategies bureaucrats use to navigate such tensions, less is known about the individual and organizational factors that drive their willingness to diverge from political superiors while remaining aligned with their agencies’ mission. This study addresses that gap by examining how different sources of organizational support—such as from colleagues, managers, or professional associations—and individual values, such as organizational commitment, influence civil servants’ willingness to engage in divergent responses to abusive leadership.

We employ a sequential mixed-methods design. First, 82 interviews inform hypotheses about the contextual conditions fostering administrative divergence. Second, we test these hypotheses with a pre-registered survey experiment (N = 609) conducted with civil servants in Brazil’s environmental sector during President Bolsonaro’s administration (2019–2022). Our findings show that peer support significantly increases bureaucrats’ willingness to diverge. Moreover, the effect of organizational support is moderated by individual levels of organizational commitment. Highly committed civil servants are more likely to engage in informal, covert divergence when supported by peers, while support from professional associations encourages both formal, open divergence and informal, covert divergence.

This study contributes to the behavioral public administration literature by linking divergence behavior to organizational and individual factors, offering a new conceptual framework to understand bureaucratic responses to abusive political leadership.