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What views do people have of public sector workers? Public sector workers are often portrayed negatively. It is unclear, however, to what extent such negative perceptions are shared among different groups in society. Using a large representative survey in the Netherlands, we study whether people's socioeconomic status is related to having more negative stereotypes about public sector workers. Contrary to expectations, education and income are unrelated to stereotypes. We do find a relation with subjective income: People with low subjective income have more negative stereotypes. Moreover, the sector people work in is highly relevant. People working in core governmental sectors such as central and local government have positive stereotypes. Other groups—such as private sector and non-profit workers—have a far more negative image of public sector workers. These findings help us to understand people's perceptions of public sector workers and the problems various groups have with the state.

Negative stereotypes about civil servants are common in many countries, for example in popular media (Pautz and Warnement 2013), or in the form of politicians’ bureaucrat bashing (Caillier 2018). Recently, researchers have mapped citizens’ civil servant stereotypes (Boer 2020; Willems 2020; Bertram, Bouwman, and Tummers 2021). The question remains, however, how these stereotypes impact public service delivery. In this study, we experimentally investigate whether stereotypes about civil servants affect clients’ satisfaction and perceptions of performance in public service delivery. A key aspect of stereotypes is that they shape expectations and perceptions of other people: They make us attuned to information that confirms our stereotypes, and so shape our interpretations, attributions, and judgements of other people’s behavior (Dovidio et al. 2010; Payne 2001). Following this line of reasoning, civil servant stereotypes may bias how citizens experience interactions with civil servants, and ultimately, public service. Then, much like trust in government not only follows from people’s perceptions of performance but also shapes them (Van de Walle and Bouckaert 2003), negative civil servant stereotypes may shape how people evaluate public encounters. This could affect willingness to seek public services in future. Additionally, it may negatively shape how clients respond to civil servants, thereby worsening the quality of the interaction further. Against the backdrop of the Expectancy-Disconfirmation Model (EDM) – the dominant model of understanding citizen satisfaction that suggests a reflective cognitive process (Van Ryzin 2004) – researchers are investigating the role of unconscious biases and reflexive processing in citizen satisfaction (Andersen and Hjortskov 2016; Jilke and Baekgaard 2020). Our research contributes to this, thus helping to refine our understanding of the EDM, its limits, and other mechanisms that contribute to public service experience and evaluation. Indeed, the reasoning of the EDM might suggest that negative stereotypes contribute to negative expectations, which can be disconfirmed by positive performance, leading to more satisfaction. Alternatively, we suggest that negative stereotypes may be used subconsciously to bring experience in line with expectation, thus reducing satisfaction – especially when service provision is not unambiguously positive (see also Van Ryzin 2013). We will use an online vignette experiment, where we experimentally activate stereotypes (negative versus control) about civil servants. We study the effect thereof on 1) perceptions of performance and 2) satisfaction levels. Vignettes will present a detailed description of a specific instance of a hypothetical public encounter, in one of three different service provision contexts: welfare provision, getting an extension of driver’s license, and communications with the tax office. By using three different contexts, our study allows us to say something about more than just one context of public service, and hopefully about generalizability of effects across different public service contexts. We have selected three types of public service delivery that do not clearly signal positive or negative performance, in terms of outcomes and process. All of them entail person-to-person interaction between a government worker and the citizen. The cases are selected such that they differ in terms of the invasiveness for citizens (see for more details the survey itself). The cases are specific, but by varying the context in this way, they are to an extent representative of the types of public encounters that citizens can have. In our analyses, we will focus not only on the sample as a whole, but will also consider participant characteristics that may interact with our manipulation. Specifically, we investigate the role of socioeconomic status, as research suggests that having low status is related to having more negative stereotypes of and experiences with civil servants and the state (Bertram et al. 2021; Christensen et al. 2020; Visser, De Koster, and Van Der Waal, n.d.). Additionally, we take a more exploratory approach to the effect of public service context, performance area, previous experiences, occupational sector, and other demographic variables.

Public sector workers are regularly portrayed as lazy, incompetent, and even evil. In Western countries, the expression of such negative stereotypes is quite commonly accepted. Building on the body of literature on general stereotypes and their consequences (Spencer et al., 2016), negative public sector worker stereotypes may undermine public sector workers. For instance, age-based stereotypes can be self-fulfilling: older people believe in stereotypes about aging and start behaving in such a way as to further perpetuate these false ideas. In general, people who are stereotyped worry about confirming the stereotype. This leads to increased stress, anxiety and mental workload which subsequently lead to negative effects on performance (Steele, Spencer & Aronson, 1997; Spencer et al., 2016). If stereotypes impact public sector workers adversely, then it is also imperative to investigate the factors that could mitigate or inadvertently exacerbate these effects. Psychologists have indicated that various strategies can be used to lower detrimental effects of negative stereotypes such as reframing a stereotype as a challenge that public sector workers can overcome and learn from, instead of seeing it as a threat (Richard & Gross, 2000). Researchers have cast threat and challenge as opposing styles of appraising potentially stressful situations (e.g., Kobasa, 1982, Mendes et al., 2007). Challenges are cast positively, as situations in which people feel capable of conquering stressors, whereas threatening situations seem to demand more resources than the perceiver can muster (Blascovich et al., 1999, White, 2008).Threat appraisal generates stress-related physiological responses and impairs performance in moderately difficult tasks (e.g., Blascovich et al., 1999). Challenge appraisal, conversely, facilitates performance by inducing adaptive stress responses and preparing the perceiver to address the stress (Scheepers, 2009, Vick et al., 2008). People might interpret the same task as a challenge or a threat, depending on a range of situational factors, like the negative consequences of failure (e.g., Keller & Bless, 2008). Given the divergent consequences of threat and challenge appraisals for performance, reframing a task as a challenge may be a promising coping strategy that reduces the effects of stereotype threat. An alternative coping strategy is to reframe the stress that is experienced as being beneficial. Stress-mindset is the extent to which individuals hold the mindset that stress has enhancing versus debilitating consequences (Crum, Salovey, & Achor, 2013). It is highly common for individuals to hold a “stress-is-debilitating” mindset (Clark, 2003; Kinman & Jones, 2005), as the mass media tend to highlight stress's contribution to negative outcomes such as morbidity and mortality (e.g., Cohen et al., 2007; Melamed, Shirom, Toker, Berliner, & Shapira, 2006). In fact, the extent to which individuals believe that stress is debilitating has in itself been positively associated with morbidity (Nabi et al., 2013) and mortality rates (Keller et al., 2012). Recent studies have indicated that stress may also produce favorable outcomes (for reviews see: Podsakoff, LePine, & LePine, 2007; Updegraff & Taylor, 2000), suggesting that a “stress-is-enhancing” mindset is also likely to be viable under certain circumstances. Interestingly, over and above the effects of stress level, induction of a stress-is-enhancing mindset has been shown to improve self-reported health and work performance (Crum et al., 2013), as well as to enhance physiological functioning and performance (e.g., Jamieson, Mendes, Blackstock, & Schmader, 2010; Jamieson, Mendes, & Nock, 2013). Following the above rationale, reframing the experience of stress as being beneficial to an individual may be a promising coping strategy that reduces stereotype threat. The goal of the proposed study is therefore to experimentally investigate: Main effects: 1. The effects of negative stereotyping on work performance of public sector workers 2. The effectiveness of a challenge mindset on work performance 3. The effectiveness of a stress-is-beneficial mindset on work performance Interaction effects: 4. The effectiveness of a challenge mindset in mitigating the negative effects of stereotyping on work performance 5. The effectiveness of a stress-is-beneficial mindset in mitigating the negative effects of stereotyping on work performance

This is a preregistration for a replication and extension of a study that was pre-registered before, under the same title. Data collection for that study has completed, but due to two issues in data collection we cannot say with certainty whether findings reflect an actual lack of effects, or whether they are the result of problems in the data collection procedure. The two issues were, first, a translation problem: a language setting in the survey set-up resulted in a prompt from Google Translate to translate the survey pages to Dutch, even though the survey was written in Dutch. If participants accepted this pop-up, Google Translate changed the survey text to one filled with grammatical errors and strange vocabulary. Unfortunately, the text was changed to such an extent, that it (severely) affected the contents of the vignettes, as well as the meaning of crucial survey questions. This pop-up did not appear in all cases, and its appearance seems dependent on participants’ own device language settings. There is no way to track which participants were affected by this. Second, unbeknownst to the authors, the panel provider used for data collection named the study ‘Image of civil servants’ in their system, and this name was shown to all panelists who received an invitation to participate. This may have acted as a cue, activating stereotypes of civil servants for all participants, thereby reducing the difference between those in the stereotype activation condition and those in the control condition. We therefore replicate the study, addressing the problems in previous data collection. We also extend the study by adding a third condition - activating positive stereotypes. In writing up the results, we will use data of both rounds of data collection, referring to the first as Study 1, and to this one as Study 2. --- Negative stereotypes about civil servants are common in many countries, for example in popular media (Pautz and Warnement 2013), or in the form of politicians’ bureaucrat bashing (Caillier 2018). Recently, researchers have mapped citizens’ civil servant stereotypes (Boer 2020; Willems 2020; Bertram, Bouwman, and Tummers 2021). The question remains, however, how these stereotypes impact public service delivery. In this study, we experimentally investigate whether stereotypes about civil servants affect clients’ satisfaction and perceptions of performance in public service delivery. A key aspect of stereotypes is that they shape expectations and perceptions of other people: They make us attuned to information that confirms our stereotypes, and so shape our interpretations, attributions, and judgements of other people’s behavior (Dovidio et al. 2010; Payne 2001). Following this line of reasoning, civil servant stereotypes may bias how citizens experience interactions with civil servants, and ultimately, public service. Then, much like trust in government not only follows from people’s perceptions of performance but also shapes them (Van de Walle and Bouckaert 2003), negative civil servant stereotypes may shape how people evaluate public encounters. This could affect willingness to seek public services in future. Additionally, it may negatively shape how clients respond to civil servants, thereby worsening the quality of the interaction further. Against the backdrop of the Expectancy-Disconfirmation Model (EDM) – the dominant model of understanding citizen satisfaction that suggests a reflective cognitive process (Van Ryzin 2004) – researchers are investigating the role of unconscious biases and reflexive processing in citizen satisfaction (Andersen and Hjortskov 2016; Jilke and Baekgaard 2020). Our research contributes to this, thus helping to refine our understanding of the EDM, its limits, and other mechanisms that contribute to public service experience and evaluation. Indeed, the reasoning of the EDM might suggest that negative stereotypes contribute to negative expectations, which can be disconfirmed by positive performance, leading to more satisfaction. Alternatively, we suggest that negative stereotypes may be used subconsciously to bring experience in line with expectation, thus reducing satisfaction – especially when service provision is not unambiguously positive (see also Van Ryzin 2013). We will use an online vignette experiment, where we experimentally activate stereotypes (negative versus control versus postitive) about civil servants. We study the effect thereof on 1) perceptions of performance and 2) satisfaction levels. Vignettes will present a detailed description of a specific instance of a hypothetical public encounter, in one of three different service provision contexts: welfare provision, getting an extension of driver’s license, and communications with the tax office. By using three different contexts, our study allows us to say something about more than just one context of public service, and hopefully about generalizability of effects across different public service contexts. We have selected three types of public service delivery that do not clearly signal positive or negative performance, in terms of outcomes and process. All of them entail person-to-person interaction between a government worker and the citizen. The cases are selected such that they differ in terms of the invasiveness for citizens (see for more details the survey itself). The cases are specific, but by varying the context in this way, they are to an extent representative of the types of public encounters that citizens can have. In our analyses, we will focus not only on the sample as a whole, but will also consider participant characteristics that may interact with our manipulation. Specifically, we investigate the role of socioeconomic status, as research suggests that having low status is related to having more negative stereotypes of and experiences with civil servants and the state (Bertram et al. 2021; Christensen et al. 2020; Visser, De Koster, and Van Der Waal, n.d.). Additionally, we take a more exploratory approach to the effect of public service context, performance area, previous experiences, occupational sector, and other demographic variables.

Research on leadership is growing. However, to date we still know relatively little about how the behaviors of followers affect their leaders (Uhl-Bien et al. 2014; Amad & Bolono 2020). Very recently Amad and Bolono (2020) found that good behavior on the part of followers psychologically frees leaders to engage in subsequent self-reported unethical behavior. However, from frequently studied consistency theories we know that past behavior does not always results in opposite behavior (licensing/cleansing hypothesis), but that it can also lead to similar behavior (consistency hypothesis) (Mullen and Monin 2016). In addition, we know that not only past good behavior can lead to subsequent bad behavior, but also that past bad behavior can result in subsequent good behavior (Brañas-Garza et al. 2013). Based on this, we ask the following question:Does motivation moderate the relationship between leader and follower behavior? By integrating these streams of research, the contribution of this study is manyfold: First, we contribute to the limited knowledge of the effects of followers’ behavior on leaders’ behavior (Uhl-Bien et al. 2014; Amad & Bolono 2020). Second, we contribute to the largest conundrum in the licensing literature – the contradiction between consistent behavior on the one hand and balancing on the other hand – (Mullen and Monin 2016), by empirically testing the effect of potential moderators: two other-regarding types of motivation. Our study is also relevant from a methodological point of view. First, we study a behavioral measure of balancing behavior rather than self-reported behavior (cf. Amad and Bolono (2020). Second, many empirical tests of sequential effects of behavior do not include a baseline condition and only contrast positive versus negative initial behavior (Mullen and Monin 2016). This is problematic as it only allows to draw conclusions about balancing and not licensing. By including a “neutral baseline condition”, we overcome this problem.

This study is part of a research project that maps people’s stereotypes of public sector workers (see linked project: Lazy Bureaucrats? Studying stereotypes of civil servants across countries). Such stereotypes, we hypothesize, are not the same across the population, and may differ based on certain citizen characteristics. This study examines the relation between citizen’s socioeconomic status (SES) and their stereotypes of public sector workers.

The project brings two lines of earlier research together: neuropolitical research and the BPA. Neuropolitical research aims to understand the neural mechanisms underlying political information processing and decision making, focusing on specific brain regions that are involved in affective and evaluative processing such as the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), the insular cortex and the amygdala (Haas et al., 2020; Jost et al., 2014). Jost et al.’s review study also shows that a more conservative political preference is positively associated with certain personality traits: resistance to change, negativity bias, authoritarianism, need for closure, sensitivity or fear of threats, anxiety, and conscientiousness. It is negatively associated with openness to new experiences, complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity. Several of these variables have also been studied in the BPA studies and proven to be related to citizens’ opinions and satisfaction with public service delivery (cf. references above). Therefore, we aim to explore whether there is also a direct or indirect effect of personality traits and cognitive neural correlates on citizens’ knowledge, preferences and expectations of public service delivery.

This study examines whether a universal public sector stereotype exists by investigating similarities and differences cross-nationally and by different types of jobs. Dedicated public sector workers are crucial for a well-functioning society. We all depend on them for our safety, health and mobility. However, public sector workers are constantly portrayed as lazy, incompetent and even evil (Goodsell, 2004). In Western countries, the expression of negative stereotypes is even quite commonly accepted. These stereotypes, however, could negatively affect public sector workers in their performance work and wellbeing (Spencer et al., 2016). Furthermore, it is not clear to what extent these negative stereotypes are shared among citizens across different countries nor whether they differ by type of worker, such as police officers or judges. This study answers the following research questions: - Which stereotypes exist among citizens about public sector workers? - How do these stereotypes differ between different public sector occupations? (Public sector workers generally, police officers, judges, and tax officials. Private sector workers will be used as a reference group.) - How do these stereotypes differ between countries with markedly different administrative traditions (South Korea, Canada, the United States, and the Netherlands)?

We test if the link between PSM and cheating behaviour is moderated by sector association.

Cross-sectoral strategic negotiation is a key challenge in PPPs. Based on framing and game theory, we investigate the effect of sectoral agency, affect, and bargaining domain on sectoral agents��� bargaining behaviour in a PPP renegotiation scenario. Results confirm that public agents are more likely to bargain for satisfactory, ���good enough��� contracts than private agents, who maximize their utility. This difference is stronger in the loss vis-a-vis the gain domain. These experimental findings advance our understanding of psychological mechanisms underlying cross-sectoral negotiations, suggesting that public managers and policy-makers account for partners��� dissimilar bargaining logics to prevent asymmetric loss socialization in PPPs.

Van toezichthouders wordt steeds vaker verwacht dat ze informatie over hun toezicht en onder toezicht staande organisaties publiceren. Dat doen ze om burgers in staat te stellen keuzes te maken, om onder toezicht staande partijen te bewegen zich aan wet- en regelgeving te houden en om verantwoording af te leggen. Een veel gehoord argument voor transparantie over toezicht is dat dit bijdraagt aan het vertrouwen. Maar draagt transparantie wel bij aan het winnen van het vertrouwen van burgers? En doet het afbreuk aan het vertrouwen in sectoren als de toezichthouder publiceert dat er veel mis is in de sector? In Vergroot transparantie vertrouwen in het toezicht? krijgt de lezer aan de hand van kwalitatieve en kwantitatieve analyses een diepgaand inzicht in de effecten van uiteenlopende vormen van transparantie op het vertrouwen van burgers in drie toezichthouders en sectoren. Dit boek laat zien dat transparantie bijdraagt aan het vertrouwen in de toezichthouder, zonder dat het afbreuk doet aan vertrouwen in een sector, zelfs als er sprake is van ‘slecht nieuws’. Er zijn echter wel verschillen tussen toezichtsdomeinen, waardoor in een aantal situaties andere communicatiestrategieën juist passender zijn.

Contains fulltext : 160113.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access) Red tape is one of the most often-mentioned nuisances citizens experience with government. However, there is a dearth of red tape research focusing on citizens. Therefore, the primary goal of this article is to analyze the effect of red tape on citizen satisfaction. The secondary goal is to go beyond testing a linear relationship between red tape and citizen satisfaction by examining individual factors that may moderate this relationship. In order to analyze the red tape/satisfaction relationship, we have designed an experiment in which 179 subjects participated. Experiments are still relatively rare in public administration, but are increasingly seen as a rigorous and useful method for theory testing and development. We found that red tape has a strong negative effect on citizen satisfaction, and that this effect is weaker when citizens have high knowledge of political processes. We conclude with implications and a future research agenda.

Contains fulltext : 175502.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access)

Purpose – Based on previous inventories, the purpose of this paper is to extend the knowledge on public administration experiments by focusing on their experimental type, design, sample type and realism levels and external validity. The aim is to provide an overview of experimental public administration and formulate potential ways forward. Design/methodology/approach – The authors examine the current state of experimental public administration, by looking at a systematic selection of ISI ranked experimental publications in major public administration journals (1992-2014) and recommend ways forward based on this review. Findings – The review indicates a rise in experimentation in public administration in recent years, this can be attributed mostly to some subfields of public administration. Furthermore, most experiments in public administration tend to have relatively simple designs, high experimental realism and a focus on external validity. Experimental public administration can be strengthened by increasing diversification in terms of samples, experimental designs, experimental types and substantive scope. Finally, the authors recommend to better utilize experiments to generate usable knowledge for practitioners and to replicate experiments to improve scientific rigour. Originality/value – This paper contributes to experimental public administration by drawing on a systematic selection of papers and assessing them in depth. By means of a transparent and systematic selection of publications, various venues or ways forward are presented.