Final Report Summary - COPING (Policy implementation in stressful times: Analyzing coping strategies of civil servants) How do street-level bureaucrats cope with stress during public service delivery?Police officers, social workers, teachers and physicians often face high workloads while having few resources and limited time per client. Therefore, these ‘street-level bureaucrats’ (a term used by Prof. Michael Lipsky) often face severe stress. A quote from an American teacher illustrates this:“I think in the last couple of years changes have taken place that have just added more responsibility, higher expectations, and more (...). I take my job very seriously and there are times that I feel like I’m just being spread thinner and thinner until the point where I get sad and it just makes me feel like I can’t do anything right (...). We talk about how everything should be about our students, but the biggest stress for me is how to keep it about the students.” American teacher talking about stress at work (own interview, 2014)The goal of this Marie Curie project was to understand how these workers cope with this stress, and how this affects their clients (which are for instance students, unemployed people or citizens). We called our topic of study ‘coping during public service delivery’.To increase our understanding of how street-level bureaucrats ‘cope during public service delivery’, we have conducted among else a systematic review of over 30 years of the literature (Tummers, Bekkers, Vink & Musheno, 2015), qualitative case studies (Tummers & Rocco, 2015) and quantitative scale development (Tummers & Musheno, 2015) in the United States and the Netherlands. In this summary, I summarize our results so far. I focus on three contributions we hope to make to the literature: a theoretical contribution, an empirical contribution and a methodological contribution.1. Theoretical contribution: Conceptualizing coping during public service deliveryTo analyze coping during public service delivery, we have defined coping and have developed a coherent classification system. Combining public administration and psychological studies, we defined coping during public service delivery as “behavioral efforts street-level bureaucrats use when working with clients, in order to master, tolerate or reduce external and internal demands and conflicts they face on an everyday basis.”Based on the definition of coping during public service delivery and the systematic review of the literature, we show that during public service delivery there are three main families of coping:- Moving towards clients: Coping by helping clients in stressful situations. An example is a social worker working a lot of overtime to help her clients.- Moving away from clients: Coping by avoiding meaningful interactions with clients in stressful situations. An example is a public servant stating "the office is very busy today, please return tomorrow."- Moving against clients: Coping by confronting clients. For instance, teachers can cope with stress when working with students by becoming imposing very rigid rules, such as no cellphone use in class and sending everyone to the office when they use a cellphone.2. Empirical contribution: Street-level bureaucrats help clients, even in stressful situationsBased on the literature review and qualitative studies, we found that most street-level bureaucrats move towards clients when confronted with stress. Street-level bureaucrats often work overtime and bend rules to benefit the clients. Hence, they help clients, even in stressful situations. This goes against the stereotype of the lazy bureaucrat who wants to make his work as easy as possible.3. Methodological contribution: Street-level bureaucrats help clients, even in stressful situationsBased on the literature review and qualitative studies, we finally aimed to develop a reliable and valid quantitative measurement instrument which can be used for survey research. The measurement instrument was tested among teachers and social workers in the Netherlands and the United States. Here, we show one of the developed scales. In total we developed five scales. You could try to fill it in yourself. How do you score? Below you will see a number of behaviors you could display towards clients. There are no right or wrong answers, just indicate how often you experience the following situations. 0=A few times a year or less 1=Once a month or less 2=A few times a month3=Once a week4=A few times a week5=AlwaysFamily moving towards clients. Way of Coping: Working overtime. My score:1. I work extra time to be able to fulfill my client’s needs ________2. I limit my breaks to keep up with work for clients ________3. I work on my days off to serve my clients ________4. I skip after-work personal activities to work for clients ________5. I work for clients even when I am on vacation ________6. I interrupt my breaks to respond to clients’ needs ________My Total Score (min.=0, middle=18, max.=36): ________SourcesLipsky, M. (1980). Street-level bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the individual in public services. New York: Russell Sage FoundationTummers, L.G. Bekkers, V.J.J.M. Vink, E., Musheno, M. (2015) Coping during public service delivery: A conceptualization and systematic review of the literature. Journal of Public Administration, Research and Theory. DOI: 10.1093/jopart/muu056Tummers, L.G. & Rocco, P. (2015). Serving Clients When the Server Crashes: How Frontline Workers Cope with E-Government Challenges. Public Administration Review. DOI: 10.1111/puar.12379Tummers, L.G. & Musheno, M. (2015). Coping during public service delivery: Developing a measurement instrument for survey research. Public Management Research Conference (Minneapolis, June 11-13).For more information, please visit www.larstummers.com/coping
