Street‐Level Bureaucrats’ Social Value OrientationOn and OffDuty

Abstract

Are street-level bureaucrats more willing to sacrifice their own self-interests to meet the needs of their clients when they are off duty or on duty? If the former is the case, what does that finding tell us about their work environment? Using the social value orientation paradigm in a mixed effects experimental design, the authors found that Israeli police officers demonstrated greater pro-social inclinations off duty compared with on duty. Given these findings, the authors suggest the possibility that the organization's constraints and culture may, paradoxically, reduce street-level bureaucrats' real social value orientations and increase the promotion of their own self-interests when they are on duty. Evidence for Practice• Using an experiment, we found that police officers demonstrated more willingness to sacrifice their own interests to promote citizens' needs when they were off duty than when they were on duty. • We also found that the more years on the force police officers had, the less they demonstrated this pro-social orientation. • Our findings imply that, paradoxically, the organizational environment reduces police officers' social value orientation when they are on duty. • We discuss the possibility that managers' imposition of extensive external rules and incentives may crowd out their subordinates' internal pro-social tendencies.The authors contributed equally to this article. Uri Hertz is a lecturer at the University of Haifa in the Department of Cognitive Sciences, where he investigates the neural mechanisms and psychological processes underlying social influence and collective decision making using behavioral measurements, computational models, and neuroimaging.

Playing defence: the impact of trust on the coping mechanisms of street-level bureaucrats

“…What role do organizational conditions play in this dynamic? As the literature already explains, together with personal characteristics and the environment, organizational conditions are critical in understanding SLBs' discretion when deciding how to treat their clients (Cohen 2018;Cohen and Hertz 2020). In accordance with Brodkin's (2011) claim that SLBs' personal preferences are mediated by organizational conditions, we argue that to better understand the phenomenon, these organizational conditions must be evaluated.…”

Walking the Talk of Social Equity? Street-Level Bureaucrats’ Decisionmaking About the Provision of Personal Resources

“…It can be argued that such professions are typically more oriented towards aspects of social equity than other professions. However, a recent study shows that police officers are willing to engage in pro-social behaviours when they are off duty, more so than when on duty (Cohen & Hertz, 2020). It may therefore be concluded that walking the talk of social equity is something that can be found in many domains on the street level, and that this is more commonly manifested in workers' informal practices than their formal ones.…”

Street‐level bureaucrats and policy entrepreneurship: When implementers challenge policy design

“…The first category—personal characteristics—includes their values, beliefs, standards, and economic preferences in response to incentives. Other factors include their ideology, preferences, values, attitudes, and opinions (Brodkin, 2011; Keiser, 2010; Kelly, 1994; Maynard‐Moody & Musheno, 2003; Meyers and Vorsanger, 2007), adherence and commitment to the agency or specific program goals (Tummers et al, 2012), their feelings about the goals of the organization (Keiser, 2010), the degree to which they want to make a difference in citizens' lives (Tummers & Bekkers, 2014), their attitudes toward and feelings about their clients (Riccucci, 2005), the degree to which they feel accountable to their clients (Hupe & Hill, 2007; Keiser, 2010), information about other actors in the organization (Keiser, 2010; Wood & Vedlitz, 2007), and their self‐interests (Brodkin, 2011; Cohen & Hertz, 2020).…”

“…The second category—their organizational conditions—includes their organizational resources and incentives. Researchers have added other factors to this category including the role of social networks, interactions with peers (Sandfort, 2000) and what their peers think and believe (Keiser, 2010), the subjective norms of their managers (Tummers et al, 2012), organizational resources and incentives (Brodkin, 1997; Cohen & Hertz, 2020), management requirements and organizational constraints (Brodkin, 2011; May & Winter, 2009), level of discretion (Hill and Hupe, 2014), influence on organizational implementation (Tummers et al, 2012), and organizational culture (Cohen, 2018).…”