Bureaucracy and Public Employee Behavior

• Author: Leisha DeHart-Davis,Mary K. Feeney
• Published date: 01 December 2009
• Date: 01 December 2009
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0734371X09333201
• Subject Matter: Articles

Review of Public Personnel
Articles
Administration
Volume 29 Number 4
December 2009 311-326
© 2009 Sage Publications
Bureaucracy and Public
10.1177/0734371X09333201
http://roppa.sagepub.com
Employee Behavior
hosted at
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A Case of Local Government
Mary K. Feeney
University of Illinois at Chicago
Leisha DeHart-Davis
University of Kansas
government reinvention advocates assert that less bureaucratic work environments will
spark higher creativity, more risk taking, and greater productivity in public employees.
although government reinvention remains a topic of interest to scholars and practitio-
ners alike, these particular arguments lack empirical support. In response, this article
tests the relationship between different forms of bureaucratic control (formalization,
red tape, and centralization) and reported employee perceptions and behavior in local
governments. analyzing mail survey data from a study of the employees of four cities
in a Midwestern state, this article finds that employee responses to bureaucratic control
are not as straightforward as reinventionists expect. Different types of bureaucratic
control are related to distinct employee responses, and sometimes these responses are
the very behaviors that reinventionists seek to trigger by reducing bureaucracy.
Keywords: bureaucratic control; formalization; centralization; red tape; government
reinvention
government reinvention efforts seek to reduce bureaucracy as one tactic for
jumpstarting government performance (Frederickson, 1996). Reduced bureau-
cracy includes internal deregulation, in which organizational rules are trimmed or
eliminated, and decentralization, in which decision-making authority is pushed
downwards in the organization. These structural changes target the public employee,
who is expected to respond with greater on-the-job creativity (Cohen & Brand, 1993;
National Performance Review [NPR], 1993), risk taking (Cohen & eimicke, 1998;
Osborne & Plastrik, 2000), and productivity (NPR, 1993; Osborne & gaebler, 1992).
These behavioral changes in public employees are, in turn, expected to increase
public organization effectiveness (NPR, 1993; Osborne & Plastrik, 1997).
Authors’ Note: The data used in this article were collected and analyzed with the support of a fellowship
from the american association of University Women, a new faculty grant from the University of Kansas,
and research assistance from the Institute for Policy and Social Research at the University of Kansas. This
support does not imply an endorsement of the article’s analyses or opinions.
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The arguments that reduced bureaucracy will alter public employee behavior are
challengeable on several grounds. Similar to many reinvention arguments, the con-
nection between bureaucracy and public employee behavior lacks coherent theoreti-
cal grounding (goodsell, 1993; Ingraham & Jones, 1999; J. R. Thompson & Jones,
1995) and often relies on anecdote rather than empirical evidence in supporting its
claims (Frederickson, 1996). Furthermore, the reinvention literature treats bureau-
cratic control as a monolithic form, thus neglecting the possibility that distinct forms
of control may induce different employee behaviors.
In response to these limitations, this article explores the linkages between bureau-
cracy and public employee behavior and perceptions. Specifically, we articulate
hypotheses about the relationships between perceived bureaucracy and employee
behavior, test these hypothetical relationships using empirical data gathered from
local government employees located at different hierarchical levels, and consider
these results in light of different forms of bureaucratic control. Undertaking these
tasks is timely, given that government reinvention shows no sign of waning as a
public administration topic (Cohen & Brand, 1993; Kettl, 2000; F. J. Thompson &
Riccucci, 1998) and has moved from large federal reform efforts to reforms at local
levels. Furthermore, public organization structure is of persistent importance to
scholars and practitioners alike, given its implications for resource distribution,
coordination capacity, and efficiency and effectiveness (andrews, Boyne, Law, &
Walker, 2009).
The data for testing these expectations were collected by a mail survey of the
population of employees in four Midwestern cities. These data offer the opportunity
to test the relationships between bureaucratic control and employee behavior and
perceptions and include the views of lower and mid-level city employees, not only
managers and leaders. The article is organized as follows. The first section identifies
the hypotheses about the relationships between bureaucratic control and public
employee behavior. The second section describes the study design. The third section
provides an overview of the measures of bureaucratic control and public employee
perceptions and the statistical models. The fourth section reports the results of sta-
tistical hypothesis testing. The fifth section interprets the results and provides con-
cluding remarks.
Reinvention Rhetoric, Theory, and Hypotheses
government reinvention efforts assume that less bureaucratized work environ-
ments yield higher creativity, productivity, and risk taking among public employees.
This section documents these expectations, articulates them as testable hypotheses,
and compares these hypotheses with theory and evidence from the scholarly litera-
ture. We formulate the hypotheses with three components of bureaucratic control:
formalization, red tape, and centralization. Formalization measures the extent of

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Feeney, DeHart-Davis / Bureaucracy and Public employee Behavior 313
written rules, regulations, and procedures (Pugh, Hickson, Hinings, & Turner, 1968).
Red tape is a measure for ineffective rules (Bozeman, 2000). Centralization indicates
the upward locus of decision making (aiken & Hage, 1966; Rainey, 1993).
Creativity
government reinventors anticipate that bureaucracy reduces the ability of public
employees to work creatively. Creativity is not explicitly defined but tends to be used
in the context of novel approaches to work tasks and problem solving. For example,
creativity is associated with new ideas and innovation (National Commission on the
State and Local Public Service [NCSLPS], 1993) and with employee judgment and
problem solving (NPR, 1993). Bureaucracy is expected to dampen creativity by
reducing room for discretionary action (Barzelay & armajani, 1992) and suppress-
ing the consideration of novel ideas (NCSLPS, 1993; NPR, 1993). Conversely,
internal deregulation and decentralization are expected to enable creativity by free-
ing employees from having to “blindly follow standard operating procedures”
(Cohen & Brand, 1993, p. 72), seeking approval from “unnecessary management
layers” (NPR, 1993, p. 70), and giving employees ownership in work processes
(Denhardt, 1993; Osborne & Colon Rivera, 1998). If these reinvention arguments are
valid, then we should expect the following:
Hypothesis 1: Increases in perceived workplace bureaucratization will be related to lower
creativity in the workplace.
Hypothesis 1a: Perceived formalization will be negatively associated with public employees’
perceptions of creativity in the workplace.
Hypothesis 1b: Perceived red tape will be negatively associated with public employees’ per-
ceptions of creativity in the workplace.
Hypothesis 1c: Perceived centralization will be negatively associated with public employees’
perceptions of creativity in the workplace.
In the scholarly literature, much of the discourse on organizational structure and
employee creativity has occurred at the conceptual level (andriopoulos, 2001). V. a.
Thompson (1965) offered a number of explanations for how centralization sup-
presses creativity: by rendering conflict illegitimate, by giving superiors veto power
over potentially threatening innovative ideas, and by inducing conformity among
employees whose success depends on superiors’ approval. Cummings (1965) out-
lined the theoretical attributes of a creative organizational climate. These attributes
include minimal formalization, to enable more rapid responses to changing environ-
ments and to eschew the notion of “one best way” of doing things; and greater dis-
cretion, participation, and autonomy, which are expected to nourish diversity of
opinion and the identification of alternative solutions. Koprowski (1972) theorized
that creative individuals have little use for authoritative structures and can be

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retained only by organizations that impose little structure. and several scholars have
asserted that bureaucratic control dampens the intrinsic motivation needed for cre-
ativity (amabile, 1988; Deci & Ryan, 1985).
In one contradictory strand of reasoning, adler and Borys (1996) argue that
“enabling” formalization, which involves explaining the goals of procedural require-
ments to employees, will allow them to interact “creatively” with the organization
and environment. This creative interaction is likened to employees who are able to
fix equipment malfunctions because they understand the technology’s inner work-
ings (adler & Borys, 1996). In most theoretical treatments, however, minimum
structure is characterized as a condition for employee creativity (Koprowski, 1972;
Mcgrath, 2001; Woodman, Sawyer, & griffin, 1993).
empirical evidence...