Coping with administrative tasks: A cross‐country analysis from a street‐level perspective

• Published date: 01 November 2024
• Author: Maria Tiggelaar,Sandra Groeneveld,Bert George
• Date: 01 November 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13745

SCHOLARLY TAKES

Coping with administrative tasks: A cross-country analysis

from a street-level perspective

Maria Tiggelaar

1

| Sandra Groeneveld

2

| Bert George

3

1

Department of Public Governance and

Management, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

2

Institute of Public Administration, Leiden

University, The Hague, Netherlands

3

Department of Public and International Affairs,

City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, SAR,

Hong Kong

Correspondence

Sandra Groeneveld, Institute of Public

Administration, Leiden University, The Hague,

Netherlands.

Email: s.m.groeneveld@fgga.leidenuniv.nl

Maria Tiggelaar, Department of Public

Governance and Management, Ghent

University, Ghent, Belgium.

Email: maria.tiggelaar@ugent.be

Funding information

Research Foundation –Flanders, Grant/Award

Number: 204276/11J0523N LG 3758

Abstract

Administrative tasks often are an unavoidable aspect of the daily work of street-

level bureaucrats (SLBs). These burdensome tasks are job demands that can cause

stress and put a strain on SLBs’working experience and performance. So far, few

studies have searched for job resources that can help SLBs cope with this aspect

of their daily work. This study analyzes how performing administrative tasks results

in job stress. Participation in organizational decision-making is presented as a job

resource that mitigates this impact—although, we hypothesize, less so in countries

with high power distance. Using a survey dataset of 113,210 teachers across

46 countries, we find that participation in organizational decision-making indeed

reduces the impact of spending time on administrative tasks on job stress. Power

distance does not influence this moderation significantly but does have cross-level

interactions with both the time spent on administrative tasks and the level of par-

ticipation separately.

Evidence for practice

•Administrative tasks often are often an unavoidable yet burdensome aspect of

policy implementation among street-level bureaucrats (SLBs). The job demand

of spending time on administrative tasks results in stress among teachers

worldwide.

•Reducing administrative tasks is not always possible. So, public managers have

to provide job resources that can mitigate the relationship between time spent

on administrative tasks and job stress.

•Based on a unique cross-country sample of teachers (N =113,210), the possibil-

ity for participation in organizational decision-making as a mitigating variable is

identified: it effectively weakens the association between spending time on

administrative tasks and job stress, thus helping SLBs cope with administrative

tasks. Moreover, participation also directly reduces job stress.

•The mitigating impact of participation is not influenced by power distance in a

country. However, we do find that in countries with high power distance, partici-

pation reduces job stress to a greater extent and the impact of spending time

on administrative tasks on stress is weaker. Culture does seemingly matter,

though not as we hypothesized.

•Our article helps public managers consider the negative impact that administra-

tive tasks hold both on the wellbeing of their SLBs as well as the expected nega-

tive impact on their implementation of policy. While these tasks most likely

remain a daily aspect of the work of many frontline professionals, there are man-

ageable organizational resources that help SLBs cope with the demand of fulfill-

ing administrative tasks.

Received: 20 August 2021 Revised: 30 August 2023 Accepted: 26 September 2023

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13745

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium,

provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

© 2023 The Authors. Public Administration Review published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Society for Public Administration.

1134 Public Admin Rev. 2024;84:1134–1147.

wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/puar