Explaining High Performance Among Indian Administrative Service (IAS) Officers: A Job Demands-Resources Perspective

• Author: Surya Prakash Pati,Ram Kumar Kakani
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0734371X211062481
• Published date: 01 June 2023
• Date: 01 June 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0734371X211062481

Review of Public Personnel Administration

2023, Vol. 43(2) 288 –308

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/0734371X211062481

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Article

Explaining High Performance

Among Indian Administrative

Service (IAS) Officers:

A Job Demands-Resources

Perspective

Surya Prakash Pati1 and Ram Kumar Kakani1

Abstract

Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers are careerist senior civil servants

(SCS) in the world’s largest democracy, holding senior roles of policymaking and

implementation. Therefore, identifying exceptionally performing SCS to unravel their

“job demands” along with “personal resources” should help with understanding how

best to manage these critical human resources. Employing a qualitative approach,

we interviewed 11 high performing IAS officers identified through a unique career

progression index. Our data analysis revealed that the IAS suffers from the following

job demands: difficulty in coordination with other departments and stakeholders,

financial inadequacy, and dishonest subordinates or coworkers. This study also found

that self-directed learning, personal reputation, empathy, and service orientation are

essential personal resources for high-performing SCS. While expanding the list of job

demands and personal resources in the public administration context, our research

provides a deeper insight into the challenges confronting careerist SCS in lower-

middle income developing countries.

Keywords

job demands-resources theory, career progression index, civil service, India

The Indian Administrative Service (IAS) can be likened to a steel frame that unites

India. It links every obscure town and village to the pillars of power in New Delhi,

1Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Kozhikode, Kerala, India

Corresponding Author:

Ram Kumar Kakani, Indian Institute of Management (IIM), IIMK Campus P.O, IIM Road, Kunnamangalam,

Kozhikode, Kerala 673570, India.

Email: ramkumar@iimk.ac.in

1062481ROPXXX10.1177/0734371X211062481Review of Public Personnel AdministrationPati and Kakani

research-article2021

Pati and Kakani 289

arguably providing the only semblance of continuity in a dynamic political landscape

(Bertrand et al., 2020). It is a leading source of assistance to elected representatives in

a thriving democracy and is engaged in varied complex duties, such as managing sys-

tems with thousands of employees and advising policymakers on multiple complex

issues (Marathe & Kakani, 2020). It also serves a diverse category of electoral repre-

sentatives, while taking care to coordinate across departments and stakeholders so that

the government functions with maximum possible effectiveness (Ingraham & Getha-

Taylor, 2004).

Given the rapid growth of digitization and social media, the scope of public service

has broadened in contemporary democracies to include areas ranging from social wel-

fare activities to digital governance to infrastructure development (Marathe & Kakani,

2020; Osborne, 2020). However, the increasing expectations on public administrators

are not matched by the resources available to them (Getha-Taylor & Morse, 2013).

Recently, this has attracted the attention of many scholars to identify and consolidate

the salient stressors or job demands (Schaufeli & Taris, 2014) that affect the perfor-

mance of public administrators. Identifying these can help governments and public

institutions design necessary policy interventions to improve the performance of their

human resources.

However, the available research on job demands in the public administration con-

text is still evolving. Moreover, there is little consensus on what are the most challeng-

ing job demands for high performing public administrators. For example, in a study

conducted in the United States, Cooke et al. (2019) found that perceived procurement

red tape negatively affected public administrators’ work engagement, implying that

they are fully physically, cognitively, and emotionally connected with their work roles

(Kahn, 1990). This contradicts the findings of Borst et al. (2019) that red tape has no

influence on the work engagement, organizational commitment, and turnover inten-

tion of Dutch public administrators. In South Asian countries, the role of public admin-

istrators hinges on the whims of the political class (see Salman, 2021), which hinders

their decision-making. In some contexts, the rules are rigid (Gupta et al., 2018),

whereas they may be ambiguously coded in others. Thus, malicious interpretations

and the exploitation of the rules to serve personal interests are not uncommon (Panday

& Panday, 2008).

In summary, the above findings highlight the need for, and importance of, contextu-

ally anchored investigations of job demands and resources. Context has been acknowl-

edged as the hidden moderator that has shaped the direction of psychological research

for more than a century (see Lewin, 1936 for one of the earliest references). In fact,

many scholars have argued that many variables in social sciences and psychological

research are more meaningful when they are studied within their cultural and historical

contexts of origin (see Van Bavel et al., 2016). The thinking has spilled over to human

resource management (HRM) research. Scholars argue institutional and cultural con-

text has a strong influence on the HRM strategies and policies of organizations (Cooke,

2018; Cooke et al., 2020). Therefore, it would not be surprising to see context playing

a limiting factor in operationalizing numerous public administration philosophies.