Unbureaucratic Behavior among Street-Level Bureaucrats: The Case of the German State Police

• Published date: 01 December 2017
• Date: 01 December 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0734371X15593990
• Subject Matter: Articles

593990ROPXXX10.1177/0734371X15593990Review of Public Personnel AdministrationBrockmann
research-article2015
Article
Review of Public Personnel Administration
2017, Vol. 37(4) 430 –451
Unbureaucratic Behavior
© The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/0734371X15593990
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Bureaucrats: The Case of
the German State Police
Julia Brockmann1
Abstract
There is an increasing interest in the public management literature in questions related
to street-level bureaucrats’ (SLBs) behaviors and attitudes and how these can be
influenced. Complex and ambiguous working environments require SLBs to exercise
discretion, and thereby bend rules to perform their daily tasks. This study identifies
factors influencing SLBs’ rule-bending behaviors for procedural improvements.
The concept of unbureaucratic behavior, defined as a rule-bending behavior for
procedural improvements, serves as a theoretical basis. Relying on data of 1,003
enforcement officers from the German state police, this study’s findings indicate that
SLBs’ unbureaucratic behavior can be influenced by stimulating employees’ voice
behavior and their readiness for strategy. Surprisingly, SLBs’ access to resources does
not significantly affect their exercise of unbureaucratic behavior.
Keywords
unbureaucratic behavior, police organization, SLBs
Introduction
The public management literature has seen an increasing interest in questions related
to bureaucrats’ behavior and attitudes and how these can be influenced. For example,
the literature focuses on street-level bureaucrats’ (SLBs; for example, police officers,
teachers) behavior such as bureaucratic posture (Wise, 2004), entrepreneurial behavior
1University of Hamburg, Germany
Corresponding Author:
Julia Brockmann, School of Business, Economics and Social Sciences, University of Hamburg, Von Melle
Park 5, D-20146 Hamburg, Germany.
Email: julia.brockmann@gmail.com

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Brockmann
431
(Denhardt & Denhardt, 2000; Grady & Tax, 1996), exercise of discretion (e.g., Meyers
& Lehmann-Nielsen, 2012; Oberfield, 2009; Taylor, 2007), and deviation and rule
abidance (e.g., DeHart-Davis, 2009; Henderson, 2013).
In public organizations, SLBs’ working behaviors are particularly important as
SLBs are responsible for the delivery of public services. They “actively shape public
policy outcomes by interpreting rules and allocating scarce resources” (Meyers &
Lehmann-Nielsen, 2012, p. 307). For this, SLBs “must find ways to accommodate the
demands placed upon them […] by routinizing procedures, modifying goals, rationing
services, asserting priorities, and limiting or controlling clientele” (Weatherley &
Lipsky, 1977, p. 172). In this sense, they also act as policy makers (Weatherley &
Lipsky, 1977). This requires SLBs to exercise discretion.
Policy managers are concerned about SLBs’ misusing discretion in delivering pub-
lic services and thereby threatening organizations’ objectives (Bovens & Zouridis,
2002). They are afraid that self-interest guides SLBs’ decisions and that they will use
their discretion to make their “work easier, safer and more rewarding” (Maynard-
Moody & Musheno, 2000, p. 329). From the perspective of SLBs, however, discretion
is perceived as necessary to perform their jobs (Jones, 2001). Moreover, they perceive
themselves as “citizen agents” (Maynard-Moody & Musheno, 2000; Meyers &
Lehmann-Nielsen, 2012) who bend rules to satisfy citizens or to make up for policy’s
limitations (Canales, 2011; Keiser & Soss, 1998). The nature of SLBs interacting with
different customers requires them to exhibit different behaviors to “maintain the nor-
mative order of society” (Meyers & Lehmann-Nielsen, 2012, p. 307).
The literature is convinced that discretion will always be a part of SLBs’ working
behavior (Evans & Harris, 2004; Meyers & Lehmann-Nielsen, 2012); however, the
current literature is limited in identifying factors that can influence SLBs’ rule-
bending behavior toward positive outcomes (Keiser & Soss, 1998). In this study, dis-
cretion will be analyzed by assessing SLBs’ rule-bending behavior and will be ana-
lyzed from a micro perspective (Scott, 1997). This study attempts to identify factors
that influence SLBs’ behavior to bend rules for procedural improvements (e.g.,
increasing task efficiency or effectiveness).
Studies have linked SLBs’ rule-bending behavior with positive organizational out-
comes: Rule-bending behaviors can create competitive advantages (Canales, 2011),
and build social capital (Portillo, 2011) and a positive reputation with the citizens with
whom SLBs interact. Other research has demonstrated that SLBs tend to interpret
rules to positively influence the delivery of public services such as social care (Evans
& Harris, 2004) or child support (Keiser & Soss, 1998). From Guyer’s (2013) study on
prosocial behavior among border patrol officers, we have learned that rule-bending
behaviors can also be conceptualized as one form of prosocial behavior as long as
these behaviors benefit the organization. She further revealed that SLBs who engage
in prosocial rule-bending behavior “implement the law to the best of their ability,”
which sometimes means “looking past agency policies” (Guyer, 2013, p. 78).
In the following, the concept of unbureaucratic behavior is introduced, which
serves as a theoretical basis to assess SLBs’ tendency to bend organizational rules for
procedural improvements. SLBs’ unbureaucratic behavior is assessed by linking it to

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Review of Public Personnel Administration 37(4)
SLBs’ voice behavior, their readiness for strategy, and their access to resources. The
findings from a survey of 1,003 respondents indicate that voice behavior and readiness
for strategy can positively influence SLBs to behave unbureaucratically.
The remainder of this article is structured as follows: The first part clarifies central
concepts used in this study and presents three hypotheses regarding the relationship
between unbureaucratic behavior and the independent variables of voice behavior,
readiness for strategy, and access to resources. The second part gives an overview of
the study sample, data collection, and study measures. In the third part, the hypotheses
are tested by using regression analysis on 1,003 responses. The fourth part finishes by
discussing the main contributions, limitations, and future research questions.
Theory and Hypotheses
Unbureaucratic Behavior
By applying the concept of unbureaucratic behavior, it is aimed to combine and enrich
public management literature with the growing field of positive organizational schol-
arship. This field “investigates positive deviance, or the ways in which organizations
and their members flourish and prosper in especially favourable ways” (Cameron &
Caza, 2004, p. 731). Positive organizational scholarship puts “emphasis on how to see,
rather than exactly what to see, [and] bears an affinity to the technique involved in
seeing an auto-stereogram” (Caza & Cameron, 2009, p. 100). Therefore, this new
perspective enables this research approach to tread new paths when looking at familiar
situations in organizations (Caza & Cameron, 2009).
SLBs’ exhibiting rule-bending behaviors for procedural improvements will be
examined by applying the concept of unbureaucratic behavior. Unbureaucratic behav-
ior is derived from DeHart-Davis’s (2007) concept of unbureaucratic personality. In
this article, I prefer to use the term unbureaucratic behavior because behaviors can
be affected by factors on different levels. Moreover, it has been highlighted that by
moving away from the static concept of personality, research can make important
contributions to a dynamic portrait of (un)bureaucratic behaviors (Oberfield, 2009).
In this study, the concept of unbureaucratic behavior serves as the theoretical
basis and is defined as an individual’s rule-bending behavior for procedural
improvements.
The literature has revealed that unbureaucratic behavior depends on different fac-
tors, including those related to the individual him- or herself (e.g., nonconformity, risk
propensity; DeHart-Davis, 2007) and those related to the work environment (e.g., for-
malization, training, leadership; DeHart-Davis, 2007; Oberfield, 2009). Moreover, the
literature has demonstrated that unbureaucratic behaviors are “paradoxical” (Portillo,
2011, p. 90) because rule bending arises for altruistic (Canales, 2011) or selfish rea-
sons (Bourdieu, 2005) and “it tends to be individually admired and collectively feared”
(Portillo, 2011, p. 90). Oberfield (2009) argued that SLBs “have the potential to act
as rule followers or rule deviators in any situation, they may constantly choose one
identity” (p. 738).

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The public management literature has recently seen an increasing interest in
research on deviant workplace behaviors such as rule bending (Brewer & Selden,
1998; DeHart-Davis, 2007; Feeney & DeHart-Davis, 2009; Portillo & DeHart-Davis,
2009). Rule-bending behaviors can occur in response to high performance pressures
(Sekerka & Zolin, 2007) or organizational change (Keiser & Soss, 1998; Lipsky, 1980;
Robinson & Bennett, 1995). In the literature, rule-bending behavior has been catego-
rized in two forms. The first form is negatively connoted, for example, when it primar-
ily serves SLBs’ self-interest or results in illegal behavior (Vaughan, 1999). The other
stream of research focuses on the...