Suchergebnisse

Most of our knowledge of the benefits and costs of telework are based on self-selected workers who have worked remotely part-time. Full-time, pandemic-induced mass telework may present benefits and costs that differ from what was understood in the prior context. Informed by conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study examines the effect of pandemic-induced remote working on work alienation in the public sector with two Canadian surveys: a panel of teleworking public servants ( n = 605), and a representative sample of teleworking Canadians in public and private sectors ( n = 1001). Teleworkers who fit the "conscientious" personality profile were less alienated in their new teleworker status, and by contrast "extroverts" were more alienated than before the pandemic. We then examine the types of organizational adaptations that lower alienation, and find that more autonomy, avoiding micromanagement and promoting communication among employees is most promising.

AbstractAs public sector work environments continue to embrace the digital governance revolution, questions of work surveillance practices and its relationship to performance management continue to evolve, but even more dramatically in the contemporary period of many public servants being forced to shift to remote work from home in response to the COVID‐19 pandemic. This article presents the results of three surveys, two of them population‐based survey experiments, all conducted during the onset of the COVID‐19 pandemic in Canada that compare public servant (n = 346) and citizen (n = 1,008 phone; n = 2,001 web) attitudes to various cutting‐edge—though no doubt controversial among some—digital surveillance tools that can be used in the public sector to monitor employee work patterns, often targeted toward remote working conditions. The findings represent data that can help governments and public service associations navigate difficult questions of reasonable privacy intrusions in an increasing digitally connected workforce.Evidence for Practice

New work surveillance technologies are available to use within the public sector and will present acceptability challenges to public managers as they contemplate the introduction of these technologies.
Multimodal survey data from Canada reveals that public servants and citizens find these emerging work surveillance technologies to be quite intrusive and unreasonable but show relatively more tolerance for digital surveillance over physical surveillance practices.
Understanding surveillance anxieties among targeted employees will be key to finding a balance between employee privacy rights and employer desires to manage employees in a remote or digital environment.

AbstractWe examine the various whistleblowing regimes in Canada which, across 13 provinces and territories and a single federal government, exhibits theoretically interesting variation on procedures, incentives and protections that are well positioned for comparative analysis. Drawing on a panel of Canadian public servants, we conducted a survey with both descriptive and experimental dimensions to identify and measure knowledge and confidence in the context of diverse whistleblowing regimes, and how that relates to perceptions of the legitimacy of unauthorized public disclosures. We find that confidence is high among public servants despite variation in the structure of whistleblowing regimes, is enhanced when respondents know the number of reported wrongdoings and their results, and that greater knowledge of whistleblowing protections delegitimizes unauthorized public disclosures (e.g., leaking to the media) of alleged wrongdoing.

Citizen attitudes toward welfare state investments are often explained by their ideological values and their perceptions of deservingness of welfare recipients, yet recent experimental research has led to the theorization that clear deservingness cues can overwhelm otherwise strong ideological beliefs. We tested these claims with respect to homelessness in Canada using a vignette survey experiment and found evidence that citizens with very different political beliefs can support similar government investments, indeed from a shared sense of deservingness as suggested by recent experimental studies, but that support is anchored by rather different reasons.Key Practitioner Message:• Citizen support for homelessness investments is jointly mediated by ideology and a sense of the "deservingness" of the beneficiary.• Emphasizing the broader cost savings to taxpayers from "Housing First" does not make conservative‐leaning citizens more supportive of investments.• Emphasizing the personal attributes of persons experiencing homelessness rather than abstract statistics may unite progressives and conservatives on "deservingness".

AbstractThis article examines the interaction of different modes and levels of legitimacy within network governance institutions over time. Drawing on new theoretical directions in European governance studies and empirical findings from Canada, we contend that whereas input legitimacy can be exchanged, or traded-off, with output legitimacy to reinforce the overall legitimacy of a network governance institution, "throughput legitimacy" functions as a necessary condition that sustains legitimacy over time. Through a comparison of homelessness governance networks in Toronto and Calgary, we find that throughput legitimacy carries an amplification effect that results in either virtuous or vicious cycles. That is, we argue and demonstrate that low throughput legitimacy in network governance institutions can effectively bring down the whole house of cards.

Who should be included in collaborative governance and how they should be included is an important topic, though the dynamics of inclusion are not yet well understood. We propose a conceptual model to shape the empirical analysis of what contributes to inclusion in collaborative processes. We propose that incentives, mutual interdependence and trust are important preconditions of inclusion, but that active inclusion management also matters a great deal. We also hypothesize that inclusion is strategic, with 'selective activation' of participants depending on functional and pragmatic choices. Drawing on cases from the Collaborative Governance Case Databank, we used a mixed method approach to analyse our model. We found support for the model, and particularly for the central importance of active inclusion management.