Effects of Employee Participation in Managing Public Organizations

Recent studies in public management have shown that managerial interventions can have a negative effect on the motivation and performance of public service providers when these interventions are perceived as controlling (e.g.,... [ view full abstract ]

Recent studies in public management have shown that managerial interventions can have a negative effect on the motivation and performance of public service providers when these interventions are perceived as controlling (e.g., Jacobsen et al., 2014; Jacobsen & Andersen, 2014; Nishii et al., 2008). To accommodate such unintended outcomes, it has been recommended that employees are consulted and involved in managing the organizations in order for them to develop more supportive perceptions of the leader’s course of actions (Mikkelsen, Jacobsen, & Andersen, 2014). But what if this involvement is in itself perceived as a controlling device merely aimed at legitimizing managerial actions?

Inspired by Motivation Crowding Theory (Frey, 1997), this paper argues that employee involvement in managing an organization – which is usually seen as a very positive thing – may in some instances backfire and harm employee motivation, job satisfaction, and behavior. Relying on longitudinal survey data with more than 1,000 Danish hospital employees in 2012-2015, we examine the relationships between managers’ involvement of employees in leadership tasks and a range of individual outcome measures (public service motivation, job satisfaction, innovative behavior, and self-reported performance) moderated by employees’ perceptions of this involvement as a controlling/supportive managerial device. Preliminary results indicate that with respect to the hospital staff’s public service motivation and innovative behavior there is indeed a negative moderation effect on the impact of employee involvement in leadership tasks when involvement is perceived as formal arrangements without any real impact. There are only direct negative effects of such perceptions on job satisfaction and self-reported performance.

The paper thus challenges the view of employee involvement in managing public organizations as an automatically positive thing. Instead, a key challenge for participative leadership is to make employees perceive involvement as a genuine and not merely a symbolic exercise.