EQUITY OR EFFICIENCY? EXPLAINING PUBLIC OFFICIALS’ VALUES IN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES 1
PAPER IN PROGRESS. PLEASE DO NOT CITE
Marcos Fernández-Gutiérrez & Steven Van de Walle
1 The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme under grant agreement No. 266887 (Project COCOPS), Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities.
Public officials’ equity-efficiency trade-off
EQUITY OR EFFICIENCY? EXPLAINING PUBLIC OFFICIALS’ VALUES IN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES
Abstract
This paper analyses the value trade-offs leading public servants make in European counties. Top civil servants’ views, attitudes and behaviours exemplify the values public institutions cherish. By studying the values held by top civil servants one can deduct the dominant value approaches of public institutions. Using the 17- country COCOPS population study among central government top civil servants, this paper maps and explains the value trade-offs they make (Hammerschmid et al., 2016). More in particular, the paper analyses the classic equity- efficiency value trade-off (Okun, 1975). The paper will first provide a descriptive picture of top civil servants’ value preferences across 17 European countries. It will then try to explain differences by looking at the context within which these civil servants work. To explain civil servants’ personal position between equity and efficiency, we explore four distinct hypotheses.
Keywords: Public values, efficiency, equity, top civil servant
2 Public officials’ equity-efficiency trade-off
PUBLIC SERVICE VALUES: FACTORS EXPLAINING PUBLIC OFFICIALS’ VIEWS ON EQUITY IN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES
Introduction
Conflicting and incommensurable values have received a lot of attention in philosophy and economics, but less so in public administration where attention is limited to a fairly small group of scholars interested in public values. Yet, attention for public values appear to be on the rise (Box, 2015), and substantial progress has been made in relation to mapping, categorising and conceptualising public values (DeForest Molina and McKeown, 2012; Van der Wal & Huberts, 2008; Van Wart, 1998). This paper adds to the body of work on public values body by using data from 14 different countries.
Easton famously described politics as the authoritative allocation of values (Easton, 1965). Government has to make choices between conflicting values. These tensions between values can be found everywhere within the public sector, especially when there is allocation and redistribution. The ‘uneasy compromises’ between values are represented in institutional arrangements (Okun: 1975: 1). Public management is about managing contradictions (Greener, 2013; Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2014). Civil servants want to achieve values and objectives that may be incompatible (De Graaf et al., 2014; Andrews and Van de Walle, 2013; Andrews & Entwistle 2010) and thus have to choose in daily administrative practice. This paper analyses the value trade-offs top civil servants make, and more in particular the equity- efficiency trade-off, and the determinants of this trade-off. We follow Molina’s definition of value – ‘as a complex cognitive-emotional preference for some object, quality, or characteristic that serves as either a means to an end (instrumental value) or an end in itself (terminal value).’(Molina, 2015: 50).
The equity-efficiency trade-off
The efficiency-equity trade-off is one the perennial questions in the social sciences. A trade- off refers to situation where one has to balance or choose between two objectives that are opposite or that cannot be had at the same time (Merriam Webster dictionary). If one goes up, the other goes down. In a trade-off situation, two objectives cannot be achieved simultaneously. Examples of the efficiency-equity trade-off can for instance be found in the allocation of landing slots to planes, or in the order of serving clients in an administrative office, where it may be more efficient not to allocate in order of appearance. The issue is also very salient in school reforms, where officials have to find a balance between school efficiency improvements and avoiding social segregation.
3 Public officials’ equity-efficiency trade-off
The academic beginnings of the debate on the efficiency-equity trade-off have been attributed by Le Grand (1990) to Barry (1965), who was discussing the evaluation of social outcomes in politics and policy. Barry argues that, if there’s for someone a trade-off between equity and efficiency, this means that ‘If it’s a question of choosing between efficiency and equity, it takes a large potential increase in equity to make him accept a potential reduction in efficiency (and vice versa)’ (Barry, 1965: 7). While different concepts, equity and equality are often used interchangeably. Equality refers to a situation where everyone is given equal resources (here, public services), whereas with equity, the resources are related to need, in order to achieve an equality of outcomes.
Okun’s 1975 ‘Equality and Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff’ is probably the best known treatise on the efficiency-equity trade-off. Okun discussed the observation that society often prefers equality-based approaches over market-based efficiency-oriented ones; and that checks on markets are common and sometimes desirable. He argues that there are parts in society where society opts for more equality, thereby compromising efficiency (Okun: 1975: 5). The opposite is not discussed in great length in Okun’s book, because, addressing economists, he assumed economists would be familiar with such market logic already. Markets pursue efficiency ‘But that pursuit of efficiency necessarily created inequalities. And hence society faces a tradeoff between equality and efficiency’ (Okun, 1975: 1). In other words – ‘We can’t have our cake of market efficiency and share it equally’ (Okun:, 1975: 2)
The book is written with distributive policies in mind, and introduced the image of a ‘leaky bucket’. The leaky bucket refers to efficiency losses that occur during redistribution aimed at reducing inequality. These efficiency losses are due to changes in incentives following the redistribution and administrative costs involved in redistribution (Okun: 1975: 92). For Okun, the size of the leak – or how much efficiency loss one is willing to tolerate to increase equality, is a matter of taste. Okun compared a Rawls who would always prefer equality no matter how large the leak, to a Friedman who would give priority to efficiency, and would have a very low tolerance for leaks (Okun, 1975: 92). This article contributes to explaining differences in this taste among key policy makers: Central government top civil servants in 14 European countries.
Okun’s equality/efficiency trade-off has become a classic, but not everyone agrees there is actually a trade-off. Osberg (1995), for instance, refers to the observation that countries with high equality also tend to grow fast, and that hence the trade-off probably does not exist. Le Grand elaborated a convincing argument ‘that the notion of a trade-off is meaningless. For acceptance of this interpretation implies that efficiency can be defined only in relation to the ability of forms of social and economic organization to attain their primary objectives and that therefore efficiency cannot itself be one of those primary objectives. In this sense, if equity is
4 Public officials’ equity-efficiency trade-off one of the objectives it is meaningless to talk of a trade-off (either in value or production) between equity and efficiency. Efficiency is not an objective in the sense that equity is an objective; rather, it is a secondary objective that only acquires meaning with reference to primary objectives such as equity’ (Le Grand, 1990: 560). Trade-offs, he argues, ‘can only occur between [..] primary objectives, of which efficiency is not one’ (199: 566). He (Le Grand, 1990) further argues that when people talk about the equity-efficiency trade-off, they probably don’t mean efficiency in its technical sense, but instead think about economic growth or Pareto-optimality.
Efficiency as a value following the NPM?
Technically, Le Grand is right. Yet, Rutgers and van der Meer (2010) argue that efficiency has always had a more substantive meaning in public administration (mainly up till the 1960s) beyond the mere technical one (as also used in Le Grand’s argument). Especially in recent decades, we would argue that efficiency in the public sector has also become a primary objective of itself. Efficiency improvements have been at the core of the NPM, and the big NPM reforms such as consumerism, agencification, performance management, or competition were all implemented with an aim of improving efficiency (Andrews, 2011: 282). Bozeman similarly posits the primacy of efficiency within the NPM: ‘It seems clear that, according to almost all descriptions of NPM, the driving values are performance and efficiency, while fairness, by any definition, rarely received much emphasis in NPM’ (Bozeman, 2007: 80). In the same book/article, he argues: ‘The values embodied in privatization and NPM […] are efficiency and effectiveness values, not equity, fairness, or communal values’ (Bozeman, 2007: 82). NPM’s focus on efficiency in this way stands in sharp contrast to e.g. the New Public Administration in the 1970s, where social equity was the core value (Box, 2015).
Efficiency is a core administrative value (Andrews & Entwistle, 2013; Rutgers and van der Meer, 2010). The traditional bureaucratic model is characterised by both equity and efficiency: equity as the result of law- and rule based behaviour; and efficiency as a result of specialisation and standardisation. Yet efficiency ‘has come to be associated with the private sector solutions embraced by the New Public Management’ (Andrews & Entwistle, 2013: 247). Van Wart and Berman (1999) see a move towards tougher standard of efficiency, and a wider value change of what is seen as productivity following the introduction of NPM- management tools. Especially following the introduction of the new public economics thinking in public administration, efficiency has become an objective in its own right, rather than a secondary one supporting the achievement of other objectives, such as equity. Beck Jørgensen and Rutgers (2014), following an analysis of historic public sector job adverts, find that, while the importance attached to NPM values has increased substantially over time ‘New
5 Public officials’ equity-efficiency trade-off
Public Management values do not crowd out other values, rather value intensity increases.’ (2014: 59).
The apparent contradiction between equity and efficiency has been one of the main bases for criticizing the NPM. It has been argued NPM comes at the cost of equity because of its focus on the bottom line, and that therefore safeguards are needed to protect values that are under attack. This has for instance been the case in utilities where public values such as universal service, affordability or continuity has to be legally protected the wake of privatisation or liberalisation (Van de Walle, 2008; De Bruijn & Dicke, 2006).
In Hood’s seminal 1991 paper on the NPM, efficiency (a ‘sigma’ value) and equity (a ‘theta’ value) represent different families of administrative values. NPM is characterised by sigma values, with little regard for equity. The latter, it can be argued (cf. Hood, 1991: 10), can very well be achieved through typical NPM-like programming and target setting. One could also argue the equity-efficiency tension is not inherent to NPM, but that efficiency is a precondition for equity to be possible – first increasing the size of the cake in order to allow for a more equitable distribution of the cake. Indeed, in a recent study we found that NPM- style structural reform is not only positively associated with (perceptions) of improvements in cost and efficiency, but also in equal access to services (Hammerschmid et al., mimeo).
The value trade-offs civil servants make
While public values are receiving increasing attention (Van der Wal et al., 2013), many studies have limited themselves to categorising values or studying the presence of values within organisations. Some scholars have for instance looked at value statements of government organisations (Kernaghan, 2003) or at codes of conduct (Beck Jørgensen and Sørensen, 2013) . There also is an extensive body of research on public administrators’ values and the value conflicts they experience (De Graaf, Huberts, and Smulder, 2014). Yet, not many studies have looked at value preferences beyond those that look at (party-)political preferences of civil servants. Exceptions are mainly to be found in health where the tension between competing objectives such as cost-effectiveness and equity are particularly tangible (Ratcliffe et al., 2009).
Some studies have looked at the position of efficiency as a value for civil servants. Andersen et al., 2012 for instance find a correlation between civil servants’ support for efficient supply with their commitment to the public interest. Efficient delivery is then seen as a way of serving the public interest. In his study on cutbacks Schmidt (2016) found that top civil servants saw frugality as a crucial value in their task as managers, precisely because they are
6 Public officials’ equity-efficiency trade-off dealing with public money. Yet, in a study among state and local administrators, DeForest Molina and McKeown (2012) found that efficiency ranked rather low in importance among a set of values. In a similar vein, Vrangbæk (2009) studied value orientations of public managers in Denmark. He found that while managers listed efficiency as a value, they do not put it very high on their list of important values in their work. He also found that efficiency was seen as less important by managers working in more operational organisations, and more so by those working in more traditional bureaucratic and administrative organisations. The former instead emphasised satisfying user needs. De Graaf and Paanakkker (2015) report on interviews with aldermen and senior administrators to look at conflict between performance and procedural values. They found that respondents mainly found conflict between lawfulness and transparency on the one hand and efficiency and effectiveness on the other. Equality did not feature prominently.
Explaining value preferences
Molina sees public administration values ‘as a contextualized set of attitudes’ (Molina, 2015:49). This means it is important to take the social and administrative context of the administrator into account when explaining the value trade-offs they make. We have earlier referred to the New Public Administration’s attention for social equity as a result of poverty and discrimination in society, and to NPM’s focus on efficiency as the result of inefficiencies and savings and the rise of new public economics. In this paper, we assume that context determines the value trade-offs officials make: their work, their prior experience, their task, the administrative system they work in, the society they are part of. Four hypotheses emanate from this assumption.
H1: Distance hypothesis: Closer distance to recipients of policies and services is related to a higher pro-equity orientation
We assume that proximity to the recipients of policies and services makes a public official more equity-oriented, because proximity means he or she can observe the direct consequences of the choices made on individual people. The context of working at a large distance from the actual recipients may make officials more concerned with the internal organisational objectives, rather than with external recipients. Certain types of public officials are closer to recipients. First, it is assumed that top managers are further removed from the operational reality as compared to heads of unit or normal employees. Second, we also assume that if a public official is working for a smaller organisation, he or she will be closer to the actual recipients. Thirdly, we also assume that officials working for agencies will have a higher pro-
7 Public officials’ equity-efficiency trade-off equity orientation, because they are closer to users. This is in line with earlier findings by Vrangbæk (2009) who found that (Danish) managers working in operational organisations tended to find satisfying user needs more important than efficiency. Efficiency was mainly seen as important in more administrative parts of government. Beck Jørgensen (2006) finds that Danish agency-level respondents attach considerable lower importance to efficiency than do respondents in departments, and higher importance for equal opportunities and user needs. Both findings go against the expectations of agencies as carriers of NPM values, such as efficiency. Van Thiel and Van der Wal (2010) find that Dutch agencies value NPM-related values, such as profitability higher than ministries. Andersen et al. (2012) on the other hand, do not find a significant difference between the score on efficient supply as a value for respondents working in authorities (ministries and equivalent organisations) and agencies in the Danish public sector. Neither is there a difference between service provision vs regulatory/administration oriented-organisations
H2: Public sector hypothesis: the more a public official is influenced by neoliberal/npm reform ideas, the more pro-efficiency oriented they will be
The second hypothesis is that the habitus of a public official shapes his or her value preferences, and that public officials’ values have been impacted by the NPM (Maesschalck, 2004). More specifically, we assume that exposure to a private sector environment instils officials with a stronger preferences for efficiency. Frederickson (2005) described the crucial difference between the public and private sector as a different trade-off between efficiency and fairness. Whereas for the former, fairness is the main value, efficiency is the leading value for the private sector. Public-private differences have attracted a fair deal of attention in the public values literature, especially following an influx of mangers in the public sector with private sector experiences – so called sector switchers (De Graaf et al., 2008; Boardman et al., 2010). Still, there is discussion whether differences in values are actually that important between the sectors (see Van der Wal, 2008). Van der Wal et al. (2008) show that there are indeed differences in the values public and private managers find important, yet their empirical work shows that both groups attach equal importance to efficiency as a value driving their work (2008: 475). Exposure to the private sector can happen in different ways: prior work experience in the private sector, or having enjoyed a business-oriented education. Long tenure in the public sector is then an indicator of having been exposed to the public sector habitus.
8 Public officials’ equity-efficiency trade-off
H3. Country administrative culture hypothesis: Public officials in Scandinavian countries are more pro-equity oriented, Eastern European countries are more pro-efficiency oriented
A third hypothesis looks into the assumption that it is not just an official’s organisation or private background that shapes his or her value preferences, but rather the broader administrative culture within which they work. Some administrative cultures have for instance a more legalistic outlook, which could mean efficiency features less prominently. There have been many attempts at defining clusters of administrative cultures, yet these tend not to be conclusive on some countries in our dataset, and especially in relation to central European countries, they tend to lump all countries together in a single category. Or they put Ireland in the same category as the UK. Also, since our dataset only covers 14 countries, some administrative culture categories were represented by just one single country. For this reason, we decided to only use a simple categorisation of administrative culture, with the Scandinavian countries belonging to the equity group, and the Eastern European countries to the efficiency group because of their strong support for market values (REF).
H4. Popular preferences hypothesis: Public officials in countries where population is more left-wing are more pro-equity oriented
A final hypothesis assumes that public officials are responsive to their environment and make choices that reflect the make-up of the population they are serving. This means that they will be more equity-oriented in countries where the population if more politically left wing, and more efficiency oriented where it is more right wing.
Data
The analysis uses the COCOPS Top Public Executive Survey, a population survey of top public sector executives in European countries. Data for the UK were not used due to a low overall response rate and high item non-response for the dependent variable. We decided to also leave out the Serbian data. All other countries were kept, but a robustness test was performed by deleting one country and repeating the estimations. After deleting cases with high item non –response on crucial values, the final dataset consist of 4238 respondents in 14 countries
9 Public officials’ equity-efficiency trade-off
Table 1. Composition of the final sample, by country % of the total Response rate Final sample sample (valid) Austria 438 10.30% 31.13% Denmark 130 3.10% 17.15% Estonia 279 6.60% 30.56% France 499 11.80% 14.66% Germany 413 9.70% 21.08% Hungary 214 5.00% 23.16% Ireland 320 7.60% 32.66% Italy 146 3.40% 15.04% Lithuania 357 8.40% 32.51% Netherlands 180 4.20% 26.86% Norway 308 7.30% 25.73% Portugal 244 5.80% 23.51% Spain 254 6.00% 15.09% Sweden 456 10.80% 35.27% TOTAL 4,238 100% 23.17%
Variables
The dependent variable is public officials’ position on an equity-efficiency scale. “Public services often need to balance different priorities. Where would you place your own position? (from 1, “equity”, to 7 “efficiency”). Descriptive findings are presented in table 3. They show that on average, officials tend towards equity.
Table 2. Dependent variable, average values by individual characteristics, post-related characteristics and country
Average s.d. Equity-efficiency position 3.55 1.62 Sex Male 3.59 1.61 Female 3.48 1.62 Age <46 3.69 1.63 46-55 3.52 1.61 >55 3.48 1.6 Education MA 3.56 1.62 PhD 3.41 1.59 Field of education Law 3.51 1.62 Business / Economics 3.76 1.6
10 Public officials’ equity-efficiency trade-off
Other social sc. / humanities 3.49 1.61 Seniority in the public sect. < 5 years 3.88 1.68 5-10 years 3.69 1.68 10-20 years 3.62 1.6 > 20 years 3.45 1.59 Experience in the private sector 1 year or more 3.57 1.61 Position Level1 3.68 1.6 Level2 3.58 1.6 Level3 3.47 1.64 Type of organization Government 3.64 1.66 Agency 3.47 1.56 Area General gov. & Foreign affairs 3.67 1.61 Finance & Economic affairs 3.72 1.64 Infrastr., Transport & 3.55 1.57 Environm. Defence, justice & pub. Order 3.61 1.68 Employment 3.67 1.49 Health & Soc. Protection 3.38 1.57 Education & recreation 3.29 1.59 Size < 50 3.49 1.7 50-500 3.5 1.59 > 500 3.63 1.63 Country Austria 3.15 1.71 Denmark 3.44 1.28 Estonia 4.22 1.56 France 3.54 1.87 Germany 3.32 1.48 Hungary 4.43 1.31 Ireland 3.86 1.56 Italy 3.91 1.55 Lithuania 2.98 1.6 Norway 4.18 1.38 Netherlands 3.4 1.33 Portugal 3.89 1.51 Spain 3.79 1.68 Sweden 3.06 1.41
11 Public officials’ equity-efficiency trade-off
Independent variables:
I. Individual-related Gender. Females vs males Age. <46, 46-55, >55 (reference) Educational qualification MA vs rest; PhD vs rest Subject of education: law, economics/business and social sciences, vs the rest Seniority in the public sector. <5, 5-10, 10-20, >20 (reference). Experience in the private sector. >1year vs rest. II. Service/post-related Kind of position 2nd level and 3rd level, vs 1st level (reference) Type of organization: agency, vs government Policy area: general government and foreign affairs; finance and economic affairs; infrastructure and environment; defense and justice; employment; health and social protection (separated from employment); education and recreation; other Size of the organization: <50, 50-500, >500 (reference) III. Country-related Typification/classification of countries according to administrative cultures (Hammerschmid et al). Scandinavian, Transition (Eastern) and Southern, vs Continental and Anglo-Saxon (Ireland) as reference category Average political placement (from 0, left to 10, right), ESS
Controls variables
Studies on administrative culture assume the existence of a dominant administrative culture within a country that sets its administration and civil servants apart from those in other countries. Our approach does not negate this possibility, but also recognises the existence of firewalls (Thacher and Rein, 2004) within an administrative system. This means that different parts of the system are (made) responsible for the realisation of different value sets. One could for instance assume different value trade-offs in redistributive vs. distributive parts of the public sector. For this reason, we add policy sector control.
The advent of the NPM meant that results replaced due process as the main purpose of public organisations (Tait, 1997). We thus assume that older public officials with long tenure had their formative years before the advent of NPM, and will be less likely to put result ahead of due process. The model controls for this through age and length of tenure.
We use OLS regression with standard errors clustered at the country level (for correcting country heterogeneity –clusters-). Four different models are tested. The first includes
12 Public officials’ equity-efficiency trade-off
individual factors only. The second adds variables related to the respondents position and organisation. Model three adds country dummies, and model four adds the country’s group membership and political placement. Missing values are eliminated when estimating, meaning that the number depends on the model. Robustness checks, for testing country representativity are pending in this version
Findings
Table 3. Estimates on the effects of individual characteristics, post-related characteristics and country factors on public official’s equity/efficiency views
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Constant 3.522 (0.117)*** 3.953 (0.170)*** 3.800 (0.086)*** -3.568 (1.040)*** INDIVIDUAL CHARACT. Sex Male Female -0.134 (0.094) -0.055 (0.086) -0.022 (0.084) -0.054 (0.081) Age <46 0.048 (0.139) 0.031 (0.137) -0.093 (0.112) -0.042 (0.112) 46-55 -0.009 (0.092) -0.009 (0.087) -0.007 (0.074) -0.004 (0.073) >55 Education MA -0.096 (0.095) -0.120 (0.080) -0.015 (0.050) -0.029 (0.041) PhD -0.213 (0.070)** -0.185 (0.060)*** 0.092 (0.059) 0.147 (0.043)*** Field of education Law 0.043 (0.119) -0.073 (0.106) -0.080 (0.075) -0.035 (0.076) Business / Economics 0.256 (0.074)*** 0.188 (0.068)** 0.152 (0.062)** 0.142 (0.058)** Other social sc. / humanit. -0.001 (0.083) -0.017 (0.070) -0.040 (0.056) -0.032 (0.053) Seniority in the public sect. < 5 years 0.382 (0.090)*** 0.407 (0.093)*** 0.234 (0.087)** 0.140 (0.103) 5-10 years 0.233 (0.120)* 0.299 (0.115)** 0.194 (0.106)* 0.178 (0.105) 10-20 years 0.148 (0.113) 0.181 (0.110) 0.145 (0.085) 0.119 (0.088) > 20 years Exper. in the private sector 1 year or more -0.012 (0.080) 0.018 (0.077) 0.046 (0.061) 0.070 (0.067) POST/ORGANIZATION CHAR. Position Level1 Level2 -0.176 (0.125) -0.185 (0.083)** -0.203 (0.078)** Level3 -0.343 (0.132)** -0.263 (0.081)*** -0.294 (0.066)***
13 Public officials’ equity-efficiency trade-off
Type of organization Government Agency -0.241 (0.125)* -0.098 (0.076) -0.159 (0.077)* Area General gov. & Foreign aff. 0.074 (0.090) 0.069 (0.055) 0.076 (0.055) Finance & Economic affairs 0.050 (0.074) 0.012 (0.073) -0.006 (0.079) Infr., Transp. & Environm. -0.007 (0.059) -0.018 (0.053) 0.022 (0.057) Defence, justice & pub. ord. 0.053 (0.089) 0.026 (0.076) 0.011 (0.073) Employment 0.183 (0.096)* 0.230 (0.087)** 0.285 (0.093)*** Health & Soc. Protection -0.195 (0.049)*** -0.188 (0.042)*** -0.209 (0.043)*** Education & recreation -0.247 (0.079)*** -0.200 (0.065)*** -0.201 (0.060)*** Size < 50 -0.106 (0.127) 0.020 (0.098) -0.067 (0.101) 50-500 -0.160 (0.067)** -0.121 (0.045)** -0.169 (0.045)*** > 500 COUNTRY FACTORS Country Austria -0.380 (0.034)*** Denmark -0.146 (0.067)* Estonia 0.644 (0.059)*** France Germany -0.366 (0.054)*** Hungary 0.797 (0.042)***
Ireland 0.283 (0.040)*** Italy 0.295 (0.034)*** Lithuania -0.552 (0.064)*** Netherlands 0.557 (0.038)*** Norway -0.072 (0.047) Portugal 0.259 (0.083)*** Spain 0.236 (0.026)*** Sweden -0.516 (0.073)*** Country model Scandinavian -1.009 (0.124)*** Continental Eur. Southern Eur. 0.628 (0.155)*** Transition -0.184 (0.178) Political placement Political plac. Left (0)-Right (10) 1.498 (0.213)*** N 4,083 3,926 3,926 3,926
14 Public officials’ equity-efficiency trade-off
Standard errors in parenthesis. Statistical significance at 1% (***), 5% (**), 10% (*)
- Model 1. Individual characteristics (only)
Females, no effect Age, no effect Education, PhD more pro-equity Field of education: o Economics/business, more pro-efficiency o Rest, no effect Seniority: less seniority, more pro-efficiency Experience in the private sector, no effect
- Model 2. Individual characteristics + post/organizational characteristics
Individual characteristics: no changes with respect to model 1, same effects are significant (and quite similar size of these effects) Level: lower level (level 3), more pro-equity Agencies, more pro-equity (than ministries) Area: o Most of them, non-significant effects o Employment, more pro-efficiency o Health&social protection and Education, more pro-equity Size: medium size organizations (50-500 employees), more pro-equity (but not the smallest)
- Model 3. Individual characteristics + post/organizational characteristics + country dummies
Model 4. Individual characteristics + post/organizational characteristics + country models + political placement
Individual and post/organizational characteristics, with respect to model 1 and 2 o Education PhD, non-significant. This effect disappears when controlling for country effects. Thus this effect were associated to country specifics, and is not a not cross-country effect . In model 4, a positive effect appears (?)
15 Public officials’ equity-efficiency trade-off
o Agency, non-significant. This effect disappears when controlling for country effects. Thus this effect were associated to country specifics, and is not a cross-country effect . In model 4, the effect appears again. So there is something in the country level not considered in model 4 explaining this effect o Field of education economics/business, lower levels (hierarchical position), area (employment vs rest and health and social protection vs rest and education vs rest), and medium size: still significant, and similar magnitude than before. These effects are cross-country (I mean, general effects in spite of the country). . Similar effects in model 4 o Seniority in the public sector (lower seniority vs rest). Still significant, but lower magnitude of the effect. The effect is partly country specific and partly general. . In model 4, not significant enough o The variables that were non significant in models 1 and 2 are non significant in model 3 (only level 2 becomes significant due to lower standard error) . Same in model 4
Model 3 Countries (with respect to France, reference) o Hungary, Estonia, Netherlands, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, Spain (in this order), more pro-efficiency o Lithuania, Sweden, Austria, Germany, Denmark (in this order), more pro- equity o Norway, non significant difference
- Model 4. Individual characteristics + post/organizational characteristics + country model + country political placement + country controls
Objective: to try to operationalize the previously detected country differences
Countries (with respect to Continental European+Ireland, reference): o Country model: Scandinavian, more pro-equity; Southern European, more pro-efficiency; Transition, non-significant o Political placement: countries more oriented to right, (much) more pro- efficiency. Explains very well differences intra-groups of countries (models)
16 Public officials’ equity-efficiency trade-off
Discussion and conclusion
- H1: Distance hypothesis: Closer distance to recipients of policies and services is related to a higher pro-equity orientation
Hierarchical level: yes Agency: yes, but disappears when introducing country dummies (so this is not a general effect but a country specific effect) Size of organization: not for the smallest, yes for those intermediate vs the largest
- H2: Public sector hypothesis: the more a public official is influenced by neoliberal/npm reform ideas, the more pro-efficiency oriented they will be
Seniority: yes. Partly a general effect, but basically a country specific effect Business/economic education: yes Private sector experience: no Sector: yes, i.e. health & social protection and education vs the rest
- H3: Country administrative culture hypothesis: Public officials in Scandinavian countries are more pro-equity oriented, Eastern European countries are more pro-efficiency oriented
Scandinavian countries, yes, more pro-equity Transition, no, non-significant Also, Southern more pro-efficiency
- H4: Popular preferences hypothesis: Public officials in countries where population is more left-wing are more pro-equity oriented yes, more left-wing population, more pro-equity civil servants; more right-wing, more pro- efficiency
Limitations
-coverage of Eastern Europe
17 Public officials’ equity-efficiency trade-off
- abstract approach to the trade-off – no context. The trade-off made could be different in specific sectors, or when related to specific dilemma;
- single item measurement of dependent variable
- we cannot really interpret the agency effect: is this an agency effect, or is it the result of task-specificity?
- we only look at the trade-off – this is just their statement, but do not study how they cope with this trade-off or value conflict (Van der Wal et al., 2011)
References
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Annex
Composition of the sample, by individual characteristics and post-related characteristics
Dimension Variable % N
INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERISTICS
Sex 4,148
Male 63.5% 2,634
Female 36.5% 1,514
Age 4,224
<46 28.7% 1,213
46-55 40.6% 1,714
>55 30.7% 1,297
Education 4,238
MA 60.1% 2,547
PhD 17.4% 738
Field of education 4,238
Law 25.9% 1,099
Business / Economics 25.4% 1,075
Other social sc. / humanities 29.6% 1,255
Seniority in the public sect. 4,177
< 5 years 7.2% 302
5-10 years 9.6% 399
10-20 years 30.2% 1,262
> 20 years 53.0% 2,214
Experience in the private sector 4,238
1 year or more 46.3% 1,964
POST/ORGANIZATION CHARACTERISTICS
Position 4,112
Level1 22.4% 921
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Level2 42.9% 1,765
Level3 34.7% 1,426
Type of organization 4,238
Government 50.5% 2,139
Agency 49.5% 2,099
Area 4,238
General gov. & Foreign affairs 19.8% 840
Finance & Economic affairs 18.6% 788
Infrastr., Transport & Environm. 15.9% 675
Defence, justice & pub. Order 14.9% 630
Employment 11.3% 477
Health & Soc. Protection 18.4% 781
Education & recreation 13.6% 576
Size 4,195
< 50 9.4% 394
50-500 45.7% 1,918
> 500 44.9% 1,883
23 Public officials’ equity-efficiency trade-off
Statistical annex. Independent variables at the country level
Country model Political (Hammerschmid et al., placement(0 –left - Country 2007) to 10 –right-)
Austria Continental European 4,74
Denmark Scandinavian 5,33
Estonia Transition 5,46
France Continental European 4,95
Germany Continental European 4,61
Hungary Transition 5,40
Ireland Anglo-Saxon 5,13
Italy Southern European 4,76
Lithuania Transition 4,93
Netherlands Continental European 5,41
Norway Scandinavian 5,64
Portugal Southern European 4,90
Spain Southern European 4,51
Sweden Scandinavian 5,33
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