Working, shirking, and sabotage
Subtitle: bureaucratic response to a democratic public
By: John Brehm and Scott Gates.
Contributors: Gates, Scott.
Series: Michigan studies in political analysis
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Ann Arbor
Language: eng
Number of pages: 270
Subjects: Government productivity -- United States.; Supervision of employees.; State governments -- Officials and employees -- Professional ethics -- United States.; Local officials and employees -- Professional ethics -- United States.; Bureaucracy -- United States.; Democracy -- United States.; United States -- Officials and employees -- Professional ethics.
Description: John Brehm and Scott Gates examine who influences how federal, state, and local bureaucrats allocate their effort by working or shirking, or even by sabotaging policy. The authors combine deductive models and computer simulations of bureaucratic behavior with statistical analysis in order to assess the competing influences over how bureaucrats expend their efforts.

Drawing upon surveys, observational studies, and administrative records of the performance of public employees in bureaucracies ranging from federal agencies to municipal governments, Brehm and Gates demonstrate that the reason bureaucrats work as hard as they do is the nature of the jobs they are recruited to perform and the influence of both their fellow employees and their clients in the public.

The authors show that American bureaucracies work, and that the reasons bureaucrats perform as hard as they do has little to do with the coercive capacities of supervisors. Brehm and Gates show that the real limitations on the bureaucratic supervisor's ability to coerce performance from subordinates are the preferences of the subordinates. Fortunately for the public, those preferences are overwhelmingly consistent with the task that the democratic public expects bureaucrats to perform.

This book is aimed at students of bureaucracy and organizations, and will be of interest to researchers in political science, economics, public policy, and sociology.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 247-262) and index.