Title: Working, shirking, and sabotage
First published: 1997
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.
Subjects: Professional ethics, Officials and employees, Bureaucracy, Democracy, State governments, Local officials and employees, Government productivity, Supervision of employees
Places: United States
LC classification: JK768.4 .B74 1997