IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jadmsc/v11y2021i3p63-d583667.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Breaking the Vicious Circle of Escalating Control: Connecting Politicians and Public Employees through Stewardship

Author

Listed:
  • Tina Øllgaard Bentzen

    (Department of Social Sciences and Business, Roskilde School of Governance, Roskilde University, 4000 Roskilde, Denmark)

Abstract

Politicians applying general rules as a reaction to local failures has contributed to mushrooming control in the public sector, which has in turn spurred higher transactional costs and motivation crowding among public employees. Drawing on a qualitative case study in a Danish municipality, this article explores the prospects and challenges for politicians of breaking the vicious circle of escalating control by adopting stewardship ideals into their leadership of the public employees. The results show that stewardship offers new opportunities for politicians, enabling better diagnosis of control problems, more robust control solutions, as well as a pronounced mobilization of employee support for those solutions. However, political competition, political discontinuity after elections, scandals in the press, resistance in the administration, and more diffuse decision-making processes pose potential challenges for politicians striving to tackle the problem of escalating control through stewardship.

Suggested Citation

  • Tina Øllgaard Bentzen, 2021. "Breaking the Vicious Circle of Escalating Control: Connecting Politicians and Public Employees through Stewardship," Administrative Sciences, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-18, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jadmsc:v:11:y:2021:i:3:p:63-:d:583667
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3387/11/3/63/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3387/11/3/63/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Thomas Schillemans, 2013. "Moving Beyond The Clash of Interests: On stewardship theory and the relationships between central government departments and public agencies," Public Management Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(4), pages 541-562, May.
    2. Svara, James H., 1990. "Official Leadership in the City: Patterns of Conflict and Cooperation," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195057621.
    3. Bruno S. Frey & Reto Jegen, 2001. "Motivation Crowding Theory," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(5), pages 589-611, December.
    4. Frey, Bruno S & Oberholzer-Gee, Felix, 1997. "The Cost of Price Incentives: An Empirical Analysis of Motivation Crowding-Out," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(4), pages 746-755, September.
    5. Jensen, Michael C. & Meckling, William H., 1976. "Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 305-360, October.
    6. Jacob Torfing & Tina Øllgaard Bentzen, 2020. "Does Stewardship Theory Provide a Viable Alternative to Control-Fixated Performance Management?," Administrative Sciences, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-19, November.
    7. Henry L. Tosi & Amy L. Brownlee & Paula Silva & Jeffrey P. Katz, 2003. "An Empirical Exploration of Decision‐making Under Agency Controls and Stewardship Structure," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(8), pages 2053-2071, December.
    8. Mark A. Fox & Robert T. Hamilton, 1994. "Ownership And Diversification: Agency Theory Or Stewardship Theory," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(1), pages 69-81, January.
    9. Bruno S. Frey, 1994. "How Intrinsic Motivation is Crowded out and in," Rationality and Society, , vol. 6(3), pages 334-352, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Damiano Fiorillo, 2011. "Do Monetary Rewards Crowd Out The Intrinsic Motivation Of Volunteers? Some Empirical Evidence For Italian Volunteers," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 82(2), pages 139-165, June.
    2. Kurz, Konstantin & Bock, Carolin & Knodt, Michèle & Stöckl, Anna, 2022. "A Friend in Need Is a Friend Indeed? Analysis of the Willingness to Share Self-Produced Electricity During a Long-lasting Power Outage," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 136773, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
    3. Javier Garcia-Lacalle & Lourdes Torres, 2021. "Financial Reporting Quality and Online Disclosure Practices in Spanish Governmental Agencies," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(5), pages 1-21, February.
    4. Giorgos N. Diakoulakis & Athanasios Kampas, 2023. "Emission taxes for genuine altruistic firms," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 94(1), pages 343-359, March.
    5. Pamela R. Murphy & Michael Wynes & Till‐Arne Hahn & Patricia G. Devine, 2020. "Why Are People Honest? Internal and External Motivations to Report Honestly†," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(2), pages 945-981, June.
    6. Jacob Torfing & Tina Øllgaard Bentzen, 2020. "Does Stewardship Theory Provide a Viable Alternative to Control-Fixated Performance Management?," Administrative Sciences, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-19, November.
    7. Konstantin Kurz & Carolin Bock & Michèle Knodt & Anna Stöckl, 2022. "A Friend in Need Is a Friend Indeed? Analysis of the Willingness to Share Self-Produced Electricity During a Long-lasting Power Outage," Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research, Springer, vol. 74(4), pages 727-761, December.
    8. Claudia Keser & Andreas Markstädter & Martin Schmidt, 2014. "Mandatory minimum contributions, heterogeneous endowments and voluntary public-good provision," CIRANO Working Papers 2014s-47, CIRANO.
    9. Marco van Herpen & C. Mirjam van Praag & Kees Cools, 2003. "The Effects of Performance Measurement and Compensation on Motivation," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 03-048/3, Tinbergen Institute.
    10. Harvey S. James Jr., 2003. "Why Does The Introduction of Monetary Compensation Produce A Reduction In Performance?," Microeconomics 0303005, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Keser, Claudia & Markstädter, Andreas & Schmidt, Martin, 2014. "Mandatory minimum contributions, heterogenous endowments and voluntary public-good provision," University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics 224, University of Goettingen, Department of Economics.
    12. Midler, Estelle & Pascual, Unai & Drucker, Adam G. & Narloch, Ulf & Soto, José Luis, 2015. "Unraveling the effects of payments for ecosystem services on motivations for collective action," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 394-405.
    13. Handberg, Øyvind Nystad & Angelsen, Arild, 2019. "Pay little, get little; pay more, get a little more: A framed forest experiment in Tanzania," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 454-467.
    14. Uri Gneezy, 2003. "The W effect of incentives," Levine's Bibliography 666156000000000315, UCLA Department of Economics.
    15. Takahashi, Hiromasa & Shen, Junyi & Ogawa, Kazuhito, 2016. "An experimental examination of compensation schemes and level of effort in differentiated tasks," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 12-19.
    16. Fiorillo, Damiano, 2007. "Do monetary rewards undermine intrinsic motivations of volunteers? Some empirical evidence for Italian volunteers," MPRA Paper 7783, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. James, Harvey Jr., 2005. "Why did you do that? An economic examination of the effect of extrinsic compensation on intrinsic motivation and performance," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 26(4), pages 549-566, August.
    18. Holger Herz & Christian Zihlmann, 2024. "Adverse effects of control? Evidence from a field experiment," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 27(2), pages 469-488, April.
    19. Gottschalg, Oliver & Zollo, Mauricio, 2006. "Interest alignment and competitive advantage," HEC Research Papers Series 823, HEC Paris.
    20. Banerjee, Prasenjit & Shogren, Jason F., 2012. "Material interests, moral reputation, and crowding out species protection on private land," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 137-149.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jadmsc:v:11:y:2021:i:3:p:63-:d:583667. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.