IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/lpadxx/v45y2022i14p991-1002.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Role Models in the Senior Civil Service: How Tasks Frame the Identification of Senior Bureaucrats with Active and Reactive Roles

Author

Listed:
  • Falk Ebinger
  • Sylvia Veit
  • Bastian Strobel

Abstract

The influence of senior civil servants’ (SCS) tasks on their role perceptions has been widely ignored in the past research on the administrative élite. This paper presents new survey data on SCS in German federal ministries to test this relation by categorizing SCS into three task-related groups: strategists, policy specialists and administrators. Regression analyses reveal that SCS’s tasks do not influence their (strong) identification with reactive (supportive) roles but have a significant impact on their identification with active, more politically entrepreneurial roles. This entails two important findings: First, SCS’s tasks matter for their appreciation of different roles. Second, active and reactive role models are not irreconcilable (as it is often argued in the literature on bureaucratic politicization), but complementary.

Suggested Citation

  • Falk Ebinger & Sylvia Veit & Bastian Strobel, 2022. "Role Models in the Senior Civil Service: How Tasks Frame the Identification of Senior Bureaucrats with Active and Reactive Roles," International Journal of Public Administration, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(14), pages 991-1002, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:lpadxx:v:45:y:2022:i:14:p:991-1002
    DOI: 10.1080/01900692.2021.1945623
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01900692.2021.1945623
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/01900692.2021.1945623?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:taf:lpadxx:v:45:y:2022:i:14:p:991-1002. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/lpad .

    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.