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Coping During Public Service Delivery: A Conceptualization and Systematic Review of the Literature
Abstract
Frontline workers, such as teachers and social workers, often experience stress when delivering public services to clients, for instance because of high workloads. They adapt by coping, using such practices as breaking or bending rules for clients, or rationing services. Although coping is recognized as an important response to the problems of frontline work, the public administration field lacks a comprehensive view of coping. The first contribution of this article is therefore theoretical: conceptualizing coping during public service delivery and developing a coherent classification of coping. This is done via a systematic review of the literature from 1981 to 2014. The second contribution is empirical: via a systematic review of the literature from 1981–2014 this article provides a framework and analytical account of how coping during public service delivery has been studied since 1980. It highlights the importance of the type of profession (such as being a teacher or a police officer), the amount of workload, and the degree of discretion for understanding how frontline workers cope with stress. It also reveals that frontline workers often draw on the coping family “moving towards clients” revealing a strong tendency to provide meaningful public service to clients, even under stressful conditions. We conclude with an agenda for future studies, examining new theoretical, methodological and empirical opportunities to advance understanding of coping during public service delivery. Trabalhadores de linha de frente, tais como professores e assistentes sociais, frequentemente experimentam estresse no exercício de suas funções de entrega de serviços públicos para os clientes em função do acúmulo de trabalho. Eles se adaptam ao enfrentamento utilizando práticas tais como quebrar ou contornar regras para os clientes, ou racionamento de serviços. Apesar do enfrentamento ser reconhecido como uma importante resposta aos problemas de linha de frente, a administração pública se ressente de uma visão totalizadora do mesmo. A primeira contribuição do artigo é, desta forma, teórica: conceituando o enfrentamento durante a prestação de serviços públicos e o desenvolvimento de uma classificação coerente de enfrentamento. Isto é realizado via revisão sistemática da literatura de 1981 a 2014. A segunda contribuição é empírica: através de uma revisão sistemática da literatura de 1981-2014, o artigo apresenta um quadro e uma narrativa analítica de como o enfrentamento durante a prestação de serviços públicos tem sido estudada desde 1980. O texto realça a importância dos tipos de profissão (tal como ser um professor ou um agente policial), a quantidade de carga de trabalho e o grau de discernimento para o entendimento de como trabalhadores de linha de frente lidam com o estresse. Ele também revela que trabalhadores de linha de frente frequentemente recorrem à famílias de “clientes proativos” revelando uma forte tendência a entregar serviços públicos significativos para os clientes mesmo que em condições de estresse. Nós concluímos com uma agenda para estudos futuros, examinando novas teorias, métodos e oportunidades empíricas para avançar o entendimento do enfrentamento durante prestação de serviços públicos. Translated by Ricardo Gomes, University of Brasília
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“Street‐level bureaucrats and other state actors are often motivated to help disadvantaged citizens compensate for their challenges in life (Jilke and Tummers 2018; Tummers et al. 2015).”
From Human Capital and Administrative Burden: The Role of Cognitive Resources in Citizen‐State Interactions (2020) · cites this paper as Tummers et al. 2015
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BackgroundThe Relationship Between Coping and Job Performance
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“, Raaphorst 2018) or their coping mechanisms (Tummers et al. 2015) could be especially fruitful.”
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“Instead, we along with the street-level bureaucracy literature build on an expectation that street-level bureaucrats experiencing stress states are more likely to engage in broad families of coping strategies (Lipsky, 1980; Tummers et al., 2015; Vedung, 2015).”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialDo consistent government policies lead to greater meaningfulness and legitimacy on the front line?
van Engen, N., Steijn, B., & Tummers, L. G. (2018) · Public Administration · doi:10.1111/padm.12570 · Cited by 52
“These frontline workers need to tailor the new policies to their clients’ needs (Sommer Harrits and stergaard Møller 2014), deal with conflicting demands from different policies (Tummers et al. 2015) and have discretion in doing so (Lipsky 1980).”
BackgroundSelf-citationStreet-level Enforcement Style: A Multidimensional Measurement Instrument
de Boer, N. (2018) · International Journal of Public Administration · doi:10.1080/01900692.2018.1465954 · Cited by 48
“Prioritizing during inspectee encounters is, thus, concerned with placing more emphasis on contextual circumstances and being effective than on other elements—like informing inspectees (Tummers et al., 2015).”
BackgroundSocial Workers in a Modernising Welfare State: Professionals or Street-Level Bureaucrats?
Trappenburg, M. J., Kampen, T., & Tonkens, E. (2019) · The British Journal of Social Work · doi:10.1093/bjsw/bcz120 · Cited by 48
“They bend towards their clients, as it is phrased in SLB theory (Tummers et al., 2015).”
BackgroundPublic Service Logic: An Appropriate Recipe for Improving Serviceness in the Public Sector?
Sønderskov, M., & Rønning, R. (2021) · Administrative Sciences · doi:10.3390/admsci11030064 · Cited by 52
“Much of the literature on street-level bureaucracy has dealt with discretion, addressed in terms of coping strategies (Tummers et al. 2015).”
BackgroundMethodInfluential“She isn’t Someone I Associate with Pension”—a Vignette Study of Professional Reasoning
Møller, M. Ø. (2016) · Professions and Professionalism · doi:10.7577/pp.1353 · Cited by 45
“In a systematic review of coping strategy studies, Tummers et al. (2015) identify three predominant ways of coping: 1) moving towards clients (the use of personal resources), 2) moving away from clients (rationing resources) and 3) going against clients (rigid rule following).”
BackgroundInfluentialNegotiated compliance at the street level: Personalizing immunization in England, Israel and Sweden
Gofen, A., Blomqvist, P., Needham, C. E., Warren, K., & Winblad, U. (2018) · Public Administration · doi:10.1111/padm.12557 · Cited by 45
“It’s Like Night and Day”: How Bureaucratic Encounters Vary across WIC, SNAP, and Medicaid
Barnes, C. Y., Michener, J., & Rains, E. (2023) · Social Service Review · doi:10.1086/723365 · Cited by 57
“In these contexts, scholars usually attribute costly encounters with bureaucrats to policy parameters that encourage bureaucrats to limit beneficiaries’ access to programs and prevent workers from providing high-quality tailored services (Soss 1999a; Soss, Fording, and Schram 2011; Tummers and Bekkers 2014; Tummers et…”
BackgroundInfluentialEthnography in Public Management Research: A Systematic Review and Future Directions
Cappellaro, G. (2016) · International Public Management Journal · doi:10.1080/10967494.2016.1143423 · Cited by 44
How Do Frontline Civil Servants Engage the Public? Practices, Embedded Agency, and Bricolage
Blijleven, W., & van Hulst, M. (2021) · The American Review of Public Administration · doi:10.1177/0275074020983805 · Cited by 43
Using Ignorance as (Un)Conscious Bureaucratic Strategy
Borrelli, L. M. (2018) · Qualitative Studies · doi:10.7146/qs.v5i2.104421 · Cited by 43
Coping with Complexity: Internal Audit and Complex Governance
Schillemans, T., & van Twist, M. J. W. (2016) · Public Performance & Management Review · doi:10.1080/15309576.2016.1197133 · Cited by 42
“Yet, as coping is about “behavioral efforts … [they] employ … in order to master, tolerate, or reduce external and internal demands and conflicts they face on an everyday basis” (Tummers et al., 2015, p. 1100), this form of conceptual traveling is feasible.”
BackgroundServing quarreling masters: Frontline workers and policy implementation under pressure
Hinterleitner, M., & Wittwer, S. (2022) · Governance · doi:10.1111/gove.12692 · Cited by 49
The challenges of leading change in health-care delivery from the front-line
Byers, V. (2015) · Journal of Nursing Management · doi:10.1111/jonm.12342 · Cited by 41
The emotional labour of boundary spanning
Needham, C. E., Mastracci, S. H., & Mangan, C. (2017) · Journal of Integrated Care · doi:10.1108/jica-04-2017-0008 · Cited by 54
“This is what Maynard-Moody and Musheno (2000) characterised as being a citizen agent rather than a state agent – or what Tummers et al. (2015) call “moving towards clients” ( p. 5).”
BackgroundBaviskar, S. (2018) · International Public Management Journal · doi:10.1080/10967494.2018.1478918 · Cited by 46
Accomplishing the Public Encounter: A Case for Ethnomethodology in Public Administration Research
Hand, L. C., & Catlaw, T. J. (2019) · Perspectives on Public Management and Governance · doi:10.1093/ppmgov/gvz004 · Cited by 41
Discretion of the Future: Conceptualizing Everyday Acts of Collective Creativity at the Street‐Level
Visser, E. L., & Kruyen, P. M. (2021) · Public Administration Review · doi:10.1111/puar.13389 · Cited by 47
“Contrary to (some) common understandings (Brodkin 2012; Lipsky 2010), we argue that street-level bureaucrats become the architects of the political and organizational system in which they work.”
BackgroundInfluentialDigital Transformation in Public Administration: A Systematic Literature Review
Mountasser, T., & Marghich, A. (2023) · International Journal of Professional Business Review · doi:10.26668/businessreview/2023.v8i10.2372 · Cited by 66
van Loon, N. M., & Jakobsen, M. L. (2017) · Public Administration · doi:10.1111/padm.12357 · Cited by 40
“Most notably, the literature finds that frontline workers try to cope by applying what we call passive behaviours in their interaction with clients, like creaming, rationing, and routinizing (Tummers et al. 2015).”
BackgroundInfluentialMedia Attention and Bureaucratic Responsiveness
Erlich, A., Berliner, D., Palmer‐Rubin, B., & Bagozzi, B. E. (2021) · Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory · doi:10.1093/jopart/muab001 · Cited by 39
“Past research on street-level bureaucratic behavior has found high workloads associated with reduced performance and organizational commitment, and increased coping mechanisms (Jewell and Glaser 2006; Jong and Ford 2016; Tummers et al. 2015).”
BackgroundPotipiroon, W., Srisuthisa-ard, A., & Faerman, S. R. (2018) · Public Management Review · doi:10.1080/14719037.2018.1500629 · Cited by 39
“Additionally, future research should examine other specific types of coping, such as emotional coping (e.g. venting one’s emotions) (Grandey, Dickter, and Sin 2004) or behavioural coping (e.g. bending rules for clients) (Tummers et al. 2015).”
BackgroundGaming the system: Responses to dissatisfaction with public services beyond exit and voice
Peeters, R., Gofen, A., & Meza, O. (2020) · Public Administration · doi:10.1111/padm.12680 · Cited by 39
Metadata
- Authors
- Tummers, L. L. G., Bekkers, V., Vink, E., & Musheno, M.
- Affiliations
- Erasmus University Rotterdam (NL)
- University of California System (US)
- ORCID
- Musheno, Michael
- Venue
- Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2015-01-12
- Volume
- 25
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 1099-1126
- ISSN
- 1053-1858 (ISSN-L)
- 1477-9803
- OpenAlex
- W1998134118
- Cited by
- 756
- References
- 118
- Citations by year
- 2026: 118 · 2025: 107 · 2024: 86 · 2023: 81 · 2022: 68 · 2021: 82 · 2020: 63 · 2019: 62 · 2018: 34 · 2017: 23 · 2016: 21 · 2015: 10
- FWCI
- 4.58
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory (publishedVersion)
- EUR Research Repository (Erasmus University Rotterdam) (publishedVersion)
- EUR Research Repository (Erasmus University Rotterdam) (submittedVersion)
- Utrecht University Repository (Utrecht University) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- University of Georgia
- University of Washington
- University of Kansas
- London School of Economics and Political Science
- European Commission (329519)
- Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam
- Universiteit Utrecht
- Université de Lausanne
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Stress and Burnout Research
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Emotional Labor in Professions
- Social Sciences › Public Administration › Public Policy and Administration Research
- Keywords
- coping, public service delivery, frontline workers, occupational stress, workload, discretion, teachers, social workers, police officers, rule violations, public administration
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