Coping During Public Service Delivery: A Conceptualization and Systematic Review of the Literature

“…the state-side of the interactions, that is, the behaviors of street-level bureaucrats and other state actors, and the determinants of these behaviors (e.g., Andersen and Guul 2019; Jilke and Tummers 2018; Lipsky 2010; Maynard-Moody and Musheno 2003; Schneider and Ingram 2012; Tummers et al. 2015).”

“This is a serious problem, especially for governments, as these public professionals form a crucial link between formulated and implemented policies and between governments and citizens (Bartels 2013; Tummers et al. 2015).”

“Several overviews lay bare the great variety of street level routines, practical judgments, and coping mechanisms as these take shape in the context of daily working conditions and structural dilemmas (Brodkin, 2012; Hupe and Buffat, 2014; Tummers et al., 2015).”

“This is consistent with Tummers et al. (2015) view that employees scoring high on PSM may have a strong desire for providing high quality public service (such as through the enactment of normative public values) to citizens even when it means utilizing personal resources regardless of their…”

“Deservingness has been examined in the context of street-level bureaucrats and their use of certain stereotypes in order to cope with their everyday work (Jilke and Tummers 2018; Tummers et al. 2015).”

“SLBs were selected for this study because they directly interact with citizens, but they also need to develop coping skills and utilize discretion to manage their job demands and resources (L. L. G. Tummers et al., 2015).”

“…such systematic reviews are growing in popularity: their thorough analysis enables identification of areas where substantial progress has been made and where future research could be directed (De Vries, Bekkers, and Tummers 2015; Tummers et al. 2015; Voorberg, Bekkers, and Tummers 2015).”

“Public professionals often work in high-stakes and high-pressure environments (e.g., Noordegraaf & Steijn, 2014; Tummers et al., 2015).”

“Such judgements determine whether service workers will make decisions that support their own self-interest, or whether they will strive to respond to the needs of the individual client (Maynard-Moody & Musheno, 2000; Tummers et al., 2015).”

“…review article of coping literature in which they defined coping as: ‘behavioural efforts frontline workers employ when interacting with clients, in order to master, tolerate, or reduce external and internal demands and conflicts they face on an everyday basis’ (Tummers et al., 2015: 1100).”

“…’ moral deservingness for state support (Guul, Pedersen, and Petersen 2021; Jilke and Tummers 2018; Maynard-Moody and Musheno 2000, 2012), resulting in bureaucrats ’ proclivity to provide benevolent treatment to some clients, and stringent, rule-bounded services to others (Tummers et al. 2015).”

“They used creativity to mend flaws they identified in existing policy, defying regulations (Tummers et al. 2015), and functioning as citizen agents (Maynard-Moody & Musheno 2000).”

“In studying public service delivery, for instance, Tummers et al. (2015) identified three “families” of coping by frontline workersdmoving towards, away, or against clientsdto deal with pressure.”

“…to assess how public administration scholars and practitioners have regarded social public purchasing, we conducted a systematic literature review (Tummers et al. 2015; Tummers and Karsten 2012) of the scholarly and practitioner literatures that were published in the most widely recognized public…”

“, 2016), coping during service delivery and implementation (Tummers et al., 2015), uncertainty during inspections (Raaphorst, 2018), and multidimensional enforcement style (de Boer, 2019).”

“Such encounters do not always run smoothly and may be negatively affected by a wide array of bureaucratic obstacles, which is well documented in the public administration literature (see, e.g. Tummers et al. 2015).”

“Following Tummers et al. (2015), we focus on behavioral coping as opposed to attitude because behavior is more likely to influence policy outcome.”

“Based on an extensive literature review of behavioral forms of coping, Tummers et al. (2015) conclude that street-level workers cope with work pressures by moving toward, away from, or against clients.”

“When street-level bureaucrats find that their behaviours are more likely to be exposed to their clients, they may prefer to be responsible for their clients, meeting their demands even at the expense of ‘bending the rules’ (Tummers et al. 2015).”

“In this sense, discretion can be used to conserve entrenched institutional practices (Maynard-Moody and Musheno, 2003: 20, 21) and power dynamics, which through a gendered lens can reinforce discretionary tactics that move ‘away’ or even ‘against’ women (Tummers et al., 2015).”

“These stakeholders could be seen as contributing to a “multiple-principal” problem (Shapiro, 2005), but the valvemen’s overall reaction was one of “coping toward clients” (Tummers et al., 2015).”

“These frontline workers can move towards clients 30 and provide them with extra information and support.”

“The vision provided by the participants is also consistent with what the literature reports regarding the dark side of the characteristics and tendencies of working conditions in general, both for their psychosocial risk factors(16-18) and because of the lack of wellbeing in health care work(5-7,10-12,26-27,30-31).”

“Thus, in discretionary structures implementers may use EU law parallel to national law by developing strategies to cope with legal tension and ambiguity in line with their professional norms (Christensen 1991; Wockelberg 2014) and capacity limitations (Lipsky 1980; Tummers et al. 2015).”

“…in contrast to NPM policies, ‘whole-of-government’ policy strategies are important resources for street-level managers in their efforts to develop hybrid professionalism, as the strategies align closely with the values of the professionals (Hendrikx and van Gestel 2017; Tummers et al. 2015).”

“Hupe and Buffat (2014, 552) and Tummers et al. (2015, 1114) similarly assert that individual characteristics such as age and gender can influence ways of coping and need greater attention.”

“We found that they sometimes bend the rules and spend extra time in their effort to move towards the citizens (Tummers et al. 2015; Jaspers and Steen 2019).”

“Coping mechanisms are defined as ‘behavioural efforts frontline workers employ when interacting with clients, 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).”

“Although the phrase “rule breaking” is used here, I do not intend to draw a clear demarcation between rule breaking and rule bending (cf. Tummers et al., 2015).”

“(See, for example, DeHart-Davis, 2007; Maynard-Moody & Musheno, 2003; Portillo, 2012; Spreitzer & Sonenshein, 2004; Tummers et al., 2015).”

“…incurs high psychological or time costs on frontline implementors, such burdens may be shifted to policy beneficiaries or other stakeholders (Burden et al., 2012; Tummers et al., 2015) and a consideration of such costs is also warranted for any efficiency-based evaluation of policy implementation.”

“Tummers et al. (2015) label this strategy “moving toward the client.””

“Moreover, CSAs who deliver (public) services can, to some extent, be seen as street-level bureaucrats who can exercise discretionary power (Lipsky 1980), rule-bending or even rule-breaking while approaching the rules they have to work with (Evans 2013; Tummers et al. 2015).”

“Indeed, the coping strategies found in our study lie well within earlier research where street-level bureaucrats adapt their tool to their professional practice (Tummers et al. 2015).”

“Tummers et al. (2015) identify ways in which public employees engage in “coping” behaviors in implementing public policies.”

“Why street-level bureaucrats behave the way they do is a central topic in public management and public administration research (e.g. Lipsky, 2010; Petersen et al., 2018; Tummers et al., 2015; Van Engen et al., 2016).”

“Scholars focus on a wide range of ’coping strategies’ during public service delivery as well as positionality of SLBs, accountability, how they view themselves and others they work with (Tummers et al., 2015; Zacka, 2017; Blijleven and van Hulst, 2020).”

“As the literature illustrates, in many cases street-level workers use their discretion to assist clients and ‘move towards them’ (Tummers et al. 2015).”

“…workers can go above and beyond their formal responsibilities to deliver meaningful public services and make a difference in their clients’ lives even under pressure because they feel accountable to organizational policies and the community (Hupe & Hill, 2007; L. L. G. Tummers et al., 2015).”

“The consequences of these financial constraints include changes in the nature of public employees’ work and potential risks to their overall well-being (Borst et al., 2020; Hesketh & Cooper, 2017; Tummers et al., 2015).”

“Considerable research has examined how SLBs implement coping mechanisms (Lipsky, 2010) when exposed to constraints and changes at the frontline (e.g., Baviskar, 2019; Brodkin, 2011; Maynard-Moody & Musheno, 2003; Thorén, 2008; Tummers et al., 2015).”

“…dealing with conflicting values is not just an individual process of balancing values, striking trade-offs, or psychological coping behavior (e.g., Lipsky, 1980; Tummers et al., 2015), as is often suggested in existing studies of street-level bureaucrats (see for a critique Thacher & Rein, 2004).”

“It is not uncommon for line level workers to cope with demands that exceed the time and resources they actually have available to them (e.g., Maynard-Moody & Musheno, 2000; Tummers et al., 2015).”

“A systematic review into the coping behavior of frontline workers (Tummers et al., 2015) identified three types of coping strategies: moving toward clients, moving away from clients, and moving against clients.”

“Comprehensive reviews of empirical studies have become increasingly valuable in public administration (Liberati et al. 2009; Tummers et al. 2015) because they systematize knowledge, identify the current state of research, its potential gaps, and applicability elsewhere.”

“…such constraints, some bureaucrats may use their discretion to provide informal support like referrals and social support to clients (Lavee 2021; Tummers et al. 2015); meanwhile, others may engage in behaviors characterized as “bureaucratic entitlement,” where workers faced with limited…”

“Rather, participant noncompliance is described as something that street-level bureaucrats cope with by engaging in behaviors reflective of their own judgments and personal values (Dubois, 1999/2010; Maynard-Moody & Musheno, 2003; Soss, Fording, & Schram, 2011), or by rule following and implementing sanctions (Tummers…”

“Building on Lipsky, coping has been defined as the ‘behavioral efforts frontline workers employ when interacting with clients, in order to master, tolerate, or reduce external and internal demands and conflicts they face on an everyday basis’ (Tummers, Bekkers, Vink, & Musheno, 2015, p. 1100).”

“(Davidovitz & Cohen, 2020; Maynard-Moody & Musheno, 2003; Tummers et al., 2015; Tummers & Bekkers, 2014).”