Enforcement officials' coping strategies in a changing regulatory environment
| Published date | 01 June 2022 |
| Author | Ning Liu,Shui‐Yan Tang,Carlos Wing‐Hung Lo,Xueyong Zhan |
| Date | 01 June 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12735 |
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Enforcement officials' coping strategies in a
changing regulatory environment
Ning Liu
1
| Shui-Yan Tang
2
| Carlos Wing-Hung Lo
3
|
Xueyong Zhan
4
1
Department of Public Policy, City University
of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
2
Sol Price School of Public Policy, University
of Southern California, Los Angeles,
California, USA
3
Department of Government and Public
Administration, The Chinese University of
Hong Kong, Hong Kong
4
Department of Management and Marketing,
Faculty of Business, The Hong Kong
Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
Correspondence
Ning Liu, YEUNG-B7522, City University of
Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon,
Hong Kong.
Email: ninliu@cityu.edu.hk
Abstract
Enforcement officials' coping strategies evolve with changes in
job attitudes, work situations, and institutional support. As the
institutional context becomes more challenging with stronger
performance management and transparency pressures, enforce-
ment officials are less likely to move toward regulatees. Besides,
in a more challenging context, officials with higher pay satisfac-
tion and societal support are more likely to move toward
regulatees. Yet officials are consistently less likely to move
toward regulatees if they receive fewer resources or more gov-
ernment support. These correlations are supported by results
from two rounds of surveys with environmental regulatory
enforcement officials in China. Our interviews and archival doc-
uments helped unearth changes in institutional contexts and
enforcement activities between and after our two surveys. This
study advances a dynamic view of coping among street-level
bureaucrats by showing how changes in institutional contexts
may reshape the motivational bases of coping strategies.
摘要
基层执法人员的应对战略会随着工作态度、工作情景、以及
制度支持的变迁而变化。当绩效管理和透明的压力使得制度
环境变得越来越有挑战性,执法人员就不会太倾向于亲近被
管制对象。此外,在一个越来越有挑战性的情景下,如果执法
人员对自己的工资水平更满意或者感知到更强的社会支持,
那么他们更有可能去亲近被管制对象。但是如果执法人员感
受到资源匮乏或者更强的政府支持,那么他们就不太可能亲
近被管制对象。我们通过对中国环境基层执法人员的两轮问
Received: 21 June 2020 Revised: 11 March 2021 Accepted: 11 March 2021
DOI: 10.1111/padm.12735
408 © 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Public Admin. 2022;100:408–426.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/padm
卷调查发现了这些相关性。同时,基于对执法人员的访谈和
公开文件的分析,我们发现了在执行这两轮问卷调查前后制
度环境以及执法活动的改变趋势。我们的研究提供了一个关
于应对战略的动态视角:制度环境的变迁有可能改变基层执
法人员应对战略的激励基础。
1|INTRODUCTION
When implementing public policies and delivering social services, frontline law enforcement officials often work in a com-
plex environment with changing enforcement situations and adversarial stakeholder relationships. Since Lipsky's (1980)
classic work, many scholars have examined how street-level bureaucrats cope with the challenges of frontline work
(Fowler, 2020; Garrow & Grusky, 2013; Hupe, 2019;Keiser,2010; van Loon & Jakobsen, 2018). Tummers et al. (2015)
recently developed a more precise and coherent framework for analyzing coping in public service delivery. They define
coping as behavioral efforts used by frontline workers to interact with clients in an attempt to “master, tolerate, or reduce
external and internal demands and conflicts they face on an everyday basis”(p. 1100). They also identified three types of
coping, distinguished by the extent to which frontline workers are moving toward, against, or away from clients.
The existing literature not only takes stock of what types of coping dominate in what professional groups in pub-
lic service delivery but also highlights significant gaps in the public administration literature. One major gap, in partic-
ular, is our limited understanding of how coping and its antecedents may evolve in a rapidly changing environment.
Works in sociology and psychology have emphasized the role of workplace context, role conflicts, and personality
traits in affecting the choice of coping strategies outside public service delivery (Folkman & Moskowitz, 2000). Exis-
ting studies in public administration have also examined how individual factors and organizational attributes affect
coping among frontline professionals (Fleming, 2019; Schott et al., 2016; Tummers et al., 2015). Few studies have
examined how these antecedents may vary due to emergent trends in the 21st century, such as performance man-
agement and transparency pressures (van Loon & Jakobsen, 2018).
This paper addresses these gaps by studying changes in coping strategies among local environmental law enforce-
ment officials in China, using data from tworounds of surveys, one conducted in 2000 and the other in 2014. We also
drew on in-depth interviews conducted in 2006 and 2017, and rich archivaldata documenting both changes in institu-
tional contexts and enforcement activities between and afterour two surveys. What makesour empirical analyses espe-
cially valuable is that theinstitutional context faced by frontline enforcement officials in China had changed significantly
between the times of the two surveys—with the institutional environment becoming increasingly adversarial. In more
recent years, frontline officials had faced greater chances of being challenged by either outside stakeholders or their
administrative superiors. Theseinstitutional changesallow us to observehow coping strategy andits antecedents evolve
over time. Results from our surveys show that, in both 2000 and 2014, street-level enforcement officials were more
likely to move against regulatees if they perceived higher resource scarcity and government support. In 2000, officials
with stronger organizational identification were more likely to move toward regulatees. In 2014, officials were more
likely to move toward regulateesif they were more satisfiedwith their pay and perceived stronger societalsupport.
In the rest of this paper, we first discuss the theory, research context, and hypotheses. This is followed by a discus-
sion of the research method and findings. We conclude by discussing theoretical contributions and policy implications.
2|THEORY, RESEARCH CONTEXT, AND HYPOTHESES
Coping has long been a concept for understanding how individuals handle psychological stress through cognitive or
behavioral means (Lazarus, 1993). When applied to workplaces in public service delivery, the concept is usually
LIU ET AL.409
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