Stability not change: Improving frontline employee motivation through organizational reform is harder than it looks
| Published date | 01 September 2020 |
| Author | Nina M. Loon,Martin Baekgaard,Donald P. Moynihan |
| Date | 01 September 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12639 |
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Stability not change: Improving frontline employee
motivation through organizational reform is
harder than it looks
Nina M. van Loon
1,2
|Martin Baekgaard
1
|Donald P. Moynihan
3
1
Department of Political Science, Aarhus
University, Aarhus, Denmark
2
Municipality of Rotterdam, The Netherlands
3
Georgetown University, Washington,
DC, USA
Correspondence
Nina M. van Loon, Department of Political
Science, Aarhus University, Bartholins Alle
7, Aarhus 8000, Denmark and Municipality of
Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Email: nm.vanloon@rotterdam.nl
Abstract
As evidence mounts about the positive effects of autono-
mous motivation such as public service motivation, there is
a growing case for public organizations to design reforms to
better support public employees’inherent desire to help
others. But how feasible is this in reality? Most experimen-
tal evidence on autonomous motivation stems from inter-
ventions at the individual level, possibly exaggerating what
government reforms can achieve in reality. We present a
longitudinal study that analyses a three-year trial in Danish
hospitals in which incentives and autonomy were changed
to encourage autonomous motivation. This set-up offers a
rare opportunity to observe the potential malleability of
intrinsic, public service, user and external motivation. The
results show little observable change in motivation due to
the reform. We explore the practical difficulties of translat-
ing evidence about motivation into reforms given imple-
mentation challenges, contextual factors and a recognition
that motivation might be less malleable than implied by
research.
1|INTRODUCTION
Is it possible to change the motivation, behaviour, and ultimately the performance of public employees and their
organizations? For public sector reformers, the answer is a clear ‘yes’. Adherents of New Public Management
assumed that organizational changes that altered extrinsic rewards and targets would generate better outcomes.
Such reforms have, at best, a mixed record (Pollitt and Bouckaert 2017). As the New Public Management paradigm
has fallen out of favour, it is natural for reformers to turn to another model, one built on a different set of
Received: 26 October 2018Revised: 28 June 2019Accepted: 25 October 2019
DOI: 10.1111/padm.12639
Public Admin. 2020;98:591–608.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/padm© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd591
assumptions about motivation. A natural candidate arises from research on autonomous types of motivation such as
public service motivation (PSM) and intrinsic motivation, variables that have positive relationships with job satisfac-
tion, organizational commitment and performance in the public sector (Judge et al. 2001; Ryan and Deci 2004;
Houston 2011; Andersen and Kjeldsen 2012; Bellé 2014; Andersen et al. 2015; Christensen et al. 2017; Jakobsen
et al. 2018). Moreover, some recent empirical work has shown that autonomous motivation in the public sector can
be both encouraged (Kjeldsen 2013; Bellé 2014; Ward 2014) and harmed (Frey and Jegen 2001; Georgellis et al.
2011; Jacobsen et al. 2014).
The emerging understanding of motivation offers a logic for governments to design reforms with the goal of
leveraging autonomous forms of motivation. Still, most of what we know is based on insights from individual-level
incentives and job characteristics, rather than broader organizational reforms. Moreover, much of our knowledge is
based on cross-sectional studies or studies using very controlled treatments and/or short delays between inducing a
treatment and measuring the response (e.g., Grant 2008; Bellé 2014). A problem with cross-sectional studies is endo-
geneity, that is, the possibility that people select into administrative environments that match their preferences
(Anderfuhren-Biget et al. 2014; Ballart and Rico 2018), and this process of selection may explain observed correla-
tions between some environmental characteristics and individual motivation. In pointing to the endogeneity problem
in studies of motivation, Vandenabeele et al. (2014, p. 783) emphasize that this is not merely a methodological chal-
lenge. It directly affects how we think about basic theoretical questions such as causal mechanisms: ‘At best, the bulk
of the research provides circumstantial evidence about the causal direction …These methodological challenges ham-
per solid theoretical inference.’We follow the approach advocated by Jacobsen et al. (2014, p. 802): ‘future studies
should use experiments or panel data to tackle the question of endogeneity better’.
We evaluate the effects of an organizational reform inspired by research on autonomous motivation. Reforms
often target the collective rather than the individual level, using tools such as organizational financial remuneration,
civil service rules or goal-settingprocesses. Previous research suggests that changesin autonomy and incentives influ-
ence autonomous motivation (Andersen and Pallesen 2008; Georgellis et al. 2011; Jacobsen et al. 2014; Mikkelsen
et al. 2017), but how this playsout when trying to implement a broader organizationalreform is less clear. In our case,
Danish hospitals adopted a new performance regime that decoupled organizational goals from direct financial incen-
tives, and gave employeesautonomy to choose their own goals and targets. Thenew regime was intended as an alter-
native to a regime characterized by externally imposed performance indicators and extrinsic rewards, with the
expectation that the changes wouldincrease autonomous motivation, and ultimately behaviour and performance. We
provide a strong empiricaltest of this reform by examining changes in employee motivationfor three years after it was
introduced, offering a rareopportunity to investigate longitudinal changes in motivation, as well as a comparison with
control wards. While moststudies focus on a single type of motivation, we provideinsight into the impact of a reform
on multiple forms of motivationincluding extrinsic external regulation,user, intrinsic and PSM.
Our findings suggest that this reform had little effect on motivation. Given that bias against null findings distorts
scholarly understandings of how public administration works in practice (Franco et al. 2014; Tummers 2015), it is
important to learn from well-designed studies that generate such results. Our results add to our knowledge by show-
ing stability as opposed to the expected change in motivation. The reform tested here—a change in organizational
incentives—is realistic, theoretically motivated and meaningful for actual organizations, especially in the field of pub-
lic health (Burwell 2015). The results do not suggest that all reforms are destined to fail, but inform an important the-
oretical and practical question about how easily motivation can be reshaped through reforms, and hence provide
new knowledge for developing realistic expectations about motivational change in practice. We cannot rule out that
other events were at play at the time of the reform. While this feature of our design may be seen as a weakness
when comparing it to a lab setting, the design excels compared to previous, controlled experiments by testing how
reforms may play out in a ‘real’setting.
In the data and methods section, and via robustness tests, we address concerns of bias in the sample. Robust-
ness checks allow us to rule out the degree of reform implementation as an alternative explanation. Cumulatively,
the results have strong internal validity. The best explanation for the results is that employees already had relatively
592 VAN LOON ET AL.
Get this document and AI-powered insights with a free trial of vLex and Vincent AI
Get Started for FreeStart Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting