Managing the Behavior of Public Frontline Employees through Change-Oriented Training: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Jakobsen, Morten; Jacobsen, Christian Botcher; Serritzlew, Soren
• 署名单位: Aarhus University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION RESEARCH AND THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1053-1858
• DOI: 10.1093/jopart/muy080
• 发表日期: 2019
• 页码: 556-571
• 关键词: professional-development; performance; management; ORGANIZATIONS; motivation; sector; IMPACT; metaanalysis; leadership; turnover

摘要

Most public frontline employees work out of sight of management. Direct management through authority and incentives is therefore often challenging. We argue that managers can rely on change-oriented training as an effective management tool that can affect employee behavior and work as an alternative or supplement to commands and incentives. First, we outline the concept of change-oriented training and explain how it can direct the behavior of public employees towards organizational goals and political priorities. Second, we test the effect of change-oriented training on employee behavior in a large-scale field experiment of teachers in Danish public schools. We show that training has a substantial effect on teachers' behavior in the classroom and infer from this that training should be seen as a valuable management tool with the ability to influence the behavior of frontline employees.