New development: Ethical dilemmas and emotional labour—what can we learn from the shared Covid-19 crisis?

IMPACTThis article will be of value to public officials and managers who are grappling with the ethical questions arising from public sector work and service delivery. This is especially relevant in the context of Covid-19 where new forms of emotional labour are emerging. Procurement officers and politicians are encouraged to consider the possibilities of unethical behaviour and the consequences.

Examining public organization communication misalignments during COVID-19 through the lens of higher education

COVID-19 is forcing alterations to administrative communication. Higher education institutions transitioning online during the pandemic offers a fertile ground to analyze what happens to organizational communication within administration when the mode is primarily remote. Using a content analysis of emails and participant interviews, this work finds that while administrators intend to communicate empathy, messages fall short of fostering connection with faculty due to failing to cultivate buyin through quality feedback channels. The takeaways of this study of remote communication is that despite its mode, communication must be two way, and the authenticity of organizational communication becomes more important under pressure-filled circumstances. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Governing Asylum without ‘‘Being There”: Ghost Bureaucracy, Outsourcing, and the Unreachability of the State

When, where, and how do asylum seekers encounter the state? Anyone seeking asylum in the Global North might meet state authorities of the country where they want to apply for international protection long before arriving at its borders. However, if the state often becomes "very present” by transcending its geopolitical margins in border control, once asylum seekers have managed to cross into national territory, the state frequently vanishes. Insufficient information, opaque proceedings, difficulties in reaching state agencies, which dramatically increased with the COVID pandemic, often translate into a denial of asylum seekers' rights and their exclusion from welfare programs. Moreover, following a widespread tendency to outsource public services, access to asylum and related welfare programmes are being increasingly mediated by a range of nonstate actors (such as NGOs, activist groups, companies, and individuals) acting as state agents. Drawing on the analysis of ethnographic results from Spain and Italy, this article proposes the concept of "ghost bureaucracy” to theorise the street-level bureaucrats from their absence and explore asylum seekers' encounters with a seemingly powerful and omnipresent but unreachable state through closed offices, digital bureaucracy and third-party actors. © 2023 by the authors.

The street-level bureaucracy research agenda in the pandemic context: an integrative review

The implementation of public policies in crisis situations is a scarce field of study, especially at the street level, in which there is interaction between the State and the citizen. The pandemic as a crisis affected the autonomy of frontline professionals and shaped their behavior, especially influenced by organizational and relational factors. This way, the study explores the research agenda in the context of the pandemic, available in the Web of Science database, seeking to understand its influence on street-level implementation of public policies, using the integrative review method for this purpose. Additionally, an attempt was made to understand how the use of software contributes to data analysis, pointing out its advantages and limitations. For this, VOSviewer 1.6.17 was used. The main results revealed that crisis contexts such as the pandemic profoundly influence the implementation of public policies at the street level with negative impacts on user service. The research focus defined has limitations due to the lack of advances in the number of data analyzed, but contributes to a better understanding of the influences of crises for implementation of public policies at the street level. Investigations on the emotional consequences to the front line and the approach to action during the crisis by professionals who deal daily with emergency situations such as firefighters and professionals of mobile vehicles of the medical emergency network are indicated.

Discretion in education services: Explaining teaching-learning models of learning from home during Covid-19 pandemic in Indonesia

This study aimed to analyze government policies in education during the Covid-19 pandemic and how teachers exercised discretion in dealing with limitations in policy implementation. This research work used the desk review method to obtain data on government policies in the field of education during the Covid-19 pandemic. In addition, interviews were conducted to determine the discretion taken in implementing the learning-from-home policy. There were three learning models during the pandemic: face-to-face learning in turns (shifts), online learning, and home visits. Online learning policies did not work well at the pandemic's beginning due to limited infrastructure and human resources. To overcome various limitations, the government provided internet quota assistance and curriculum adjustments and improved online learning infrastructure. The discretion taken by the teachers in implementing the learning-from-home policy was very dependent on the student's condition and the availability of the internet network. The practical implication of this research is that street-level bureaucrats need to pay attention to discretionary standards when deciding to provide satisfaction to the people they serve. © 2022, EnPress Publisher, LLC. All rights reserved.

Children, COVID, and confusion: How frontline workers cope with the challenges of vaccine mandates

With the emergence of COVID-19, many governments around the world co-oped non-health actors into enforcing comprehensive mandatory vaccination policies. Implementing these policies can be challenging, creating irreconcilable goals and problems with knowledge and understanding of areas outside the implementers' direct field of expertise or scope of work. We know very little about how such frontline workers cope with these challenges associated with implementing policies whose goals lie well outside their remit (which we describe as generating exogenous policy pressures), and what this means for the operation of the policies. This article uses policies in place prior to the pandemic to fill this gap. It examines attitudes and experiences of frontline childcare educators who implement Australia's No Jab, No Play childhood vaccine mandate policies within the states of New South Wales, Queensland, and Victoria. Through qualitative analysis of interview and focus group data, we find that these frontline workers cope with moral conflict, confusion, and a lack of knowledge by moving against clients: they rigidly follow the rules beyond legislative requirements, and sometimes break them, generating a new coping category we call 'rigid rule breaking'. However, their need to employ coping strategies is informed by the extent to which government has designed the policy to coerce the behaviour of the providers, families, or both. The implementation of more coercive variants of No Jab, No Play policies deviates more from what legislators intended, while providers given scope to make their own decisions about enrolling unvaccinated children report satisfaction in their decision-making. Points for practitionersAustralian state mandatory vaccination policies generally require childcare providers to exclude unvaccinated children.Street level bureaucrats face pressures when implementing coercive policies exogenous to their remit.They may simplify policy implementation in ways that counter governments' goals.Actors given more discretion about passing on coercion to policy targets demonstrate better understanding and ownership of policies.

Doing better with less: do behavioural capabilities affect street level bureaucrats’ ability to deliver public value?

Street Level Bureaucrat (SLB) and Conservation of Resources theories are used to develop measures for Public Value (PV) and a higher-order construct comprising psychological capacities and behavioural capabilities - HERO-INE, and to test whether it is an antecedent of Public Service Motivation (PSM) and Public Value (PV) using data from 259 SLBs working in Australian healthcare collected at two points in time and analysed using Structural Equation Modelling. HERO-INE, PSM, and in-role behaviour explained approximately 40% of the SLBs' PV. The implication is that organizations must ensure that SLBs have the psychological and behavioural capabilities to deliver PV.

Healthcare Workers during the COVID-19 Pandemic from a Street-Level Bureaucracy Perspective - A Narrative Review of Literature

Street-level bureaucrats are professionals whose main role consists in the implementation of public policies at a community level, guiding themselves through the use of autonomy and discretion. In this narrative review of literature 44 articles that had information about street-level bureaucracy regarding healthcare workers in the COVID-19 pandemic in specific countries (China, United States, Italy, Brazil, Mexico and Colombia) were selected from various databases and analyzed to explore how the implementation of health public policies during the current COVID-19 pandemic impacted and shaped the work of healthcare workers. Various ideas were extracted and analyzed using the street-level bureaucracy model as a reference point. We concluded that street-level bureaucrats have played a crucial role in this pandemic and that providing them with government support, clear public policies and enough resources is essential for them to correctly manage public health problems. Further research needs to be done regarding the consequences brought upon street-level bureaucrats by the pandemic and the impact that street-level bureaucrats have had in countries like Colombia.

Risking Lives to Save Others During COVID-19: A Focus on Public Health Care Workers in Bangladesh and Egypt.

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has been spreading around the world, causing a major public health crisis that has already claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. Street-level bureaucrats--health workers, teachers, street cleaners, police officers-, and so forth-are at the forefront in fighting against the pandemic. Of these, public health care workers, due to the nature of their involvement, should know and understand why they are risking their lives to save others during this pandemic. Based on the preliminary data gleaned from interviews with public health care workers in Bangladesh and Egypt, this ongoing research suggests they are risking their lives for reasons such as altruistic behavior, service to profession, adherence to bureaucratic accountability, and a desire to help mankind. The findings contribute to the existing literature about street-level bureaucratic behavior in atypical times such as these of the pandemic. This study is unique in that it comprehends that public health care workers of two culturally and geographically distinct countries are risking their lives for the same public-spirited cause.

Coping with Denialism: How Street-Level Bureaucrats Adapted and Responded to COVID-19 in Tanzania.

CONTEXT: This article aims to highlight challenges and adaptations made by local health officials in Tanzania in working to contain and manage COVID-19. METHODS: The study takes an inductive approach, drawing on the reported experiences of 40 officials at different levels of government across four purposefully selected regions in July 2020. Interviewees were asked about the guidance they received to contain COVID-19, the source of that guidance, their challenges and successes in implementing the guidance, and if and how they adapted the guidance to their particular setting. FINDINGS: The interviews depict considerable challenges, including a lack of supplies and resources for implementing infection control, surveillance, and mitigation practices and dealing with fear and stigma. At the same time, they also provide evidence of innovation and adaptation among street-level bureaucrats. Respondents overwhelmingly praised the president, whose limited national response is seen as helpful for reducing fear and stigma. CONCLUSIONS: Other scholars have highlighted the potential dangers of street-level discretion if local officials "make policy" in ways that contradict their agencies' stated goals. In contrast, our study suggests benefits of autonomy at the street level-particularly in contexts where the central state was relatively weak and/or acting against the public interest.

Demand smoothing response by street-level bureaucrats (SLB) in delivering public services during COVID-19 scenario: A system dynamics modeling study.

During such unprecedented time as COVID-19, despite stretched to its limit, public service delivery remains crucial to societies' well-being. Street-level bureaucrats (SLBs), specifically, become the most visible outreach of public policies to citizen. However, as the literature suggests, unintended outcomes of SLBs-citizen interfacing have been discretion, inefficiency and accountability, an issue lies at the heart of the standard public governance. No scholarly attempt has been made in the past to address this shortcoming. This research by proposing a conceptual model using system dynamics captures the complexity, and in so doing posits testable hypotheses that instigate an alternative visualization of public affairs, thereby closing the gap in the SLB scholarship.