Managing The Implementation Of Innovation Strategies In Public Service Organisation:How Managers May Support Employees Innovative Work Behaviour

This paper examines which management strategies public managers may use to enhance innovative behavior among their employees. We focus on the implementation of a politically ambitious innovation strategy in a large Danish municipality. Based on a survey distributed to 1292 employees and 113 managers, we conduct a multi-level analysis focusing on how different management strategies (reported by the managers) and perceived management behavior (reported by the employees) affect the public employees' perceived idea generation, idea promotion, and idea realization. The results show that knowledge of the innovation strategy, encouraging management, a risk-tolerant culture and autonomy are important management tools, whereas strategic management communication and economic rewards do not correlate with any of the phases in innovative work behavior. We contribute with new evidence on how innovation is supported by public managers in the different phases of the innovation process, and we conclude by discussing the practical implications of the findings.</p

Time to rediscover task-oriented leadership? A multi-source, time-lagged study on leadership and well-being in public service jobs

Although leaders have a considerable impact on the well-being of public employees, this relationship has not yet been fully disentangled in both conceptual and empirical terms. We develop a framework of how task- and relations-oriented leadership affect well-being (i.e. hedonic, eudaimonic, social dimensions). A multi-source, time-lagged study from a large Danish municipality shows that task-oriented leadership yields positive associations with both social and eudaimonic dimensions of well-being, while for relations-oriented leadership, we only find a positive association with hedonic well-being. The findings suggest rediscovering task-oriented leadership as an important but often overlooked quality of effective leaders.</p

The contagious leader:a panel study on occupational stress transfer in a large Danish municipality

Occupational stress has immense economic and health-related consequences for individuals, organizations, and societies. In this context, the question of whether and how stress among managers transmits to their subordinates is highly interesting, yet not profoundly researched. This study aims to empirically investigate the effect of manager occupational stress on the development of subordinate stress and for how long such effects last in time. We exploit a unique panel dataset based on three different surveys among employees from a large Danish municipality, covering 5,688 employees and their 473 immediate managers between 2016 and 2020. We analyze this data using a fixed effects estimator with clustered robust standard errors, allowing us to significantly reduce potential endogeneity issues. The study shows that managers do in fact ‘transmit’ stress onto their employees, that the relationship is detectable a full year after the initial transmission of stress occurred, and that such an effect fades within additional two years. Our study serves to emphasize the great importance of the psychosocial wellbeing of managers as ‘nerve centers’ for entire job teams and urges organizations to treat stress among personnel on management levels with a high degree of concern.</p

Does acute stress disorder predict posttraumatic stress disorder following workplace violence?:A prospective study of psychiatric staff

Objectives: Psychiatric staff is at risk of workplace violence (WV) and subsequent posttraumatic symptomatology. The current study assesses the prevalence of acute stress disorder (ASD) and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in psychiatric staff following WV. This also examines the prospective association between ASD and PTSD. Methods: This is a prospective cohort study of staff from 18 psychiatric wards in Denmark (n = 250), that reported an incident of workplace violence. Results: The prevalence of ASD was 10.8%, while 8% had PTSD 3 months post-assault. Generalized linear mixed models showed a significant predictive power of ASD on PTSD (OR 8.45, p &lt; 0.001) in the fully adjusted model. Conclusions: ASD seems to be a predictor of future PTSD in an occupational context and should be considered a possible instrument in enactment of preventive strategies.</p

Latent Growth Mixture Modeling to Estimate Differential PTSD Trajectories and Associated Risk Factors in Psychiatric Staff Following Workplace Violence

Background: Workplace violence (WV) towards psychiatric staff has commonly been associated with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). However, prospective studies have shown that not all psychiatric staff who experience workplace violence experience post-traumatic stress. Purpose: We want to examine the longitudinal trajectories of PTSD in this population to identify possible subgroups that might be more at risk. Furthermore, we need to investigate whether certain risk factors of PTSD might identify membership in the subgroups. Method: In a sample of psychiatric staff from 18 psychiatric wards in Denmark who had reported an incident of WV, we used Latent Growth Mixture Modelling (LGMM) and further logistic regression analysis to investigate this. Results: We found three separate PTSD trajectories: a recovering, a delayed-onset, and a moderate-stable trajectory. Higher social support and negative cognitive appraisals about oneself, the world and self-blame predicted membership in the delayed-onset trajectory, while higher social support and lower accept coping predicted membership in the delayed-onset trajectory. Conclusion: Although most psychiatric staff go through a natural recovery, it is important to be aware of and identify staff members who might be struggling long-term. More focus on the factors that might predict these groups should be an important task for psychiatric departments to prevent posttraumatic symptomatology from work

The association between public managers' type of education and prioritizing core service provision and communication

An important question in public management is whether public organizations should prefer or avoid specialist managers (i.e., managers whose professional backgrounds match the work they oversee). Research has shown that specialist managers are associated with better field-specific performance in public organizations, and theory suggests that they lead differently than nonspecialist managers. However, there is no empirical evidence to support this latter claim. To remedy this, we investigate whether specialist managers prioritize core service provision more and communicate better than nonspecialist managers. Through multilevel regressions of employee reports of leaders' behaviors in the contexts of schools, eldercare, daycare, and employment, we find that specialist managers prioritize core service provision more in all contexts but schools and communicate better in eldercare and employment but not elsewhere. These findings are consistent with the theoretical expectations and thus emphasize the importance of educational background in shaping managerial behavior.</p