Policy alienation of public professionals: the effects

Abstract

Nowadays, many public professionals face identification problems towards public policies they have to implement; that is, they experience policy alienation. We conceptualize policy alienation, starting from the sociological concept of alienation and showing how this can be used in the realm of policy implementation. Policy alienation occurs when a professional a) perceives he cannot influence the policy b) perceives the policy as meaningless and c) experiences conflicts between different groups (for example clients and management) because of the policy. We explore the effects of policy alienation by applying it to Dutch high school teachers implementing a new policy intended to prepare students better for higher education, in a small case study based on content analysis. We observe that when teachers experience policy alienation, their job satisfaction decreases. Next, the perceived workload of teachers implementing the policy increases when they experience policy alienation. Last, teachers experiencing policy alienation seem to be less effective in implementing the policy