No abstract

The public sector requires job crafting from employees so that they can better cope with overdemanding jobs due to layer upon layer of public management reforms. Simultaneously, however, red tape and austerity constrain job autonomy. This study therefore tests how job crafting can be fostered in public organizations by studying social resources at work and, specifically, empowering leadership and social support. Multilevel analyses based on survey data from 1,059 nurses in 67 public elderly care organizations in Flanders, Belgium, show that empowering leadership and social support contribute to job crafting and, simultaneously, strengthen each other’s contribution. Additional analyses showed that empowering leadership, social support, as well as their interaction have differential relations vis-à-vis the different dimensions of job crafting. The implications for public management are discussed.

Currently, the public sector is undergoing a major digital transformation. Although this digitization is seen as a positive transformation, digital tools can also put additional job demands on employees, resulting in negative HR outcomes. An example of a job demand resulting from such digital tools is red tape. By building on the job demands-resources model, we developed a theoretical model investigating the relationship between red tape originating from digital tools and turnover intention. Our data analysis ( N = 779 teachers; 91 school leaders) provides evidence for a positive indirect relationship between red tape originating from digital tools and turnover intention, through emotional exhaustion. Additionally, our results also suggest that the amount of red tape perceived by an employee’s leader will exacerbate the strength of this indirect relationship, hereby providing evidence that a factor at leader-level can exacerbate effects on a lower level.

In a context where the amount of red tape in healthcare organizations continues to rise, head nurses’ job satisfaction is constantly under pressure. By building on the Job Demands-Resources model, we developed a theoretical model investigating the relationship between red tape and job satisfaction. By investigating the mediating role of discretionary room and the moderating role of autonomous motivation in this relationship, this study does not only aim to provide additional knowledge regarding the underlying mechanisms in this relationship, but also to increase our understanding of how this suffering at work can be mitigated. Our conditional process analyses (N = 277 head nurses) indicate that red tape undermines head nurses’ job satisfaction and that discretionary room acts as an underlying mechanism in this process. By revealing the mediating role of discretionary room, this study advances our understanding of the risks originating from red tape for leaders. Furthermore, our findings also indicate that autonomous motivation mitigates the negative relation between red tape and discretionary room and between red tape and job satisfaction. As autonomous motivation turns out to be an important protection mechanism against the negative consequences of red tape, organizations should put extra effort into stimulating the autonomous motivation of their leaders. When organizations make sure that their leaders’ job designs and work environments meet the need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, leaders will become more autonomously motivated, which will buffer the negative impact of red tape.