Public servant stereotypes: It is not (at) all about being lazy, greedy and corrupt

Abstract

As stereotypes strongly influence social interactions, this study explores the stereotypical associations regarding public servants, and about various professions in the public sector as well as the for‐profit and nonprofit sectors. This leads to a better understanding of the theoretical and practical challenges, such as citizen behaviour towards public servants, attractiveness of and political decisions about public service jobs. With a mixed‐method analysis of cognitive associations (7,470 associations by 415 respondents for 12 professions), the defining epithets of public servants are clarified, along with their positive or negative connotation. Despite the strongest associations for public servants being positive (caring, helpful and dedicated), as an overall category, it has a less positive connotation compared to some specific professions typical in the public sector (nurse, firefighter and police). However, cognitive associations are substantially more positive for public servants compared to politicians, lawyers and salesmen.

Processing stereotypes: professionalism confirmed or disconfirmed by sector affiliation?

“…Consistently, the positive stereotype confirmation (H1a) is slightly more negative for the public sector (Table 2B; b ¼ À0.19; p < 0.05). That is despite the fact that these associations were particularly identified for public servants (Willems 2020). Overall, our data supports Hypothesis 1, though with minimal effect size.…”

“…However, Willems (2020) finds that negative words are associated with public servants, but that these play only a minor role. This is supported by a study from de Boer (2020) that finds that both, positive and negative characteristics are associated with various types of street-level bureaucrats.…”

“…These personal characteristics are: caring (þ), dedicated (þ), hardworking (þ), helpful (þ), corrupt (À), greedy (À), and lazy (À). They were selected based on the data and analysis from Willems (2020), which shows that these are the most-occurring stereotypical associations for public servants in the US. Originally, we planned to conduct our main analysis based on one main construct including all nine items.…”

Measuring stereotypes in the banking industry – an application to client relational benefits

“…However, in the banking industry, they have not attracted much interest: previous studies of stereotypes mainly refer to gender (Li and Zeng, 2019) and age (Harris et al , 2016). The studies that came closest to examining professional stereotypes were conducted by Willems (2020) on public servants, including bankers, by Lazarus (2012), who looked at four “banker figures,” and by Bienfait (2014), who studied the stereotype of the telephone advisor (banking by telephone). Although the literature shows that some customers fail to seek advice (Lewis, 2018) or fear corporate greed (Caruana et al , 2018), corporate hypocrisy (Hur and Kim, 2020), and unethical sales practices (Tosun, 2020), it still does not give an exhaustive scientific examination of the banker stereotype.…”

A Systematic Literature Review on the Use of Games for Attitude Change

“…Lipsky(1971)alreadyfound a"tendencyonthepartofstreet-levelbureaucratstodevelopdefensemechanismsinordertoreach accommodationandresolutionofstresstendencies,thatresultsinadistortionoftheperceivedreality" (p.396).Morebroadlythanstreet-levelbureaucrats,wecanassumethattheresistancetochange isakindofdefensemechanism.Thisbehavioristoensurestabilityandhasthedisadvantagethat newpoliciesrequiringachangeofattitudesrequiregreateffort.Concretelimitations,suchaslack ofresources,physicalandpsychologicalthreats,andambiguityofroleexpectations,makechange difficultforcivilservants. Willems(2020)foundthat"thepublicsectorisoftentypifiedasbeingbureaucratic,slow,and inefficient"(p.9).However,healsofoundthatapro-socialmotivationonpublicservantsisrelevant tounderstandtheirbehaviorsandtheperceptionsofotherstowardsthem (p.19).Itmaycontrastwith definitions,suchastheonescomingfromtheBureauVotingModel,whichassumesthatgovernment employeesalwaysseekanincreaseintheirsalaryorjobsecuritybysupportingmoresubstantial budgetexpenditures (Tepe,2012).…”