Daphne van Kleef

Confused Professionals?: Capacities to cope with pressures on professional work

Abstract Public professionalism is increasingly subject to organizational and societal pressures, which has led to ambiguity concerning its nature. Professionals face conflicting situations due to potential clashes between multifaceted professional, organizational, and societal factors. This raises questions about how these factors affect professional work, how professionals experience conflicts and how they cope. We investigate such conflicts, confusion, and coping strategies in a group of veterinary inspectors. Using semi-structured interviews, we analyse their work and link the resulting insights to different perspectives on professionalism. We show that workers experience conflicts as less stressful when they accept organizational factors, or when they are able to enact a more integrated set of professional/organizational work principles. We call this organizing professionalism. We trace factors that hinder and favour such organizing coping strategies.

Gender differences in academic careers: evidence for a Dutch university from personnel data 1990-2006

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine gender differences in promotion probabilities of the academic staff of a large university in The Netherlands, taking into account the sex segregated context of the faculty.Design/methodology/approach – The study uses records of the universitys personnel information system from 1990 to 2006, covering the data of 1,792 employees in the academic ranks who have entered since 1990. Cox regression models are used to test three hypotheses.Findings – The findings show that women have lower promotion probabilities than men. The gender differences are primarily explained by differences in years of service and external mobility, and not by the sex segregated context of the faculty. A higher share of women decreases the odds of being promoted for both men and women. Gender differences in working hours do not explain the gender differences in promotion probabilities.Originality/value – The paper adds to the existing literature because event history analyses have hardl...

What does it mean and imply to be public service motivated

In public service motivation (PSM) literature, PSM is assumed to have a positive effect on performance. Even though frequently mentioned, this assumption has proved difficult to verify empirically. In this article, we argue that individual interpretations of what it means to serve the public interest need to be considered to get a grip on the concept of PSM and its behavioral consequences. As interpretations of “the public interest” vary depending on the roles people occupy in society, so too does the meaning of PSM. A theoretical argument is developed that helps to clarify the meaning of PSM and its relationship with performance by introducing insights derived from identity theory. This is illustrated empirically by a study of veterinarian inspectors. The theoretical, empirical, and practical relevance of this new approach to PSM is pointed out.

In or Out: Developing a Categorization of Different Types of Co-Production by Using the Critical Case of Dutch Food Safety Services

The understanding of co-production as a concept is fragmented; there are many different definitions and many cases are labeled co-production. Two dimensions seem to be important in most definitions: the ability of the co-producer to self-produce or to produce the same product without input from others and the extent to which co-producers’ participation is voluntary. Based on these dimensions, this article develops a typology of co-production. It is shown that cases in which involuntariness is combined with a high ability of self-production are rare. This article contributes to the literature by studying such a case, namely Dutch food safety services.ABSTRACT The understanding of co-production as a concept is fragmented; there are many different definitions and many cases are labeled co-production. Two dimensions seem to be important in most definitions: the ability of the co-producer to self-produce or to produce the same product without input from others and the extent to which co-producers’ participation is voluntary. Based on these dimensions, this article develops a typology of co-production. It is shown that cases in which involuntariness is combined with a high ability of self-production are rare. This article contributes to the literature by studying such a case, namely Dutch food safety services.

What Factors Drive Organizational Learning From Crisis? Insights From the Dutch Food Safety Services’ Response to Four Veterinary Crises

Although organizational learning has been studied extensively, empirical studies in relation to crises and theory building have remained scarce. This study explored what factors affect the learning process from crises of a public sector organization. We studied the responses of the Dutch food safety services (NVWA) to the veterinary crises classical swine fever (1997–1998), foot-and-mouth disease (2001), avian influenza (2003) and Q fever (2007–2010). Data from in-depth interviews with key experts in the organization and from crisis management documents pointed to political–economic context, social–emotional understanding, organizational structure, organizational culture, crisis management stage and organizational forgetting as key factors. Remarkably, postcrisis evaluation reports, leadership and a shared sense-making of what lessons to learn were not found to play a central role.

Inspections Services and Inter-Rater Reliability: Differentiating Professional Role Identities of Dutch Veterinary Inspectors

Inter-rater reliability is a prominent topic within inspection services. We address inter-rater reliability as a problem beyond the technical concern for improving regulatory instruments. We combine theories on professionalism and identity theory to deal with an issue overlooked in much of the literature on regulation and inter-rater reliability: the potentially diverging ways inspectors perceive their professional role. Studying veterinary inspectors in the Dutch food safety services, our focus is on how we can empirically differentiate between different role identities and how these identities diverge from ideal-typical expectations the organization holds of its inspectors.

The combined impact of professional role identity and public service motivation on decision-making in dilemma situations

Working in the public sector implies the need to make decisions in the face of dilemmas. As consistent decision-making is highly desirable for organizational performance, the question arises: what do public service professionals base their decisions on? This study aims to increase our understanding of whether public service motivation and professional role identity are useful concepts by which to predict what decisions public service professionals will make in complex situations. Using survey data, this research investigates the impact of these two concepts on the decision-making of veterinary inspectors working at the Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority. The results support the hypothesis that decision-making is influenced by the way in which veterinary inspectors interpret their professional role. Public service motivation, in contrast, seems to have neither a direct nor a moderating effect on decision-making in the context of dilemma situations. Points for practitioners Two important conclusions of this study are of interest for managers working with professionals. Our findings should urge them to consider the different views that employees have about their job when teams are formed or when specific combinations of tasks are assigned. For example, attention should be paid to the question of which mixture of professional role identities is most suitable to accomplish organizational objectives. Second, the construct of public service motivation can be used by human resource managers to assess whether public professionals are motivated to provide public services. However, the results also indicate that the operationalization of public service motivation needs to be adapted to the professional context of public service providers.

Reality Shock and Public Service Motivation: A Longitudinal, Qualitative Study Among Dutch Veterinary Inspectors

ABSTRACT To this day little is known about the mechanisms that help explain the mixed findings of longitudinal public service motivation (PSM) research. This study aims to deepen our understanding of post-entry PSM dynamics by focusing on the role of the often cited “reality shock” as a potential explanation for the decrease in PSM also found here. The results of this longitudinal, small-scale qualitative study of a specific cohort of newcomers who just started work as veterinary inspectors at the Dutch food safety authority suggest that a loss of PSM is not due to a generic shock effect, but is linked to having unclear job expectations and individual differences in coping behaviour.