Review of Public Administration and Management

The Impact of Public Servants Recovery on Public Organizations’ Reputation: A Double Source Examination

Tsamantouridis K^1*, Tsameti A¹, Bellou V¹ and Andronikidis A^{2 1}Department of Economics, University of Thessaly, Greece
²Department of Economics, University of Macedonia, Greece
^*Correspondence: Tsamantouridis K, Department of Economics, University of Thessaly, Greece, Tel: +302421074876, Email: ,

Received: 17-Nov-2021 Published: 07-Dec-2021, DOI: 10.35248/2315-7844.21.9.315

Introduction

Nowadays, employees deal with several changes both in their jobs and during their workday. To successfully meet these challenges and the subsequent ongoing changes, organizations need to be able to adapt quickly and effectively. public servants in Greece are employed under rather mentally taxing conditions. High bureaucracy, inflexible procedures and strict norms, lack of job descriptions, role ambiguity, the situation in which public servants are forced to deliver efficient and high-quality services, which may be even more challenging for public sector organizations [1]. are constant phenomena increasing public servants’ daily routine loads and work demands. These are only a few key characteristics of the contemporary Greek public sector, which constitute sufficient evidence to be labelled as damaging its reputation both regarding services provided and the service encounters. Nevertheless, public organizations also provide considerable conditions for work recovery to occur. Recovery describes the process by which individuals “recharge their batteries” [2]. The process by which individuals’ state returns to pre-stress levels and strain is limited [3]. Recovery occurs when employees stop working or end their working day [4]. The concept refers to the resources acquisition or their replenishment through a variety of activities and experiences [5]. Work recovery is based on the Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, which suggests that the gain, preservation, and protection of individuals’ resources is of utmost significance [6]. As a result, the present research focuses on the state of being recovered before individuals engage in any work demands, that is before the beginning of their workday (i.e. individuals’ state of being recovered before work).

Taken together, the present study seeks to further investigate the relationship between public servants’ status of being in recovery and public organization’s reputation, taking into account the mediating role of affective delivery. In terms of its expected contributions, first of all, the study investigates this relationship within the public sector, for which there is no previous evidence. Second, it adds to the delineation of the nature of the relationship between employees’ recovery and public organization’s reputation, which remains vague. In other words, the current study seeks to examine variables that constitute rather a distant relationship, namely, employee recovery and organizations’ reputation, which has not received prior research interest. Third, affective delivery has received minimum attention as a mediator within the public sector. Last but not least, the paper discusses the practical implications of these relationships, offering managers in public organizations advice for boosting both employees’ recovery state and organization’s reputation.

Literature Review and Hypothesis

Employee recovery

Employees’ obligation to fulfill pre-arranged job demands in the context of their employment requires an investment of a certain amount of both physical and mental resources. Resources refer to “those objects, personal characteristics, conditions, or energies that are valued by the individual or that serve as a means for attainment of these objects, personal characteristics, conditions, or energies”. Given that resources reduce during workdays, as soon as job demands and related stressors stop, individuals strive to replenish them The process of employees’ unwinding after facing work-related stressors and their return to a pre-stressor condition is generally referred to as work recovery [7-9].

Work recovery is based on the Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, which suggests that the gain, preservation, and protection of individuals’ resources is of utmost significance. Τhe recovery phenomenon, addressing stress that follows resource loss and taking subsequent action, consists of three facesets, namely recovery settings, recovery as process, and recovery as outcome [10]. Recovery settings focus on the time component under which recovery can occur. That is during the workday, internal recovery - work-breaks, and/or after its end, external recovery - e.g. after work leisure/ free time, weekends, sabbaticals, vacations. Recovery as a process consists of the various activities that individuals can participate in to achieve recovery. Some of them are likely to unfold through engaging in social activities - such as meeting with friends or family, while others might be replenished by working-out. Finally, recovery as an outcome refers to “the result of a successful or less successful recovery process” (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Model under investigation.

The present research focuses on the latter facet of recovery, taking into account the subjective perception of individuals for the level of recovery achieved. Existing literature refers to this as either level or state of recovery, often causing confusion. In order to avoid confusion, the present study will address the concept as the “state of being recovered”. Furthermore, the present research focuses on the state of being recovered before individuals engage in any work demands, that is before the beginning of their work-day (i.e. individuals’ state of being recovered before work). The choice of a before-work state of recovery summarizes the outcome of all daily recovery opportunities of individuals, as it consists of both the recovery (i.e. work-related, household and child-caring, physical, low-effort, and social) and personal maintenance activities (i.e. personal hygiene, eating, and especially sleeping) and experiences (i.e. psychological detachment, relaxation, mastery, control) [11]. individuals participated in during the previous day.

One of the main reasons for recovery’s importance is its effect on employees’ performance. According to Beal and colleagues’. “performance during an episode is a joint function of resource level and resource allocation” [12]. which means that in order for employees’ to achieve the highest performance, they have to invest the highest number of resources they acquire to the task at hand. Employees with high availability of resources are able to invest, directly or indirectly, those resources on their work [13]. and thus, the fluctuation of those resources has an impact on their performance [14]. As mentioned before, when employees utilize their resources, they perform and their resources deplete. On that notion, existing literature regarding internal recovery suggests that micro-breaks spent in engaging in relaxation, socialization, and cognitive activities were found to lead to increased performance [15]. On the other hand, regarding external recovery, Binnewies C, et al. [16] suggest that not only daily recovery helps employees to perform, but also helps in performing more efficiently regarding the psychological costs. Besides Volman FE, et al. [17] argued that employees who feel recovered in the mornings, before their workday, tend to perform better at their work duties these days.

Employee recovery and affective delivery

Performance is an umbrella concept that has many conceptualizations throughout the existing literature. For the needs of the present research, we focused on a rather new concept in industrial-organizational psychology, that is affective delivery. As stated in service literature, affective delivery refers to the extent to which employees’ emotional displays meet or exceed the expected service norms [18]. also called emotional performance [19]. In most service industries, front-line employees are required to display positive emotions, such as warmth and friendliness, during service transactions [20]. Such affective service delivery involves a combination of spoken words and socially acceptable facial expressions and voice tones [21]. Past empirical evidence has indicated that employee affective delivery can bring benefits to an organization. These benefits include positive customer reactions, including customer satisfaction, loyalty, perception of service quality, and positive word-of-mouth, in a sense of improvement in customer willingness to return and recommend [22,23]. Besides, since affective delivery necessitates engagement in positive emotions when dealing with customers, it is considered as a cooperative behavior [24]. Prior research in affective delivery has also been related to the length of time customers spend in stores and/ or organizations, to customers’ positive mood, ratings of service quality, and willingness to return to the store and recommend it to friends. Taken together, in this study we propose that the state of being recovered by public servants in the morning, before workday starts, is likely to influence civilians’ perceptions of the service interaction. Specifically, the anticipation is that:

Hypothesis-1 (H1)

Public servants’ state of being recovered positively influences their affective delivery towards civilians they serve: Researchers suggest that the establishment of a unique and positive reputation in the public sector is complex and problematic Sataøen HL and Waeraas A [25], probably explaining why it is an under-investigated subject [26]. Reputation refers to trust between government and citizens that is developed, assessed, and maintained [27,28]. and can be developed through communicability, visibility, interactivity and collaborative ability. Reputation has been found to contribute to organizational stability, profit, performance and employee loyalty, and to ease recruitment and decrease transaction costs [29]. all of which are particularly attractive attributes to public sector organizations which are struggling with financial and political pressures. Nevertheless, in the case of public organizations it has been suggested that the reputation of public sector organizations involves divergent aspects, typically related to high expertise and trustworthiness, along with rather poor service and bureaucratic functions.

Reasonably, one may consider how the relationship between employees’ recovery and organizations’ reputation is formed, particularly, public organizations’. Employee recovery, for example, a relaxed rather than a stressed workforce with a more positive attitude towards the job and the served, which in turn may result in satisfied employees, is expected to lead to enhanced job performance, providing services in quality, leading to a positive word-of-mouth intention, that shapes a good reputation.

Hypothesis-2 (H2)

Public servants’ affective delivery positively influences public organizations’ reputation: Summarizing, we therefore propose that the general state of an individual employee is able to affect the organization as a whole. In that notion we suggest that the state of being recovered of employees has a positive effect on the organization’s reputation, and that this apparently distant relationship is bridged by the affective delivery performance of the former.

Hypothesis-3 (H3)

Public servants’ affective delivery mediates the relationship between their state of being recovered and organizations’ reputation

The profile of public organizations in greece: Public servants in Greece are employed under rather mentally taxing conditions. Although highly bureaucratic, the Greek public sector lacks clear job descriptions, to define public servants’ roles, responsibilities, and boundaries. Role ambiguity constitutes a frequent phenomenon, adding to public servants’ daily routine loads to their work demands. Even more, public servants are frequently interrupted by their supervisors, coworkers, or even civilians (especially when public servants work in front-line job positions) leading to a highly stressful routine. During the service encounter, a mistake or even a misunderstanding of a situation could trigger an intensive reaction between the public servant and the person being served). Regarding civilians, in most cases visiting public organizations is obligatory, non-avoidable, and definitely time-consuming. Therefore, public servants are faced with people who are in a hurry and probably disappointed from previous service experience. As such, the interaction with civilians may be highly demanding, wearing public servants’ resources off.

Along the same line, the recent governmental initiatives relevant to digital transformation within the public sector (e.g., Diavgeia, Central Governmental Portal (gov.gr)), mainly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, shocked the public servants status quo. Being middle-aged (45-50 years old), with most of them holding a university degree, speaking one foreign language, having attended several professional seminars, but with limited computer skills Greek public servants are prone to experience additional strain in a digital context [30].

Overall, the extremely insufficient evaluation system, the budgetary restrictions and the absence of working interest, constitute the most basic problems of the public servants’ productivity in the Greek public administration [31]. To date, Greek public servants work under a fixed reward system designated by Law (based on job position, tenure, level of education, and family status and not tied to performance) and performance appraisal is merely procedural. Furthermore, the structure and the overall function of the Greek public sector are not characterized by quality procedures and there seems to be no general administrative planning targeting improvement based on quality processes [32]. Concerning the design of jobs in the Greek public sector, this is mostly traditional, guided by law, and leaves employees with little - if any - space for initiatives. Greek public servants have been found to show dissatisfaction with their autonomy at work and the limited scope for exploiting their creativity as well as they feel dissatisfied in regard to the level of their salaries, the opportunities for their development and the recognition of their work. As it has been already mentioned, the Greek public sector needs to become more operational, efficient, decentralized, and able to work in a flexible and efficient way, responding to internal and external changes [33].

Greek public servants are employed under a protected environment that grants them life-long work span [34,35]. This stability rarely provides any motivation to employees to perform. Besides, in terms of promotions, they are also based primarily on descriptive characteristics through a point scoring system (points are gained depending on e.g., job position, tenure, and level of education), providing lack of any motivation for increased performance. Therefore, we consider that all the above-mentioned key characteristics of today’s Greek public sector are sufficient evidence to be regarded as damaging its reputation relevant to services provided and the service encounters. Nevertheless, public organizations also provide one of the most significant conditions for work recovery to occur, which is a stable work schedule. Most of the Greek public servants, especially the front-line ones, work five days per week (Monday to Friday), eight 8 hours per day, and totally forty 40 hours per week (ypes). More precisely, daily work-hours are distinguished to three arrival-departure fixed times that are 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (kathimerini). This implies that Greek public servants have at their disposal the two thirds of their day available to utilize on recovery (among others). Daily afternoons and evenings could be used in order to participate in any work-related, householding and child-caring, loweffort, physical, and/or social activities 9 that will lead, eventually individuals to unwind. Moreover, it is easier for public servants to participate in those activities when they have a significant and fixed work-free time period in contrast with other employees whose work schedule is unsteady and often working over-times. For example, it is easier for one to take up dancing classes if one has every evening free than risking missing those classes due to work. In addition to this, most Greek public servants have the privilege of work-free weekends and its beneficial effects [36]. as they are once again able to participate in activities at their disposal in order to recover from the previous days’ work. Therefore, Greek public servants working conditions suggest a suitable workforce as it combines both increased mental load and a variety of recovery opportunities.

Materials and Methods

Procedure

The current study is part of a larger research project on public servants’ functioning and the effects on public organizations. Both a daily diary at a micro-level and a fixed time-sampling was used. Authors reached public servants informing them about the study and its objectives as well as the data collection method. Public servants who agreed to participate in the study were asked to inform their supervisors and seek their agreement to participate, too. Public servants whose supervisors agreed to participate were given a sealed folder that contained.

(a) A “General Questionnaire” regarding participants’ demographics,

(b) Five copies (one for every day of the week, Monday to Friday) of “Before Work Questionnaire” asking participants’ perception of their state of being recovered the previous day,

(c) Three copies per day (a total of fifteen) of “Civilian’s Questionnaire” containing questions about their demographics, and on public servant’s affective delivery and public organization’s reputation, as well as

(d) A copy of data collection instructions. Instructions were clearly defined in the data collection procedure. Specifically, public servants had to complete the “General Questionnaire” the latest by the Friday before the start day (i.e. Monday) of the daily “Before Work Questionnaire”.

The latter had to be completed for five consecutive work-days, beginning on Monday, before starting their work-day (i.e. at 7 p.m., 8 p.m., or 9 p.m. depending on the public servant’s working hours). During their working hours, public servants distributed the “Civilian’s Questionnaire” only to civilians served by them. In particular, public servants were called to invite up to three civilians, and when they reached that number, they stopped inviting more. In case of serving civilians under the number of three, then he or she kept either 1 or 2 civilians’ questionnaires [u1]. For the purposes of the current study, we used only questionnaires collected by the first civilians who were served (based on the time of their service encounter). After the end of the five days, and data collection finalization, public servants enclosed the completed questionnaires in the folder and contacted the authors to collect them.

Sample

The sample consists of 31 public servants who fully completed each questionnaire that was handed to them, gathering a total of 354 responses from civilians they served. The total number of public servants conducted by the authors were 74, which points to a response rate of 42%. Similarly, total “Civilian’s Questionnaires” provided to the 31 public servants were 465 questionnaires, suggesting a response rate of 76%.

Public servants (Table 1) were almost equally distributed in terms of gender (48.4% men and 51.6% women), half of them were under 50 years old, married (67.7%), and had one child (80.6%). The majority were graduates of technical universities (41.6%), with no working experience in the private sector (40.7%), while most had a 15-20 year tenure in the public sector (46.6%). Furthermore, the vast majority had the same supervisor for less than 5 years (96.8%). Lastly, 50% of the participating public servants serve 2 to 5 civilians per day (Table 1).

Table 1: Descriptive characteristics of public servants.

The majority of civilians (Table 2) were men 965%). Regarding the age of the civilians participating in the research, 16% of them were 18 to 30 years old, 58.4% aged 31 to 50, and the rest 25.3% were above 51 years old. Furthermore, 59.8% of the participants were high school (28.2%) and university graduates (i.e., 31.6%). Regarding their previous experience in public organizations, most of the civilians reported that they were waiting 5 (16.7%), 10 (27.4%), or 15 (16.1%) minutes to be served despite the fact that due to COVID-19 measures they had time-scheduled appointments. In addition, the time needed to be served varied mostly between 5 (19.8%), 10 (25.1%), 15 (24.6%), and 20 (17.2%) minutes (Table 2).

Table 2: Descriptive characteristics of civilians.

Measures

State of being recovered: For the measurement of the state of being recovered before work, the 3-items implemented by Sonnentag S [37] were used. This author used the items to measure recovery before work regarding the previous day’s recovery opportunities, which matches the purposes of the present study. The Cronbach’s alpha of the items was .851.

Employee affective delivery: Five items from were used, such as greeting, thanking, speaking in a rhythmic vocal tone, smiling, and establishing eye contact. Participants were asked to register the value “1” if such a behavior was displayed and “0” if not. Cronbach's alpha for this subscale was .695.

Reputation

Measuring the reputation of the public organization proved to be a complicated task. At first 40 items from Luoma‐Aho V [38] were used in a 5-Likert scale, but the feedback from the pilot distribution of the questionnaire to civilians suggested that such an extended instrument is discouraging. Civilians suggested that if they were to participate in the research after their interaction with the public servants the questionnaire must be as short as possible. Therefore, for the reputation measurement of the public sector, civilians addressed to, the 4-item from Li Y [39] was modified to fit the context of the present research. The Cronbach’s alpha of the items was .962 (Table 3).

Table 3: Cronbach alphas and bivariate correlations between variables.

Limitations

Like other studies, the present one has certain limitations, which may require the attention of the future researchers. The most important limitation is the relatively small size of the sample and the fact that the study took place among only Greek public servants. In addition, one could consider that those public servants who participated in our study, providing daily responses (before their work time) for five continuous days and caring for convincing civilians they served to participate in our research, are likely to be rather than mere employees who will perform (servants’ affective delivery’s mean is 0.67, above the mean in a binary likert scale) their job under their typical job description framework, but those who might exhibit extra role behaviors, contributing in further multiple ways to their organization (e.g., reputation). Future studies may not only extend the sample size, but also include public servants from other countries, as their working context may be significantly different than the one of the present study. Besides, the present research took place under the unexpected and sudden period of COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, the researchers encountered several difficulties in data collection, as public services experienced radical changes in their services due to COVID-19 restrictive measures. Service encounters were made by appointment, keeping distances, while public servants across the country were forced to learn and manage new service systems for civilians. Public servants who participated in the research were limited to serving approximately from one to three civilians per work day. This situation may have provided a myopical view of public servants’ performance and organizations’ reputation, as it was assessed by the civilians. In addition to the above-mentioned difficulties, due to the restrictions provoked by the COVID-19 pandemic, individuals had limited access to recovery experiences (e.g. closed theatres, cinemas, gyms, stores and coffee shops). Finally, future scholars could add and investigate several potential moderators to create a more detailed picture of the relationship between public servants’ recovery and organization's reputation, whereas multilevel analysis of data (e.g., days, individuals, organizations) could offer further insight into public servants’ and civilians’ perspectives.

Results and Discussion

According to Table 2, findings suggest a positive correlation between affective delivery and reputation (r=0.29, p <0.01) and state of being recovered (r=0.17, p <0.05). No statistically significant correlation was found between the state of being recovered and reputation.

The hypothesized model was tested in PROCESS Macro, via a mediation model (Model 4) with 10,000 bootstrap samples. More precisely, we tested a mediation regression analysis which explains the path of the independent variable (i.e., employee state of being recovered) on the dependent variable (i.e., organizational reputation), through a mediator (i.e. employee affective delivery). Overall, the model explained 17% of reputation [F=4.56, p <.001, R²=0.17]. Public servants’ state of being recovered was found to be positively and significantly influencing affective delivery towards civilians they served (β=.0635, p <.05). More precisely, zero value does not lie between the confidence interval (CI, 95%) based on 10,000 bootstrap samples [LLCI=0.0048 and ULCI=0.1222]. This result offers support to hypothesis Η1. Besides, regression results suggest that public servants’ affective delivery has a significant and positive impact on civilians’ perception of public organization's reputation (β=1.0757, p<.01, LLCI =.4899 and ULCI =1.6616). Therefore, hypothesis H2 is also supported. When affective delivery is taken into consideration as a mediator, the direct effect of the state of being recovered on reputation becomes not significant (β=1.0757, p >.01). However, the indirect effect of public servants’ state of being recovered on organization's reputation via affective delivery is significant, as zero does not lie on between the confidence interval (CI, 95%) based on 10,000 bootstrap samples [LLCI=0.0061 and ULCI=0.1534]. Thus, these results support a full mediation, offering support to Hypothesis H3.

Conclusion

The purpose of the present study was to set forth the relationship between public servants’ state of recovery and its effect on the public organizations’ reputation, taking into account the mediating role of public servants’ affective delivery. Building upon the Conservation of Resources (COR) Theory we show that public servants’ recovery does exert a positive impact on their affective delivery towards civilians they serve and this in turn, leads to more positive public organization’s reputation. Considering that affective delivery captures employee performance and in line with previous studies of employee recovery that have suggested a positive relationship between different types of recovery (e.g., internal, external) and performance the findings of this study suggest that public servants’ state of recovery is also likely to enhance their (emotional) performance.

The contribution of our study is twofold. First of all, as far as we know, it is the first that takes into account employees’ recovery within public organizations, although it is apparent that front-line public servants are as likely as their private sector counterparts to experience work-related stress and need for recovery. Second, our study examines variables that constitute a rather distant relationship, namely, employee recovery and organizations’ reputation, a rather neglected research topicand in orderto achieve this, it exploits the mediating effect of affective delivery, revealing that public servants’ affective delivery mediates the relationship between their state of being recovered and organizations’ reputation. A possible explanation is that public servants who are recovered, possess high availability of resources, are able to invest those resources on their work and, thus, trigger an impact on their performance. Therefore, it would be reasonable to argue that the more relaxed employees are, the more satisfied they will be, leading to positive job performance. Enhanced job performance in terms of providing high quality services is likely to shape a good reputation. Another explanation could be the fact that the public sector system provides a stable work schedule (fixed work time, both daily and monthly), which is considered one of the most significant conditions for work recovery to occur, and thus, public servants are likely to achieve both internal and external recovery, being more rested, cheerful, and contented to work, exhibiting positive job performance. Improved job performance, in a sense of a positive affective delivery can benefit an organization, including positive customer reactions, customer satisfaction, perception of service quality, and positive word-of-mouth. Therefore, this positive word-of-mouth contributes to a positive reputation, which is of a high significance particularly for the Greek public sector because the latter is considered as problematic forming both a negative image and reputation.

In addition, the findings of the current study revealed that public servants were being recovered above mean on average (a value of 3.76 in a 5-point Likert scale) which is -in some way- in alignment with the descriptive results relevant to reputation (a value of 5.08 in a 7-point Likert scale). This offers fruitful insights to scholars, providing potential significance to the direct relationship under investigation (i.e., employee recovery to organization’s reputation), and a demonstration at a theoretical level.

At a practical level, given the findings, before making any recommendations to practitioners, we need to turn their attention to both assessing and supporting their public servants’ recovery. Evidently, recovery can be of great importance when trying to enhance performance that will lead to an improved public organizations’ reputation. Since Greek public organizations are considered as highly bureaucratic and non-flexible, offering services of poor quality. these characteristics can be seen as damaging their reputation. Thus, practitioners, and policy makers should allow for public servants’ state of being recovered in order to enhance service experience, which may potentially reverse negative perceptions regarding public sector’s reputation [40,41].

Additionally, conditions that are often observed within the public sector such as role ambiguity, time consuming procedures, and multitasking during the service encounter, can trigger an intensive reaction from either the public servant or the person being served. As a result, practitioners should focus on the gain, preservation, and protection of individuals’ resources which are outlined by the COR theory by introducing opportunities for internal recovery.

Practitioners could also track their subordinates’ state during the workday and take action, if needed, in order to preserve and protect their subordinates’ resources daily. For instance, in a situation of huge numbers of civilians to be served, supervisors should make sure that they appropriately allocate cases to be served and provide all that is necessary to ensure smooth service encounter and delivery. Managers should be alert, to quickly spot their need for recovery and possible further support. Hence, it is important for managers to identify and introduce alternative ways of making their servants’ working day more pleasant and productive by maintaining short breaks, being supportive to them, offering opportunities free space for taking responsibilities (initiatives) and promoting a rational distribution of job tasks. Along the same line, employee’ gain of resources is a critical issue for the Human Resources Management Department. Specifically, processes such as employee continuous training and development could systematically provide employees with the resources needed to perform their tasks.

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