The Influence of Job Autonomy on Occupational Commitment and Job Involvement —A case study of civil servants

Perceptions of government and civil servants are shaped by a variety of factors including popular culture. In the public administration literature the significant role that film and other narrative forms have on citizens’ perceptions is duly noted, and there is ample research on politicians and military heroes in film, but a focus on civil servants remains largely elusive. Among the sparse literature centered on civil servants are studies that employ a case study approach or focus on a few films. In contrast, our research employs a large sample of 150 films. These films comprise the top ten box-office grossing films from 1992 through 2006; therefore we examine the films most likely to have been seen by a majority of movie-watching Americans. More than 60 percent of the films in our sample portray government as bad, inefficient, and incompetent. However, the data on more than 300 civil servants yield intriguing findings. Surprising, in light of the negative depiction of government, is the positive depiction of individual civil servants. Half of civil servants were positively portrayed, and only 40 percent were negatively depicted. Americans may view government negatively, but they see in film positive depictions of how individual civil servants can and do make a positive difference.

Download Full-text

Job Autonomy and Job Involvement as a Cause for Turnover Intention of the Women Employees with Job Satisfaction as a Moderator

Management Today ◽

10.11127/gmt.2014.06.03 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 4 (2) ◽

pp. 13-18

Author(s):

B. Aiswarya ◽

G. Ramasundaram

Keyword(s):

Job Satisfaction ◽

Turnover Intention ◽

Job Involvement ◽

Job Autonomy ◽

Women Employees

Download Full-text

“A point that escapes Darwin”: Crises of colonial self in the nature essays of Edward Hamilton Aitken and Philip Robinson

The Journal of Commonwealth Literature ◽

10.1177/00219894211032836 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 002198942110328

Author(s):

Jason Sandhar

Keyword(s):

Everyday Life ◽

Civil Servants ◽

Gender And Race ◽

Daily Work ◽

Psychic Life ◽

British Rule ◽

The Everyday

This article shows how the colonial nature essay both spoofs and affirms crises of the European self in British India’s post-Rebellion era (1857–1947). Authored by English civil servants who took to naturalism as a hobby, the nature essay’s exaggerated misadventures with quotidian animals such as ants, beetles, and mosquitos parody British accounts of the 1857 Rebellion, while dehumanizing caricatures of uncooperative servants reduce Indian society’s complex hierarchies of class, caste, gender, and race to buffoonery. Taking as a case study two of the genre’s exemplars, Edward Hamilton Aitken and Philip Robinson, I read the colonized animals and people in these texts as agents who destabilize the material and psychic life of empire. Historians and postcolonialists agree that censorship, paranoia, and violence defined British rule over India between 1857 and 1947, yet they overlook the everyday life of empire. The nature essay’s peculiar synthesis of humour and science grants surprising insights into how colonial agents understood themselves as Raj hegemony shifted into its final stages. As the nature essay’s colonized people and animals thwart the daily work of empire, they also reveal the colonial class’ failure to confront its anxieties about the sahib’s political and epistemic stability as a rational, post-Enlightenment agent destined to master the colony.

Download Full-text

Hoe gesprekken een participatieproces maken of breken

Tijdschrift voor Communicatiewetenschappen ◽

10.5117/2019.047.001.003 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 47 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Christine Bleijenberg ◽

Noëlle Aarts ◽

Reint Jan Renes

Keyword(s):

Citizen Participation ◽

Civil Servants ◽

Comparative Case Study ◽

Framing Analysis ◽

Local Participation ◽

Participatory Processes ◽

Participation Process ◽

Insight Into ◽

Discursive Patterns

A comparative case study into the meaning of conversations between citizens and government on the course and outcome of local participation processes Although the importance of conversations for citizen participation is widely recognized, there is still little insight into the meaning of conversations for participatory processes. This comparative case study provides insight into the discursive patterns that characterize the conversations between citizens, civil servants and other stakeholders in two participatory processes in different municipalities. Our framing-analysis shows how different discursive patterns develop in interaction and how these patterns effect the course and outcome in both participation processes. The results provide insight in how experiences of previous events influence the discursive patterns that participants construct in interaction. It is concluded that in both cases not the nature of the issue, but the way it was discussed and how participants framed this was crucial for the course and outcome of the participation process.

Download Full-text

Indian Civil Servants

10.1093/oso/9780198796244.003.0002 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 26-46

Author(s):

Mark Knights

Keyword(s):

Social Norms ◽

Civil Service ◽

Civil Servants ◽

Public And Private ◽

Private Interests ◽

The Press

The chapter explores a case study of the 1829 prosecution by the young Charles Trevelyan of Sir Edward Colebrooke, the East India Company’s Resident in Delhi, as a means to illustrate many of the themes covered by the book. The case highlights the distinction between gifts and bribes; social norms that blurred definitions of corruption; the overlap between public and private interests; the reliance of Britons on native agents who could themselves be seen as corrupt; the ‘systems’ of corruption that grew up around powerful officers; the politics of anti-corruption; the role of the press in exposing or vindicating corruption allegations; and the ways in which corruption could be gendered and racialised. Trevelyan went on to help write a report in 1854 which is often seen as the blueprint for the modern civil service, and the interaction of Indian and British affairs is an important theme of the book.

Download Full-text

Bureaucratic Activism: Pursuing Environmentalism Inside the Brazilian State

Latin American Politics and Society ◽

10.1017/lap.2018.75 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 61 (2) ◽

pp. 21-44 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Rebecca Neaera Abers

Keyword(s):

Social Movement ◽

Civil Servants ◽

Public Employees ◽

Temporary Employees ◽

Attitudes And Practices ◽

Brazilian State ◽

The Government ◽

Definition Of

ABSTRACTThis study explores the evolution of the Green Grants program, run by Brazil’s Ministry of Environment, as a means for developing the concept of bureaucratic activism. When the Workers’ Party first took office in 2003, many social movement actors joined the government, especially in that agency. After 2007, however, most of these activists left the government. At the same time, the ministry substituted thousands of temporary employees for permanent civil servants. Surprisingly, this study finds that these public employees carried forward the environmentalist cause, even when this required contesting the priorities of superiors. Examining their attitudes and practices leads to a definition of activism as the proactive pursuit of opportunities to defend contentious causes. The case study helps to develop this concept and to demonstrate that workers inside bureaucracies can engage in activist behavior. It also explores the effects of bureaucratic activism on environmental policymaking in Brazil.

Download Full-text