Author: cprokop

Publication in JPART

Representative Bureaucracy and Public Hiring Preferences. Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment among German Municipal Civil Servants and Private Sector Employees (online first) Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, with Michael Jankowski and Markus Tepe

Abstract:

Drawing on Weber, this study tests whether the normative principles of merit orientation and impartiality are more prevalent in shaping public hiring preferences among civil servants – both junior and senior – than among private sector employees. In a conjoint experiment, respondents are asked to compare two hypothetical applicants for an office job in a municipal administration and to decide which they would hire. The application profiles vary with respect to a set of meritocratic and nonmeritocratic attributes. The empirical findings suggest that first, in all three samples, hiring decisions are primarily based on meritocratic attributes. Second, there is evidence of ethnic discrimination in the private employee sample, while there is no such effect in either of the two civil servant samples. Third, private employees’ hiring preferences are influenced by personal political beliefs, while civil servants are less likely to let political attitudes affect their hiring choices. Thus, while civil servants hiring preferences are largely consistent with passive representation and non-discrimination, support for a representative bureaucracy among citizens should be improved.

Talk at the University of Copenhagen in March 2020

The planned presentation of a recent study titled “The Causal Effect of Digital Interaction and Service Failure on Citizens’ Satisfaction with Routinized Public Services. Evidence from a Vignette Experiment” (with Markus Tepe) at the Department of Political Science of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark unfortunately needed to be cancelled due to the coronavirus.

EPSA conference, 2019, Belfast

Presenting joint work with Michael Jankowski and Markus Tepe: “Who supports EEO policies? Empirical Evidence on the Individual Attitudes towards Equality and Merit in Public Hiring” at epsa annual conference, Belfast/Northern Ireland from June, 20 to June 22, 2019.

PMRC 2019 at UNC, Chapel Hill

Presenting joint work with Michael Jankowski and Markus Tepe: “Political Ideology and Public Sector Work: Empirical Evidence on the Individual Attitudes towards Equality and Merit in Public Hiring” at PMRC in Chapel Hill, North Carolina/USA from June, 11 to June, 14 2019.

Annual Meeting of the DVPW working group decision theory, 2019

Presenting recent work on the influence of the individual political orientation on the attitudes toward EEO policies among public and private employees (“Politisierte Verwaltung? Determinanten der Einstellung gegenüber der anonymisierten Bewerbung im öffentlichen Dienst” / “Politicized Public Service? Determinants of individual preferences towards anonymous applications in public service recruitment”) at the annual meeting of the DVPW working group decision theory (AK Handlungs- und Entscheidungstheory) in Bremen/Germany, 23. /24. May 2019.

Norddeutsches Kolloquium Sozialwissenschaften, Socium, Bremen

Presenting a study on the relationship between political attitudes and individual opinion towards public policies: “Determinanten der Einstellung gegenüber dem Verfahren der anonymisierten Bewerbung im öffentlichen Dienst” (“Determinants of individual preferences towards anonymous applications in public service recruitment”) on the biannual meeting of the Norddeutsches Kolloquium Sozialwissenschaften, at the Socium, University of Bremen, on February, 1st, 2019