Service in the Field: The World of Front-line Public Servants 9780773567504

Table of contents :
CONTENTS
TABLES, FIGURES, AND BOXES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
1 Who Are These People and What Do They Do?
2 The Research Described
3 "How We Do Things around Here"
4 Service to the Public
5 The Workplace Environment
6 Two Solitudes or One Big Happy Family? Dealing with Head Office
7 Administrative Reform: How It Plays in the Field
8 Bureaucrats Are People Too
9 Where Do We Go from Here? Implications for Implementation and Management Theory
APPENDIX: METHODOLOGY
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
Z

Citation preview

Service in the Field The World of Front-Line Public Servants

The most important people in government are not the prime minister, premiers, and senior bureaucrats but the people who work in government field offices across the country, providing service to Canadians. Service in the Field, the first book to focus exclusively on the role of field-level public servants in Canada, examines the work they do and the relationship between field and head offices. As governments attempt to deal more effectively with service delivery, it has become apparent that little is known about the people who actually provide the services. Barbara Wake Carroll and David Siegel analyse structural issues and the administrative reforms of the last few years. They highlight field officers' perceptions of the problems and suggest ways to improve field office-head office relations and operations generally. The authors' analysis is based on more than two hundred interviews with federal and provincial civil servants in the smallest hamlets and largest cities across Canada. The authors allow public servants to tell their own stories and, in so doing, provide examples of the application of systematic qualitative research to Canadian political science. With its accessible style and emphasis on personal experience, Service in the Field will be of interest to students and scholars of public administration, political science, organization theory, and related disciplines in addition to people in government in both field and head offices. BARBARA WAKE CARROLL is professor of political science, McMaster University. DAVID SIEGEL is associate vice-president, academic, and professor of politics, Brock University.

COLLECTION ADMINISTRATION PUBLIQUE CANADIENNE CANADIAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION SERIES Iain Gow, A. Paul Pross, Co-editors / Co-directeurs

IE. Hodgetts Editor Emeritus / Directeur émérite En publiant cette collection, l'Institut d'administration publique du Canada cherche à promouvoir la recherche sur des problèmes contemporains touchant l'administration publique, la gestion du secteur public, ou les politiques publiques au Canada. Il cherche aussi à favoriser une meilleure comprehension de ces questions chez les praticiens, les universitaires et le grand public. This series is sponsored by the Institute of Public Administration of Canada as part of its commitment to encourage research on contemporary issues in Canadian public administration, public sector management, and public policy. It also seeks to foster wider knowledge and understanding among practitioners, academics, and the general public. The Biography of an Institution: The Civil Service Commission of Canada, 1908-1967 J.E. Hodgetts, William McCloskey, Reginald Whitaker, V. Seymour Wilson An edition in French has been published under the title Histoire d'une institution : La Commission de la Fonction publique du Canada, 1908-1967 by Les Presses de 1'Université Laval Old Age Pensions and Policy-Making in Canada Kenneth Bryden Provincial Governments as Employers: A Survey of Public Personnel Administration in Canada's Provinces J.E. Hodgetts and O.P. Dwivedi Transport in Transition: The Reorganization in the Federal Transport Portfolio John W. Langford Initiative and Response: The Adaptation of Canadian Federalism to Regional Economic Development Anthony G.S. Careless

Canada's Salesman to the World: The Department of Trade and Commerce, 1892-1939 O. Mary Hill Conflict over the Columbia: The Canadian Background to an Historic Treaty Neil A. Swainson L'Economiste et la chose publique Jean-Luc Migué (Published by Les Presses de 1'Universite du Quebec) Federalism, Bureaucracy, and Public Policy: The Politics of Highway Transport Regulation Richard J. Schultz Federal-Provincial Collaboration: The Canada-New Brunswick General Development Agreement Donald J. Savoie Judicial Administration in Canada Perry S. Millar and Carl Baar The Language of the Skies: The Bilingual Air Traffic Control Conflict in Canada Sandford F. Borins An edition in French is distributed under the title Le français dans les airs : le conflit du bilinguisme dans le contrôle de la circulation aérienne au Canada by Les Presses de 1'Universite du Quebec L'Analyse des politiques gouvernementales: trois monographies Michel Bellavance, Roland Parenteau et Maurice Patry (Published by Les Presses de 1'Universite Laval) Canadian Social Welfare Policy: Federal and Provincial Dimensions Edited by Jacqueline S. Ismael Maturing in Hard Times: Canada's Department of finance through the Great Depression Robert B. Bryce Pour comprendre 1'appareil judiciair québécois Monique Giard et Marcel Proulx (Published by Les Presses de 1'Universite du Quebec) Histoire de l'administration publique québécoise 1867-1970 James Iain Gow (Published by Les Presses de 1'Universite de Montreal) Health Insurance and Canadian Public Policy: The Seven Decisions That Created the Canadian Health Insurance System and Their Outcomes Malcolm G. Taylor

Canada's Department of External Affairs: The Early Years, 1909-1946 John Hilliker An edition in French has been published under the title Le ministère des Affaires extérieures du Canada: Les années de formation, 1909-1946 by Les Presses de l'Université Laval Getting It Right: Regional Development in Canada R. Harley McGee Corporate Autonomy and Institutional Control: The Crown Corporation as a Problem in Organization Design Douglas F. Stevens Shifting Sands: Government-Group Relationships in the Health Care Sector Joan Price Boase Canada's Department of External Affairs: Coming of Age, 1946-1968 John Hilliker and Donald Barry An edition in French has been published under the title Le ministère des Affaires extérieures du Canada: L'essor, 1946-1968 by Les Presses de l'Université Laval The Institutionalized Cabinet: Governing the Western Provinces Christopher Dunn The Dominion Bureau of Statistics: A History of Canada's Central Statistical Office and Its Antecedents, 1841-1972 David A. Worton An edition in French has been published under the title Le Bureau federal de la statistique: Les origines et l'évolution du Bureau central de la statistique au Canada, 1841-1972 Patchworks of Purpose: The Development of Provincial Social Assistance Regimes in Canada Gerard William Boychuk Service in the Field: The World of Front-Line Public Servants Barbara Wake Carroll and David Siegel

Service in the Field The World of Front-Line Public Servants

BARBARA WAKE CARROLL DAVID SIEGEL

The Institute of Public Administration of Canada L'Institut d'administration publique du Canada McGill-Queen's University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca

McGill-Queen's University Press 1999 ISBN 0-7735-1795-2 (cloth) ISBN 0-7735-1796-0 (paper) Legal deposit first quarter 1999 Bibliothèque nationale du Quebec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. McGill-Queen's University Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program for its activities. We also acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Carroll, Barbara Wake, 1947Service in the field: the world of front-line public servants (Canadian public administration series) Co-published by the Institute of Public Administration of Canada. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7735-1795-2 (bound) ISBN 0-7735-1796-0 (pbk.) 1. Civil service - Canada, I. Siegel, David, II. Institute of Public Administration of Canada, III. Title, IV. Series. JLI08.C3678 1998 352.6'3'0971 C98-901000-7 Typeset in Times 10/12 by Caractéra inc., Quebec City

Contents

TABLES, FIGURES, AND BOXES

ix

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

xi

INTRODUCTION

3

1

Who Are These People and What Do They Do ?

10

2

The Research Described

27

3

"How We Do Things around Here"

44

4

Service to the Public

69

5

The Workplace Environment

98

6

Two Solitudes or One Big Happy Family ? Dealing with Head Office

129

7

Administrative Reform: How It Plays in the Field

156

8

Bureaucrats Are People Too

181

9

Where Do We Go from Here ? Implications for Implementation and Management Theory

199

APPENDIX: METHODOLOGY NOTES BIBLIOGRAPHY

215 231 239

INDEX

249

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Tables, Figures, and Boxes

TABLES

1.1 Deconcentration of employees of the federal and provincial governments—approximately 1995 1.2 Federal government employment—selected departments and agencies, 31 March 1995 2.1 Distribution of participants 6.1 How field office people view their own jobs and head office jobs 6.2 Styles of communication 6.3 Modes of head office-field office interaction 7.1 Advantages of centralization and decentralization

14 16 38 135 147 148 165

FIGURES 2.1 Distribution of participants by age 2.2 Distribution of participants by function of department 2.3 Distribution of participants by province by level of government 5.1 Typical bullpen office configuration 5.2 Typical open landscape office 6.1 The conflicting tensions facing the field official 6.2 The fractured organizational reality 7.1 Alternative delivery mechanisms 7.2 Matrix management

41 41 42 111 112 130 133 159 167

BOXES 1.1 Supervisor of family and child care workers 1.2 Food and drug inspector

11 13

TABLES, FIGURES,

1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 3.1 4.1 4.2 4.3 7.1

X

AND BOXES

Senior immigration officer Fisheries biologist The heroes Victims of violence Workplace catastrophes Bureaupathology Skunks The ideal culture ? Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration—An agency of Agriculture Canada Painting the white passing lines Goals of the West Prince Regional Services Centre A few of the services provided by B.C. agents Success at Agriculture Canada-Ontario

15 17 22 23 23 25 26 61 86 90 93 171

Acknowledgments

It is trite for authors to say that the work of a great number of people went into the production of a work. However, it is particularly true of this book, which could never have been written without the cooperation of hundreds of public servants across the country who gave us their valuable time in interviews. Since we promised them confidentiality, we cannot mention their names, but the insights that they provided to us were essential. We have reproduced many direct quotations from these people to allow them to tell their own story. These quotations are identified by a small circle (o) at the beginning of the quotation. More than just their time, the enthusiasm they showed for our work helped build our enthusiasm on days when our own spirits were dragging because of too many kilometres in airplanes and cars through all sorts of weather. We obviously owe these people more than we can ever repay. In addition to these who must remain anonymous are some whose cooperation can be acknowledged openly. A number of people responded positively to our request to identify others who could be interviewed, or assisted in the research in other ways. These were Albert Agyeman-Duah, Amelita Armit, Bill Ashton, Ellen Baar, Richard Bagley, Sheila Bailey, Geneviève Bouchard, Phillip Brown, Fran Cameron, Verna Carroll, Don Dennison, Gail Dennison, Michel Desbiens, Andrew Dickson, Brian Dornan, Iain Gow, Ken Hipkin, Gerry Irving, Katherine Kemp, Roger LeFrancois, Edd Lesage, Carmen Moir, Roy Nichol, Pauline Peters, Vincent Planet, Patrick Robardet, Demarais Rose, Lynne Spiritt, Patricia Stacey, Rosanne Sutton, Gail Tolley, Helena May Wake, and Cathy Work. Many others assisted in the actual production of the book. Eric Montpetit was invaluable in conducting most of the interviews in French. Transcriptions, typing, and various other editorial tasks were

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

done by Emily Crocco, Lori Ewing, Katie Lowes, Kathryn Sirotnik, Paula Smith, and Phyllis Way. We also benefited from the comments of colleagues who were kind enough to read parts of the manuscript and provide comments. Thanks to Mohamed Charih, Iain Gow, Ken Kernaghan, Evert Lindquist, Susan McCorquodale, and Mark Sproule-Jones. We are also pleased to acknowledge gratefully the financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. We incurred significant travel costs in undertaking this research, and it would have been impossible to do this without the council's generous support. Finally, we would like to thank Maureen Garvie, copy editor for McGill-Queen's, who took on the painstaking task of improving and smoothing our prose and correcting the inconsistencies that can arise when a book has two authors.

xii

Service in the Field

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Introduction This book is about the most important people in government. It is not about prime ministers or provincial premiers; it is not about cabinet ministers; it is not even about deputy ministers, or people who work in central agencies. This book is about the people who work on the front lines of government to prevent child abuse, issue passports, build highways, and collect taxes. It is about people who work in field offices of federal and provincial governments. Field offices have been with us since the Chinese built the Great Wall and the Pharaohs built the pyramids. Canada has a much shorter history than China or Egypt, but its geography has dictated that field offices would play an important role from the early years of Canadian government. However, except for a few specific works on lighthouse keepers,1 social workers,2 forest rangers3 or state employment counsellors,4 comparatively little is known about people who work in field offices.5 Most attention in both the popular media and academic work is on highprofile politicians and senior public servants in the national and provincial capitals. To some extent, this is understandable: these major players at the top of the organizational hierarchy make the significant decisions that affect Canadians across the country. However, this focus on the tip of the iceberg ignores the large number of people who actually interpret policy and deliver services and who represent the face of government to citizens receiving government services across the country. Over thirty years ago the Glassco Commission commented on this contradiction: The most obvious feature of the Canadian setting is the size and regional diversity of the country. The effect of this diversity on the political process in Canada has long been recognized, but its relevance to the machinery of administration seems to have been

S E R V I C E IN THE F I E L D

largely overlooked. Yet the task of national administration in Canada is clearly different from that in more compact and homogeneous countries. While the centre of federal administration is in Ottawa, most action, as distinct from decision, takes place in the field, often thousands of miles away. More than three-quarters of the public service ... is to be found in offices and establishments outside the OttawaHull area. However, the organization and administrative process of the entire public service have been shaped almost exclusively by the needs of the central apparatus for decision making. There is little evidence of any attempt to develop effective forms of organization and appropriate working arrangements for the 150,000 public servants throughout the rest of the country.6 In the three decades since Glassco little attention is still paid to the public servants in the "rest of the country" outside capital cities. This neglect is particularly striking because it is the civil servants in the field who serve as the vital link between the policy direction of head office and the actual delivery of services. This linkage is key to the overall efficiency of any organization. Lambert and Pross discuss how this relates to natural resource management, but their point applies to all types of departments: In this discipline, it is inevitably the man "in the field" who actually carries out the programmes. It is what that man actually does that counts, not what the Minister or Deputy Minister, or the Branch Chief, or any of the other senior officials say, that makes the programme a success. To be successful, a programme must, of course, be well conceived. But it is not sufficient that its various specialized segments come together into a rational whole at the highest levels; it must also, and perhaps especially, come together at the lowest operating levels.7 When people do write about field offices, they frequently focus on such structural issues as span of control or methods of delegating authority,8 which relate to the role of managers and management rather than the delivery of service. At one point there was substantial discussion in the literature about the ideal size of regions, the areas that formed natural regions, and the appropriate location of regional offices.9 These issues are all important, but they can lead to an emphasis on the analysis of disembodied maps and organization charts, without much recognition that real people are involved in these decisions. 4

Introduction The purpose of this book is to look at those real people and how they do their jobs. It discusses the public persona of field officials by describing and analysing how they relate to both clients10 across the counter and superiors in head office. But it also discusses their private personae. What motivates them to perform their jobs ? What are their aspirations and frustrations ? What are their feelings when they go home at night ? Government departments really have two roles. One is to serve the needs of the minister. While public servants should not play an overtly political role, it is clear that they have an obligation to be loyal servants of their political masters and assist them in carrying out their duties. The second role of a department is to deliver services to the public. At first glance these roles seem to be complementary, as providing good programs and delivering services well make the minister look good. However, in practice, the roles can impose conflicting pressures. For example: • If the minister needs data to answer a question in the house or for some other reason, people in field offices could be asked to gather it at the expense of serving clients. • A prime minister or premier must take into account a number of considerations in designing the portfolio structure of cabinet, only some of which have to do with program delivery.11 In fact, this latter consideration is frequently quite far down the list in cabinet-making. • A program that seems to be working well from the perspective of clients and field staff could be replaced by one that has more highprofile political appeal but does not serve clients as well: o The program we had in place was just a little one. We helped little groups in a lot of ways, but then we got a new minister and she didn't think it was flashy enough. Now instead of giving little bits to a lot of groups, we give big building grants and stuff to just a few. It produces a sign and a photo opportunity for some politicians, but I don't like it. She has to make all the decisions now too; they don't rely on our opinions or recommendations as much any more.12 • Funds could be allocated to geographic areas on the basis of how constituencies voted in the last election rather than the greatest need. Thus, highways are built in areas which selected the "right" members, not in areas with the highest traffic levels: o The other thing too, of course, is this is a government department, and if your member is a member of the sitting government, then

5

SERVICE IN THE FIELD

chances are more funds for special projects will be available ... That being the case, if you happen to be working in an area of a sitting member, chances are your workload will be heavier. This book comes in large part from the personal interests and experiences of the authors, both of whom worked in field offices of governments before becoming academics; but it also comes from a perceived need to review a very important area of administration which has been largely overlooked. There are any number of books and articles about the structure of cabinet and its committees, the role of deputy ministers, the position of central agencies, and similar topics which focus on the operation of head office. There is virtually nothing in the recent Canadian literature about the role of field officers, and what does exist tends to view their role from a head office perspective—structuring discretion, organizing field office-head office relations, and so forth. Very little has been written from the perspective of people who work in field offices. The subjects of this study are the large number of government employees who work outside headquarters, usually in places outside the capital city, although capital cities also have field offices. Some of these people have less face-to-face contact with the general public but still play important roles in building and maintaining highways, inspecting food supplies, and conducting research on environmental issues. Chapter 2 describes the research methodology in more detail, but our basic approach was to visit field-level officials in their offices and conduct open-ended conversations with them to determine how they saw their roles, and to get some insights into their work environment as well as their personal attitudes to their work, their clients, their co-workers, and even themselves. We interviewed federal and provincial employees in a broad variety of departments in all ten provinces. They worked in the biggest cities of the country and in the smallest villages. Some worked in fancy corner offices of highrise buildings; others did most of their work in the front seat of their pick-up trucks. The focus of our interviews was people who had reasonably direct contact with the public. This included case workers, advisors of various kinds, counter clerks, and their immediate supervisors. It also included people who provided services that had a significant impact on the public even if they involved little face-to-face contact with members of the public, e.g., natural resource officers, highway engineers, and food inspectors. We did not interview people who worked in decentralized head offices such as Veterans Affairs in Charlottetown, because those are not really field offices. Our research also did not include intermediate offices between head office and field offices such as the regional 6

Introduction offices13 of the federal government (and a few provinces) which are in effect decentralized head offices. The study also excluded some of the most senior people in field offices, because they had little client contact and were more like adjuncts of head office than true field-office staff. We also did not include people providing such staff services as human resource or financial management because we were most concerned about service to the public. In terms of geography, we covered all ten provinces, both large cities and smaller places, but did not visit remote northern locations or international offices. The reasons for this exclusion were partly practical, relating to cost and time considerations, but mostly we felt that the activities of these people would be sufficiently different from what goes on in a "normal" office that an attempt to consider such a diversity of offices would confound our findings. For the same reason we did not interview military personnel or police officers. In making these exclusions we are not suggesting that these people are unimportant. On the contrary, they are so important and so different that they should be the object of their own study. If we attempted to combine these exceptional areas with the more normal kinds of field offices, we would not do justice to either type of office. It is important to emphasize that this book is about field offices; it is not about bureaucracy in general or the travails of the individual bureaucrat. In some cases we identified what we considered to be very significant workplace issues which spanned both head office and field offices. Many people related anecdotes about the foibles of bureaucracy in the hopes that we would expose some of these follies. However, we have decided to confine ourselves rather rigidly to a discussion of the unique characteristics of field offices and not to extend into the more general area of all types of bureaucratic behaviour. Some examples from the area of gender relations will illustrate the nature of our decision. In our interviews, we discovered that gender issues were significant among many workers, both male and female. However, on further analysis we determined that few of these workplace issues were unique to field offices. For example, many women felt that their value was still not fully recognized in the workplace in spite of employment equity, while many men were concerned that employment equity had had a negative effect on their careers. A second type of example was that of senior women who told us about going to meetings with outside groups accompanied by their junior male staff. Those at the meeting automatically addressed themselves to the junior males rather than the senior woman. Unfortunately, this is a story that one hears equally at both head and field offices. Similarly, we heard numerous stories of "burn out," bad employment practices, and just the uncertainty of working in 7

SERVICE IN THE FIELD

a large organization in times of downsizing. These are just a few examples of broader workplace issues which we did not discuss extensively because we felt that they were not unique field office issues. Our point is not that gender issues or other broader bureaucratic issues are unimportant but rather that they are pretty much the same in both head and field offices. OVERVIEW This book is by its nature exploratory rather than definitive. Since it is one of the first approaches to this topic, there were few ready-made hypotheses which could be tested through quantitative methods. We used a qualitative approach which will be discussed more fully in chapter 2. However, the thrust of this approach is that we did not specify precise hypotheses in advance. Instead, we began with some loosely defined research questions, but we also worked with our respondents to identify what they felt were the major issues. Out of this reciprocal relationship came the following research questions: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

How did these people spend most of their workday ? What were the best and worst parts of their job ? What was their relationship with citizens across the counter ? What was their relationship with head office ? What did they think of the recent spate of administrative reforms ? How much discretion did they have in carrying out their duties ? How did their work life spill over into their personal life ?

The remainder of this book elaborates on these ideas and themes. The first chapter introduces the main characters by discussing who works in field offices and describing what they do. The second chapter provides more detail on the research methodology. This chapter is a somewhat technical discussion of the research technique. The following chapters provide a complete overview of the working environment of the field level government employee. Chapter 3 discusses how these organizations really work and the common attitudes that hold them together. Chapter 4 discusses the relationship between the field level public servant and the clients to whom services are provided. Chapter 5 describes the workplace environment in terms of both human resources management and the physical "tools of the trade." Chapter 6 discusses the relationship between field offices and head office. Chapter 7 focuses on recent administrative reforms such as the federal government's Public Service 2000 and provides some insights into how these are perceived and implemented in the field. Chapter 8 discusses the relationship 8

Introduction between the public persona and the private life of the public servant. Chapter 9 summarizes insights from the previous chapters and provides some advice for improving the role of field level officials and the relationship between field and head offices. This book will be important and interesting to public servants, students of public administration, and the general public. In the first place, it documents what public servants do and gives a voice to what is often an anonymous body of individuals. Secondly, it corrects the negative impression of field level officials as the over-paid, under-worked automatons often painted by journalists, politicians, and senior civil servants. The reality is that most field staff appear to give good value for our tax dollars. However, there are cases where the above stereotype (or worse) fits, and those situations will not be ignored.

9

Chapter One

Who Are These People and What Do They Do ? Few people notice government services when they are delivered well. No one knows about the large number of immigration applications that are processed uneventfully everyday, but everyone hears about the criminal who is allowed to enter the country through an oversight. No one comments on the many kilometres of nicely paved, wellmaintained road; everyone notices the pothole. If most government services are invisible, then so are the people who deliver them. This book is about those invisible, but very important, people who provide all sorts of government services. Some of the things these people do are: • • • •

ensure that food products are processed and stored in a safe manner; provide protective services to children who are at risk; build and maintain an extensive road system; ensure that race track gambling is conducted in a fair and legal manner; and • collect taxes to ensure that all the above services can be provided adequately.

The remainder of this book discusses in more detail the nature of the work of field staff, but the job descriptions on the following pages provide some insights, in the words of the workers themselves, into the details of these jobs. HOW

MANY OF THESE PEOPLE ARE THERE ?

Many of us equate "governing" with what goes on in head offices, but many more people work in field offices than in headquarters. This is

Who and What Box I.I Supervisor of Family and Child Care Workers (located in small urban area) JOB DESCRIPTION

I am the supervisor of seven social workers; five of those social workers are what we call intake family service workers. These are the people who have a rotational intake schedule. At this point, it's one day each per week. So they have to be available between 8:30 and 4:30, which are the government hours, in the office available by phone and by drop-in. We don't have appointments on those days, so if you have an issue, a problem, you want to make a complaint about abuse or neglect, you can drop in, you can phone in. That person will do the phone contact, the personal interview, take down the information, and get particular computerized forms ... and they get processed and placed into the system. Now, if that intake worker gets a complaint of child abuse or neglect, the process is that that's shared with me, as the immediate supervisor. I go over it with them and ask questions and get some more information to see if in fact it's warranted that we have something to look at, or what direction do we go, or should we get out there right now, or do we wait, whatever. Some of them are obviously self-evident—you have to get on it right away—but others aren't that clear, especially the neglect ones. So ... my position with the workers is to make that assessment, and then I have two investigators. They do nothing but the abuse investigations, and they've developed ... an awful lot of expertise in this area ... Basically that's my job here right now, and it's quite a demanding job looking after child abuse. TYPICAL WORKING DAY

I spend a lot more time in the office now than I used to ... I don't go out of the office. One of the reasons is they [senior management] wanted to have dedicated supervisors, as they called them, because they wanted a supervisor to be available for staff. Instead of supervising twenty people and each gets one-tenth of you, they felt that ... eight is the maximum social workers that they want a supervisor to supervise and even that's too many in a protection situation. That means that we're there for consultation. That was the whole idea—better service delivery, etc. I not only don't have a real need to go out, but there really isn't the opportunity to go out. I basically have to be here and available for consultation, and I have the luxury here of having some very experienced people ... So the point is that if I was in a situation with a lot of new employees, I might have to go out with them a lot more to help in investigations and meet the community and do that. So basically I'm stuck in here. [Most of my time is spent consulting with the workers] and all the attending paperwork that goes with it. We do have other offices ... in this area and we do meet with them periodically as a group of supervisors together ... Very little travel. 11

S E R V I C E IN THE F I E L D

not a recent phenomenon; field staff members have always played a major role in the governing process.1 In the early years of Canadian government, people working outside the capital city were referred to as the "outside service" and were treated very differently from employees in head office.2 When the merit system was established to improve the efficiency of government, it was brought to the inside service considerably before it found its way to the outside service. For many years after patronage was abolished in Ottawa, it was considered quite appropriate for local members of Parliament to name local postmasters, game wardens, and so forth.3 The practice was so open that I.E. Hodgetts et al. provide an account of how a Liberal riding association met in 1906 to "elect" a new customs officer.4 Newspaper accounts seemed to accept as a matter of fact that this was clearly within the purview of a party association. In some cases, the citizens who received the service were in the forefront of pointing out the dangers of a patronage system, such as this ship's captain in Donald Graham's Lights of the Inside Passage: '"I think you will agree with me that the appointment of lightkeepers solely by their political influence with the members is not always conducive to selecting the best men for efficient service,' Gaudin pointed out, sheepishly adding, 'Not that I wish in any way to deprive members of their prerogative.' "5 In many provinces, this attitude toward field staff continues. It is customary in some provinces for the field staff in the highways department to see a major change after each election. Premier Savage of Nova Scotia recently incurred the substantial disfavour of many in his own party when he took the honourable step of discontinuing this practice.6 It is unclear whether the different treatment of the inside and outside services stemmed from the fact that there was more pressure on local MPS to provide jobs in their ridings to garner votes or whether there was a feeling that, since the work of the outside service was less significant and required less skill, it was less important that these jobs be filled in accordance with the merit system. However, even in the early years, the outside service accounted for a large percentage of total employees. For example, in 1867 almost 90 per cent of federal employees worked outside the National Capital Region and almost 80 per cent of Ontario government employees worked outside Toronto.7 Table 1.1 provides contemporary figures comparing the number of those who work in the national or provincial capital to those working outside the capital city.8 This shows the numerical significance of staff employed outside the capital city. However, even this understates the number of people who work in field offices, since some who work in the capital city work in field offices that just happen to be located in 12

Who and What Box 1.2 Food and Drug Inspector (located in major office in a large city, but responsible for covering a large area) JOB DESCRIPTION

My title is food and drug inspector. My responsibilities are to inspect food manufacturing plants and to ensure that they comply with the Food and Drugs Act. We also pick up samples—what we call monitoring samples from the retail market—and submit them to our laboratories ... and they are analysed for compliance with the Food and Drugs Act. We get complaints from the public ... We can go into retail markets, but we also visit the warehouses of importers ... and we sample there also. Also, a consumer may phone up with a question, you know: "How safe are these raw eggs I have ?" or, "How safe is the chicken ?" You just provide them with advice over the phone, or we have literature that we can mail out to them. TYPICAL WORKING DAY

I couldn't describe a typical working day, because I seem to go in cycles. Each year the plant inspections to be done in a year are all programmed, all the samples to be picked up are programmed. Therefore I may grab a bunch of files, get on the road, do the inspections while travelling around for, say, three or four days, come back to the office, enter all that information into our database (we have a computerized database for all the plant inspections), prepare letters to be sent out to the firm identifying conditions that we talked about identifying deviations. That's one cycle. It just starts all over again. Another cycle ... is the sampling cycle. Samples are programmed for pick-up throughout the year. So it's just a matter of the supervisor assigning them, going to get them, doing the paperwork, submitting them to the lab. And if the analysis is unsatisfactory, then you have to take a little more action. Consumer complaints are not on a cycle. That's just demands on your time that have to be scheduled in here and there ... We tend to specialize a little bit ... The secretary tries to get a feel for the question or the complaint and will divert it to whoever can look after it the best.

13

SERVICE IN THE FIELD

Table 1.1 D E C O N C E N T R A T I O N OF EMPLOYEES OF THE F E D E R A L AND PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENTS Approximately 1995

Total employees Newfoundland Prince Edward Island Nova Scotia New Brunswick Quebec Ontario Manitoba Saskatchewan Alberta British Columbia Federal government

35,987 1,287 10,811 9,497 66,692 77,507 15,081 11,415 22,883 42,996 225,619

Employees outside capital city 19,670

309 4,414 5,764 36,040 49,165 7,239 6,355 10,486 29,811 154,009

o/ /o

outside capital city

54.6 24.0 40.8 60.7 54.0 63.4 48.0 55.7 45.8 69.3 68.3

Source: Correspondence between the authors and various federal and provincial government agencies.

the capital. This is particularly the case in provinces such as Manitoba and Ontario in which a high percentage of the total residents of the province live in the capital cities. It would have been ideal to use numbers that made a distinction between those employed in headquarters and those employed in field offices, but these figures could not be obtained easily from most governments. It could be argued that the number of people working in field offices in each area in the jurisdiction will be determined in part by the number of people living in that area. Of course, this is not precisely correct since some government employees such as forest rangers are actually more likely to be found in areas away from population centres. However, one would generally expect the number of public servants in a jurisdiction to bear some relationship to the number of people living in that jurisdiction. For example, 28 per cent of the population of Saskatchewan live in Regina, so that even if Regina were not the capital city, one would expect approximately 28 per cent of the provincial public servants to be located there. In fact, 44 per cent of Saskatchewan public servants are based in Regina. This provides a reminder that even the relatively high percentage in the extreme right column of table 1.1 understates the percentage of people who work in field offices. 14

Who and What Box 1.3 Senior Immigration Officer (located at Canada-u.s. border) JOB DESCRIPTION

I review cases that are presented to me from examining officers. Basically, what we're examining people for is their admissibility to Canada. If [the examining officer] feels there is a question as to their admissibility to this country for whatever reason—going to school, working visas, or immigrant visas, or refugees, things of that nature—they would write a report, and then I would review it. And I decide whether we can deal with it right there at the border or if we should send it up the ladder, so to speak, to the adjudication system, and they would rule on it at that point. TYPICAL WORKING DAY

The day would start at 7:30 ... First thing in the morning now you have scheduled refugee [interviews], so you get ready for that ... You basically have to slice your people up as to who's going to do what. You've got counter work to do—people coming in with passports, tours, and things like that, work permits, student visas coming in that might have been processed at the consuls abroad. So you can deal with those much more efficiently right on the counter, fast-flow sort of thing, get 'em in, get 'em out fast. You want to try and facilitate entry as fast as possible, but those people that need a little more interviewing as to why they're here, what they're all about, we schedule them for an interview time and that is when an examining officer is taken away from the counter and they do the work ... and hand the report to us. We review it and proceed to issue all the paperwork necessary to either get 'em in or remove them from the country at that time. The rest of the day is basically just dealing with that, any cases that come up ... an awful lot of interviewing going on, a lot of oneon-one stuff, a lot of talking. (The officer does not have a private office. The work area is a large open office with all the staff working together.) It's kind of like organized chaos, but somehow it works quite well. We have to do any of our own filing of any of the memos that would come down from our main office ... or from the regional office or national office in Ottawa, stuff like that. You have to take all that and make sure you read it and file it properly ... Get your own forms out for any of your review work ... Make sure all the forms are still there. There's no support staff.

15

SERVICE IN THE FIELD

Table 1.2 FEDERAL GOVERNMENT EMPLOYMENT, SELECTED DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES

31 March 1995

Total employees

Employees outside national capital region

o/ /o

outside national capital region

HIGHLY CONCENTRATED DEPARTMENTS

Finance Treasury Board Statistics Canada National Archives of Canada

838 730 4,692 788

3 5 415 100

0.4 0.7 8.8 12.7

366 11,183 5,557 26,833 28,898 18,489

343 10,686 4,881 22,342 23,194 14,702

93.7 95.6 87.8 83.3 80.3 79.5

DECONCENTRATED DEPARTMENTS

Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency Correctional Service of Canada Fisheries and Oceans Human Resources Development National Defence Transport

Source: Letter to authors from Treasury Board of Canada

Numbers vary a great deal by government. Not surprisingly, geographically smaller provinces such as Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick deliver more services from the provincial capital, while the larger provinces have fewer public servants in their capital cities than population numbers would dictate. There is also considerable variance by department.9 Some departments, e.g., central agencies such as Finance and Treasury Board, tend by their nature to be concentrated, while others, e.g., transportation, social services, are more likely to be deconcentrated. Table 1.2 provides data for some selected federal departments. W H E R E DO THEY W O R K ?

At one time it was easy to find the government office building. Every city and town had a federal building usually located close to the central square with a large maple leaf flag out front. It seemed as if all buildings constructed at roughly the same time were built from the same set of 16

Who and What Box 1.4

Fisheries Biologist

(located in a research station, but most real work is done in the field) JOB DESCRIPTION

I'm a fisheries biologist, but given quite a wide mandate ... I'm dealing with the public through a variety of programs I think which more or less hit on the edge of what government's moving to and that is that we're working with volunteer groups where initiative is shown and providing expertise so that community-based groups can do work as opposed to the government coming in and doing the work. So my work involves ... a lot of meetings with the public, involves a lot of field assessments, dealing with other governments, and whatnot, because a lot of the material I deal with is cross-jurisdictional ... So I deal a lot with essentially the people aspect of fish and wildlife. (He tries to develop partnerships with outside organizations.) As a matter of fact, most of my funding [for research projects] ... besides my salary, has come from outside sources. Long ago I began to realize that waiting for government to fund your projects was probably a lot of (unintelligible, because he is laughing so hard). So I've been able to get [significant amounts] of private money ... over the years. [I] make field assessments in order to determine how to restore a river, for example, where there's channelization, farming, problems, forestry, hang-overs from log drives, and stuff like that. You've got to make field assessments, figure out the limiting factors. The public often wants to go do something to feel good, but they don't know where to channel the energy ... I try to help a little. TYPICAL

WORKING DAY

It varies by season. But today's a good example, I'm here to meet you. Often I do have a meeting [and] office work. Tonight I hit the road. I'll probably be home around midnight. It's a meeting tonight. Two months ago or if the weather had been good ... I might have been up on [a nearby river] for a ten-mile walk down the river if the water was low enough to permit it. A lot of this stuff is time-related. You've gotta get in the river and do it when the water's low—otherwise it's too late. But it's a combination. There's a little bit of diving work. But it isreal fieldwork, it's not just strapped to an office. It's sort of a balance. I have one staff person who assists me with a lot of the writing ... We have to balance it off. I do do a lot of writing as a part of my work ... [However,] I would say 50 per cent of the time in the summertime and the spring and even into the fall [is spent in the field], but getting into [late fall] it's more meetings and writing material up.

17

SERVICE IN THE FIELD

plans. On the main floor was the post office with one room for the service counter and one for postal boxes, and most other federal departments were located on the second floor, up the stairway located in the centre of the building. Usually the departments represented were some combination of customs, income tax, unemployment insurance, and veterans' affairs, with other departments such as agriculture, coast guard, or fisheries thrown in depending on the city. Many of these buildings still remain, although in most cases the city's central square has moved so that the building is now not quite in the centre of town. Though there was some variety between provinces, within any province it was still fairly easy to identify that province's office building. For one thing, it was never very far from the federal building. Depending on the province, its construction materials were usually somewhat more modest than those of the federal building, but it still functioned as something of a shrine to the heyday of popular government. These buildings were reasonably comfortable places to work. The terrazzo floor provided an institutional air, but it was easy to keep clean. All middle and senior level staff had a private office, usually with a window. Lower level employees were generally located in what were called bullpens—large open spaces with rows of desks and no privacy, often with a counter for public service at the front. The lack of air conditioning made it uncomfortable for a few days in the summer, but it also meant that even the hardest-hearted supervisor had to provide a few afternoons off in the hottest weather. Lunch and coffee breaks were easy because the cafeteria was in the basement, with a full selection of cello-wrapped sandwiches which seemed to be the same from Victoria to St John's. The workplace environment is discussed further in chapter 5. However, over time the needs of governments have expanded beyond these buildings. In recent years governments have been more inclined to lease space in privately owned office buildings than to build their own monumental structures. This change has been prompted by a number of considerations. An important one is the desire of government in the 1990s to maintain a lower profile—a complete turnaround from earlier eras when governments wanted to draw attention to the centrality of their role in society. Another reason for the change is the flexibility that comes with leasing rather than owning. This is particularly attractive with the realization that government will no longer automatically grow over time. These new buildings have added variety to the location of government offices. Many are still downtown quite near to the older federal buildings. Some are in suburban shopping malls close to bus lines and 18

Who and What with free parking nearby. In smaller towns, locating in the second floor office space above the cental shopping mall is attractive. The office environment of these rented buildings is different from the dedicated federal buildings. The floors are carpeted, air conditioning has replaced windows that opened, and instead of private offices there are semi-private workstations for all but the most senior staff. However, when all is said and done the differences between the two are not that significant. Of course, many people do not work in traditional office buildings. Customs and immigration officials have offices on the bridges and docks and in the airports where people are entering the country. The quality of these accommodations is determined by when the last renovation was completed. Some are virtual hell-holes for both clients on short visits and staff who must spend their entire days there. Others are much more pleasant. Some of the most pleasant places to work are in national or provincial parks or in the several agriculture, aquaculture, or silviculture experiment stations. These are usually free-standing operations with appealing grounds. Like the customs offices, the quality of accommodation depends on the date of construction, but the spacious grounds make for a reasonably pleasant working environment, even if the office space leaves something to be desired. Finally, other people hardly work in their offices at all. Many field officers spend most of their time working in the offices of clients and driving to and from those locations. Working in clients' offices can be stressful because the work is frequently regulatory in nature and the clients are not exactly pleased to welcome government inspectors. Tax auditors and child protection workers are two examples of people who can experience a great deal of stress. Food plant inspectors and employment standards officers are also likely to face conflict from time to time, but it is less personal and less stressful to deal with a corporate persona than an individual. Other people travel in a more positive environment. Highways department officials spend much of their time either patrolling highways looking for problems that need to be corrected or supervising construction projects. This is a great job for someone who enjoys autonomy and being outside. However, the extreme weather conditions and the importance of finishing a job to the proper specifications, on time and within budget, can contribute to the stress in these jobs as well. In sum, there is really no typical setting for a government official or government job. The variety is virtually endless, and most have both positive and negative aspects. 19

SERVICE IN THE FIELD HOW IS THE W O R K O R G A N I Z E D ?

There is no such thing as a typical public servant or a typical government office. This is particularly the case in field offices where there are vast differences in the nature of services delivered and the way the work is organized. Some field level officials fit the stereotype of the public servant behind the desk or counter responding all day to an endless line of inquiries from citizens. Like the immigration officer introduced earlier, these people have little control over their day; they must respond to the multitude of concerns brought to them. They typically enjoy the variety of their workday, but they also find it frustrating. They frequently have this same ambivalent attitude to the people they deal with: o I love to deal with clients. I love to deal with people you can help. I get a great deal of satisfaction in sitting down with a client and working toward the resolution of a problem. I get a lot of satisfaction from the type of service we provide, and although hard to measure, it is tangible and you can see the results. Nothing is more satisfying than to see someone walk in who's depressed and dejected and feels lost, who is starting to question their own self worth, and to watch that individual work with the staff and end up with a job or with the skills that are going to get them a job. On the other hand: o The nature of the job itself can be really contentious. Basically a lot of people you meet don't want to pay child support. That's frustrating in terms of getting screamed at sometimes and people not seeing the reality of their financial responsibilities. That is unpleasant at times. o Les gens chialent sur les boites vocales mais je crois que c'est une question d'habitude. Les gens sont habitues au grand luxe que nous ne pouvons plus nous permettre. Au debut, nous aussi on etait centre ces boites mais, maintenant nous pensons que c'est une bonne solution. Je crois que c'est aux gens a s'habituer. II faut eduquer ces gens. Les insatisfaits passent aussi souvent par les deputes et certains ministres. On essaie toujours de repondre a leur question. Other field staff have considerably more control over their days. Many spend relatively little time in their offices, instead visiting clients or remote worksites and doing a considerable amount of their work on 20

Who and What the road. These people generally can organize their own workdays. Some, like the food plant inspector introduced earlier, are told what they must do in a month or a quarter and are then free to organize their time to accomplish it. In other cases public servants have even more autonomy about how to accomplish their objectives. The wildlife biologist introduced earlier is an example of someone who is relatively free to set his own agenda within broad limits. Another example would be the economic development officer who is expected to work with clients to develop the industry but has a great deal of autonomy in determining how to do it. This provides the individual public servant with some discretion in deciding what aspects of work should be emphasized: o Usually I've got about four to seven major issues going at the same time. They start and stop and then something will come on, you'll work at it for awhile and then at a given point it will be dropped, but you don't put it away. You work at it on your own time basically, until it comes back. Thus, there is no such thing as a typical day, a typical public servant, or a typical field office. HEROES, PLAIN FOLKS, AND SKUNKS

Albert B. "Happy" Chandler, twice governor of Kentucky, a u.s. Senator, and commissioner of baseball, was ultimately named "Kentuckian of the Century." He titled his autobiography Heroes, Plain Folks, and Skunks10 to describe the range of people he had dealt with in his years of public office. This is not a bad characterization of the range of public servants that one might meet. Most field officials are just like any other workers: they put in their time, make a contribution to society, and are compensated accordingly. However, some stand out as either heroes or skunks, and others can be the innocent victims of serious circumstances. The jobs of many of these people are the stuff heroes are made of—lighthouse keepers,11 search and rescue officers in the Canadian Coast Guard, firefighters at airports. Others just happen to be in the right place at the right time. The newspaper stories in box 1.5 provide examples of situations in which brave and caring public servants saved the lives of others. Of course, not many positions require these kinds of heroics. In fact, the general public sometimes makes fun of public servants as having quiet desks jobs in a very safe work environment. However, we live in an increasingly violent society. When there are economic downturns, 21

SERVICE IN THE FIELD

Box 1.5

The Heroes

A DARING

RESCUE

It was a tragedy narrowly averted by the everyday heroism of a Canadian search-and-rescue crew. A Greek-owned freighter ... reported leaks in two of its holds due to storm damage early on January 10 at a point about 600 miles east of St. John's, Nfld ... A Canadian fisheries patrol ship, the Leonard J. Cowley, travelled at full speed for 15 hours from St. John's through the raging sea to reach the stricken ore carrier ... Then, as more bad weather closed in and the swells began to rise again, reaching seven metres, three sailors from the Cowley—Chief Officer James Gurney of Owen Sound, Ont., Seaman Earl Pryor of Trinity Bay, Nfld, and Ron Nicholls of Mount Pearl, Nfld.—used a rubber dinghy to ferry the 24-member crew of the Amphion to safety, five men at a time. Maclean's, 22 January 1996 LETTER C A R R I E R S A V E S B A B Y B O Y ' S L I F E

Postie Allan MacNeill knows nothing can stop the mail—not rain, sleet, snow or even a heroic life-saving rescue. MacNeill continued on his route Wednesday only moments after breathing the life back into 10-month-old Daniel Acuna, whom his mother thinks may have choked on a plastic building block. "I was glad I could help. I hope I did some good, that's all," 34-yearold MacNeill said humbly. MacNeill is to be recommended for the Gold Post Mark award, Canada Post's highest honor. Niagara Falls Review, 26 August 1994

people tend to blame government or at least expect government to solve their problems. When this does not happen to their satisfaction, violence sometimes erupts, and that violence is frequently directed at the person who personifies government to the aggrieved individual—the public servant across the counter. Almost all field staff in sensitive departments have experienced or were aware of extreme or violent behaviour. The stories in box 1.6 provide some indication of what these people can face from time to time. Some public servants are not victims of deliberate violence in the workplace but work in situations which invite certain forms of danger. Box 1.7 provides some examples of workplace tragedies experienced by public servants. Some situations involve less risk but are still rather stressful. These seldom lead to serious injury but over the long term could have a major

22

Who and What Box 1.6

Victims of Violence

HOSTAGE

O R D E A L : MAN HOLDS WCB STAFF AT G U N P O I N T

In the Calgary regional office of the Workers' Compensation Commission, a man entered the lobby, fired two shotgun blasts, and held three people hostage in order to draw attention to his disputed claim for benefits. The situation was resolved without physical injury, but there were many tense moments. Calgary Herald, 1 December 1993 ARMED CONVICT SURRENDERS

AFTER H O L D I N G NURSE

HOSTAGE

An armed convict, involved in his second hostage-taking in 18 days, held a nurse captive for nearly 14 hours before surrendering peacefully yesterday, police said ... The latest hostage-taking began late Wednesday when Dokis, armed with a sharp metal instrument, grabbed the nurse as she handed him his medication in a room in a maximum security wing of the provincial jail. The hostage was not seriously injured physically, but was taken to hospital. Montreal Gazette, 20 April 1990

Box 1.7 Workplace Catastrophes

W O R K E R ' S C O N D I T I O N STILL S E R I O U S Working on a busy highway can be very dangerous. Tracy Trench, a 37-year-old single mother, had to have her leg amputated after she was struck by a car while she was clearing debris left by a previous accident on Highway 401 near Toronto. Toronto Star, 16 February 1995 PLANE CRASHES DURING WILDLIFE SURVEY

Three Saskatchewan government employees were killed in a plane crash while they were conducting an aerial survey of white-tail deer in the Manitou Sand Hills area near Lloydminster. The crash claimed the lives of Wally Kost, a wildlife biologist, Kevin Misfeldt, a conservation officer, and pilot Brett Thomas. The Standard (St Catharines, ON), 25 January 1997

23

S E R V I C E IN THE F I E L D

impact on health and well-being. A classic example of such a situation occurred in 1994 when a group of native people occupied portions of the Toronto office of Revenue Canada to protest certain decisions made in head office.12 The situation developed in such a controlled manner that few people feared serious violence; still, everyone in a situation like this can recall other apparently innocent situations that quickly escalated into serious problems. It was clear that this situation would be more an inconvenience than a danger, but even the inconvenience factor strained people's tolerance. This was a classic case of injustice in the eyes of the field staff: the demonstrators were protesting a policy established in head office and which could only be changed in head office. Yet the protest was causing a great deal of inconvenience to field staff. Over the years a number of demonstrations like this have targeted offices of departments in social services, housing, fisheries, and native affairs, among many others. Some of these demonstrations have even occurred in front of the homes of public servants. Paradoxically, it is unlikely that the demonstration could have occurred at head office, yet most regional and head office buildings have a considerably higher level of security than field offices. This is in addition to the fact that regional and head offices tend not to be well identified to assist demonstrators in locating them and are usually situated in remote locations in faraway cities that are somewhat inaccessible to large groups. Many civil servants feel they are always stuck in the middle of contending groups, as does this employee of the federal Commissioner of Official Languages: o What is difficult about it is that nobody likes you, so you have to feel comfortable with your team. The francophones feel we are not doing enough; the anglophones feel we are doing too much. As a manager you really have to motivate these people because they are working in something that is negative all the time. It is like the doctor who always sees the sick people, he never sees the people who are well. It is a challenge ... to keep them motivated. In some cases the stress is more personal, because it is clear that many civil servants are not able to leave their jobs behind at the office, as is the case with this public health inspector: o I don't eat in restaurants, I don't go out to bars, I do not want to associate with too many people—because all of a sudden it always comes up that you are health inspectors and they ... want a favour from you. I don't even go to church because people don't say "Hi" 24

Who and What Box 1.8 Bureaupathology

M A T T H E W ' S STORY : HOW THE B.C. SYSTEM BROKE DOWN In 1995, there was a major commission of inquiry into the operation of the child protection system in British Columbia because of the death of a six-year-old boy. There had been numerous reports which indicated that the boy was at risk, but somehow no one took action to prevent a preventable tragedy. Globe and Mail, 4 December 1995 ACCUSED ORDERED

DEPORTED, POLICE SAY

In Vancouver, a man, who had been ordered deported eighteen months earlier, killed the baby of a rival gang member by striking it with a car. The story did not say why the man had not actually been deported, but immigration officers commonly complain about lack of resources to effect the large number of deportations which are ordered. Globe and Mail, 17 October 1997

to me; they make complaints to me, and I am my own person besides my work. I used to get a lot of people calling me at home. I had the phone disconnected and put in my wife's name. Of course these types of positions can have a positive side: o I really impress my brother when he comes to visit and we go to a restaurant. Because I am the public health officer and can close them down, I get the best seat in the house. Even though I'm only twenty-nine, I could probably get the senior citizens' discount too if I asked for it. There are also cases of what might be called "bureaupathology," situations in which negative consequences result not because of the irresponsible actions of an individual official but because some situation falls between the cracks and it is unclear who is responsible for a particular resolution. Bo;: 1.8 illustrates two such situations. The interpretation of these cases is always difficult: some will accuse the officials of deliberate irresponsibility, but the officials frequently feel that their hands are tied, either by established government policy or by lack of resources. Finally, there are the skunks. Unfortunately, every occupational group also has its share of villains, and the public service is no exception. The high-profile villains are more likely to be found at the field 25

S E R V I C E IN THE FIELD

Box 1.9

Skunks

SENIOR TAX INSPECTOR ARRESTED AFTER PROBE

One of Revenue Canada's top tax-evasion investigators was charged with demanding and accepting a payment from someone who owes $1-million in taxes. Gaetan Chauret, 44, chief of Revenue Canada's Ottawa-area special investigation unit, was charged with breach of trust by a public official. Mr. Chauret's arrest comes against the backdrop of a highly publicized Revenue Canada campaign over the past 18 months to prosecute tax evaders and scofflaws and to publicize their convictions. Globe and Mail, 21 June 1995 ALCOHOL BANNED FROM RESEARCH

VESSELS

The federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans removed alcohol from its scientific vessels and ordered sensitivity training for crews and scientists after an allegation of sexual harassment on board a ship in 1993. However, the sensitivity session was a bit problematic when the participants took a break from training in order to watch the aerobics and make sexual remarks and catcalls. Globe and Mail, 9 May 1995 level, because they are less subject to close supervision, are in immediate contact with the public, and have direct access to cash and other resources that can be misappropriated. The stories in box 1.9 list some of these people's exploits. Unfortunately, as both the media and the general public seem to focus more attention on the skunks than on the heroes, the few skunks cast a negative shadow over the entire public service. One of the challenges facing public servants is to convince the unbelieving public that the great majority of public servants are more likely to be heroes, or at least plain folks, rather than skunks. CONCLUSION Public servants are a lot like other workers. Some are exemplary; some are skunks; but most are average, reasonably hard-working, capable people. The remainder of the book will extend this portrait and describe various aspects of the work of these people. However, first we make a short digression to describe the research methods used in our findings.

26

Chapter Two The Research Described

THE GENESIS OF THE R E S E A R C H , OR HOW IT ALL BEGAN

We began this research in order to answer the question, often asked by students and the general public: What do all those civil servants do ? Both authors had worked for government at the federal and provincial level in the past and were able to talk about our own experiences, but when it came to a broader generalization, there was little material to draw upon. A few studies had been done by sociologists of specific types of workers such as fisheries inspectors1 and forest rangers,2 and in the 1970s a number of PHD dissertations at the University of Toronto had studied specific departments.3 There had not, however, been a broadly based study on the function of civil servants and, in particular, the vast majority of those who work in field offices delivering services to the public. Having decided to fill what we considered an obvious and important lack of information, we had to decide how to do it. As Bryman points out, what research actually gets done is usually not a function of grand theorizing but rather is driven by the interests of researchers and the nature of the funding process and the research granters (and reviewers) who function as gatekeepers.4 There is, therefore, a highly opportunistic aspect to research—it is not nearly as cut and dried as the research methods texts would indicate. While we started the research to answer a question about what civil servants do, we rapidly found that other important theoretical points had to be considered. In the first place it became clear that much of the impetus for administrative reform of the late 1980s and early 1990s— the "reinventing government" phenomena—was based upon a series of assumptions, which might not be true.5 As Dunsire has pointed out, the reforms of the late 1980s and 1990s were ideologically rather than the-

S E R V I C E IN THE F I E L D

oretically or empirically driven.6 Thus, their assumption that civil servants do not have, or will not use, discretion in carrying out their work was more myth and wishful thinking than fact. Secondly, there was an assumption in this case, based more on ideology than fact, that all field offices and field officers were alike and therefore broad-based universal reforms could work. Finally, there was an assumption that civil servants were not interested in their clients, were not interested in client service, and were quite hidebound relative to the private sector.7 But there appears to be no literature that indicates that these assumptions are correct. Conversely, an extensive literature indicates they are incorrect.8 QUALITATIVE

VS. QUANTITATIVE

RESEARCH

In deciding how to carry out the research, we had to decide between two contrasting approaches to social science field research. One is a quantitative tradition that relies upon statistical generalization and large scale surveys. The other is a qualitative tradition that relies upon logical generalization and involves a non-random sample and often fewer contacts or observations. The latter approach is more commonly used in what is referred to as exploratory research which is not trying to explain something on the basis of hypothesized causes.9 Much of the empirical research carried out in the Canadian political science community is based upon concepts of inductive statistics. It relies upon large-scale, standardized questionnaires and the "law of large numbers" to allow it to conclude that the results of the survey are accurate "within five percentage points 19 times out of 20." It requires the ability to create a random sample by having access to lists of everyone in whom one is interested—the so-called "sampling frame." Elite interviewing also has a long tradition in Canada. This is the method by which "experts" or "those in the know" are asked about events. In these cases, generalization is not necessary as the people actually involved are consulted. Both these types of research are problematic. Large scale quantitative research is based upon statistical assumptions about the distribution of the sample and the inclusion of the sampling which are very rarely met. Elite interviewing, when access is possible, is dependent upon the participant's accurate recollection of events and motivations and suffers from "ex-post hoc generalization" or "rose-coloured glasses rationales."10 Qualitative research is different from both of these methods, although the interviewing technique itself is close to that of elite interviewing. The distinctive characteristics of the qualitative approach are that questions are more open-ended, although they are standardized; sampling is systematic but not random; and generalization is based upon logic rather 28

The Research Described than inference. The nature of the questionnaire requires more skill on the part of the interviewer as subjects tend to jump from one topic to the next. It is useful in exploratory research, that is, research where little is known about the topic so fewer specific hypotheses are being tested.11 Logical generalization differs from statistical generalization because it is not based upon an examination of the sample but of the responses. In logical generalization one can generalize if three questions can be answered: Is there any logical reason to think, if my twenty, or fifty, or two hundred respondents have told me this, that it is not true ? (Alternatively, would they tell me this if it was not true ?) Is there any other logical explanation for this behaviour, phenomena, or observation? Finally, is there any reason to think that if I have consistently been told this by two hundred people, the next two hundred might tell me something different ? This last question brings us to the point of "theoretical saturation," the point at which we can stop interviewing, or observing, as we will not be learning anything new. We chose to do qualitative research for a number of reasons. The first was that we did not have access to a sampling frame of field level civil servants. In fact, we are not certain such a sampling frame exists. Government telephone books are at best an incomplete sampling frame. Although access might have been possible through the federal Public Service Commission or its provincial counterparts, we had decided earlier that we would have better, more frank discussions if we could honestly say we had no official government contact. This allowed us to send to interviewees a guarantee not only of confidentiality and anonymity but also of complete research independence. (For a copy of the material sent to contacts and potential interviewees, see the appendix.) Secondly, our research was exploratory, and we felt that absorbing the feeling of someone's office environment was an important part of that research. Sitting in a park ranger's office in New Brunswick after a blizzard is different from talking over the phone or reading someone's responses to a mail survey. Given our decision to do personal interviews, utilizing quantitative techniques would also have wasted too much of the richness and context of the information we had available. Finally, we felt that the only means of really communicating the ideas and attitudes of field level staff was through their own words. Forcing responses into particular categories or paraphrasing comments could easily distort the subtlety of the meanings. QUESTIONNAIRE DESIGN AND SAMPLING TECHNIQUES

As this was exploratory research, we wanted the individuals we interviewed to tell us what they thought. We did not want to impose upon 29

S E R V I C E IN THE FIELD

the research our own ideas about their activities and attitudes.12 The questionnaire, therefore, consisted of some forty open-ended questions organized around six different themes. (The questionnaire is in the appendix.) The first section asked respondents questions about the job itself, their responsibilities, the degree of autonomy they had in decisions and more generally, how their day was organized. The second part asked questions about their opinion of their job and their work environment. This included questions about the good and bad points of the job, the quality of the training they received, and how they dealt with problems. The third section focused on relations with head office and the impact of any administrative or program reform initiatives. The fourth section was about relationships with other governments. The last two sections dealt with what we called "interaction with the environment" and basic demographic information. These tended to be the more personal questions about the individuals themselves, their career aspirations, and the effect their job had on their life. In practice, many of the questions were never asked. Most people we interviewed were so enthusiastic that the first question or two opened a floodgate of information indicating the interviewee could hardly believe that some academics from Ontario had come all the way to the interior of Newfoundland or British Columbia to talk to them. Often only a few promptings were necessary to finish the forty-seven questions. In this type of research on specialized samples it is also helpful if the interviewer is knowledgeable about the language and culture of the group. In this case both researchers were former civil servants and, as we expected, this made it easier to establish a rapport with the individuals. It also made it possible for us to act as reality checks on some of comments made. If the interviewee indicated he or she had a great deal of discretion, our knowledge of the processes of bureaucracy allowed us to judge whether the comments made throughout the rest of the interview substantiated this claim. It also allowed us to read between the lines when we reached the expressive, drawn out yet unelaborated upon "but" in interviews, as, for example, "Yes, head office understand our problems, but ... let me tell you a story about that ..." Qualitative research also requires care in sampling. The sampling technique is purposive and selective. In our case we had to ensure that all categories were matched so that the process of triangulation could take place. Triangulation means that no one case constituted a sole category of characteristics of interest to us. This is important for generalization. If a conservation officer in rural Alberta had told us something and he was the only rural Albertan interviewed, and the only conservation officer, we could not generalize from his comments. But if 30

The Research Described conservation officers in other provinces, at different levels in their respective organization and of different ages and experience tended to say the same thing, we could generalize about conservation officers. It is this feature of the sample that allowed us to draw some conclusions about changing values, which are important for our discussion of implications for the future in chapter 9. For example, a high proportion of our sample of younger people (25-34 age group) observed that they considered their family more important than their jobs and would turn down, or had done so, opportunities for promotions that were not practicable for their families. On the other hand, a common regret expressed by older individuals in the 40-50 age bracket was that they had put their work ahead of their families throughout most of their careers. In response to a question about regrets, one individual commented: o The job almost cost me my marriage. My wife is a nurse. At first with all the moves she could get re-established quite easily. But it has become harder for nurses to build up seniority and stuff, particularly crossing provincial boundaries. When we came back here, she said enough was enough. The kids were old enough, and the next move would be without her. So I had to make a decision, and here I stay. I would have liked one more promotion, but it wasn't worth it. One of the most striking features of the results was the similarity in attitudes and responses across a very diverse group. For example, responding to a question about dealing with problem clients, two different people in two different provinces (one bilingual, one not), who were very dissimilar in age and experience but both worked in the area of landlord-tenant relations, used almost identical language to explain how they handled difficult callers. o A lot of the callers do not think. They are just calling to complain. When we give them an answer they do not listen. They are not always the easiest to talk to, they are rude or abusive. If they start to become abusive you will warn the client that their language is unacceptable and that you will not be able to continue the call. You tell them that if they do not stop, you will hang up. And then you do. They do not have the right to talk to me as if I was just a lump of clay. o I tell them that "I'm sorry. I may be a government employee but I don't have to take abuse from you and unless you change your 31

SERVICE IN THE FIELD

language I'm going to hang up the phone. You are going to talk to me like you're talking to another human or I'm hanging up the phone." This ability to generalize logically became particularly important in two other aspects of the research. One was questions about sexual harassment and other problems relating to gender and the workplace. David found women hesitant to discuss the issue, and although he had a feeling a few people were not being forthright, no one admitted to experiencing any problems. Barbara found women more willing to discuss the issue with her. As the other experiences of these people were similar, and they were working in the same, or similar offices, we felt safe in concluding that the lack of response from the one set of interviewees was an "interviewer effect"13 and that there had, in fact, been gender problems in the past but they had now been largely resolved. The second place where the ability to generalize was important was with regard to the responses from Quebec. We had reason to expect that civil servants in Quebec might be different in some of their attitudes because some aspects of the civil service culture in Quebec have been influenced by French theoretical ideas and different approaches to administration and management.14 We did not conduct the interviews in Quebec ourselves—they were carried out by a francophone PHD student. This would have produced a problem if the Quebec civil servants did exhibit differences from anglophone civil servants; such differences could have been a result of being interviewed by someone who had not worked in the civil service and, therefore, did not understand the culture and jargon of the public service. If this had been the case, it would have been necessary to do additional interviews in Quebec and to either have the original researchers do the interviews or hire someone who had worked in the public service. In fact, this did not turn out to be the case. In the areas of interest to us, Quebec civil servants responded in the same way as civil servants in other provinces: that is, their comments about discretion, administrative reform, and attitudes towards their work, head office, and their clients did not reflect a distinct francophone or Quebecois attitude. Generally, all federal government employees, regardless of province, had the same attitudes towards Ottawa. For example, staff in Canada Employment Centres in Quebec were similar in expressing their attitudes to clients and their level of job satisfaction; and differences between provincial and federal civil servants were consistent with other provinces. Because it was one of the last provinces surveyed, we slightly over-surveyed younger civil servants in Quebec because they 32

The Research Described had been under-represented in our sample to that point.15 The responses of the 25-34 age group in Quebec were similar to those in the rest of Canada. HOW THE RESEARCH WAS DONE

Selection of the Sample We started preparing to do the field research in the summer of 1992. We had three means of finding potential interviewees: references through friends or contacts in government or academic life, government telephone books, and references from earlier interviewees. The first source is potentially biased because there could be a systematic pattern of respondents. For example, referrals from colleagues and friends could reflect our own values and approach to public administration. References from interviewees or government sources of any type might try to pick the "best and the brightest." We did try to control for this by being very specific to our contacts and in our letters of approach about our ideal "participant profile." Telephone books overcome these biases but have the problem of listing only senior people by name, and often not giving first names. The books also became increasingly inaccurate over time because not only did government reforms lead to major structural changes in which even names of departments changed but one popular cost-cutting reform has been to up-date telephone books less frequently. We adopted a dual strategy of using contacts for the first round of names and telephone books to provide the triangulation match. We had an advantage in government contacts as one of us had worked for four different provincial governments and we had both worked in a number of different departments at the federal level. In addition, we had friends and neighbours who were civil servants who were unlikely to exhibit any systematic patterns of attitudes toward their work. Finally, we had both been active in the Institute of Public Administration of Canada (IPAC), a professional association of civil servants and academics. Contacts from this group were utilized only infrequently as they again could have produced a systematic bias. We found it interesting that only two of the individuals interviewed mentioned IPAC as one of their areas of involvement. We started to prepare our sample by writing letters about our research to fellow academics, former colleagues in government, other social contacts, friends, and relations. The contact letter described the research and gave a profile of the type of person we wanted to interview—an individual working for a line government department, providing a 33

S E R V I C E IN THE F I E L D

service, and being outside of the head office. While crown corporations were included, independent bodies such as hospitals were excluded. Police officers and institutional care workers (prison medical staff, medical officers of health, prison social workers) were also excluded because the culture of their work is sufficiently specialized that questions about service and discretion would not be consistent with the larger body of public servants.16 In addition, the nature of their work dictates that these individuals operate under norms of accountability which are different from those of other front line public servants. Prison guards were excluded for the same reason. Public health nurses, public health inspectors, and other correctional staff such as probation officers were included, however, as they have contact with a broader public and their work is less constrained. Except for two pre-test interviews in the summer of 1993 we avoided former students on the grounds that they might be biased in their responses. Of the various contacts, former government colleagues, other social contacts, and friends tended to be most successful. Few academics responded, and those who did tended to know only senior civil servants in head offices or in central agencies. We do not know if this was a function of overload or not keeping in touch with former students, or because, as one academic put it, "I tend not to know people who are actually involved with service delivery—my contacts tend to be with policy people." Asking people in head offices for names of field people also tended to have mixed results. A former colleague in Ottawa canvassed her entire division and could not find someone who knew anyone in a field office—not even the Ottawa district office. She did, however, provide a copy of an internal phone book which provided helpful names. In the other categories people responded with enthusiasm. In Manitoba, a former colleague and a former high school friend together produced some fifty names across forty provincial and federal agencies at all levels of operation. The test of inferential statistics is that everyone has an equal chance of being included. We clearly did not meet, and did not intend to meet, that criteria. But one of the tests of logical generalization is that there is no chance of any systematic pattern creeping in that would bias the results. We feel we successfully met that test. To give some examples of people interviewed: one was the brother-in-law of a man who lived across the street from one of the researchers' mother-in-law; another was the sister-in-law of a woman who used to work for the ex-boyfriend of a former student; another was the former swimming partner of a nephew. Another good source of people was the interviewees themselves who frequently had national, interprovincial, or intraprovincial networks. Often they provided the membership lists of various professional, con34

The Research Described sultative, or other types of committees or organizations. In one case, an interviewee was so concerned that a particular type of field level person had not been included that we were faxed within two days a ten-page list of names from every province. When dealing with lists of this type the selection of individuals to be interviewed was done randomly. These initial contact lists were augmented with names from provincial or federal government telephone books. From the list in each province, names were selected to obtain a cross-section by level of government, by function, by hierarchical level, by department, by geographical area, and by age (possible only with the contact lists), and sex. As the work progressed, more attention had to be paid to the triangulation process. For example, the interviews in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia were done toward the end of the interview process. When drawing up potential interviewee lists in those provinces, it was necessary to find conservation officers, provincial park managers, and public health inspectors to match interviewees in the Atlantic provinces. The telephone books were particularly useful for matching positions and locations. By the end, over half the sample was selected at arm's length from telephone books. When the "potential interviewees" list was completed, contact letters were sent along with a package about the research and the researchers and the assurance of confidentiality (see appendix). Interestingly, while interviewees were offered the option of meeting in their home or at a neutral location, the overwhelming majority chose to have the interview in their place of work. This did not always mean in offices; some interviews took place in conference rooms with the interview made to look like a client interview. But mainly the interviews took place in an official place of work, in offices or formal meeting places. This in itself became a sign of the degree of discretion individuals had; they could take an hour during the day to talk to a stranger without permission or even questions being asked. We were told there were some rumblings within the office, but only informally and good-naturedly. The Changing Environment The field portion of the research started in 1993 and finished in 1995, although most interviews were carried out in 1994. The timing and ordering of the interviewing were dictated by teaching schedules and other commitments. The original funding grant had been intended to cover only Ontario. To stretch the funds, some of the travel was timed to take place in conjunction with another activity. For example, interviews in Alberta were carried out before and after the meetings of the Canadian Political Science Association in Calgary; interviews in Nova

35

S E R V I C E IN THE F I E L D

Scotia were piggybacked onto a course one of the researchers was giving at Dalhousie University. The appendix at the end of the book provides the research schedule and events surrounding it. The time period spanned a federal election, an election in Quebec, the Ontario Social Contract, Ralph Klein's cuts in Alberta, and a series of bad-news budgets in almost every province. The Alberta interviews, in fact, were carried out as the cuts were being announced and implemented. As a result many of the responses were prefaced with comments like "I may not have a job this time next year," or "We have been told our unit is closing down." To allow for indications of temporal bias when the environment was changing so quickly, Ontario was used as a control province with interviews being carried out in that province throughout the period of the study. We could find no discernible pattern in the responses over time. Federal responses also showed no temporal pattern. The Interviews Carrying out the interviews posed a few problems, some quite different from normal interview research. One problem was fending off eager potential interviewees who did not fit the profile, or explaining why a phone interview could not be carried out when a potential interviewee was not going to be available during the field trip. Another was finding names when government telephone books typically provide only titles, or simply finding people who were often not known by name even in the head office of their own department. Maintaining confidentiality in small centres could also be difficult, although people did not seem to be concerned that others knew they were being interviewed. We would run into former interviewees in the coffee shop, or in asking directions would make it clear who we were looking for: "Only one person has an office next to the bowling alley in this town—you must be going to talk to so-and-so." The weather too caused problems, particularly when interviewing in the winter because some locations were long distances from each other and accessible only by car. Finally, locating buildings in small towns where everything is a post office box and where street maps are not easily available to someone who has arrived in town only minutes before occasionally produced tardiness and frantic calls for directions. This last problem sometimes resulted in hilarious relays of calls from interviewee to spouse/secretary of researchers, to researcher, and back again across several different time zones. This situation became simpler in the latter days of the interviewing when cellular phones had become more common. The response rate was 98 per cent. There were only four refusals. One was a public affairs official in a federal government department, 36

The Research Described another a public health nurse who was concerned about confidentiality. In both cases, people in similar positions were interviewed. Substitutions from the original lists occurred when people were unavailable at the time we were visiting the province or had left their field position, or we simply were never able to make contact. This was a particular problem with Canada Post where staff seem to have a habit of not returning telephone calls. One employee of Canada Post initially declined in writing on the grounds that "this is a Crown Corporation, a dynamic entrepreneurial organization, it has no connection with government nor are its employees public servants." In the end the interview took place. This was fortunate, because Canada Post illustrates an interesting case of the problem of changing a corporate culture. Generally, however, people were enthusiastic and helpful. At the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Agency (PFRA), one person we originally contacted would have retired before the interview could take place. He offered to return for an interview if the required number of interviews could not be arranged. Although it was not necessary, he was determined that we would have an opportunity to talk to PFRA people because, as one interviewee remarked, "this is such a great place to work, it has to be included in your study." In contrast, it was extraordinarily difficult to listen to people's pain as they told their employment history, in some cases breaking down as they told it. A response rate of 98 per cent seems high in this time of "interview fatigue." The explanation is that no one—not even people from their head office—seems to have ever shown an interest in these people before. Many were clearly intrigued as to why an academic would come all the way from Ontario to talk to them. A response rate this high also indicates that there is little possibility of self-selection bias. Those to be interviewed were selected broadly, and virtually all of those initially selected agreed to partcicipate. We are quite confident that those interviewed constitute a broad cross-section of the universe of field level public servants. In the end, we interviewed 220 people in sixty-four different centres. There was a slight under-representation of some outlying areas in smaller provinces, but this is an error on the side of conservatism. If someone talks about feeling some degree of alienation less than a mile from head office, it seems likely that the same feelings would be reported further away in the field. THE PEOPLE WE INTERVIEWED

Table 2.1 gives a demographic profile of interviewees. They are widely spread across departments and age groups. It is typical in quantitative 37

Table 2.1 D I S T R I B U T I O N OF PARTICIPANTS

%

NFLD

PEI

NS

NB

QUE

ONT

MAN

5/1 S/C

ALT*

BC

Total

Federal Provincial

5 13

6 11

10 13

9 8

8 8

18

11

16

10

3 18

10 10

17 16

97 123

44.1 55.9

Female Male

7 11

6 11

7 16

6 11

4 12

14 20

8 13

9 12

4 16

8 25

73 147

33.2 66.8

White Non-white Native

18 0 0

17 0 0

20 2 1

16 1 0

16 0 0

32 1 1

20 1 0

17 2 2

17 3 0

32 1 0

205 11 4

93.2

0

2

0

11

15

2

1

0

2

0

33

15.0

4 11 2 1

1 5 10 1

4 6 12 1

2 7 5 3

6 2 6 2

8 9 14 3

4 9 7 1

3 6 8 4

3 6 9 2

3 12 14 4

38 73 87 22

17.3 33.2 39.5 10.0

Francophones 25-34 35-44 45-54 55+

5.0 1.8

Table 2.1 (cont'd) D I S T R I B U T I O N OF PARTICIPANTS NFLD

General Services Protection of Persons & Property Transport & Communications Health Social Services Education Resource Conservation Economic Development Recreation & Culture Labour, Employment & Immigration Housing Regional Planning & Development Other TOTAL

Number of centres

PEI

NS

5

3

1

1

1

2 1 1 1 4

1 1 1

2 3 4 2 4 2 2

1

4 2 1

1

2

NB

2 1 3 4 3 3 1

QUE

ONT

MAN

3

5

3

2

3

1

2 1 4 1 3 2 2

2

3

5 3

3 2

4

3

2 1 1

2 1 4 1 2

M5K

3

2 2 3

ALT A 3

1

6

Total

%

4

29

13.2

5

16

7.3

3 4 1

15 13 25 7 41 15 15

6.8 5.9 11.4 3.2 18.6 6.8 6.8

BC

6 1

5 1

6 3 3

1 2

3 1

1 1

20 9

9.1 4.1

2

2 13

0.9 5.9 100.0

1 2

2

18

17

23

17

16

34

21

21

20

33

220

5

4

8

5

4

10

6

8

5

9

64

1

S E R V I C E IN THE F I E L D

research to compare the characteristics of the sample with those of the population. This is impossible in this case, since we could not identify these characteristics of the population. Our population was defined as the service delivery level (admittedly, somewhat vaguely defined) of the eleven federal and provincial governments. We could find data for the total composition of these governments, but it was impossible to find data for a rather ill-defined subset. In defence of this sample, it is clearly a broad one, including a healthy representation by level of government, age, race, language group, and type of department. Another factor that decreases the importance of the comparison of the sample and the population is that qualitative research does not rely on statistical inference. This sample is sufficiently inclusive that we can be satisfied we have interviewed all groups that are represented in the total population. For example, the size of our sample of women might be a bit small, but the fact that we interviewed seventy-three women means we are confident that we heard from a broad cross-section. At the same time the under-representation of women might indicate that recent initiatives toward employment equity have not been as effective in field offices as in head offices because of lower levels of staff turnover. Certainly in the areas of agriculture, highways, and parks, respondents noted that they wanted to hire more women but had been unable to do so for a number of reasons. This is discussed in more detail in chapter 5. It is unfortunate that we interviewed only four native Canadians; however, this small number is reflective of the small number of native people who work for governments. We are not able to make any definitive statements about native people based on these four respondents, but since native people constitute such a small proportion of government employees, this is not a serious problem in drawing broad conclusions about the government work force.17 The age range (figure 2.1) was from 25 to 64 with the bulk in the 4554 age bracket, reflecting the general pattern in the public service. Although one would expect more young people as they start their careers to be in the field, this tended not to be true. This no doubt reflects the downsizing and freezes which have been in place, at least at the federal level, for almost a decade. Education ranged from Grade 10 (the minimum for entry at Revenue Canada) to PHDS. The norm among older workers was high school and some technical school, unless they were in highly specialized areas. Among younger people an undergraduate degree was common, although still not the norm. The exception was in social welfare where a Bachelor or Master of Social Work was the most common qualification, and in transportation and agriculture where a university degree in engineering and agricultural economics was the norm. 40

The Research Described

Figure 2.1 D I S T R I B U T I O N OF PARTICIPANTS BY AGE

DISTRIBUTION OF PARTICIPANTS BY FUNCTION OF D E P A R T M E N T

Figure 2.2 indicates that we interviewed people over a very broad range of departments.18 The distribution of employees was influenced by the responsibilities of federal and provincial governments and whether the duties were more likely carried out in the field or in head office. Thus, we interviewed no one from central agencies because these people are not normally located in field offices. We interviewed a high proportion of people in resource conservation, because large numbers of these people work in field offices at both the federal and provincial levels. We interviewed very few people in regional planning and development, because this is basically a municipal function. In terms of the number of people who worked in the same location as the interviewee, the range was from one to more than two thousand. The average tended to be relatively small offices of five to six people, or medium size at thirty to forty. 41

SERVICE IN THE FIELD

Figure 2.3 D I S T R I B U T I O N OF PARTICIPANTS BY P R O V I N C E BY L E V E L OF G O V E R N M E N T

Some people did not have a private office, or shared a desk. Surprisingly, the "bull pen," a large room with rows of desks, is still with us. Not surprisingly, the francophones were clustered in New Brunswick and Quebec, with francophones in other provinces being almost exclusively at the federal level. Figure 2.3 shows the distribution of respondents at the two levels of government across the ten provinces. Federal public servants were generally under-surveyed in each province because the cumulative total of federal people interviewed in every province provided a good sample. The numbers in each province allow us to obtain a good feel for some of the provincial differences but were generally too small to allow for meaningful comparisons between provinces. We did not attempt to interview civil servants in northern or very remote locations. We felt that these individuals would have particular problems related to their geographic remoteness which could not be accurately covered in this study. This was borne out by comments made by two interviewees in which they contrasted their current position to earlier more remote ones. In one case this was to a position as a summer park attendant in a remote national park and in the other to a previous position in a remote centre in the Northwest Territories. 42

The Research Described rince Albert, Saskatchewan, was our most northerly location. The smallest centre had a population of 135, and we did not interview anyone whose office was more than a mile from a population centre. Some highways staff spend part of their time in remote locations but are based in population centres. The research methodology allows us to draw a number of conclusions about the role of field level bureaucrats in the administrative process in Canada, and about their work, their attitudes, and their problems. Many of our findings on corporate culture (which we call corporate reality), morale, performance evaluation, satisfaction with supervision, and general attitudes to their work are consistent with a more systematic study of its members carried out by the rofessional Institute of the ublic Service of Canada. 1 We can, however, make only limited generalizations about any one province, although there were clear cultural differences across provinces and within functional areas which we will discuss in chapter 4. Similarly we can make only limited generalizations by gender or age, although there were clear patterns in attitudes across the age groups which we think are important for the future. But we believe the findings of this exploratory work will be interesting to members of the general public who want to know what their neighbours do, to taxpayers who want to know where their tax money goes, to students of public administration who aspire to these positions, and to senior bureaucrats who are trying to change the way government operates.

43

Chapter Three 'How We Do Things around Here"

"Organizational reality" is a concept similar to what academic and head office literature frequently refers to as "organizational culture." Much of this reality emanates from the shared values that govern people's actions and which not surprisingly were very much the traditional values of fairness, equity, and responsiveness associated with public service; but it is also affected by the structure of the organization and some aspects of the job itself. o Yes, there is a culture to the Corrections branch. There is a culture of law enforcement. The culture is one of a gallows humour. I suspect there is a lot of that, because if you were not able to laugh at the reality of this business, there is an understanding that nothing is surprising. WHAT IS THE M E A N I N G

OF O R G A N I Z A T I O N A L R E A L I T Y ?

In the 1980s organizational culture was considered to be "the newest and most controversial of the schools of organization theory."1 Epitomized and popularized to a large degree in Peters and Waterman's In Search of Excellence,2 "organizational culture" and the manipulation of the informal organization became the management panacea of the 1980s as managers tried to find a costless means of improving productivity and performance. Organizational culture was one of the most studied aspects of organizations through the 1980s.3 The search for how to create a corporate culture, creating "shared meanings" or "a culture-bearing interest,"4 became almost the holy grail of management theory. The thinking suggested that there should be a unifying culture which is the

How We Do Things around Here glue that holds an organization together. According to such thinking, this culture is set by those at the top and spreads to all levels of the organization, encouraging a certain uniformity of thinking and action on the part of employees. The idea is that it will supplement the command and control side of the organization and encourage employees to follow organizational norms even in situations not covered by standard operating procedures. Theoretically, an organization with a strong internalized culture would need relatively few firm rules; employees would simply voluntarily conform to the expectations set out in the organizational culture. In the public sector, much of the drive to create an organizational culture became part of the drive for administrative reform under the assumption that if people's willingness to work and to take on greater responsibilities could be increased, there would be a higher level of productivity.5 Recently the "culture thesis" has come under some criticism, in part because of theoretical or conceptual inconsistencies, and in part because it has not delivered the promised improvement in performance.6 For example, it is not clear whether the leader of the organization is part of the culture or above it, nor is it clear exactly what role culture plays in an organization. Is it purely the informal values of the organization—the "shared values legitimating patterns of social practices,"7 as Wildavsky has defined it—or is it a more formal part of the organization ? Neither is it clear whether or how a culture can be created. Although leadership can affect culture, it is inherently an evolutionary concept that develops from the interplay of formal roles and informal interactions within the workplace. While management can attempt to design the culture, there is some question as to whether it can control it. Finally, empirical tests have not supported the assumption that a strong organizational culture can lead to improved performance. While studies have identified a correlation between culture and performance, the direction of the causal relationship is not clear. Good performance tends to co-exist with good culture, and poor performance with poor culture, but it is also logical that morale and attitudes would be negative in a badly performing organization and positive in a well-performing organization.8 As a result, by the end of the decade it was not known whether performance was enhanced by a good organizational culture. In effect, it was unclear how the relationship between reality and performance should be perceived.9 Still, despite the lack of empirical proof that there is a relationship between a happy worker and a productive worker, intuitive logic certainly suggests that people who enjoy coming to work will work better.10 45

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When we first asked people about the culture of their organization and who set it, most did not understand the question. It became apparent that this concept was not in everyday use in the field. When we explained that "culture" referred to "something that makes your organization different from other organizations," or the idea that anywhere in the country you could walk into an office and know that this particular office was a Canada Employment Centre or a social welfare office, understanding began to dawn. People can identify the existence of an atmosphere, a set of values, and a unity within their organization, and they can articulate the influence it has on their day-to-day working environment. It can be positive; it can be negative; it can change the way people work; or it can simply differentiate one organization, or one part of an organization, from another. It can be exemplified either through formal rules or more informal group norms, but it does exist. The finding that the term "culture" was misunderstood was not surprising. As outlined in later chapters, a great deal of both the management literature and the lore of head office is at odds with the reality of the field office and, as numerous authors have pointed out, much management literature is based upon ideology rather than empirical research.11 For this reason, we have chosen to use the term "reality" rather than "culture" to express this concept. We have also returned to the ideas of Chester Barnard, which seem to express more accurately our respondents' idea of "organizational reality."12 Barnard was one of the first writers to make the distinction between the formal and the informal organization. The formal organization consists of the hierarchical structures and the written rules of the organization while the informal organization is concerned with group norms and behaviour. By definition the informal organization cannot be structured, although it can be influenced by leadership and style of the organization or work unit. Barnard recognized that "when the individual has become associated with a cooperative enterprise he has accepted a position of contact with others similarly associated."13 From this contact there arise interactions between these persons individually, and these interactions are social." Barnard suggests five aspects of the work experience which are important for understanding the interaction between the formal and informal organization: 1) the factors which give the individual a sense of feeling a part of the organization; 2) the idea that authority is a matter of mutual consent and has to be accepted by those being controlled; 3) the system of communication and sense of cohesion; 4) the fact that the workplace is governed by personal integrity, equity, and respect; and finally, 5) the recognition that there are more than monetary rewards within the workplace.14 46

How We Do Things around Here Within the rest of this chapter, we discuss what our respondents perceive as the organizational reality of their work and their workplace, and the values and factors that influence and change it. Interestingly, the values expressed tended to be these ethics of traditional public service: equity, responsiveness, integrity, and fairness.15 Most of those interviewed did not see their organizations as having a strong, unifying organizational reality but did have a sense of what demarcated the reality of their workplace. One very telling aspect of respondents' perceptions of the organizational reality was the use of the words "we" or "they" to refer to the organization: o It is a pride in your own organization—not just your individual section but in the whole department. In our case the pride is waning a little bit, but there is still a lot of us who think substance is important. Or, as respondents put it: o Organization culture is on a geographic basis. It seems to me that the people in the regions are pretty much independent operators, and they value innovation, and they value the ability to work oneon-one with clients. That starts to break down immediately when you get into layers in Ottawa. o It is much more a regionally based identification. It depends at times if in fact you are dealing with an advisory or a different point of view, or a different value base. You might see people identify with the division in relationship to another division. More often than not it would be very regional-based, in the sense that we come from a very decentralized structure and a lot of the flexibility and a lot of autonomy have been left to the region to decide how they would deliver services. WHAT "CREATES" A REALITY ? The literature reflects considerable debate about what creates the reality of an organization, and particularly about what aspects of the structure of an organization are important. The aspects of the organization that the people we interviewed cited as being significant to them in creating the organizational reality were very similar. These related to both the formal and informal structures of the organization and corresponded with the attributes that Barnard suggested played a part in keeping the informal organization working with, rather than against, 47

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the formal organization. There does, then, seem to be some consensus that, while leadership and authority structure are important, a sense of cohesion and belonging, autonomy and mutual respect, shared values and good communication are also important.16 Authority Structure and Leadership It is clear that some of the more formal aspects of a corporate reality were established by the people at the top, not necessarily with mission statements and core values but by their overall attitude to the work of the organization. These attitudes produced both positive and negative results: o This is a very good organization to work for. The people are excellent. My boss is a very committed and highly ethical person, and I have learned a lot from him. Some departments are very hierarchical, and they run things in almost a regulatory or quasi-military fashion. Everything winds up like ducks, and the top duck quacks, and everybody follows suit. In departments like ours we have a lot of delegated authority and we are expected to do the reverse. In fact, our corporate culture is such that my boss is an ADM [Assistant Deputy Minister] equivalent, but he is based in the regions. o Management stick their heads in the sand and look after their own jobs. They don't care about what is really going on, and they make no attempt to vary the job or make it more interesting. As a result my dedication to my job is unlike other peoples'. It [the reality] has been "look after number one," and this is not what I am like as a character. But essentially the reality of this organization, the way this organization is, makes me look like that. Some identified the organizational aura with particular individuals. A number of employees referred to particular senior managers who had really unified the department: o The president is the person really responsible for the lightening up of things here. He is an old field man himself and knows what we are up against. In fact, I bet he knows half of the field office managers themselves. Under him we have been given a lot more authority and flexibility. Before it was all top-down authority models. In some cases people referred to managers who had left the department as long as five years before the interview but still ranked large in 48

How We Do Things around Here the minds of employees. Many Canada Employment Centre employees attributed a dramatic change in the reality of the organization to the appointment of a particular deputy minister. It was also clear that the immediate supervisor, often the office manager, was of major importance. Respondents sometimes expressed little sense of receiving a reality from head office: o In our place I think it is because of the manager and the supervisor. Other local offices do not have their own supervisor. They share with some other section. What probably also helps is that our manager is fairly young, early thirties. The former manager retired at sixty-five. He was from the old school. He didn't understand some of the women. He didn't understand staff wanted to go home for kids. The manager we have now has kids and his wife works. o It is the supervisors. It is absolutely 100 per cent the supervisors. And because they are so important in an open door policy or whether or not you have someone who is very closed, whether you have someone who is directive, or whether you've got someone who is very participative, supervisors can make or break the environment. In an organization with a bad reality, good supervisors can make things better. They cannot make them excellent, but they can improve them by insulating the field office from some of the problems in head office. But even in an organization with a good reality overall, or within the local office, a bad manager or supervisor can destroy that atmosphere in a very short period of time: o There is no doubt in my mind that [name of manager] makes this branch. He is the one that makes this branch what it is. He is very approachable. He is always there. He is very understanding, and he is very, very fair. o This used to be a really nice place to work. Everyone used to chip in and do a little more than they had to. Like me, for example: I am bilingual, so I would do any little bits of translation that had to be done rather than sending it out. Then we got this new supervisor. All she seems to be interested in is looking good for the bosses and her next promotion. She is on so many task forces she is never here. Everyone has become so demoralized—we don't even have coffee together any more. We go separately to different places downstairs. 49

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It was clear that managers did have the ability to make a difference. An individual who had been in the same office long enough to be able to give a comparison of the differences in managers told this story: o The managers we've had have sort of gone from one extreme to the other, the sublime to the ridiculous. The first manager who was here was very conservative. He was quite young, and this was his first job as a manager. He was young. He was keen. We did a lot of things together, but he did not take many chances. The next manager was older and very experienced. He had been manager in a number of different places. He was also more of a "people" person. He would walk around and interact with the staff. That set a better comfort level, and it made a difference in separating the "them" and the "us." Rather than them being the managers and us the flunkeys, it was us, the office, and them, "everyone else." He also let you have a lot more flexibility in the kind of things you could do, and he was willing to take chances. The next manager was female, which was a change. She had some really off-the-wall ideas. There was no real interaction with the majority of people in the office. She had a group of people she would associate with and that was a bit of a clique. It was a bit uncomfortable at times, and she tended not to give the staff much support. Now we have a manager who comes from the national office which is a very different perspective than that of the branch. He has a very friendly open-door policy and has a tendency not to want to deal with unpleasantness. As a result, he has pulled a couple of things that I think would surprise people and has lost the trust of a number of people in the office. But all of them were different in their way, and we have to keep in mind that we are all getting older together and we may be getting a little less tolerant. The second case is from a Canada Employment Centre where one manager made a difference: o In the last five years, mainly because of the change in the deputy minister, we have had some really big changes in the type of leadership we had. And certainly now we have a great deal more flexibility than we had in the past, and, I believe, women managers in other departments have had. And this flexibility makes a big difference. When I went into the job in the northern office last year, it was like taking a step back in 50

How We Do Things around Here time. The manager I replaced was a bit old-fashioned, and there you have the counter with the long line-ups of people, disgruntled and unhappy. So I brought my people together and said, "You can't like doing this ? Let's open up the window and let some sun shine in." And they said, "No, we don't like haying people yelling at us all the time." So with a few simple changes we have managed to turn it around. There are still some line-ups, but the clients are not as unhappy and things are working a lot better. In addition to the management climate, the rules of the organization and the way in which they were interpreted also made a difference: o Things have changed here. They are not as stringent anymore. We used to have an error rate on everything we did. We don't work that way anymore because it was so demeaning to people. On any given day you make mistakes. They used to write up your errors and hand them back to you. Now you just have to correct them. It used to be like an old-fashioned convent school, and now it's a lot more like the university. o There are two lunch times and two coffee breaks. You pick early or late when you start and stay that way forever. Unless you make a request to change because you want to eat or have coffee with different people, you usually take all your breaks with the same people. We had a case last month when a guy, one of the guys in the office who was going to be best man at a wedding, asked if he could change his lunch just for one day. He was turned down. Basically if he wanted to change his lunch he had to make it as a permanent change. Yet this is a guy who looks after ten million dollars worth of tax assessments on a regular basis. In one particular case poor human resource practices, or unfair treatment, was directly linked to perceptions of a poor organizational reality. In the discussion about what contributed to an unhealthy reality, a program officer with the federal government outlined and supported with written documentation a lengthy history of harassment from her immediate supervisor which seemed to verge on persecution. Other people in the same office in positions both above and below the program officer independently in interviews raised the treatment of this program officer by her program manager as a factor contributing to the bad atmosphere in the entire office. The problem seemed to be not just the unfair treatment but that it was well known in the office and by senior management and had been allowed to continue. This sort of situation

51

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will be looked at further in the discussion of human resource systems in chapter 5. Equity and Mutual Respect In establishing the organizational reality, leadership is clearly important, especially the role leaders play in setting the rules within the office, maintaining rule, and managing to maintain some degree of stability. In particular, people were bothered by there being two sets of rules within the office. Indeed, this was one of the most common ways in which people articulated that the organization was not a good place to work—when there was one set of rule for the "twinks" and another for the "big shots." o I tend to give people a lot of leeway. People might start working at noon because they will work until nine at night. Much of their work is when other people are not working. They work out a time schedule that suits themselves. If Mrs. Smith can't come in at eight or nine, then she might come in at noon. That is fine as long as we know what is happening and we know where everyone is at any given time. But they still have to say this is the week they come in at ten or noon, etc. Because people still phone in regular work hours and you are providing service to the public, it is only respectful to tell them that someone won't be getting back to them until after lunch. They have flexibility, but it is not a free-for-all. It makes sense, and it is organized, and it is the same for everyone including me. As one person put it, "This interview is vacation time for me, but it wouldn't be if I was a more senior person." And we found this to be quite true. People at the more junior levels often had to be met during their lunch hours or coffee breaks. In some cases we met away from their office, in the lobby or in coffee shops. But by the time people reached the level where they had their own office, we were always able to meet on company time. The concern about two sets of rules tended to be associated with what human resource specialists and head office call "in-service training" but which field people call "kiting." This is when people are promoted above the heads of people who are already in the office, often for affirmative action or training purposes. The net effect is junior people teaching more senior people how to do the job. In some cases this was a function of the admirable goal of trying to give head office people experience in the field. Unfortunately the movement was more often seen simply as a means of seasoning the fast trackers:

52

How We Do Things around Here o It really gets to me sometimes. Here I am, I work at my job, I take extra courses, I do all these things, and then they've got these other people and they are so concerned about making up the numbers that they promote them over you, or they make you teach them how to do their jobs so they can promote them somewhere else. In some cases they make all of these concessions for people who won't move. I've moved four times in my various jobs. I don't see why everybody else doesn't have to move too. o They've read the books, and there is a bit more informal communication between management and worker, but that's misleading. There is a clear management/worker split with management putting down "those girls" when things go wrong. Management go through the motions—they say "we're all one big family" but that's BS, it's not true. They have little respect for their staff. Dignity and respect are two words which are not in their vocabulary. They're very sensitive and their little egos have to be pacified like little boys. It's all words. It has to do with power and control. They have a real fear that if they give anyone power they will look bad. They would rather bring in someone totally foreign to the division because they will have more control over a person who has less knowledge. Three of four supervisors are men, all of the directors are from outside the system—we trained them all. This quotation raises another point that seemed to affect the reality—whether people perceived that everyone in the organization was working more or less toward the same goal: o We are often being asked by our management to operate as a team within the department over the new regional office. I find that very difficult to grasp in a sense of: fine, it is a good intellectual concept, but the team is really not myself and the person in fisheries. It is myself and the industry, myself and the client. Management, even in such simple things as performance appraisals, does not value it. They perceive the teamwork between administrative support and their Ottawa counterparts and ourselves, and most of us think that is very, very secondary. Essentially, again, this is a case in which the organization did not see people working towards the same goals. Difference in rules also reflected the relationships between the field and head office: 53

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When I go to head office, I have to travel on the weekend to be there first thing Monday morning. In fact, nowadays they want us to go Saturday to save the air fare. But when they come out here, they leave after breakfast on Monday and then they want me to wait around until they arrive. It doesift matter that I have kids who need to get places. The only time they travel on weekends is when they want to go fishing or visit their kids at the taxpayers' expense. It's things like that that make us all look bad. People often tended to talk in terms of their office reality versus that of the head office. Because of this distinction, we developed what we call the concept of a fractured organizational reality. This concept, which cuts between the head office and the field offices with regional offices as the "person in the middle," is discussed more fully in chapter 6. It could be argued that the idea of a fractured organizational reality is not unique to the divide between field offices and head office. Numerous fractures can exist between central agencies and departments and even between departments and between units within departments. This is not, however, what we mean by a fractured organization reality. Organizational reality sets one organization apart from another. Therefore there is supposed to be a difference between the reality of a central agency and a line department, or between different types of departments. A problem, however, develops when there is distinction in the reality of a single organization because it makes it difficult for the organization to function as a common unit. As one federal employee put it, "This department has our way of doing things. We have to be very client orientated. We all have to be." Belonging: A Sense of Cohesion and Shared Values Organizations that had widely shared values and which fostered a sense of cohesion tended to elicit positive comments from our respondents. These tended to be organizations with a clear, stable mandate and common technology: o I am surrounded by people who have a sincere commitment to the people who they are trying to help, people with values that are similar to my own, who are trying to make things better, who are trying to offer service that allows people to lead a healthier and happier existence. o Compte tenu que nous sommes dans un des plus vieux services, il y a beaucoup de traditions et les gens ont de Pexperience et se

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How We Do Things around Here connaissent bien. La permanence du mandat dans le temps fait que la culture est plus forte qu'ailleurs. o On est un projet qui connait un succes dans son demarrage. On demontre done notre pertinence sur la marche. Tous nos employes sont ici pour faire usage de leur creativite. Les aspects plus positifs c'est d'abord de commencer un projet. C'est assez rare qu'on a cette opportunite. Ici, on a tout commence. On a bati 1'equipe, on a cree 1'esprit d'equipe. La beaute de ce projet c'est qu'on peut le considerer comme notre petite entreprise. A shared history and common symbols are also an important part of an organizational reality. We found this very often in housing, where, because there is no defined avenue to obtain university education, people tended to have gone through common internal training processes and had come to know other people in the organizations fairly well. Organizations based on a particular profession or shared knowledge base such as fisheries or agriculture tended to be similar. Departments like these have a relatively high level of commitment to the organization, and a strong sense of internal reality, despite downsizing: o Agriculture Canada has a very strong commitment to people. They have really gone out of their way so people will not lose their jobs in the downsizing. That makes a difference to everybody here. o There was never an inland waters culture. It was a Water Survey of Canada culture—strictly the hydrometric water quantity program. Very simple, straightforward: you could identify with it, and people did. For the first 20 years when I was attached to water survey I would have to say, yeah, there was an engineering culture, we did our thing and no one else in the country was doing it, and we did it very well. This was lost when we got into the interdisciplinary thing. As soon as they had to do these ecosystem things they lost the culture ... The culture is determined by the hydrographers themselves—a pride in our own organization. That is waning a bit in the face of all the cutbacks in Fisheries and Oceans, but a few of us still think substance is important. Some other examples of departments that fit this criterion were the provincial highways, social services, federal level customs, and income tax departments.17 In the areas of agriculture and highways, there was some evidence of an organizational reality that actually crossed federalprovincial boundaries. 55

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The employees of each of these departments also shared a common professional background. The highways department people were all engineers, the agriculture people tended to be scientists, and the taxation people were accountants. In many cases not only had everyone had the same education but often had even gone to the same university. Observed one inverviewee, "I think I may be the only professional in this department that did not go to the University of Manitoba." The customs and housing people are probably not, strictly speaking, members of a profession, but members of the former group see themselves as law enforcement officers, and long-serving members of the latter group have a sense of mission extending from the post-war housing crisis. This common professional background means the employees bring a similar perspective with them to their work and that some of the moulding has already been done as they have learned their professions. It also facilitates communication, because these people already share a common language, a common way of thinking about things: o The department traditionally has not been a thumbs-down kind of department. It allows the people that work here to do the job and make the decisions that have to be made. But our management has always relied very heavily on the engineering thought processes. They regard the decisions made by engineers very highly. I admit this can be a problem if you are not an engineer. The down side of the shared values and sense of cohesion is that those members of the organization who had a different background or came from a different culture tended to feel excluded: o It's fine for these guys, they all went to school together and have been friends since college. I haven't. But that doesn't mean I don't know my stuff. Just because I look at things differently doesn't make me wrong. o I'm the only one in my unit with a degree. It makes it difficult sometimes, and I am clearly resented. Oddly enough, that seems to bother people more than that I am the only woman. This sense of shared values and cohesion was also a source of cleavage between field offices and head office. There was a clear perception that the more senior levels did not know what the job of the street level administrators was, nor how they went about doing it :18 56

How We Do Things around Here o I have a lot of contempt for those senior boys. A lot of them are brainless wonders, and I don't know how they ever got where they are. I would like to see them right at the front desk trying to deal with some of our clients. They are so far out of touch they probably couldn't find the front door. o People in managerial positions tend to look at themselves and how they see things being done as opposed to how they really are done by their subordinates. They are a bit redundant in their jobs; instead of going ahead, they go around. They talk about communication, and they talk about teamwork, but perversely, sometimes they work against it. We expected that the size of the unit would be a major factor in developing a sense of belonging, but this was not entirely true. It makes sense that it is easier to maintain a well-defined sense of belonging in a smaller organizational unit than in a larger one. Many people in small organizations spoke of the easy camaraderie among staff and the fact that they have a clear understanding of the operation of the organization. It did seem, however, that it was easier to change the reality of larger organizations. This produces somewhat of a paradox. While small organizations tended to have the better internal reality, they also tended to have the very worst reality in other cases—when a small organization becomes poisoned or bad, it is almost impossible to correct it, short of Parkinson's prescription of burning it to the ground and starting out again.19 In part this could reflect the enforced intimacy of small organizations or small offices in which even one person could produce a number of problems. There was a reluctance to face the problem and quarantine the individual: o My perception is that support staff and non-professional people are viewed as second class staff. We have a lot of administrative problems which are not addressed. For example there is one very strong personality here at the office and she is a very long-term employee. Her record is that she tends to have personal problems with at least one other person in the office. The manager does not deal with it, and this is common among many of the offices in this organization. In the larger organizations, particularly with better developed and more rationalized personnel systems, "one-person problems," even in a small office, tended less often to be recognized as a problem. 57

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An Ability to Communicate The final component of the organizational reality identified by people was the communication system. This system had to be rather intensive to be effective; the simple exchange of memoranda or reading the same operating manuals did not suffice. The communication system was also fostered when people moved around to a variety of different locations within the same department. People who have worked together for a year or two early in their careers can maintain that relationship over an extended period through contacts as members of departmental committees and similar experiences. o Most of our contact now is within a region. We work in close partnership with the provincial and local authorities. This requires a lot of internal and external communication. We have a management team, and we work very hard at keeping up to date on what is going on. o We work hard keeping the information flow to staff very strong both in person as well as in written format. We withhold nothing from our staff. o I go out and talk to the staff in the morning and in the afternoon to get a sense of what the mood is in the office. It's a lot different from what it used to be. When communication was good, people felt they were being given the room to do their job, but also that there was support being given to them: o Basically you're on your own. In a month I make contact with my supervisor maybe once or twice on the phone or through e-mail. That is how little interaction we have. At one point I did not see him for about eight months. It's nice not to have someone over your head constantly monitoring you, but sometimes you feel really alone. o We do a lot of reading. We keep up to date with the various journals. There are workshops we send our staff to. I always have my door open and so my staff can come in and out. We are not that large a group; we have about ninety staff in total, and we are a very close knit group and are very caring of each other and what happens to each other. 58

How We Do Things around Here Most people had developed a series of contacts in head office to whom they could go with specific questions. Interestingly, most of these contacts were developed through the organization's informal network. The formal organization seldom recognized the need for this kind of contact, or people had learned that the contacts specified by the formal rules were simply not as useful as those they had developed on their own. Many people had cultivated these contacts over the years because they did not feel that they could approach their immediate field office supervisors with detailed technical problems. Respondents expressed several reasons why they would contact people other than their immediate supervisors. In some cases, field managers were "professional managers," with little expertise in the operatives' daily responsibilities. Thus, operatives would go to these managers for advice about personnel regulations or other management issues but would not approach them about more technical problems. Operatives would discuss these problems with peers in their office or other field offices, or occasionally with specialists in head office. In other cases, the consolidation of departments had resulted in the reorganization of field offices, and the new field office manager had little expertise in some areas of operation. This forced field officers to seek advice from head office. A surprisingly large number of field staff did not produce any sort of activity report or similar document for head office to account for their time or explain their activities. In some cases, this report had been superseded by computer technology. Many field officials do all their work through a computer network tied in with head office. Thus, each file they process generates an entry in the computer system. Interested staff at head office can access this system and generate statistics and reports, unbeknownst to field office staff. Some people had a vague idea that their work might be monitored in this way, but most doubted that anyone in head office cared very much what they did. A few people prepared detailed activity reports that went to head office. These were usually focused on accounting for their time and showing results achieved. No one we interviewed mentioned receiving feedback as a result of these reports. When asked if they knew whether anyone in head office looked at their reports, they usually laughed and admitted that they had no way of knowing. A few daring people said that they had unilaterally stopped sending the reports and no one had noticed. In summary the impression given by people was that leadership was not as important as "equity and mutual respect." All of the negative factors seemed to reflect this. "Kiting," different goals, different rules, 59

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and poor communication were all problems or complaints that went against deeply held values of equity and ideas about the way people felt they should be treated.20 Thus, it was not the leaders themselves who were necessarily the problem. Certainly there were cases of "bad" management, but on the whole responses focused more on general situations, the atmosphere of the organization, and in particular systematic and systemic patterns. This finding is consistent with other studies which have found that individuals in organizations have strong normative standards of behaviour and will impose them on others and resent it when they are not followed.21 Box 3.1 summarizes an example of what sounds like an ideal organization from the standpoint of a shared culture or organizational reality. THE REALITY OF CHANGE

It should not be surprising that when a group of employees has experienced a number of reorganizations and consolidations, they have more difficulty developing a cohesive organizational reality. Several people told us wistfully about how they once understood exactly what their department stood for, but after a series of reorganizations they no longer understood what their real role was. Some of the alienation within offices also seemed to be a product of the degree of change going on within the organization—change in which the purpose, the timing, or the expectations were not well communicated. This was a source of stress and complaint echoed across governments, departments, and levels, from clerks to managers: o The biggest frustration is not knowing how long it will stay like this. Right now we are going on a month-to-month basis. o Something changes every day, and this definitely causes problems. It causes a lot of problems for the staff and for the public. It is a matter of confidence: you can never be sure—100 per cent sure— that what you are doing or what you are saying is correct, because it may have changed yesterday and no one told us. o We are not even able to keep up with the new regulations because we are so bogged down at work. We sit at our desks and work all day, and someone up the hall thinks we're goofing off. You give them your best seven and a half hours a day, and often it is monotonous. Then you see others who are not doing that, and you wonder why. 60

How We Do Things around Here Box 3.1 The Ideal Culture? Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration (An agency of Agriculture Canada)

We are a soil and water conservation agency. We operate in the three prairie provinces, which are divided into five regions. I have a staff of about fifty people who are located in four district offices. We operate directly with clients. We offer technical assistance and some modest financial assistance for farmers or rural municipalities. We provide [shelter belt material] to farmers. We offer technical assistance for water related projects, irrigation. We try to make the technical skills we have available to the client. Our headquarters is in Regina. The technical "brain thrust" of the organization is centred in Regina, but the technical service is available at each one of our district offices. The service is available through walk-in. They write to us or call us— we are their partners. We have a very good reputation. We are an organization that actually does something. The rural issue goes beyond the agriculture industry. We try to apply our expertise and try to know as much as we can about as many other people that are involved in providing a service to rural people—Unemployment, Immigration, Economic Development and Tourism. We go to our clients and try to never say no to these people. We try to look at a bigger picture. I deal with partners, either government or private, in the agriculture sector, in the tourism sector, in the human resources sector. We deal with rural municipalities, organized farming groups. Our whole philosophy in our organization is to provide all of our services and all our skills through the districts so they can help people out there. A district officer would call us if he wants clarification of a budget item. What we have done is recognize that the business end of our organization is at the district level. We have empowered these managers with a tremendous amount of authority. Sometimes they will call to make sure that they have the amount of authority that is given to them, to doublecheck their authority. One of the reasons that this organization is so successful is that most of the people within our organization come from farms, and we can relate to the clients that we serve and we can cut through a lot of the bullshit sometimes and get to the meat of the matter. If [our] people do not live on a farm, they were probably brought up in a farming town. But should it ever materialize that we start getting people from a different background, I would see that being a big problem. How do you stay real with your clients if you haven't got some of that dirt on your shoes ? (continued overleaf) 61

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The district offices have a lot of interaction with the field offices. All the district offices are linked up by e-mail. In fact, we can e-mail anybody within PFRA. We are trying to encourage lateral communications. Partnerships are the buzz-word of the 1990s, but we have been doing it this way since the 1930s. We really mean it. I have been continually challenged in this organization. I can hardly wait to get to work in the morning. We have had extremely good leadership from the top down, and our leaders practise what they preach. Morale is very high in our organization. There has also been tremendous mobility in PFRA. Consequently, everybody knows somebody in another office. There is quite a network; it is quite a family. It is the socializing after hours where they get the sense of family. The organization is very flat. This is through recognizing that we want to be responsive, close to the client, close to the deputy. We can't afford to be too tied up in the bureaucracy: we don't have that luxury. Everyone in this office knows everyone else's family, and it is even more so in the district offices. We are one big family. We try to encourage families socializing with one another. I spend a lot of time in the district offices because the prime reason is that we are a true family department. And it is nice to be rubbing shoulders, with the networking thing at coffee each day, so that I could tell managers in another branch ... "Here's what we are doing," and sooner or later there will be opportunities that we can do things together. There is an excellent working relationship with provincial people in the field, but one of the frustrations that I have is having to spend the time of high-priced employees and having to spend my own time putting out some of these fires. I find it frustrating to spend time on something as frivolous as petty turf fighting or turf battles. Agriculture is a shared jurisdiction, and the frustrations are that at the political level or the subpolitical level on the provincial side there is a perception, which is totally unfounded, that there is overlap and duplication between what the province is doing and what we are doing. My biggest political frustration is the federal/provincial ... There are often agendas at a much higher level than PFRA, and some of the politics I referred to in the province is really wrangling and positioning on another agenda, and essentially it filters down to us. Sometimes you can be used as a pawn in this bigger picture. We have always been empowered more than most organizations, but really we have increased that a lot in the last three or four years in recognizing that these guys out there are the business end of the organization, and if we want them to do the business end, we have to give them the authority to represent the organization. The people that I have working for me are all very committed. I heard one of them say, "Our job is to make you look good."

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How We Do Things around Here Some people, however, had learned to cope with the constant change, but as discussed in chapter 7, it made them rather cynical of attempts at administrative reform. "I am a survivor," one interviewee said. "I have been in enough work situations that I am fairly flexible. I don't have any real difficulty with any of the corporate structures that do come down." Similarly, wage freezes, roll-backs, reduced staff or programs, or some combination of the above were often given as the cause of problems. In other cases it drew people together in a form of siege mentality: o The change that we feel right now is they're really looking at the financial aspect of things, and they're really trying to take some tough positions to bring things under control. So obviously we're feeling that, but that depends more on the time than whatever party happens to be in at the time and whatever stance they take. o Ce que je trouve tres difficile et negatif dans mon emploi c'est de motiver les employes. Nous avons des employes exceptionnels mais le contexte gouvernemental (gel des salaires, baisse de salaire) est extremement demotivant. Nous ne sommes pas comme 1'entreprise privee, on ne peut pas valoriser un employe de fagon concrete avec des bonus. There were relatively few stories of a major reality shift overall, even with a change in government. Perhaps not surprisingly, given the financial and political climate, there were more cases of worsening reality than of improvement. As one woman put it, "What do you expect when we've been having coffee together for thirty years and every time someone leaves they are not replaced?" But downsizing and change were not always viewed as negative: o I used to be the only one in a section of five under forty. Then they combined four sections. Now there are three of us in a division (we don't have sections anymore) of fifteen. It makes it more fun to have people your age around. o There's not a lot of the old national culture left. What you are talking about is what we used to call the "old school tie" syndrome of Immigration which was extremely structured. That was very much eastern university and ex-military that ran Immigration. Some of this alienation comes from the recent mania for merging organizations. This kind of basic change makes it difficult for staff to feel part of an organization that is constantly changing around them: 63

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o People on the employment side tend to vie with those on the unemployment insurance side, which they see as hard nosed and out to get the client, whereas they perceive themselves to be in the helping mode. People on the ui side also perceive themselves as being in more of a helping mode but still they are perceived by their colleagues across the hall as auditors. There are many cases where counsellors and ui agents work together. But there are still tensions and those perceptions which were there in 1975 when we relocated. The realities also change: o I think there is a very strong culture. It is being challenged in a sense that we are now merging with two other departments whose culture is very, very different. Regulatory, read-the-rule-book, implement-it-and-insist-on-compliance departments and I think this really challenges our culture as to how we can get around that. o I would say that our culture is very similar in the customs component. If you went to the GST component, or the taxation component, you would see a very different culture. Those cultures will merge. You see differences in each custom office, but the basic philosophies are the same. THE POLITICAL REALITY

Public organizations are different from private organizations in a number of ways. The most obvious of these is that public organizations are involved with both politicians and politics. We asked respondents a number of questions about the impact of politics and political change. Most of those surveyed reported some contact with politicians or at least political staff. Generally this contact was with people who worked in constituency offices who were seeking advice or assistance on behalf of a constituent. In most cases the contact was reported as being both polite and proper in that inappropriate favours were not requested. The constituency worker was generally asking what could be done in a particular situation or seeking clarification about why a particular decision had been made. There were virtually no reports of inappropriate pressure being applied. Observed one worker, "[We] have enjoyed a pretty good relationship with MPS. Certainly they'll try to influence funding on projects ... or they will intercede on behalf of a particular individual. For the most part, it has not been an adversarial situation. It's a lot less political than people think, and the MPS know what you are able to do and what you can't do." 64

How We Do Things around Here Many of the people who worked in provincial highways departments suggested that there were geographic shifts in priorities when a new government came to power: Are you affected significantly by the political environment ? o Not normally ... Some people may write to their politician and say, "Look, I'd like this done," or "I got this problem." In a lot of cases, it's ignorance on their part, because if they came to us directly, they more than likely would get quicker service. In a lot of cases, they would go to the politician, and the politician would come and relay this concern. They would also, a lot of times, ask for clarification of maybe what's going on. The other thing too, of course, is this is a government department, and if your member is a member of the sitting government, then chances are more funds for special projects will be available. If there are people living on a road that they think should be rebuilt, should be repaved or reconstructed, and they give a petition, well, chances are the money will be forthcoming, if you have a member of the government as opposed to a member of the opposition. That being the case, if you happen to be working in an area of a sitting member, chances are your workload will be heavier ... The politicians ... would never step in and tell you how to do your work ... I've always been very pleased with the politicians I've worked with. o Involvement at the ministerial level is the same regardless of what party is in power. It's just different regions. The emphasis changes depending on the locale he is from, but I haven't noticed any major difference based on ideology. You pave a road which we would not consider our priority as a department, but it is the minister's priority, so it gets done. It is one of the drawbacks of a democratic society, and I think it probably is a drawback that's worth it. This was generally not viewed as a serious problem by those interviewed. In most provinces, there is a significant backlog of needed road improvement in all areas of the province. Deciding to spend a bit more in county A and a bit less in county B is not a serious attack on professionalism. However, there were cases where employees did resent the political involvement, such as this person who worked at a Canada Employment Centre: o The absolute worst part is working with the political bureaucracy— this is a really political department. Election time what is the number one thing [is] "jobs, jobs, jobs," and we are in the forefront. Any 65

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program/project we do has to go to an MR If we recommend or don't recommend something, it goes to the MP, and he puts his comments on it, and if he doesn't agree it goes to the minister—and the minister decides. There is always a political slant to everything we do, and that is the most frustrating part of the job. Frequently we do have an opportunity to give our side of the story when they are in the newspaper and frequently the decision has been politically driven. A housing official, who told a similar story of having to keep local politicians of the proper political stripe informed of project openings and problems during construction, summed up the situation rather eloquently with a shrug: "It goes with the territory." When asked what impact a change of government had on their work, most field level public servants felt that they were not seriously affected by the broader political environment in the capital city. They said that they did not see any immediate difference in their day-to-day work activity when a new government came to power or a new minister was appointed. Many expressed total indifference to the political process, like this public servant who was asked about the impact of a change in government: "I think it's too soon to tell. But I'm not a big government follower, to be honest with you. I don't thrive on politics." A minority saw real differences following major changes such as the election of the NDP in Ontario in 1990: Is your work environment affected by a change in government ? o Absolutely! It's never been so obvious as it has been with the change to the NDP government ... It's not even the political—it's the potential political. You have to keep in mind at all times that what is happening can always be a political situation. You get somebody annoyed at legal aid or the community legal services and that has the potential to become a politically contentious issue so quickly ... In terms of the workload ... the changes that the NDP government has initiated have brought an enormous workload onto staff. And a lot of it is changes that have been swift changes without practical foresight into the implications. It's so easy to say "Let's change the legislation." While public servants did not experience major immediate changes when a new government came to power, they were aware that in subtle ways the election of a government that was sympathetic to their program or the appointment of a strong minister was helpful to them. 66

How We Do Things around Here o I think if you are in a government that sympathizes with your program, of course, things are going to be easier. We took deeper breaths when the Liberals came to power because we felt that they were more interested. But the general view was that changes in governments in the capital city were too far away (in several senses of that phrase) to have an immediate impact on field offices. People were more concerned about the minister they would get than the political stripe of the party he or she represented: o Of course it makes some difference who the minister is, but that's more—that's a little bit higher level, and it's not something that you feel day to day. It's not something you're conscious of on an ongoing basis. Now, of course, we are, in terms of whatever implications there may be for staffing and that sort of thing, but apart from that, in terms of philosophy or whatever, those things may become apparent in time but they're a bit more long-range than immediate. Field officials reported subtle, long-term shifts after a changing of the guard. However, they viewed most shifts as incremental rather than fundamental. This could reflect on the ability of the captain of the ship to make truly fundamental changes in long-established policy. Alternatively, it could suggest that changes that seem fundamental when viewed from the top are modified as they find their way down the organizational hierarchy to minimize the impact they have on the environment in which public servants actually work. CONCLUSION Although respondents had some difficulty with the academic concept of a corporate culture, they were easily able to identify situations in which their office was a good or bad place to work, where there was a strong or weak sense of belonging, and what things differentiated one organization from another. Good organizations were ones in which people perceived themselves as all having the same goals. Often this meant organizations in which people shared an education, had the opportunity to build up informal networks, and perceived the organization as having the characteristics suggested by Barnard and discussed at the beginning of this chapter. Interestingly, no one mentioned socialization or social interaction outside the office, although it occurred as a factor in terms of corporate reality. 67

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Organizations that were perceived as having an unhappy reality tended to be those with a lack of mutual consent with respect to authority; lack of communication and cohesion; lack of personal integrity, equity and respect, and incentives; and lack of mechanisms to make the individual feel part of the formal organization. In these cases the sense of belonging came entirely from the informal organization and, as expected, was often perceived to be working at cross-purposes to the formal goals of the organization. These themes will be discussed in later chapters. To summarize, a good corporate reality seemed to be found in an organization or an office in which "they leave you alone to let you get on doing the job that you are being paid to do." Implicit in this quotation, perhaps, is the additional comment, "and trust you to do the job well."

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Chapter Four Service to the Public My little bit of personal satisfaction is being able to correct the things we have done wrong. Assessment reviewer, Revenue Canada You are the field, you are the first line. Social welfare official

Most of the people we interviewed clearly liked their jobs and put a high priority on service and helping people: o Yesterday I had this man here and he was on the way to a fiftieth reunion of his war regiment. He told me his wife had died last week. He didn't know if he should go, but he had been looking forward to it. I felt so sad I tried to do a bit extra for him. o Un aspect important et positif de mon travail est le contact avec le public. Si on aime rencontrer les gens pour les aider, c'est tres valorisant. o On a typical day as the administrator of the office I come in and go through the correspondence, and that will be the day. But one call could come in and I have to deal with that, because we are at the service of the public and we can't tell the public, "Sorry, I have to do this and that, and then I will deal with you." THE SKILLS NECESSARY FOR SERVICE

We also asked people what skills they thought were necessary for doing their job. We purposely left the word "skills" vague enough that people could answer in a number of ways. They could refer to broad knowledge-based skills such as engineering or accounting, or they could

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be more specific, mentioning knowledge of the relevant legislation or regulations, or they could refer to their own personal qualities or abilities. The responses ran across this entire range. For many jobs, a background in a discipline such as engineering or accounting was essential, and virtually everyone had to have some knowledge of the legislation he or she was administering. However, the unprompted response from the overwhelming majority of interviewees related to communications or "people" skills—in this context, those two words mean virtually the same thing. o You have to have people skills. You have to know how to work with people. You really do: I mean, that's primary. Many of us are learned but have no life skills. Very intelligent, but hard to cope ... You need those people skills to interact. I think that comes with working with people. An ability to get around problems in a way that's not challenging or dictatorial or anything like that—that's very important. What skills would you say are the most important skills that you have in doing your job ? o Right now, what we're doing, I guess you could use the term people skills—the ability to sit down and listen and talk to people and find out what their problems really are. A lot of cases they'll come in and they think they've got money problems, so we sit down and do a budget ... I guess the ability to sit down and be able to talk to people and get them to relax so they'll let on to you what's going on. A highways department engineer contrasted his need to employ his engineering and people skills in this way: o I think it's administration and communication, your interpersonal skills ... A lot of people working in our department are quite knowledgeable, a lot of them have the technical expertise. Oh, there's times when I have to be called in because I have maybe more technical experience ... We have one hundred-plus employees, and the population base is very large, a lot of roads in [this] county. We've got about two thousand kilometres of roads ... So there are a lot of inquiries and you're dealing with people all the time, and you can't agree to everything that they want. So in a lot of instances you have to say no, and it's how you say that no. If you say it, and they go away and they're—I should say not happy, but at least don't let them go away angry. 70

Service to the Public Even a research scientist emphasized people skills: o The science is extremely important, but beyond that, the ability to deal diplomatically with people and to have a social sense of where people are coming from, to be able to be sensitive enough to the people that you're actually dealing with, you have to have an antenna up ... I was scared stiff when I hired a staff person last spring—[I wanted to] get somebody with some social graces. This was really important, writing ability, and the ability to organize one's thoughts either on paper or up here (points to his head)... The other thing is I think one has to project a sense of self, and I know a lot of biologists who I get along with, but they have an arrogance that they portray to the public. They don't mean to, but they come across as all-knowing and egotistical without even trying. Others mentioned related skills: o I think you have to have good listening skills. You have to have some negotiating skills. You have to have some problem-solving and conflict-resolution skills, because, as you can imagine, you have an employee group and an employer group who are not very happy with one another ... Sometimes you have to be very clear, very concise, very direct, and on the one hand what you don't want to be is a government bureaucrat ... o In my role I think the ability to be creative—that's the biggest strength that I think I carry in this position that's given me the most success. Obviously I need to have some project control, and I need personnel and managerial supervisory skills and those type of things, but the ability to take shrinking budgets and still maintain what we do and do even more, plus bring other players into the forefront through the whole public-private sector partnering—that whole concept. Some people suggested that the mix of necessary skills has changed over the years and it was not easy for everyone to adapt to the change: o Probably communications skills is probably one of the biggest things ... For me one of the most challenging things is dealing with people. I think that it's been a big change. Management has changed. When I first started, I know that it was very like military, there was a lot of retired military. It was very structured; orders were given, and that's how the thing went. [Now] we have relatively new staff, highly 71

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educated people, and I think people skills are more important because there's changes in our workforce where money isn't the big issue any more—family life is. I think you have to be a good listener, and communication, as I say, dealing with people, is probably the most important thing. Legislation changes so much you could never be an expert. I think the biggest challenge in the last five or seven years is dealing with change and helping people deal with change. This finding is significant because we heard it from so many people at middle and lower levels of the organization. It has long been understood that senior managers use their managerial and interpersonal skills more than the technical skills and knowledge that got them to their senior position. At some point in the managerial hierarchy, a person is expected to stop being an accountant, or engineer, or whatever and become a manager. What was surprising is that we found this need to employ interpersonal skills at fairly low levels in the organization in field offices. In head offices it might be possible to "hide" people with poor interpersonal skills; it is virtually impossible to "hide" anyone in a field office where almost everyone has some sort of dealings with the public. Therefore, virtually everyone must develop the people and communications skills that respondents told us are so important. DISCRETION

IN THE ADMINISTRATIVE

PROCESS

Another area we asked people about was not just their job and the pressures they felt but their attitudes toward their clients, and their perceptions of their clients and their job. In particular we were interested in the degree of discretion individuals had in carrying out their job. Because the exercise of discretion in a bureaucracy also implies some form of control over the degree of discretion exercised, we were interested in the forms and type of control which people exercised over their work. Our expectation was that we would find that, unlike the conventional conception of bureaucracies and bureaucrats that was behind many of the administrative reforms of the late 1980s and 1990s, field officers would have a considerable amount of discretion in the exercise of their responsibilities. Discretion can be a difficult word, as it often carries a negative connotation of particularism or favouritism. The Oxford Dictionary, however, defines it as "good judgement, prudence, the freedom or authority to act according to one's judgement." While the word could imply particularism, the sense in which we use the word is intended to cover a 72

Service to the Public broader range of actions in which individual judgment is exercised. In that sense, then, it has a neutral or even positive meaning. Much of the literature on field level bureaucracy has been produced by sociologists.1 Although they pay considerable attention to the notion of discretion, it tends to be in terms of patterns of bureaucratic behaviour rather than as part of the overall administrative process. As a result, they treat discretion as a case of administrative pathology rather than an essential part of the administrative process. Since rules cannot be made to cover every situation, civil servants must make their own decisions using their own judgment. Both Blau and Merton talk about how field level bureaucrats ration services ;2 Lipsky refers to categorizing, standardization, and "creaming." This latter is the process, found in many social service areas, housing and various types of rehabilitation programs, by which the easy cases are dealt with first.3 The "nice" poor people are housed first; the newly or only slightly addicted get treated first. Possibly because of the way we asked our questions, rather than using unobtrusive methods, we found little evidence of any of these forms of bureaucratic pathologies. The literature on street-level bureaucrats generally focuses on the ways in which they exercise discretion in dealing with clients.4 These studies have tended to be intensive investigations of specific organizations generally in the social service or justice fields, and tend to look at one particular bilateral relationship—that between the client and the public servant. The conclusion of much of this research has been that the clients were not as well served by the public servant as they could have been. The current study looks at the role of field-level bureaucrats in a different fashion. The scope of our study is broader and includes people who do not have extensive personal contact with clients but still provide service to citizens. Because we were concerned about the perspective of civil servants, our main source of information was the civil servants themselves. Since they were our major informants, we would not have expected to hear the same negative stories uncovered by other researchers. However, we did hear some surprisingly negative points, usually from civil servants talking about other people. Because of the difference in research strategy, the findings of this study are different from those of the street-level bureaucracy literature. This research and the previous literature focus on different issues and therefore tell different stories. As in the story of the several blind people grasping different parts of the elephant, each perception is right, but each is grasping a different part of the issue at hand. In discussing discretion, we make a distinction between policy discretion and administrative discretion. Policy discretion can be defined as 73

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the "ability to adjust the program or process to meet the needs of the client." It is the process by which the administrator is able to use what James D. Thompson called a judgmental decision strategy to change or alter programs to suit the client, or in some cases, the administrator.5 This is a de facto policy-making role. Administrative discretion takes two forms: one, the degree to which administrators can alter the structure of their day—the ordering of their work—the other, the extent to which administrators can define the job itself. Both policy discretion and administrative discretion are important. Policy discretion reduces the need for complex categorization of programs and provides greater flexibility and responsiveness.6 Administrative discretion is important because feeling in control of one's environment is an important factor in maintaining high morale and improving work satisfaction. Policy Discretion A high level of policy discretion is characterized by the ability of the administrator to make a decision without consultation or approval of a hierarchical superior, although this does not imply that the decision could not be appealed or scrutinized after the fact. (We deal with appeal and oversight in the next section.) High levels of policy discretion tended to be found in four types of cases. The first was in departments in which there was a clear technology that permeated the entire organization, for example, wildlife conservation or customs. The second was in departments where most jobs demanded high levels of education in the same discipline, for example, highways departments where everyone was an engineer, or agriculture where everyone had a degree in agriculture, or social services where a Masters in social work was the norm. Particularly at the provincial level, this often meant people were from the same university. In the third case, there was a reasonably high level of policy discretion when the work was project oriented. Each individual would work on a project (sometimes in teams), and each project required interpretation and implementation of the individual needs of the project. These were cases in which what Thompson refers to as a "craft" technology was in use; 7 income tax, forest fire fighting, and some forms of social services fit into this category. While clearly these three categories were highly correlated, they were not entirely so. Particularly with respect to education, there were cases in which people with very low levels of education had high levels of policy discretion, and vice versa. Finally, in small remote offices where there was limited oversight, a high level of policy discretion was exercised, although not always authorized. 74

Service to the Public We heard a number of examples of people exercising policy discretion and making major decisions. o On a day-to-day basis we can make—and we do make—a lot of decisions up to $10 million without consulting with our superiors, even though in theory the job only requires a Grade Ten education and one week of training. Most of us have a lot more than that, but it is not necessary. o I can independently write off arrears up to $250,000, and I just make a note in the file. Even though I work entirely alone in this office, no one even looks at my outgoing mail—but then this is viewed as only a clerk's job. o Souvent, tu dois refuser des gens qui selon la loi sont inadmissibles mais qui, en realite, sont peu coupables. Nous n'avons pas de pouvoir discretionnaire (speaker has a law degree). The degree of policy discretion varied from being very strict to "anything goes." The only limitation seemed to be the actual legislation, which was frequently cited as the ultimate limit on action. Perhaps extreme policy discretion is best exemplified by the following anecdote: o We had this project, just a couple of a million dollars. It was a very worthwhile project which had been in the pipeline for a couple of years. It was under the section of the act which requires projects be federal-provincial. But when the time came, the local federal office did not have enough money in their budget and did not know if they would be able to get it in the next budget reallocation. I happened at the same time to have a bit of slack in my budget from things which had come in below budget. So I told them we would fund the entire project—they could make it up to us later on something else. Of course, head office came to know about it—they had to know where the money went—but the minister had opened the project and he was happy, so no one said anything about it. I had more or less stayed within the budget lines, and the project was finished. In another case, during the course of our interview a forest fire jumped a highway and was threatening a large hunting and fishing lodge. The conservation officer had to make a decision about whether to bring in water bombers to protect the lodge or let it, quite probably, burn down. This again was a decision potentially involving millions of 75

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dollars. The officer had to make the decision in less than a minute without consultation. He decided that the lodge likely had insurance and therefore it could burn. But the more normal case was for there to be a relatively broad level of discretion depending upon the factors which we have outlined. Even within this range the exercise of discretion tended to take the form of allowing independent initiatives or interpretation of rules or guidelines. Actions arising from the exercise of discretion were aimed at assisting the client rather than towards any particularistic end: o Nous essayons toujours de changer le mal du client avant qu'il s'en aille. On fait notre possible pour lui faire comprendre que nous sommes la pour 1'aider. Dans 95 pour cent des cas, ga fonctionne. Mais il y en a qui chialent toujours pour des bagatelles. C'est assez rare qu'on ne peut pas leur repondre a temps. Generalement, on fait de notre mieux pour rencontrer les echeances des voyageurs. o I get a sense that as long as we do the job well, however we go about doing it is really up to us. For example, we wanted to take some steps to do some cost-containment within our own little range of responsibilities. So we met and we developed strategies and we submitted our package to the supervisor. He was thrilled—"Great, go for it." We met with the people that would be impacted by some of our changes and they were very supportive of it. So we pulled the information together, and we prioritized what we wanted to do, presented it to our supervisor, and he said, "Go for it." o I have a lot of autonomy of thought, not necessarily autonomy of action, but autonomy of thought—that is, taking up a problem area, an identified problem area where there isn't a solution at this point, and finding the most direct and simple route to resolve the issue. And you can do that and cross federal, provincial, private sector boundaries, and let's take an eraser, and everywhere there's a line, rub it out. So everybody at the end sits down and says, "That makes sense, right, that makes sense and it works." o We had a woman with a child and she wanted a particular training course. It was being offered at the high school near her, which would have meant she would not have had day-care problems. She was entitled to the course because she was a city resident—but because we can no longer buy courses from some outside agencies, she could not take the course. She had to go to the Community College for it, which was the other side of the city. And it made 76

Service to the Public absolutely no sense. In the end we got around it, but I would rather not tell you how. There are lots of cases like this where the rules just don't seem to be reflective of the actual situation, and there is very little we can do about it. o There is the formal agreement, but within that frame we certainly have a great deal of scope, even at the officer level, for independent action and working with the client. Previous agreements had an application type of program: you fill in the form and it was diagnosed yea or nay. But I call it negotiated access now because there's no application form. Really you call up or we call you if we think we have an idea that we want to work on, and away we go. We try to create a win-win type of situation with the client and then make sure it gets funded and gets completed. It's quite a different and less adversarial type of relationship with the client, which is certainly fashionable, and not only that, it's much more effective. o How much discretion you have is how much you want to take and how close to retirement you are. In small offices, or in relatively remote areas, policy discretion was sometimes simply seized. In these cases the isolation made a high level of policy discretion possible—it was not a function of the type of education or department activity. Not surprisingly, many people in such remote locations had relatively low levels of education, reflecting the lower level of classification and importance placed on the activity. This high level of policy discretion was found in a number of environmental agencies such as forestry conservation or parks. o The biggest advantage with this department is that you are given lots of freedom and responsibility and authority. On the other hand, if you goof up you better be prepared to take the [flak] for it. Which is the way it should be. o You are basically on your own. I mean they want stats at the end of the month to see what the amount of overdue work is due, but basically it is your own case and it is up to you to maintain that things are current and ongoing. o We bend the rules to serve the client. We have to stay friends with these people, if we want them to come back again. Sometimes that doesn't get through to them up there. They don't live in small-town Saskatchewan, they aren't going to church with that farmer. 77

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o They may want me to enforce this regulation, but hey, I have to live in this town, and these people are my friends. I get the job done, maybe not exactly the way they want it, but I get it done. It should be clear, therefore, that not only is there a considerable amount of policy discretion but that it is exercised discretely and thoughtfully. These civil servants are neither the dysfunctional robots nor the loose cannons that field level people have been described as being.8 While there were some patterns by demographics with older people often having slightly more discretion—the opposite of the timeserving functionary—we did not find as many of the extreme types of individuals zealots, conservers, climbers, and so forth hypothesized by Downs in the exercise of power, or the more narrow typology found by Moore or Britnall of those who were insensitive or had withdrawn.9 For the most part we found people who were mild advocates of the program or policy they were implementing and who were judiciously pragmatic in recognizing their own role. We think the more balanced picture we found is a better indicator of reality in the field, and this may be in part a function of the research method. We did not ask people to rank their motives for making decisions, nor did we attempt to "penetrate their meanings."10 We have left the variations and ambiguities as they were told to us. Efficacy in the Policy Process An offshoot of policy discretion is policy efficacy. This is the extent to which individuals felt they had real influence in the policy-making process, in that they felt their views would carry weight with senior administrators and politicians: o L'aspect positif est que j'ceuvre dans une fonction publique assez bien structuree dont les mandats sont, en regie generate, assez clairs. Laquelle organisme est aussi qui prete assez souvent a se reajuster. Ce que je trouve valorisant, c'est d'avoir 1'impression que je peux influencer, ameliorer. If respondents had used their discretion to make a positive improvement, we then asked if they could communicate this information to others or have it develop into a permanent policy or program change. Almost without exception the response was NO ! As a result there were quite substantial variations in program delivery across offices resulting from differences in the interpretation of guidelines. One respondent told us, 78

Service to the Public o There are so many grey areas that if you file your claim in Winnipeg or Thunder Bay you will get a different answer—and we are in the same region! Interestingly, on the question of efficacy the problem seemed to be more one of perception of lack of influence than lack of influence per se. In conversations, many examples were given of changes which that particular office was able to make; but generally people had the perception that on a broader basis they had little or no influence. A program officer commented, o The problem is that there are all these rules from headquarters that don't seem to make any sense—rules that tell us what kind of documentation we need, for example, that we simply can't get. But, later in the same interview, the officer made the point that o For the most part the rules and procedures make quite a bit of sense, because most of the changes evolve from complaints from different areas when they have problems following certain procedures. In another case a social worker complained that field officers had no input and no one listened to them, but later went on to point out that all new procedures were reviewed by a working group made up of field people. The department had three people in the working group and rotated them every eighteen months to make certain their field experiences stayed "fresh." One area where efficacy was very low was in the introduction of new technologies: o I really think that technology—I know it's great, and it speeds things up, but I think it's really hurting client-government relationship ... It's hard to get it across to the decision-makers, but this new technology isn't wonderful as anything. I quite often use seniors as an example: it's just horrifying for a senior to try to deal with Revenue Canada right now, because they get all these recordings, and they punch a button and wait and everything. Half of 'em can't, they don't even know what it means, and they want a live person to talk to. And I see the old-age pension people are going to the same thing, where they had excellent service. I find that especially seniors and others as well ... they'll go to these departments and get all these recordings and whatever, and then they 79

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come back to us and say, "Would you please do it for me ?" And before too long we're not going to be able to do that. And my heart aches for those people. o The government adopted a new telephone system and we certainly didn't have any input in that when it was being decided, because Transportation and Public Works was pushin' it for dollars and cents. Anyway, government adopted it and it sounded good to them and everything, but it's a horrible system for clients. It's great for civil servants because, like you and I could call each other direct on our phones ... but the public doesn't have that direct access because the phone numbers aren't advertised. Administrative Discretion—Driving Your Day In contrast to policy discretion, which is the ability to adjust programs or policies to suit the circumstance, administrative discretion is the ability to organize the actual work tasks. It takes two forms—organizing the actual tasks to be done in any given day, and defining the job itself. The latter involves the capacity both to take on new tasks and to decide what not to do. Both forms of administrative discretion are necessary in order to give people a sense of control over their work. While there were wide variations in the level of administrative discretion, it was clear that the needs of the client or the exigencies of the work environment—usually the telephones—were what drove most people's day: o Our day is organized through how busy the phones are. The phones always have to be covered, and if the phones are busy, then we don't do our paper work. Sometimes if we are really busy and our paper work needs to be done, we will be granted some time off of the phones. For someone else that means they are much busier, because they are picking up the calls I don't take. o The average day is spent taking applications. We are on an appointment-based system for people who wish to apply for citizenship. It may range from twenty-two appointments a day to thirty-three appointments a day. A person comes in, we go over their application forms; we ask questions about sections we are uncertain about; we examine their documentation and ask them certain questions. But, regardless of the level in the organization, people have a considerable amount of flexibility in the organizing of their day. Administra80

Service to the Public tive flexibility was often greatest at lower levels, where pressures of meeting with others did not take up as much time. Administrative discretion tended to be highest in smaller offices where fewer people had to be accommodated. o Every day is different. Customer service, training for farmers, applied research programs, consulting work, providing basic information to a range of farmers and agri-business, food processing companies—about 10 per cent of my time is administration, the rest is looking after customer groups (two-person office). o When I leave home in the morning, the wife asks me, "What are you going to do today ?" I say, "Well, I've got absolutely no idea." That's one of the challenges of the job. o The majority of my time is spent working with people involved in projects or in the administration of their project files. Either they come in, or phone, or I work my way through the files and correspondence they have mailed in. Priority goes to groups I might be visiting soon so I have all their work up to date. Administrative Discretion—Defining Your Job The other area where people tended to have a rea nable amount of discretion was in defining their own position. This is not changing the official job description; obviously that requires a great deal of effort. But as discussed in chapter 1, it was clear that the official job description frequently did not mean very much. Jobs tended to change over time, in many ways, because the incumbent changed them. There appeared to be plenty of room for self-defining or redefining the job as long as the basic work got done. In so e cases the changes were quite imaginative: o We were telling people what jobs were available and what jobs they were qualified for, but it seemed to me that the problem was they could not "market" themselves properly. So we got together and decided that we would run special seminars on how to write a resume and how to go through an interview. We worked these into our regular jobs by stinting on coffee or lunch. It went really well, and our placement rate went up. No one seemed to mind that this was not something we were supposed to be doing. We had been doing this for a couple of years when they reviewed our positions and it resulted in a reclassification—but that took a long time. 81

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o Les clients insatisfaits ce sont ceux qui ont des besoins plus pointus. Souvent, nos donnees ne sont pas assez precises pour le local. Mais, il faut leur faire comprendre et leur expliquer ce qu'on ne peut leur donner. On doit aussi leur montrer que tu es pret a les aider. Les nouvelles idees ont besoin d'etre testees pour ne pas rendre la bande de donnees fausse. On a toute la latitude, mais on doit y aller par etapes et de fac.on parcimonieuse. o As long as the files get covered, you can do pretty much as you please. I'm trying to generate some ideas for new kinds of "home businesses" for farms which would be high value-added, although strictly speaking that is not the responsibility of this department. However, as workloads increase and controls become more stringent, this form of discretion might become more limited. This is somewhat ironic as the goal of much of the administrative reform movement has been to empower and encourage workers to define their jobs more creatively and take initiatives. Some conversations reflected a wistfulness about the way things were in an earlier period when the situation was perceived as being more open. This was clearly perceived as the result of a change in management, not the loss of financial resources: o You know, we used to really be able to work with the native groups. I could go out and help them work something out. Now we have lots of programs, but it's not the same. o Things aren't the way they used to be when you [the interviewer] were in the field. Those were the fun days. o When we were just our own little department ... it was different somehow. o Now I have to cover the whole Maritimes, and I don't have time to look at each case as an individual. The sense of being in control and being able to define both the work day and the job itself were closely related to the defining milieu of the organization. There tended to be a high correlation between cases in which respondents felt that the need of the head office rather than the client drove the day, and perceptions that the milieu of the organization was negative. While policy discretion is more important for meeting client needs, administrative discretion seems to be more important for improving the sense of self-worth and morale of staff. It was the lack 82

Service to the Public of administrative discretion that drew the most obvious comments on frustration. o I have to ask for a key to go to the bathroom. Head office is concerned about security, so they locked the cans! Ironically, the departments that allowed the lowest levels of administrative discretion were often those that had pushed for "empowerment" reforms most strongly. The Relationship between Policy and Administrative Discretion Surprisingly little correlation was found between administrative and policy discretion. Often there was a great deal of program discretion but almost no administrative discretion. At other times the reverse was true: o I can make decisions about a million dollar road, but I can't always decide when I want to have lunch. This interview, for example—it had to be re-scheduled because someone in head office wanted something. My time is often scheduled weeks in advance because of meetings and the difficulty of getting people together. o I have a great deal of administrative discretion, but we are controlled by a piece of legislation. For example, we use a cooperative approach because we have to use many of the same functions. During noon and coffee breaks I am the receptionist. The job descriptions that control duties in other offices fly out the window in this small office. You need to have a special type of person to work with that. Some people say it is easier to run a large office than a small office but I say no, you have to rub shoulders every day, you can't hide in your corner. We had also expected to find that the degree of policy discretion would be low in regulatory areas, at lower levels in the hierarchy, or with high budget items. While the latter was true it was not as clear in the regulatory areas. Certainly there was no pattern based upon the place in the hierarchy. A surprisingly high level of regulatory discretion was evident in the so-called "grey areas": o We have a great deal of delegated responsibility as long as we stay within our budget. For example, in staffing we identify a vacancy and decide what selection and recruitment process to follow. 83

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o It all comes down to inspectors' judgment. We have a set of good manufacturing practices for each type of process, but if the inspector sees a situation, he is at liberty to use his judgment and training and make his decision as to whether or not that situation constitutes a health hazard to the public. So he's free to make that judgment, although if the situation is "I don't know what to do," or "I need advice," then there's a phone call back to office here: "I've got a situation here, I need some advice. What should we do ?" o It is odd sometimes. Here we are, our job only requires a Grade Ten education plus what we have learned over the years, and we are dealing with these very highly priced accountants who have to accept that our interpretation is the law. In terms of patterns in either forms of discretion or relationships between them, the only consistent variation seemed to be the individual's willingness to take action: o I'll give myself the autonomy, and if somebody wants to pull me back, that's fine. I'm not going to waste a lot of my time running around asking for permission. I know the sense of decorum, and I'm sort of within the ball park. I take my own autonomy. People take their own autonomy and take their own responsibility. o We have analysts and bureaucrats in head office who live to make up policies that they think will help me out in the field. Most of them have never been here and don't know what is going on. There's reams and reams of policy. If you want to basically ignore them, it is okay provided nothing goes wrong. If something does go wrong, if you are okay about owning that, then you have all kinds of autonomy. On the other hand: o I felt comfortable as long as I had stayed within departmental policy. That was my mandate and I could move only within it. I very rarely departed from department policy as I did not feel I had the authority to do that. No pattern was evident between federal and provincial governments and even within the same departments. o Most of our work is done through projects—what we call work specifications. And they're all set out by our project officers in 84

Service to the Public Ottawa. If we have a question of interpretation about a certain project, then we will call them to get it straightened out. But another person from the same department had almost the opposite impression about the role of the "so-called" specifications: o There are specs sent out from Head Office, but they are really just guidelines. We have to adjust them to fit the particular needs of the project. Wide variation appeared within the same policy areas, in some cases across provinces. The following were all social welfare workers dealing with the same types of cases: o That is why I work in a district and not a province-wide program, because if I want to do something I can do it. o This is a big province and the needs are different in different centres. A program that works in Regina, for example, may not work here without me making a lot of changes to it. o There's a problem with consistency across programs. For example, the amount of discretionary spending money for a child in a group home versus a child at home with its mother on welfare is different. I administer both, but I cannot equalize it because it is across programs. But equally there were differences in policy discretion within the same province. These often tended to be a factor of the experience, age, and personal proclivities of the individual involved. More experienced employees seemed to have great latitude, while younger employees often were more eager to "take control." The degree of administrative discretion tended to be more a function of the preferences of managers. In some departments, or even in some offices, the management had a preference for either control or flexibility. While we did detect patterns in which some provinces seemed to have a more open policy on discretion, the sample from individual provinces was not large enough to draw any real conclusions. Box 4.1 gives one area of great difference across the provinces. OVERSIGHT, REVIEW, AND CONTROL

If the exercise of discretion takes place, one would expect to find some form of oversight, some check or control in place to limit or correct for 85

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Box 4.1

Painting the White Passing Lines

Saskatchewan is apparently the safest province in which to pass on a twolane road. The norm for passing is sixty feet of visibility if travelling at 100 kph. In every province but Saskatchewan the safe passing distance as indicated by the dotted white line on a highway is measured using a chain. In Saskatchewan, while the chain is used as a guideline, each passing interval is measured using a car. Thus in case an obstacle or minor dip in the road might hinder visibility, each passing opportunity is tested.

errors. At the least one would expect some form of post-audit of both program and administrative actions and, ideally, some form of an appeal of a policy/program decision. In asking about checks or controls, we had in mind three types. The first was a formal appeal to either the courts or an administrative tribunal. The second was a more informal appeal or review, often simply an appeal to a higher level within the same office. The final type was a post-audit check on what had been done. Overall, we found that while there was usually some ability for an informal appeal to take place, this was not often used or even the possibility communicated to the client. At the same time, formal appeals were rarely used. Finally, very few post-audit checks were made on decisions that had been carried out. Reports, in most cases, were filed, but there was little sense that they were actually reviewed. Formal Appeals The formal appeal process could be outlined in the legislation or might require the redress of judicial review. Although rarely used, it was offered to clients as an option. o Thirty-five per cent of cases are successful at first decision level, higher at appeal, and they can appeal to the board and then to the courts. There is a subjective factor on appeal—the client is there and they can see them, harder to turn down when you can see them. o I always made sure that the people I was dealing with knew what the policy was and its limitations. I wasn't always successful, and there were many times when the minister would eventually make the decision—basically because the policy would have to be contra-

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Service to the Public vened. I would always advise the client thaj: the minister could make the decision for them if they wanted to take it that far. o I very rarely get involved in a claim decision because the discretionary situations are very small. It is a regulatory program. I have no authority to override the decision of an agent. If an agent makes a decision on a claim, the only person who can change that decision is the board of referees or the umpire, which is a federal court judge. I do not remember a case of this ever happening. o Us peuvent demander a voir le directeur, rnais ca ne change pas la decision. C'est la loi. Informal Appeals Informal appeals, usually to a superior within the office, are used far more often. Again, these processes are frequently offered to the client without prompting. o As recently as last Tuesday I had a situation where a client was dissatisfied with services that were being provided and wanted to appeal and we sat down and I think I listened for a good hour and a half before he felt he had got most of his concerns and complaints off his chest. That sort of brings you back to reality. o If a client comes in and is not satisfied, they are immediately referred to a sit-down interview with the appropriate authority. If they are having difficulty, the supervisor is available. If the supervisor can't handle it, the assistant manager or the manager is available. There have been a couple of times within the last year when they have had to call the police to settle a client down, but generally, no. o I prefer to use informal solutions. To give an example, I had a case last week in which the person said, "I don't care about the process, I just want the problem I identified fixed." So we treated it as a request for information. Yet in another case we have to use a formal route of appeal because it serves the rights of the person involved. Administrative Checks There was surprisingly little in the way of administrative checks beyond those triggered by a complaint. When they did occur, they tended to be in offices with a regulatory role. "The Ministry tests us now and again 87

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to make sure we are giving the right answers," said one interviewee. Another reported, "Je suis evalue mensuellement d'apres la mesure d'execution." Reports were made, but they did not appear to be used in evaluating how the individual exercised discretion or in measuring output. Similarly, there were formal performance evaluation systems in place in most offices, but they were generally viewed as part of the human resource management system and were not perceived as having anything to do with the actual functioning of programs. o They [head office] do some statistics. I don't think that they're very pure statistics, to be quite honest with you ... I would say that we feed statistics in to them. I think that they think that they're good, but they're not ... [In one place] I worked ... there was a feeling that Queen's Park was trying to over-control them constantly because they were asking for these bizarre statistical reports and they wanted them within two days turnaround time. I'd be running around trying to pull this information off of computer systems that weren't set up to give that, so a lot of it was manual and there was always a feeling, well, why do they want this information ? Usually the statistics aren't real because they're just not coming from reliable sources, because the databases aren't set up to glean that information, or people aren't recording it. But there were huge variations in the degree of checks. In one case a clerk alone in an office dealing with land resource leases had the authority to decide whether to write off the arrears of rent on leases or work out some sort of payment plan based upon submissions made to her. When asked about appeals, she admitted that there probably was a process, and there probably was some system to check on her decisions. The problem was that she filed her decisions in the separate file on the property. Unless you knew she had exercised discretion on this file, you would not know to look in the file. No separate record was kept of leases she handled or of the decisions she made. In another case a park ranger had the right to ban people from his park for life. He did not think this could be appealed, but in any case no one had ever questioned his decision. He was not required to keep track of or report these decisions to anyone. As with discretion, there did not appear to be any pattern to the forms of appeal or control by function or department. The only factor that seemed to influence administrative checks was the closeness of the supervision which again usually varied more on an individual than a systematic basis. One department which had very low levels of policy 88

Service to the Public discretion and high levels of control was Veterans Affairs. The reaction of two very different Veterans Affairs officers serves to underline the difference in individuals' reactions to tight administrative controls. One was an older man who had worked in a number of other government departments, the other a young man for whom this had been his only job. In the interviews both had gone on at great length about the extent to which HQ or "the Island"11 controlled their work. The older man was quite embittered about it: o I wish they had to sit here ansd look at some old veteran in the eye who is clearly in poor health and say, "Well, you don't meet our criteria." It's easy for some suit to sit up there and play God. The younger one was much more philosophical. o Well, I do what I can. It is hard sometimes when you know you are dealing with someone who is in need and very proud, and there just isn't anything you can do. I'll usually try to find some other agency to help them out. Both were concerned about the impact it had on their clients, although they did quite different work. SOME E X A M P L E S OF S E R V I C E D E L I V E R Y IN ACTION

Most government services are delivered in the traditional fashion across counters in government buildings. These traditional approaches will be discussed more fully in chapter 6. However, some governments have developed other models of delivering services in the field which can be easier for clients to use. This section describes some of these interesting examples. Regional Services Centres in Prince Edward Island Prince Edward Island has developed a system of regional service centres located in several major towns outside Charlottetown. These centres house most of the provincial government employees located in the area, and some attempt is made to locate federal departments as well within these offices (see box 4.2).12 Not all departments are located in these centres, only most of those providing direct service to the public. It would not be particularly functional to have the local office of the Department of Transportation and Public Works in such a centre. 89

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Box 4.2

Goals of the West Prince Regional Services Centre

• To provide accessibility of Provincial and Federal Government departments under one roof "One-Stop Shopping." • To provide [sic] client inquiries on a regional basis. • To facilitate a better understanding of the collective needs of the people served by the Services Centres and to develop policies, programs and approaches consistent with their needs. • To take advantage of economic benefits of offering a large number services through a central location. • To provide a facility for community meetings etc. • To provide sharing of inter departmental knowledge between government departments (Federal and Provincial) so as to benefit the client and community. West Prince Community Advisory Board, West Prince Regional Services Directory (September 1995)

Delivery of services through these centres has a number of advantages. From the standpoint of the consumer of government services, the regional service centre is a one-stop shopping centre. Many citizens are confused about what services are available to them and which departments or even which level of government provide them. An operating principle at each of the centres is never to let a client go away without some level of service. When clients seek something which is not available in the regional centre, they are put on a direct telephone line to the necessary department. Many service providers cannot warrant a full-time presence in an area, so the centre's administration schedules regular office times for them and sets up appointments for clients on these days. The combination of regionally located staff and visiting part-time services coordinated through the centre administrator, as well as a full inventory of government forms, benefits residents in each region.13 An official in one of these centres illustrates the importance of his role as a clearing-house for information. o I'm responsible for administering the budget and also to respond to inquiries from the public on any government type of service that is being asked for, requests for information ... On any kind of service ? But you only have certain departments here. That's right, but any department that is not represented by an employee, a civil servant ... we will answer the question, make a contact. We have documentation forms, information on various

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Service to the Public programs and services. And that's federal as well as provincial. People associate this as a government office, and that's where they come to ask the questions. If the resident's problem spans several departments, chances are that all the departments will be located in the same building so that problems of coordination can be handled on a face-to-face basis instead of an exchange of memoranda with the attendant delay and possibilities for misunderstanding. o My role is to try to keep people working together even on programs and things that are happening. As managers, we come together from time to time, and social service would have programs, Canada Employment would have programs. Well, how can we work this all together ? So, we try to work very closely together to have that interaction between federal and provincial. And we do work well. In addition to being helpful to clients, the regional services centres also generate economies for government. Receptionist, clerical services, photocopying, and similar common services are provided on a pooled basis. When a staff member must leave the office, the common receptionist can answer telephone calls, take messages, schedule appointments, and so forth. When these centres were created in the early 1970s, they were supposed to serve as a focus for community development as well as government offices. The managers of the centres were encouraged to provide meeting space and secretarial service to various community groups. Financial restraint in recent years has restricted this function to a certain extent, but in some centres community groups using the facility were sufficiently well organized that they have continued in spite of cutbacks. Some centres have community advisory boards which act as two-way conduits to disseminate information about available services into the community and provide feedback from the community about what services are needed. Some of these organizations have gone beyond their narrow advisory role to function as community and economic development bodies, organizing conferences, seeking funds for new initiatives, and so forth. The West Prince Community Advisory Board has prepared a directory of all services available to the public. The directory includes information about services provided by federal and provincial governments and such non-governmental agencies as the Chamber of Commerce, the local band council, and the local tourist association.14

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Such arrangements have numerous intangible benefits as well. People spoke very positively of the benefits derived from knowing employees of other departments on a personal basis and acquiring an understanding of the programs of other departments. Said one, o It is hard not to see yourselves as all members of one team when you share coffee together in the common coffee room or sit on the same staff committees. Several reviews over the years have judged the concept to be generally successful.15 An original goal of the concept was to integrate services so that a person dealing with a variety of government departments within a service centre would deal with one intake worker and have only one consolidated file. For a variety of reasons this never developed. Instead the centres have turned into a co-location of a variety of departments with shared common services. While the reality has fallen short of expectations, the accomplishments are not trivial. In 1985 75,000 people visited these centres and 240,000 telephone calls were received.16 Since the population of Prince Edward Island is 120,000 and these centres do not serve the Charlottetown area, this means that almost every Islander living within the service area of one of these centres visited a centre each year and each islander made on average three telephone calls to a centre. One problem identified was that so e centres have been victims of their own success in that they lack space to accommodate all potential tenants. This has caused friction in some cases,17 but in general everyone interviewed seemed positively disposed to the concept of the regional services centre. British Columbia Agents

Offices

An organization providing a different type of one-stop shopping is the British Columbia Agents Office. This office has a long and fascinating history going back to the time when the province was being settled and there was very little real government presence outside Vancouver and Victoria.18 The system of the British Columbia agent was fairly consciously modelled on that of the agent sent out by the British colonial office to establish its presence in its African and Asian colonies.19 It also bears some similarities to the French prefectoral system.20 As the B.C. interior was being settled, agents were sent out to be "the government" as far as settlers were concerned, functioning as police, prosecutor, and judge. They administered the system of land claims and 92

Service to the Public Box 4.3

A Few of the Services Provided by B.C. Agents

Air brake manuals Birth certificates Dog licenses Drivers licenses Fur royalties Gold commissioner Hunting licenses Mining claim tags

Mobile home registry Ombudsmen complaints Provincial voters lists Senior citizen assistance Strike vote observer Tourist information Will registration and searches

provided a rudimentary level of government services. No individual departments operated in the interior: the B.C. agent was it. In the early years agents were expected to provide two-way communications, alerting the central authorities in Victoria to emerging problems in the field and even becoming advocates for policy changes.21 Contemporary agents are still cognizant of this role, but changing communications, the presence of MLAS, and the increasing role of government departments have combined to decrease the agents' two-way communications role. Not surprisingly, their primacy has declined as government has become more departmentalized and departments have established their own presence across the province. However, agents still play an important role. The agent's office delivers a variety of services to the people under contract with other departments. Box 4.3 lists some of the services provided in the agent's office. This is not the same as the co-location of departments found in the P.E.I, regional services centres. The services listed are provided by employees of the B.C. Agents Office under a series of contracts the office has with other departments. Rather than being a co-location, this arrangement makes it unnecessary for some departments to have field offices. However, the role of the agent goes beyond simply providing the services contracted. Agents are cognizant of their history as "the government representative" in an area. If a resident comes into the office needing a service from the provincial government, the agent will take the necessary steps to put the person in touch with the proper organization. The agent is expected to provide other services as well. Provincial public servants working temporarily in the area and needing work space will likely ask the agent if there is any space available in the office. Agents also described their offices being used as temporary 93

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storage areas. In short, the agent seems to be the person that anyone— citizen or public servant—calls on in time of need. While the structure is different from the P.E.I, situation, many of the efficiencies generated are similar. This again is one-stop shopping for the citizen. While some of the more complex social services (social assistance and child protection) are not a part of the agent's responsibilities, the agent can be the starting point for locating the appropriate services. The arrangement is also efficient for departments because they do not have to establish small offices all over the province at significant cost to each department. This means that citizens in smaller communities probably get services close at hand which they would not get if the department had to justify the cost of operating an office. The only problem identified by agents was that relationships with departments could sometimes be difficult when a department wanted to modify its procedures in ways that were awkward for the operation of the agent's office. These were usually short-lived problems that the two sides were able to resolve with discussion. In sum, this arrangement seems to work well for British Columbia. Federal-Provincial Business Centres A standard criticism of federal systems of government generally and the Canadian system particularly is that they result in duplication as both levels of government tend to become involved in certain areas. This not only increases costs for both levels of government but also confronts citizens with a confusing array of services: two tax systems, two regulatory regimes, two places to go for information about starting a new business. In 1993 the federal government and some provinces (sometimes acting with other partners) attempted to alleviate this problem by establishing jointly staffed business centres in large cities. The idea of these centres is that they would constitute "single windows" for businesses. Key employees of both levels of government would be available in one office to provide all the information an aspiring entrepreneur needed to start a new business, or a businessperson needed to solve some problem. The logic is simple: Bring together under one roof all the information needed for business to work through the maze of government services—from taxation and business registration to loans and subsidies. "Most entrepreneurs couldn't tell you the difference between the federal and provincial government, let alone between ministries," says John Dyble, regional director at the B.C. Ministry of Small

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Service to the Public Business, Tourism and Culture, who helped get the centres off the ground. "The idea was for the customer to see a seamless service." 22 o Le centre est un diffuseur d'informatlon pour les entrepreneurs a la base. C'est un partenariat entre les gouvernements federal, provincial et la chambre de commerce. Ma clientele directe ce sont les entrepreneurs et ma clientele intermediaire ce sont les pourvoyeurs d'information (le gouvernement federal, provincial et la chambre de commerce) et aussi un tres grand nombre d'entreprises non gouvernementales. These offices serve as both walk-in and phone-in centres. The telephone operator-receptionist, usually a bilingual federal employee, can direct telephone calls or individuals to the appropriate person. Offices emphasize convenience of access by providing an 800 telephone number and remaining open some evenings. The offices are staffed by officials from a variety of departments. Employees of the taxation departments (federal and provincial) are there to help people register new businesses or to provide advice. Business development officers provide advice to entrepreneurs about starting new ventures or expanding existing ones. There is also a resource room with a range of information useful for research purposes such as books, databases, and videotapes containing census data, and information on international business trends. Staff pride themselves on being able to locate information even if it is not available in the office. o My day includes probably about twenty-five to fifty different inquiries from somebody about something. It may be something as simple as somebody wanting a trade commissioner directory or somebody saying, "I've got a shipment that's being held in Bahrain, and I don't know what the problem is." Well, of course, I wouldn't know how to solve the problem, but I'd know who would. So I'd just contact the person. People in these offices are also in a strategic position to apply pressure to other departments to try to encourage them to streamline their services. o We're trying to make sure that other departments are together with their information. So if you find something that doesn't make sense ... we'll try and work it out so you get the proper answer. Since this is a new experiment, no serious evaluation of it has yet been carried out. Many of the employees are enthusiastic about the 95

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opportunity it gives them to make a real difference in providing services to businesses. They feel that they are free-wheeling service providers rather than stodgy bureaucrats. o On est des gens qui viennent de differents ministeres done on s'est donne comme allegeance le client et non le logo qu'il y a sur notre cheque de paye. On a 1'avantage d'etre un petit groupe et de ne pas avoir les lourdes structures bureaucratiques. Mais, on a aussi 1'avantage d'avoir les aspects positifs de ces structures administratives. This form of co-location certainly constituted an improvement over the previous fragmentation and in some offices it was clear that the "seamless service" mentioned above was provided. However, managing this kind of organization and ensuring cohesion can be difficult. Nominally, all employees in the office, federal and provincial, report to the office manager, who can be either a federal of provincial employee. Of course, legally each employee works for a particular department in one level of government or the other, and this poses problems for the manager: o Everybody in this establishment reports to [the manager] financially. From my experience, I find sometimes that they don't take his authority with much authority because they know that even though they report to him, he really doesn't have a lot of sway, at least not over what their career path is going to be. Add to that the fact that really there isn't much of a career path ... he has to use a lot more moral suasion than he does power. Employees may also have different policies in areas like bilingualism and different working conditions such as rates of pay and the length of the work week. When the overall environment is positive, it is easy to set these differences aside, but some offices accentuated the differences. In some cases there was a virtual demarcation line down the middle of the office with different styles of furniture on each side. CONCLUSION We found that field staff perceived themselves as serving the public and performed their service enthusiastically, regardless of the myriad variations in how the work was structured. They also had a considerable amount of policy discretion in carrying out their work. Moreover, they exercised their judgment not in a particularistic but in a limited fashion, 96

Service to the Public within the confines of meeting clients' needs. This is consistent with the literature that suggests scope for independent action is both necessary in implementation but also limited.23 As one person said, o Rules are meant to be bent to a certain extent. There is always a grey area. I have seen projects that have been approved that you would not believe because they fell into that area. At the same time, field staff also had a reasonable level of policy efficacy: o If it's in the legislation, we cannot break the law. If it's in regulations, if it's in directives and it doesn't make sense, make sure that your senior managers are aware of it and change it. Feelings of efficacy, however, were related more to the two types of administrative discretion than to actual levels of policy discretion. This is not surprising as there were more controls on minor administrative actions than oversight over program delivery. While we found a considerable amount of administrative discretion, the extent to which employers could use their judgment in defining their job or organizing their day varied widely. There was also little correlation between the levels of policy and administrative discretion. But low levels of discretion or controls that were perceived as interfering with service were resented. More importantly, low levels of administrative discretion were sometimes perceived as acting to lower the quality of the workplace environment. We turn to this point in the next chapter.

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Chapter Five The Workplace Environment In spite of all the support systems we've got, we still get the job done. Correctional Service of Canada employee Since the Hawthorne experiments of the 1930s, administration and management theory has too often considered human resource management as being distinct from aspects of the physical environment. Most standard texts pay little attention to the physical environment except to the extent that changes in technology have made concerns about ergonomics more important. This approach misses the very real and subtle messages sent by aspects of the physical environment. As a result we look at the physical tools and the physical environment that are provided in conjunction with three aspects of human resource administration: • "the tools to work with," i.e., training and development, • "building a team," i.e., performance appraisal, and • "planning for the future," i.e., career development. In theory, all of these are connected. A positive, well-equipped work environment enhances morale and performance. Sound performance appraisals identify weaknesses in an employee's effectiveness which can then be remedied by training and development. Proper utilization of training and tools by an employee will improve the employee's future appraisals so that her or his career development prospects will be enhanced. In practice, however, when there are few promotion opportunities and financial resources are scarce, the picture changes. Maintenance and equipment budgets tend to be the first to fall victim to cutbacks. Training is given as a reward, an opportunity to get away from the office; and evaluation tends to lose most of its meaning. At the same time, the work environment has increasingly been affected by employment equity and human rights considerations, which

The Workplace Environment is laudable in the sense that they improve equity, but they have had other impacts on the workplace as well. o I really resent the fact that I have a Master's degree and I had to move three times to get to be a section head. Now every time they have a competition, they are almost begging some of the "girls" to apply—these "girls" (and that is what they call themselves) that have never bothered to get any training, even though it was available, and resist even having to go to Ottawa for a few days or staying overtime. They call this equity. As a visible minority interviewee pointed out: o I bristle when someone says to me, "You don't have to worry, you are safe because you are part of a designated group." But, I admit, they are probably right. I would like to point out, however, I made it before there was this 'employment equity,' and I worked hard to get this ... job. In the end what is important is whether the employees feel they matter: o This department reminds me of where I worked in the '70s. In the organization I worked for, you were given three days of compassionate leave when an immediate family member died. We had a woman working in our Edmonton office who was from Newfoundland and had been raised by her grandparents rather then her parents. Her grandmother was dying, and she asked for three days compassionate leave to go and visit her before she died. She was told by our human resource officer that you only got compassionate leave after the person has died, not before they died, and they turned down her request. That was over twenty years ago, and things are not very different today. W H E R E DOES THIS WORK GET DONE ?

As discussed in chapter 1, government office buildings come in all shapes and sizes. Once it was fairly easy to spot the federal building or the local provincial government office building. Although this is no longer true, the existence of a government presence is still important symbolically. o The two of us are the only provincial employees in town. We are the provincial government to the people here, and I like to try and

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get forms for other departments so they can pick them up here. They do the same for the federal government at the Post Office, although I think they have to do that. This loss of visibility is sometimes lamented. One interviewee told us, o When I was the local postmaster, it used to make me feel so proud. I wore a uniform and I was the symbol of the federal government in that town. Before they built the consolidated high school on the edge of town, we had the only national flag in sight. And while the work gets done in a huge variety of different types of offices, as we will see, many problems in what Milakovich calls "the components of the total quality of human resources—the physical layout and surroundings, the technical systems and the management of human resources"—are remarkably similar.l THE TOOLS OF THE TRADE

If you do not give people the tools, and I mean not only the physical "tools" but the training to use them, it does not take very long for them to figure out how little you value them—and this is directly apparent in morale.2 Training and Development Procedures manuals place heavy emphasis upon the need for good training and development. Interviewees, then, were asked both specific and general questions about the training and development they had received over the years. The intent was to determine how they judged the appropriateness of training and whether they felt the organization had a systematic approach to training. Surprisingly small numbers of people were sent on formal orientation courses before or shortly after they took up their duties to ensure that they knew the roles and responsibilities of their new position. However, some people did comment on how good their training had been. How much training did you receive when you started your current position ? o Six months. When I first started they gave us a copy of the ... act and a ... manual book to go over. After the first week, the acting manager would sit in with us. People came in from Ottawa to see how well we were progressing in training. At the end of the

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six-month training period, we were sent for a week [to the processing centre] to meet the people that we would be dealing with and actually see how the operation worked. After that we went to Ottawa for a week where we sat in with a training supervisor. During this week we went over case studies ... Then we returned to [our home city] and were given two weeks to study up on things and wrote the final exam. o I had a great deal of training, and I'm not sure why. That was really unusual ... I'd been in and out of the job because I've had two babies in the last two and a half years, and when I got the position, it was very rare for them to have overlap ... So I was given approximately six weeks of training, which was spending some time with a supervisor and a lot of observation of other ... workers ... To have that much hands-on training was unusual, and I don't think I needed it all. However, these cases were clearly the exception to the rule. The perceived quality of training is an area where there is substantial variance among departments. Some interviewees were positive, albeit reserved, about the quality of training programs they had experienced; others made a joke of the question when it was asked. This latter group felt that they were in a very difficult position because they were thrown into a new position with little support from management. o When I first started here, in terms of training, I was told where the files were. o Aucun (rire). Avec 1'Operation Realignement, on a decide de reduire a trois paliers [de supervision]. On a reduit le personnel d'encadrement et comme j'avais une formation de base en administration je me suis reclasse dans une autre unite. o I had no training. The previous senior analyst left. I was filling in as an ... analyst and did the job for about six months. They hired another senior analyst that was ineffective and I was still doing a lot of work on the side that he wasn't doing. When he left, they formally gave me the position. At that time I still hadn't received any formal type training. o For the first year I was angry about the fact that I didn't get any training—my predecessor left six months before I was hired. 101

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This approach to training is not only bad for the organization because it does not ensure quality and uniformity in service delivery, but it can also leave the individual bitter by creating the impression that the organization does not care about the person. One man described how on his first day on the job he attended a meeting with his boss and a number of other people. When his boss excused himself in the middle of the meeting because he had other things to do, the new recruit did not even know where his office was. Most people received what is euphemistically referred to as on-thejob training, frequently from the former incumbent of the position or a peer. This "training program" consisted of shadowing either a coworker or the previous incumbent for a week or two before the position was turned over to the new employee. People usually expressed the idea that this was at best a marginally adequate form of training. They knew the routine but were uncomfortable in dealing with unusual situations: o It [was] on-the-job training for me. I can honestly say that it took me a year before I knew where I was going or at least what I was doing. Even now after three years I am still not focused 100 per cent. I am more focused than I was when I started. o The person who was in my job was there for a resource person to help out but it was basically a self-learning, self-taught role ... It was more trial and error and talking to fellow ... managers. o Even today—this is the tenth year—we have not had manuals which address some of the programs that we run. A manual would be a good place to start a training program. Most of the training has been training on the job based on a combination of saying "Here it is, read it, and if you don't understand, come talk about it," and some sort of informal buddy system which says you are going to take over some of the portfolio of this individual, so you stay close to this individual who will introduce you to what goes on. We have not had effective formalized training. Some concern was expressed about on-the-job training, because new, young people can learn the bad habits of experienced people as easily as they can learn their good habits. A number of examples were cited in which incorrect information had been disseminated fairly widely as a result of word-of-mouth comments during the on-the-job training process. In many cases the lack of formal training was not a serious problem, because the person was being promoted from the operating level within 102

The Workplace Environment a unit to the supervisory level of the same unit, so that he or she was familiar with virtually all aspects of the operation anyway. Therefore, little training in the substantive work area would have been needed. However, people in this situation frequently lamented that they had had no training in supervisory or management skills. They said that they knew how to do the work but that they were initially uncomfortable in the supervisory role, both in terms of hard skills like knowledge of collective agreements and departmental rules, and softer skills such as motivational techniques. One respondent, asked if he was satisfied with the level of management training he received, said no. o [This area] is probably one of the enormous weaknesses of government, at least of [my department]. For our managers I got a twoweek middle management course, but it's a very general program, it really isn't ... specific [to our program]. I don't think we are very good at training our managers. I think we go on the "sink or swim" prospect. The responses to questions about whether departments took a systematic approach to training and development parallelled those about more specific training opportunities. Some departments have excellent training programs and do a good job of ensuring that all employees have an opportunity to participate: o Je n'ai pas eu un entrainement lorsque j'ai debute. J'ai eu plutot une formation graduelle au niveau de mes changements d'emploi. J'ai eu des cours de leadership, des cours de superviseur et des cours de management. En plus, j'ai eu des cours d'informatique. A part ca, c'est de la formation sur le tas, mais je peux toujours demander de suivre les cours qui sont pertinents. However, people also expressed a number of concerns about the quality of training in their departments. The most general concern was simply that their department did not take a systematic view of training and did not have a systematic program of development for employees: o Non, c'est assez faible. II y a un discours qui se fait a ce niveau mais c'est tres faible. La seule initiative qu'ils ont prise, c'est qu'apres sept ans de travail au ministere, ils m'ont propose de faire ma maitrise en administration publique pour devenir gestionnaire. Ma formation continue—c'est moi qui y ai contribue par mon initiative personnelle.

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Amongst a number of more specific concerns about training was that of several employees who felt that the level of funding their departments devoted to training was inadequate: o Training was one of the first things to be cut in the resource cutbacks, which I think is wrong. We should be focused back on our core activities, and if there is training that needs to be done in those core activities, that is the way we should be going. o Oui, nous avons acces a des cours de formation sauf que c'est tres difficile de profiter d'une formation continue les budgets etant ce qu'ils sont. II faut vraiment y mettre du sien soit par des lectures ou des colloques moins chers. Les cours a 1' ENAP sont maintenant inaccessibles. Cette annee, pour 1'ensemble de la direction de la technologic de Pinformation, le budget est d'a peine 30 000 $. Ce budget est tout bouffe par la formation sur des produits bien precis. In other cases programs were in place and employees nominally had the opportunity to become involved in them, but individual staff members found it impossible to take the necessary time from their day-today duties to go to training programs. o I don't have time, quite honestly. I've been booked in for training sessions a number of times, but if there's a training session set up and there's a particular project that's in difficulty, or one that has to come on line to meet a deadline, then training takes second place. You do what you're doing. For example, there was training on utilizing computers ... What I wound up doing was grabbing a friend of mine and saying, "You went to the training, give me your book." So I took the book home and played with the computer. If that's training, that's what I got. o There are lots of courses you can take for career development but if you do, you have to catch up on your own work. Program-type learning you are expected to do on your own time. Obviously these departments were not truly committed to training for their employees or a way would have been found to ensure that people could take advantage of opportunities. In other cases employees had attended courses but were less than enthusiastic about quality: Did you get training in supervision ? 104

The Workplace Environment o Yes and no. I was sent to Ottawa for two one-week periods on a supervisory course. Were they useful ? Not really. I say that because when you supervise out of a book, and when you actually are standing there supervising people face to face, it really is different. Other people complained about the timing of the courses. Said one worker, o In the last two years we have had some ... courses on management and supervisory skills. They sent me on two of those courses, sort of after the fact—human relations type courses, dealing with staffing issues—after two years of working in the job. It makes little sense to train staff after they have been doing the job for an extended period. Some people recognized that the world is changing so rapidly that it is difficult for a department to put training programs together; employees have to take responsibility for their own learning: o Je n'ai pas eu de formation. Nous avons appris sur le tas. L'evolution [de mon champ] fait en sorte que nous sommes constamment en mode d'apprentissage. o Absolutely none. Absolutely nothing. This particular position I had put in for and I'd like to assume that I was chosen because I had a number of the attributes. Basically, the position over the last, say, I've had it eight years now, the position has changed so much from then to now that I don't know who could have trained me ... So it's basically pick it up, learn it as you fly. o On a un certain budget de perfectionnement. A partir des evaluations qu'on rec,oit, ga peut nous conduire a un cours de perfectionnement. Mais moi, par strategic professionnelle, j'ai toujours anticipe mes mouvements professionnels. Ce qui fait que je n'ai jamais eu de problemes pour qu'on m'accorde les credits necessaires. The characteristics of a good program of training and development are that it should be timely; i.e., it should be delivered when the individual needs it, and it should be appropriate to the employee's position. Unfortunately we found little evidence of programs that met these criteria.

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Computers and Other Technology and Their Effect on Staff The other area of "tools" which we discussed with interviewees was the use of computers and other new technology. The use of these varied considerably, with the exception of the fax. The reliance upon it was universal: no matter how small or ill-equipped the office (or in some cases, the trailer), there was a fax machine. For other forms of technology the variance usually seemed to be related to the level of affluence of the government. In the better-endowed departments, most employees had their own computer, usually tied to a network that provided quick access to head office, other field offices, and many other sources of information through the Internet. A few employees were supplied with laptop computers because they did a great deal of their work in the field. Where there was adequate equipment, most people felt that the standard word-processing, database, and spread-sheet software provided were adequate for their needs. The views on custom-produced application software were more variable. Many were very pleased with the software and commented on how it made their work much easier. A minority had serious problems. A few felt that the software was probably quite good but that they had not been properly trained and so were not using it to its full potential. Others knew how to use their system but found it completely inadequate for their needs: o Shortly after I came here to [this department] someone in Ottawa made a very unwise decision to buy a very expensive computer software program that would do all of [certain aspects of our work], and it also had a module there for doing [other aspects of the work]. It was the most inefficient, horrendous system that anyone ever had to work with. And we still have ... part of it, and they've made improvements and, yeah, it is working, but we had to fight long and hard not to have to take [a particular] module. It was not uncommon to find employees spending a great deal of time maintaining both a computer system to satisfy head office and a manual system which they really used to organize their work. One person told about how she first made calculations, then entered the answers in the computer: o They've spent so much money now, they've got to get this thing up and running properly. I don't know how they're going to do it ... They can't seem to put it in there to make the calculations work ... We have to do everything outside the computer. All the work has 106

The Workplace Environment to be done outside the computer, and then you put all that information into the computer. In the offices of some less affluent governments, there were either no computers or there was one (or a few) allocated to the secretarial and clerical staff. In some cases professionals had the old computers which secretaries had discarded, but they tended not to use them. Other staff took their turns when the secretary was not present or did not use the computer at all. This configuration did not seem effective because, in the first place, when people did not have their own computers, they did not learn how to work well with them. More importantly, the dynamic in the office was altered by who was allocated the scarce resource. Observed one worker, o The administrator, that old battle-axe, is the only one with a computer hooked up to Ottawa. The fourteen of us all have to share it when she says she doesn't need it. Boy, does she enjoy that. As with furniture, which we discuss in the next section, employees are resigned to the fact that they will be looked after when head office needs have been met, or they will get head office hand-me-downs: o I go up to head office and the secretaries typing memos have computers with better data processing capability that I have. But I know when someone in head office says he just got some flashy new machine that my turn will come, because pretty soon the two systems will be incompatible. Another major change in offices in recent years is e-mail, and most people have developed a love-hate relationship with it: o J'aime accroitre ma credibilite aupres des gens. La transmission d'information, pour moi, doit se faire tout de suite. o L'informatique prends de plus en plus de mon temps. Le papier a beaucoup diminue. Mais, je trouve que ma charge de travail a augmente ... What effect has e-mail had ? o I love it ... In terms of the structure of the office, I guess the way it's impacted is we've been able to do things (trails off). There is less manual work so it has ... eliminated probably two or three positions ... More of the officers, for example, are getting onto doing their own correspondence, although they still don't have the skills to 107

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set up letters and all that sort of stuff ... In terms of increase, because it's so good and you can get so much information, and you can do so much analysis, it's caused more work in that respect. It's probably helped us make better decisions ... and given us better information, but it still does cause some additional work. In terms of communication ... it's so terrific, but it's so easy to use as well. It's so easy to hit F-10 and circulate the minutes of a meeting to everyone. So everyone opens the screen in the morning, whoa! screens and screens of mail and ... staff is saying, "We're swamped. We just can't read all this stuff and still do our jobs." ... It creates a feeling of people being overwhelmed when they see all of this. It's purely a psychological thing, but I think it does. Not surprisingly, there seemed to be a dichotomy in the use of technology based on the age of the employee. Older employees have frequently not made their peace with the computer era. A few people volunteered that they had never turned on the shiny new machines sitting on their desks. However, most of these traditional types had learned enough to use the computer in a minimal fashion for e-mail or to enter and access needed information, though they still relied on a secretary for the preparation of letters, reports, and so forth. Most younger employees were able to use their computers extensively for entering and checking information, accessing data bases, and even writing their own correspondence and reports. These people felt very comfortable and simply did not need a secretary in the traditional sense of a typist/stenographer. It is now common that most people either do not have a secretary or share one with a large number of other people, or have upgraded the status of their secretary to an administrative or executive assistant with responsibilities for organizing office work-flow, doing public relations, and making routine decisions. Most of these people took on the responsibilities, it was often noted, without the benefit of any training or upgrade in salary: o We tell them we are enriching their job. It probably isn't fair. No, it really isn't fair, but even as a director I cannot do anything about it. As the younger group ascends the hierarchy, the already developing disappearance of the traditional position of secretary will likely be hastened. Large numbers of secretary/typists will be replaced by smaller numbers of executive assistants or administrative assistants. o We do have secretarial support here, but the support we have is basically zero. As I mentioned before, with technology these days, 108

The Workplace Environment luckily enough, myself and my colleague ... know how to use computers. We do all our typing on our own computers. We do all our reporting. We now have remote modems for information for clients on programs or files, whatever. We can send directly, so we're connected directly to our head office ... With voice mail, it's the same thing ... Mind you, it's a new age, a new age, and to tell you honestly, secretarial support we don't need because it's being handled through us. Both of us—my colleague and I—we're out of the office a lot, but ... even though we're three or four days out of the office, I make sure that if I get a call and if I'm out today, tomorrow morning I'll return your call and I'll act on it. However, while it is efficient to share secretarial and administrative assistance, some problems were identified: Is the amount of clerical support viewed as satisfactory or is there a lot of complaint that staff don't have enough ? o I hear that quite often. And in fact, from even my own personal standpoint, I find that problematic from time to time because I share my administrative support person with [another director] who's in the office next to me. And consequently there are some things that I would like to have done as soon as possible that aren't attended to as quickly as I personally would like, because she quite simply has other priorities and I have to appreciate that and accept that. So it's a problem. It is a problem, I would say, throughout the entire department. Certainly in [this office] it's a common complaint that we don't have enough administrative support people to expedite things as much as we would like. In an enlightening further discussion, the above respondent stated flatly that his professional staff did not use computers for anything other than e-mail and seemed to express some surprise that anyone expected anything else. This points to a problem which can exist whenever there is a technological shift. Central agencies will make staffing and other resourcing decisions based on certain assumptions about departments, e.g., fewer support staff are needed because professionals are using technological fixes as replacements. However, in some cases this assumption might not be correct. As one study on the introduction of new technologies noted, o Change is initiated by politicians and/or senior management and imposed on operational and front-line staff ... with decisions about the procurement and use of technology left to technical specialists, 109

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and a lack of integration between the structurally compartmentalized worlds of policy-makers in senior management, technology experts, service professionals and front-line staff ... This is done without distinguishing specific skills training from broader programmes of education and staff development necessary to the development of the organizational capacity to make effective use of technology.3 Our findings on tools support this conclusion. RESPECT

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In addition to having the tools to work with, it is also important for people to feel valued and respected. This is achieved through the quality of the working environment and by feedback on the quality of their performance. "Your Personal Space" Earlier in the chapter we discussed the extent to which the "government building" sent a message to the public. In a less than subtle way, the quality of workspace can be a signal to employees about how the organization feels about staff. The offices of Nike athletic shoes in Beaverton, Oregon, are set in a beautiful seventy-four acre campus which provides employees ready access to day-care facilities and several stores, as well as physical fitness opportunities both outside on the wellmaintained grounds and in the fully equipped gym. 4 At the other extreme, whenever someone wants to represent a poor employer, the picture painted is usually one of sweat-shop conditions in a large, noisy factory with no privacy. This is a popular portrayal in movies such as Charlie Chaplin's classic Modern Times and the more recent Norma Rae. In both these extreme cases, organizations are sending significant signals to employees about how they are valued. Because of a great variety of interior layouts of field-office accommodation, it is very difficult to make general statements. Usually clerical functions are carried out in large open areas, while professional staff are more likely to have private offices. This leads to a mixture of open and private spaces in most configurations. An important bureaucratic principle is that the size of the office and the level of accoutrements provided are a function of the level of the occupant. In fact, many governments have rules specifying the number of square metres of office space provided to a person at each level within the organization. This is accompanied by rules about the size of desk and other office 110

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Figure 5.1 TYPICAL B U L L P E N OFFICE C O N F I G U R A T I O N

furniture including sometimes even the presence and size of rugs in the office. This is referred to as "rug-ranking." Experienced people visiting public service offices can quickly determine the status of persons to whom they are speaking by the location and appointment of their offices. Figure 5.1 provides an illustration of the ultimate bureaucratic-style government office—an income tax return processing centre. This "bullpen" is probably one of the most alienating environments in which staff can work. There is no privacy: everyone is in one large room resembling a bowling alley or airplane hangar. In the 1970s the unemployment 111

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Figure 5.2 TYPICAL OPEN L A N D S C A P E OFFICE

insurance claims-processing office in Belleville, Ontario, was actually located in a converted bowling alley, and staff referred it as "the bowling alley" to indicate its contemporary ambience as much as its former use. Not many offices are this inhospitable, yet despite the knowledge that this type of an environment is alienating and unproductive, the bullpen persists. Income-tax processing offices are arranged like this to accommodate the maximum number of people in the minimum space, and also because security provisions require that all employees handling returns are in full view of supervisors at all times. Although this style has been changed for Revenue Canada offices to accommodate a "new" processing philosophy, the outcome is still alienating. 112

The Workplace Environment A more common type of design is the "open landscaping style" f office architecture which came into vogue in the early 1970s.5 This style has become so popular that when older buildings have been remodelled since the 1970s (as most older buildings have been), they have been converted to the open landscape style as much as possible. In this arrangement, illustrated in figure 5.2, a few private offices reserved for senior staff are usually located around the outside walls. Most other employees, even supervisory staff, are lodged in cubicles made from movable, cloth-covered partitions approximately five feet high. This arrangement offers flexibility and efficiency in that the partitions themselves take up a minimal amount of floor area and can be moved quickly to redesign space. The actual size of offices is also typically reduced.6 The flexibility leads to situations of what is referred to as "guerrilla furniture moving,"7 where employees surreptitiously move their partitions to create more space in their own offices at the expense of colleagues. This may seem humorous, but it is deadly serious to those who are sensitive to the relationship between status and office size and have little else to prove their "worth" to the organization. Problems of productivity and privacy were mentioned frequently in relation to open landscaping. With no doors on cubicles and the fivefoot height just right for looking over, it is difficult for occupants of the office to signal that they are busy and not available for small talk. The partitions have created a new piece of office jargon: "prairie-dogging" is defined as hanging over cubicle walls to chat. This has resulted in tongue-in-cheek discussions about whether information obtained by prairie-dogging should be considered confidential or a part of the public domain. Not surprisingly, short people have registered concerns about discrimination because of their inability to prairie-dog.8 Even when people are not interrupted directly, the general level of noise and commotion in the office can be quite distracting for some. o If you listen carefully, you can hear several conversations going on around you, and the lack of a door and the height of the partitions means that you can also almost always see people moving around the office out of the corner of your eye. Privacy and confidentiality are also problems because it is difficult to have a confidential conversation in this environment. This could involve a client speaking with a staff member or several staff members discussing a client and forgetting that there is another client just behind the next partition. When confidentiality must be ensured, the only possibilities are using a boardroom or interview room or taking the chance that a private office might be available. This can lead to other kinds of problems: 113

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o When I want to talk to one of my people about even a minor problem, I have to take them into an interview room or the boardroom. As a result everyone in the place knows what is going on ... It is a public "taking someone to the woodshed" and ends up being perceived as much more of a reprimand than was intended. When you come out, you feel as if everyone in the place is watching you. Given that place, they probably are. (This person chose not to be interviewed at work.) Employees also commented on more personal aspects of the lack of privacy. For example, it is difficult to make personal telephone calls. While it is probably desirable that employees be discouraged from having lengthy personal telephone conversations on government time, this also made it difficult for employees to make shorter, justified calls to physicians, lawyers, or family members. It created an impression among staff members that they were not trusted. In assigning individual offices, "rug-ranking" was fairly obvious. Senior people have large offices in prime locations such as the corner of the building with a good view and away from the hubbub of the reception area. Senior people also have large desks, large high-back chairs, and fairly fancy credenzas for storage, never utilitarian file cabinets. These larger offices would also have several comfortable chairs for visitors or a separate sitting area away from the desk with a coffee table and couches or chairs. Junior people, if they have an office, will have a much smaller desk with a smaller chair. There might be an additional chair for a visitor or a number of chairs that float around offices to be temporarily commandeered when the need arises. Many of these offices are so small that if there is an extra chair it doubles as storage space. This style of accommodation, however, runs counter to the actual needs of the office-holders. Senior people, who spend much of their time outside their offices attending meetings in other offices or board rooms and relatively little time processing paper, have large desks and large offices. Junior people, who spend most of their time in their offices processing a large volume of paper, have small desks and limited storage, which makes their work situation difficult. Greater emphasis on work needs rather than status would suggest a reversal of these situations, but this is such an affront to what everyone identifies with appropriate status that it is not likely to happen. The overall quality of furnishings varied considerably. Although this had something to do with the level of resources of the government, it was also a product of "rug-ranking." Regional offices had better furni114

The Workplace Environment ture than district offices. Generally the local offices in a capital or regional centre were the best furnished, while the smallest or most remote offices seemed to be the worst served. It was not unusual to see in use furniture that appeared to be forty or fifty years old. In some cases, it was quite serviceable, but in others drawers were not useable and pieces were held together in makeshift fashion. o You see this junk we live with, but whenever a new minister or new senior staff at headquarters are moved into an office, the office is entirely redecorated even though the furnishings might be only a year or two old. It's a waste of money when they are crying for budget cuts. Comments on associated waste were quite frequent. Still, the overall impression was that most public servants had an office and furnishings that were adequate to allow them to do their jobs, although they were clearly not lavish or even much beyond spartan. Adornment on the walls also varied. Some people had working offices with maps and/or photographs related to their work. For example, it was quite common for people involved in fishing or other marine activities to have pictures or models of ships in their offices. There is almost always a place for framed copies of university degrees, professional certificates, and so forth. A few people tried to make their offices more congenial with one or two examples of nondescript art. Its pedestrian nature has a rationale: One person, after noting the blandness of government decor, commented that when the office had been opened, the then-manager, whose wife was an artist, had picked out some nice abstract prints for the walls. About a year later a new employee objected to the blasphemous and pornographic nature of the prints. Although in the previous year no one else had discerned the same message from the prints, the offending pieces were replaced. Overall, the aura of most government offices is much more institutional than comfortable. The feeling of an institutional setting carried over into questions of safety and security. These issues have become an increasing concern among employees whose work engenders tense relationships with clients. The obvious examples are tax collection, social services, and child protection agencies. Many of those interviewed from sensitive departments had experienced situations with clients in which they had some concern for personal safety. These ranged from vague threats which did not result in any action to serious physical assault. The most vulnerable position for employees is outside the government office in the client's home or office. A benefit of working in a 115

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decentralized environment where staff members are a part of the community they serve is that they frequently know (or have heard about) the persons they will be visiting and so can anticipate the nature of the situation. Even when there is no anticipation of a problem, employees may take routine precautions. For example, they park their vehicle in such a way that they have quick access to it and that it cannot be blocked in. In a home or office, they are conscious of always standing closer to the door than a potential antagonist so that their quick exit cannot be blocked. In extreme cases they even arrange for police back-up, and at a minimum, ensure that someone knows who they are with and where they are. It was clear that more and more government offices have erected barriers ranging from relatively benign-looking high counters with locked gates to more intimidating solid walls with plexiglass openings and doors with combination locks. Many offices also have uniformed security guards to supplement the physical barriers. The age and demeanour of the security guards varied considerably. Some were more avuncular than intimidating, while others seemed quite anxious to exercise the authority vested in them. Both situations are a bit scary, the first too accommodating to be effective, the second too authoritative, to both staff and the visiting (but unknown) public. During research for this book a researcher had the experience of being required to sign in at the entrance of the building for security reasons, then wandering around the building unchallenged for some time because the security staff did not know where the interviewee, one of the most senior people in the building, was located. When this was discussed with the interviewee, he had strong words about the quality of the security staff: o I think it's a common trait of [a particular security firm]. That's one area where I haven't been able to do what I'd like to do, which is not have them at all. I find they're a very expensive service for what we're getting. And if security is our real concern, we should have somebody down there that can do something about it. They certainly don't. There are other precautions taken which are less obvious to the public. Many offices and meeting rooms are equipped with panic buttons installed under tables or in some unobtrusive location. Employees can also carry an easily concealed, remotely operated panic button. Consid116

The Workplace Environment erable thought goes into the design of offices and conference rooms to promote safety and security, but often many of these were routinely ignored, with doors being propped open and security desks left unstaffed. The impression given was that "if you look OK and carry a briefcase, you can pretty much wander around as you please, unchallenged." Performance Appraisal While a pleasant work space is a physical means of sending a message to employees that they are valued, the performance appraisal is another means of doing the same thing. Performance appraisal is usually considered a very important part of the human resource management process. Most governments have a policy requiring periodic, usually annual (or more frequent, for new employees) formal appraisals. There is often a great deal of detail in the procedures about what characteristics will be appraised and how the appraisal will be done. Usually a written appraisal by the immediate supervisor is involved, on a standard form which is reviewed by the subordinate, and a frank discussion between the two should ensue. The subordinate would then have an opportunity to provide a written response to the supervisor's comments and the completed form would be sent to the human resources department for review and filing as a part of the employee's permanent record. Surveys find that more than 75 per cent of organizations have formal appraisal systems, with an even higher figure for governments.9 The original purpose of performance appraisal was simply to assist in making administrative decisions about promotion and pay increases. Over the years the uses have expanded so that some organizations now use them as a basis for human resource planning and to provide counselling and development advice to employees.10 With the relatively recent increases in expensive unjust-dismissal cases, performance appraisals have now taken on a significant role as legal documents. They can be used as proof that employees have been informed of substandard performance and advised of what they must do to improve. The system has also been used successfully in some cases to build or improve the culture of the organization.n The performance appraisal process, therefore, is probably as important as the appraisal document itself. Not only is it an opportunity for supervisors and subordinates to work together to identify strong and weak points in the subordinate's performance12 but, in theory, it can also motivate subordinates by making them feel that they and their work matter to the organization. In government organizations where there is no incentive pay and salaries have been frozen or reduced

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across the board in recent years, a positive performance review is almost the only "pat on the back" that an employee can be given, and employees recognize this: o Ce que je trouve tres difficile et negatif dans mon emploi c'est de motiver les employes. Nous avons des employes exceptionnels mais le contexte gouvernemental (gel des salaires, baisse de salaire) c'est extremement demotivant. On est pas comme 1'entreprise privee, on ne peut pas faire valoir, valoriser un employe de fagon concrete par des bonus. o In the public sector I think that [the evaluation process] is an important process because they're lax in their reward system. Basically, either your reward or your demerit for the year is that evaluation process. So you need that. At the same time, it was clear that some departments had very good systems which came very close to meeting the ideal. o Une fois par annee, a chaque debut d'annee, je rencontre mon superieur et on se formule des attentes. On elabore un espece de contrat psychologique. C'est sur que le directeur general est le representant des attentes de 1'organisation, mais moi, en tant que professionnel, j'ai des attentes personnelles a satisfaire. Done, on cherche une fagon pour que ces deux types d'attentes puissent se satisfaire. A chaque trois mois, regie generate, on fait le point sur les objectifs organisationnels. A la fin de chacune des annees (actuellement, ga se fait d'une fagon moins systematique parce qu'il fut une periode ou on avait une evaluation au merite qui etait un element motivateur), on fait un bilan. o For the staff here I do the evaluations for each and every one of them, and it is based upon our action plan. We have some major activity, the target group, the activities, and who is responsible. At the end of the year I will go through the activities with the employee and the time frame he had to do it and what was done and why it wasn't done. It is quite qualitative. This type of response, however, was a distinct minority. When asked about how the performance appraisal system affected them, virtually everyone interviewed laughed in a good-natured way and said that either it had been years since they had seen an appraisal or that there were periodic appraisals but they were largely a matter of going 118

The Workplace Environment through the motions and neither supervisor nor subordinate took them seriously. o There hasn't been anyone in the last seven years come and tell me I've ever done anything wrong. Nobody ever comes to look ... They don't tell you you've done something right; and they don't tell you you've done something wrong. There's no review of the operation. Surprisingly, few subordinates felt bothered by this lack of formal feedback on their performance. A part of the reason is obvious. In the absence of the possibility of promotions or pay increases, there is no "up" side to an appraisal, regardless of how positive; the subordinate's status remains the same. In the current environment, the most positive appraisal produces no benefit, but a negative appraisal could result in an undesirable outcome, i.e., laying the groundwork for discipline, demotion, or dismissal. Therefore, why would a subordinate want an appraisal ? No news is good news. Supervisors were uncomfortable with appraisals for similar reasons. They were clearly upset that there was no tangible way to reward good employees. It is upsetting to a supervisor to give an employee a highly positive rating and then say that there is no future benefit for her or him, or to have to explain that the appraisals had to be fitted to a bell curve which only allowed a fixed percentage of employees to receive a highly positive appraisal—regardless of actual performance. Conversely, many supervisors seemed to be notoriously slow to confront poor performers. Add to this the fact that in the current work environment, managers are overloaded with other kinds of work, and performance appraisals simply get put at the bottom of the stack. It is easy to see why no one—supervisor or subordinate—really wants a performance appraisal in the existing situation. o We have had [appraisals in the past]. With the new reorganization I guess our administrators, management people, have been too busy with other things to really get after us and make sure we really do the damn things. And if they don't, I won't, because they are kind of painful. o Sometimes you have very little input of what the department thinks of your work or how they measure your work, or if you are doing a good job. You basically have to look up to your own sense of working ethics and your own expectations. I have not had a performance review since I have been in the job. I have been with the

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department since July of 1987 and have only had one performance review, which is pretty poor. I found the same thing when I was a case worker. The managers are just swamped and they keep putting these types of things off. It's a matter of priority, and they know that this is a poor area and they are not attending to it. With no pay increases and little movement within departments, many people are at the top of their pay category. This means that appraisals have no impact on pay and so are needless irritants which can increase the tension in the office: o Senior [managers] will know that out of the half-dozen [people] that they have administrative responsibility for, only one of them is eligible for an increment. So that's the one that they will devote some time and will either come and see me and tell me about this person—how well they've been doing, or how well they haven't been doing, or a combination, or they will submit these forms. But the other people who aren't eligible for increments kind of take a back seat and then get lost in the shuffle. And then it's easy to rationalize that: "Well, I don't really need to go through the appraisal process with those people because they weren't eligible for increments anyway. So why would I even bother ? It's just grief to me; I really don't like doing it." But in the process, we're doing ourselves and them and the department as a whole, and I guess ultimately, the public, a disservice because we're not taking the time to sit down with them and say: "Here are the areas where you're really good, but here are some of the areas that we think need shoring up." Sometimes the disincentives to prepare appraisals are exacerbated by personal situations. In many field offices people are evaluating other people who were once their colleagues: o We're talking about people who have been colleagues in some instances for many, many years, that have worked together ... And now one of them is in a position of some authority over the other, and we're talking about people who have built up amicable relationships over the years, so that's hard. That's the immediate hurdle, the mental block that both people have. Small offices present particular problems. We encountered a twoperson office in which the two people were peers in terms of job descriptions, but one was older and had considerably more experience. 120

The Workplace Environment Head office expected the senior person to provide a performance appraisal for the junior, but he declined on the grounds that he was not a supervisor. As a result, the junior person never had an appraisal. She did not seem concerned because she felt that alarm bells would have been going off if there was a serious problem, but this does nothing for her career development. Even when appraisals are done, employees are frequently dissatisfied with them for a variety of reasons: o It is a waste of time. If they have something to write about me, either good or bad, they should write it up and put it in a file, and talk to me about it. The evaluation is a standard one for everyone here. The same comments for everyone here, year after year. I think they come from the same mould. o I would have to say that I don't think I've ever been given a fair evaluation. Mine have always been good and I'll come off as being fully satisfactory or superior. But that's not what job evaluation is about ... We all have weaknesses and I think if you're going to use the evaluation system, you talk about the strengths as well as the weaknesses. And there should be some meaningful discussion and some plan to correct those weaknesses. I don't think I've ever had an evaluation that did that for me. o The main measurement we use is result. We are required to do an annual performance evaluation which I don't really believe in a lot because it's like you have a child that misbehaves at nine o'clock in the morning and you say, "Daddy will spank you when he gets home." To leave it to the end of the year is not very good. So I feel that when I do them at the year-end, there really aren't any surprises. It is a summary of what we have talked about and where the coaching has been. Some people told us of a way in which managers avoid many of these problems: they simply ask employees to appraise themselves. There is some evidence that self-appraisal can be beneficial when used in an appropriate fashion,13 but none of those interviewed spoke positively of this approach. Aside from the absurdity of asking someone to appraise her or himself, it puts the employee in a difficult spot: "It can be very difficult to blow your own horn." Subordinates generally felt fairly good about their positions even in the absence of a formal appraisal process in which they had a great deal

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of confidence. Most had a system of self-appraisal by which they determined for themselves whether they were doing a good job. o Pour 1'instant, il n'y a pas de methode formelle. Par contre, il y a une foule d'outils informels pour juger du succes ou de 1'echec du projet (les soupers, les blagues, etc.). D'un point de vue statistique, on le voit par 1'achalandage. On a aussi une feuille info-fax que nous distribuons a nos clients. o I know I am doing a good job in assuring water and navigation safety when I feel I can let my daughter cross that body of water. o II est evalue au jour le jour. Je n'ai pas devaluation formelle et je crois que je devrais, en principe, en avoir une. Us me disent au fur et a mesure ce qu'ils pensent de mon travail. o When you actually drive by a subdivision or a building and realize that it wouldn't be there except for you, it gives you a kind of rush that no performance appraisal can make up for. In sum, it is not much of an overstatement to say that the formal performance appraisal process isn't working. In some cases, there are no appraisals, and in others, people follow the letter of the rules without it really meaning anything. However, in the absence of a formal appraisal system, a real appraisal system has developed which is much less formal and depends more on a "wink and a nod," and self-satisfaction, than words on paper. THE FUTURE

With governments continuing to rethink their purpose, there are implications for the physical environment, the career prospects of public servants, and the human resource needs of the future. As governments have been contracting and contracting out, this has given rise to a renewed interest in the co-location of offices as a way of saving money, which in some cases has happened. However, there are still many separate offices, probably because departments have become accustomed to the high profile a separate office with an identifying sign out front gives them. More pragmatically, many departments, like the ombudsmen or Canadian Wildlife Service, have discovered good reasons to have their own locations built or modified to suit their specifications. While the general trend in the last thirty 122

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years has been away from the dedicated government office building and to departments locating in a variety of different locations, recent trends toward downsizing have reduced the overall size of government offices and made "economies of scale" a rediscovered issue. Thus has begun a series of discussions about a return to amalgamation. The difference this time is that amalgamations are often by functional lines across levels of governments to produce one-stop shopping. This has happened in some employment offices in Alberta where federal and provincial offices are combined, or with private/ public consolidations as in business development centres in New Brunswick where provincial staff share offices with non-governmental agents. It may be that in small centres in a few years the "government building" with two flags flying will be the norm. Career Development As management enters a continuing era of cutback management in which doing more with less is a basic part of everyone's job description, the importance of training and career development and the role of performance appraisal in this takes on added significance.14

The federal government defines career development in the following manner: "Career management is the ongoing, collaborative process between employees seeking to develop their full potential and achieve their career aspirations and the organization seeking to ensure that the necessary human resources are available to meet its objectives. Career management is multi-dimensional. It may encompass job enrichment, lateral movement, career re-direction, changes in responsibilities, movement outside the organization and upward progression."15 From this definition it would seem that career development is an important process from the standpoint of both employer and employee. Because of weakening employee loyalty to a specific employer, the employer must ensure that there are a reasonable number of good employees available to fill key positions. Too much uncertainty could cause all the good employees to seek other employment, leaving the employer with a cadre of people who are sufficiently incompetent that they have no other options. Commented one worker, o Sometimes it seems that they want us to quit. This would save them a bit of money, [but] afterwards they would worry about who was going to do the job.

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Bluntly put, in the current environment there seems to be little attention given to career development. This should not be a surprising conclusion, given the earlier findings about training and development and performance appraisal. There are well-understood tensions between a rigid application of the merit system and deliberate career planning.16 These tensions are exacerbated at the field level where there are fewer opportunities to move, people are less likely to have the broad overview and the informal network that allow them to anticipate future opportunities, and family commitments limit mobility. Increasingly, selection criteria have also been replaced by "protection criteria"—those which will protect jobs during a period of downsizing. As one of the very few openly gay interviewees put it, o Everyone knows who my "family" is, and if they think they are going to downsize me, they will have a human rights case on their hands. In sum, field level officials realize that their potential for future career movement is limited even though they are not close to retirement. Surprisingly few expressed a great deal of concern or dissatisfaction about this situation. Most of those interviewed dealt with it in one of two ways. Some people have focused on improving their present working environment as much as they can because they know that this will be their environment for the rest of their careers. This is a positive approach which has generally caused staff to become more client-centred. They put a great deal of time and thought into organizing their work for the maximum benefit of clients and into working with clients beyond the minimum required. o First of all, I don't see myself as having a career. I see myself as having a job ... I'm more interested in seeing things develop, solidify, happen than I am in planning a career, which has a lot of economic drawbacks. In our organization they ask about your career path, and that means "Go do something you're not good at and we'll pay you more." And you say: "No, I think I'm pretty committed to making things happen, so unfortunately I'm not going to be paid more." So they say, "Let's red-circle this person because he really doesn't care about his career. He only cares about his job." o I'm not going anywhere in the organization, and I want to stay wheree II am because I like doing this type of work. 124

The Workplace Environment Others have chosen to find their fulfilment in life outside the office. Many people were very active in community associations, sports clubs, church groups, theatre and musical groups, and the like. It was clear that many realized their career was in a static condition and they would have to obtain their real stimulus elsewhere. There is probably nothing really wrong with this; people are performing their jobs as required. Of course, motivating people to perform when their real interests lie elsewhere may be of concern, and it is also a bit of a personal tragedy when people must spend one-third of their day in a work situation which they do not find stimulating and where they feel unappreciated. However, there was little evidence that service to the public suffered as a result. Field people would have more career opportunities if they moved to head office. Had they considered this as a possibility ? o I have too many things keeping me here personally. I'm happy with doing what I'm doing now. The compensation, the pay, well, like all of us, I'd like to get paid this much more. However, I feel I'm being paid good enough. In order to get that requires a couple of hours a day commuting time and to me it'd have to be in excess of $10-12,000 a year minimum just to look at it. o You would never get me back to national office. The hassle is just too great. Here I can ski, I have taken up tennis, and I have a much better quality of life. o When I first started I thought of moving up and eventually getting to Ottawa, but I don't speak French. I started to learn it ... but I have found other things to do with my time and have decided my future is here. o To be pragmatic, I could have a great future in this organization given my colour, my education, and my languages. But I am not interested anymore. I see my long-term future in the private sector. That is what they keep pushing at us. In sum, many had had an opportunity to move to head office at some point in their careers and chose not to, or did move and then chose to return to a field office later. A few expressed regret that they did not take (or were not offered) an opportunity to further their career by moving to head office, but these were a distinct minority. 125

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o I applied for a couple of jobs in head office over the years, but I did not get them and now I am resigned to staying where I am. In the end it may be a blessing—over the years I have moved so much and now I can build myself a little niche here. Most people, then, are in field offices by choice, even though they recognize that this is a career-limiting decision. o No, I don't really want to go to head office. I think I'll stay here where I have got the contacts with the community, with the staff, with the clients. And in particular I like the autonomy of being out in the field. o I blocked [my future career development] from here. For personal reasons, I have been resisting any move ... In my case, because I love the field and the freedom, I wouldn't want to get buried in national office. This choice is frequently reinforced by a combination of geographic and family considerations. Many of those interviewed first chose the location in which they wanted to work and then sought a job that would take (or keep) them there. In some cases, people have made a conscious decision to return to their birthplace after considerable movement. In others, people have never left and never want to. Alternatively, some have moved around the country frequently over the years and almost serendipitously found a place they really enjoy. The geographic considerations are frequently tied to family. In some cases, people do not want to move because their spouse has a good job or their children are at a stage in their schooling where it would be unfair to move them. Some people expressed a desire to remain close to their extended families, although this was much less common than concerns for spouse and children. Few of the people interviewed exhibited the stereotype of the male-dominated household picking up and moving whenever the husband and father had an opportunity for promotion. It was clear that most of the men and women interviewed were not making unilateral decisions: o My wife has a professional career here. We are raising our family in our own community for the next ten years. If I want to get promoted I have to move to Fredericton. I realize I will have to stay here for seven or eight years. In my long-term career I would like to progress. When I have fifteen years under my belt I would like to be promoted at that time. 126

The Workplace Environment o Pour les quatre-cinq prochaines annees, j'aimerais mieux rester dans le gouvernement a cause de ma vie personnelle. J'ai de tres jeunes enfants. Dans 1'entreprise privee, tu dois courir plus et accorder plus de ton temps personnel. Mais dans cinq ans j'irai dans 1'entreprise privee. We found little evidence of systematic career development in the conventional sense of that term. Our findings, mentioned earlier, that both training and development and performance appraisal were generally done poorly should not make this surprising. There was little evidence that supervisors encouraged people to think in terms of career development, and employees generally had fairly limited views of their future careers. Career development has a particular meaning for people in field offices. Most of them are not ambitious in the conventional sense of wanting to climb the departmental hierarchy. On the contrary, they are happy in their current situation, at least for the short term. They have made a conscious choice to remain in a field office, either because they are more comfortable in that environment or for family or geographic reasons. CONCLUSION This chapter makes it fairly clear that there are significant gaps in the practice of good human resource management, as well as significant gaps between the physical environment people work in and what they feel they need to do their jobs properly. Most respondents were critical of their department's practices in the areas of training and development, performance appraisal, and career development. This is partly a product of difficult economic times; it is pointless to get excited about performance appraisal when there are no salary increments and few opportunities for promotion. In theory, economic restraint makes good human resource management important, but in practice, this is less likely to be the case. It was not that the need for career development was not recognized, but it does not seem to have been developed, implemented, or communicated in a meaningful way. Part of the reason for this weakness in development of human resource management systems at the field level stems from the gap between field offices and head office (discussed in more detail in the next chapter). Although they pay lip service to it, few organizations take human resource systems seriously.17 The development of appraisal, evaluation, or measurement systems intended to improve the effec ve127

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ness of organizations—the self-correcting or self-evaluating mechanism of organizational learning—tends to be left in the hands of staff specialists within the organization.18 They develop these systems which are frequently quite complex and employ their own particular language and acronyms. The organization then becomes split between those who speak the language and those who do not. The field people tend not to speak the language; it is the language of head office to them.19 The result is that rather than helping them to do a better job, the formal system becomes one more layer of administration which is perceived as being imposed upon the field office and inhibiting field office staff from getting on with their work. In some cases informal systems had developed to augment the weaknesses in the formal systems. Thus, most people felt fairly comfortable about their performance in their current positions, even though they had not received a meaningful, formal appraisal for a number of years. Most importantly, there seems to be little recognition that the people who are not being trained, appraised, or having their careers developed will also be the civil servants expected to implement any new reforms. This came across as a problem that many felt head offices had not recognized.

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Chapter Six Two Solitudes or One Big Happy Family? Dealing with Head Office "Hi, I'm from head office and I'm here to help you." Winner in the Globe and Mail (10 August 1996) contest to identify "The Greatest Lies Ever Told" "Mind you, I guess most often with head office people it's fine with us if they stay there." Field office staff person

One of the main external interactions of field offices is the relationship with head office. This relationship is very complex because field officers feel themselves caught in the middle of a number of conflicting tensions (see figure 6.1). A large number of actors have some influence over the field-level official. Some have line authority over the field-level staff (indicated in the diagram by solid lines), but there are many more groups which have some kind of influence in the operation of the field office (indicated by broken lines). The level of influence of these agencies varies considerably. The actions of field-level officials are strongly influenced by organizations such as Treasury Board and the Public Service Commission, while other organizations such as interest groups and other governments have a less direct influence. The chart also recognizes that organizations such as the minister's office and head office manager which have line authority over field offices through an established channel will sometimes circumvent that channel. This turn of events is useful for providing quick turnaround of information, but it can also cause tension. The major problem confronting field officials is balancing all of these influences and trying to satisfy the contrary demands being made on them. It is true that not all officials face exactly the same constellation of forces, but all face some grouping of these. Of course, to some extent all units of all government organizations are caught in the same web,

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Figure 6.1 THE C O N F L I C T I N G T E N S I O N S F A C I N G THE FIELD O F F I C I A L

but field offices feel the pressure more acutely because they are directly on the firing line in terms of delivering services and must frequently respond immediately to concerns of outsiders. Field officers often feel that distance provides some isolation and safety for people in head office. The first section of this chapter discusses some of the problems in organizing the relationship between field offices and head office and some organizational configurations used to structure that relationship. The next section analyses how well these structures work in practice. It suggests that many organizations do not have a unified and unifying organizational reality or culture but that rather there are clear divisions in perspective between head office and field offices. The third section discusses the very important role of communication in the field officehead office relationship. The last section introduces the idea that there are several different modes of field office-head office interaction 130

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and provides an assessment of which modes seem to function more smoothly. ORGANIZATIONAL

STRUCTURES1

From the standpoint of head office, the organizational problem is to establish and maintain mechanisms to ensure that officials in the field are complying with head office rules and procedures without unnecessarily restricting their freedom to be responsive to local conditions.2 After all, it is these local officials who are closest to the needs of citizens and most knowledgeable about how best to solve problems. However, they cannot be given carte blanche to do whatever they like without regard to the overall objectives of the department. The basic problem then is to design an organization that is both responsive to local needs and responsible to the duly constituted authorities in the capital city. Observes I.E. Hodgetts : "A responsive bureaucracy clearly ought to be concentrating on transferring authority to the administrators down the hierarchy and out in the field; yet the historical claims for a responsible bureaucracy can best be met by retaining authority close to the top where it can be used by the minister and scrutinized by parliament."3 This can be restated as a need to develop an organizational structure that provides for both differentiation and integration.4 Differentiation refers to the necessity of a division of labour so that each organizational unit has a set of specified duties and responsibilities, and a reasonable level of autonomy in carrying out its duties. Integration refers to the need to coordinate the activities of these separate units to ensure that the overall objectives of the organization are served by its various units. The essence of a good organization is ensuring that these two factors are in place, but that task becomes more complicated as organizations become larger and more decentralized. Fesler has set out a list of concerns that must be handled by any organization which has field offices : How are regional administrators to keep informed of the flow of technical advice to their subordinates ? How can field officials be given adequate understanding of the total program of the agency ? How can functional divisions be prevented from dropping "paratroops" into regions to perform special brief assignments—or how can this practice at least be kept from undermining the regional director's responsibility for all agency activities in the region ? How can field officials be apprised of central decisions in advance of their appearance under headquarters' datelines in the region's newspapers ? How can headquarters' answers, given directly to officials of state and local governments, business corporations, and 131

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private citizens, be kept consistent with the answers of regional officers to the same people ? And how can headquarters be kept informed of communications between regional offices ? In addition, there is the important and puzzling question of the volume and type of reports that field officials must file centrally to keep headquarters informed of developments all over the country and to facilitate effective supervision over the field services.5 THE G R E A T D I V I D E : THE FRACTURED ORGANIZATIONAL REALITY

Organization charts are typically drawn to illustrate a seamless, unified line of authority extending from the minister and deputy minister down to the lowest operative in the smallest field office. This implies a unity of purpose and clear understanding between people at all levels, as was discussed in chapter 3. While an "ideal" organization might exhibit a unified reality stretching from top to bottom, in practice most organizations were perceived to look like the chart in figure 6.2. The perception among field staff is that their organizational reality is considerably different from that of head office. Zussman and Jabes provided a first indication of this in The Vertical Solitude when they suggested that even in the highest echelons of a department the organizational culture was not passed between levels very well.6 Our finding is that organizational culture or reality is even less likely to pass from head office to field offices. One respondent focused on the role of human resource specialists in head office, but his views were echoed by others about head office staff in general. o The tradition in the human resource field, from my understanding of it, is that there is a lot of movement between departments. So they become very, very knowledgeable about the Public Service Staff Relations Act, the Public Service Staffing Act, grievance procedure, but they're not as familiar with our culture, and they are in my mind woefully inadequate when it comes to understanding the dynamics of working in the field. (Later he talked about a particular situation in which he had needed advice.) Their view was very pristine in terms of the legalistic perspective, but as human beings you see it in a different fashion. Even though what they were interpreting was better for me to manage, they didn't see the human side of it. They lack the human aspect of dealing with people. The emphasis of my job is getting the job done through people and creating an environment which will 132

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Figure 6.2 THE FRACTURED ORGANIZATIONAL REALITY

make those people want to work, and it's the little things that matter. This division in perspective between people in field offices and head office produces the fractured organizational reality. In many cases a perception exists of a clearly defined organizational reality in field offices but less certainty about what prevails at head office. It was as though a filter were in place between head office and field offices, controlling what passes between them and changing it in subtle ways. As with any filter, small items (forms to be completed, phrases to be mouthed at appropriate times) are more likely to find their way through than large ones (shared organizational goals). It is clear from the interviews that field office staff see themselves as very different kinds of people from employees in head office. In a few cases this is put forward with acrimony. However in most cases, the tone is more matter-of-fact: people simply feel there are two solitudes in the organization. o The key difference between being out here and being in a headquarters job is much more hands-on operational management. [You] very directly influence programs, and you can see the very 133

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direct output of programs. When you're in headquarters, you have to be a good conceptual, hypothetical thinker, and you have to be able to think in the abstract and look at a lot of things in the abstract ... For a person who's good at hands on, it's much more difficult to see the rewards for this abstract type thing you have to get into in management. The payoff is much longer term than what you see out here. o If you stay in head office developing policies and procedures in an ivory tower, it doesn't help in the field. o I find that I phone up to national office for policy interpretations and I come off the phone and I think: "Who can I talk to now?" It just seems like they live in a different world. They might write the policies, but they are not there on the other end trying to apply them. The concept of the fractured organizational reality is a very important finding because much of the recent management literature focuses on the importance of developing and using a unified organizational culture to motivate staff. Field office staff generally do not have a strong sense of organizational culture of any kind, but to the extent that they do, they feel that they are different from their head office counterparts even in the same department. They usually see this in a very matter-of-fact way, with little resentment. They just feel that the two groups are different. Table 6.1 summarizes the field officials' perceptions of these differences. It is important to understand that what follows is perceptions of reality: some head office staff with whom these perceptions were discussed did not agree with them. As frequently happens in such cases, the reality is probably some place between the two perceptions. The point here is that field office staff feel that these perceptions are accurate and act accordingly. Diverse job responsibilities—narrow job responsibilities. Field office staff seem to absolutely delight in the diverse responsibilities they find in their jobs. When asked an open-ended question about favourite aspects of their positions, they routinely went on at length about the diversity of their day-to-day work. They frequently spend significant amounts of time outside their offices, away from their desks. They deal with a broad variety of people from the elite to the salt of the earth. o I like the idea of not being confined to a desk all day. And I like being out. I'm always seeing different things. If I go into a cheese plant one day, the next day it could be a fish plant, and the day 134

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Table 6.1 HOW FIELD OFFICE PEOPLE VIEW THEIR OWN JOBS AND HEAD OFFICE J O B S

Their own jobs

Head office jobs

Rich and diverse job responsibilities

Narrow and s cific job responsibilities Oriented to process control Oriented to rules Concern for government's political agenda Concern for energy and change Focus on political nature of work Traditional upward mobility Trying to move on to the next job Not really committed to program/ department; current position is just stepping stone in career

Oriented to delivering service Oriented to people Concern for client Concern for stability Little tolerance for "politics" Tied to geographic area Trying to do the current job better Committed to program/department

after I could be in a winery. So it's always something new, and I enjoy that quite a bit. o Mes journees ne sont pas tres typiques. Je verifie le volume du personnel, le temps et delais de travail, les statistiques, les commandes, etc. II n'y a pas de taches specifiques qui se repetent tous les jours. Je m'occupe en fait de la gestion totale du bureau. They enjoy the fact that they learn a great deal about all aspects of their department, because they are directly on the firing line and they must have an answer or find an answer to any question referred to them. They clearly relish the variety involved in their workday. o I think the thrill and the challenge of working in a regional office is that ... no two days are ever the same. While they recognize that this complicates their lives somewhat, they clearly enjoy the variety. By contrast, they see people in head office as being bound by narrow job descriptions. They respect the knowledge of staff in head office because they recognize that there are people there who know a great deal about the intricacies of individual rules and programs; however, they are confident that no one in head office has a greater breadth of knowledge about the overall workings of the department than they do:

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o We represent the department at the region and we have to give ourselves a profile ... I guess we have to be the expert in everything. In some ways, we are. We are the jack of all trades. A lot of things, a lot of the administration work that I have, for example, are people calling me on the various programs available. They also view head office people as being closely tied to their desks, interacting with the same group of people day after day and generally experiencing little variety in their daily routine. o To me the advantage of working in a field office is being closer to where the real work is done. You tend to see more the direct relevance of the work you're doing ... What generally happens in headquarters is you're in headquarters and you're in an eight by eight cubicle everyday. o I know if I was working in Ottawa I would be basically confined to a desk, and I like getting out on the road and I like sitting down meeting new people within the ... industry. I don't feel that happens in Ottawa. It seems in Ottawa to be one series of endless meetings, but here you get to travel on your own and make judgments out in the field. This probably overstates the level of routine and tedium found in head office positions, but what is significant is the perception of field staff about the working environment of head office. Service Delivery-Process Control. One of the starkest differences drawn between the two groups relates to attitudes toward service delivery. Field staff feel that they are closely attuned to the needs of clients and strongly oriented to providing the best service possible. They emphasize that they must face clients every day and compare this to the attitude in head office: o Us ne sont pas confronted avec la problematique du public, avec nos delais. Des fois, on leur demande de 1'information et ils ne se preoccupent pas de nous la donner en tant voulu pour le client. Lorsque nous avons des problemes, on se parle directement ou quelquefois on passe par notre superieur. o I [like] the scope for independent action, and the ability to work with a team, the team being largely external to the department, and to visualize an idea and see it through to execution. And then not 136

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only doing that once, but doing it repetitively and doing it concurrently on a whole variety of fronts. Having worked for [a federal department] in Ottawa back in the early '70s, I saw it from ... the policy and policy planning viewpoint where you were creating conceptual ideas without really any ability to influence whether or not they'd be implemented or could be implemented. It was all very interesting in an intellectual sense and perhaps [if I had been more senior, I] may well have [had] some impact. But I quickly learned then that the way to have impact was to be out of Ottawa almost all the time. That speaks volumes, I guess, for the pros and cons of where you'd rather be. Field employees contrast their service-oriented approach with the more control-oriented approach of head office. Their views run from the rather benign idea that head office people simply do not understand what clients need to a stronger view that the controls imposed and support provided by head office actually make it more difficult for them to provide service: o Le central a une preoccupation de systeme, d'une certaine uniformite, equitabilite entre les regions. o Souvent les procedures sont difficiles et non realisables pour le client. Us sont loin de la realite. J'ai toujours dit que le monde du central devrait etre renouvele, on devrait faire une rotation avec ceux des bureaux regionaux, avec ceux qui connaissent la realite quotidienne du bureau. Le central est dans la lune. II est deconnecte de la realite. Field staff feel that some controls are put in place simply for the sake of adding controls rather than any concern about quality of service delivery. In some cases the irritant is not the actual controls themselves as much as the amount of time and the contradictions involved in dealing with head office. o There are more regulations. We have analysts and bureaucrats in head office who live to make up policies that they think will help me out in the field. Most of them have never been here and don't know what is going on. There's reams and reams of policy. Field office staff generally regard time spent dealing with head office as wasted time, as contrasted to productive time spent with clients. Sometimes field staff feel that head office imposes rules that actually

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prevent them from doing what needs to be done, in some cases because head office is out of touch with clients' needs. In other cases there is the common regional lament that rules are made to conform to the needs of the most complex clients, usually those in central Canada, which are counter-productive elsewhere. o Un aspect negatif est la reglementation qui est affreusement tatillonne (cucul). A un moment donne, il faut demander au Conseil du tresor 1'autorisation d'economiser et ce processus est tellement long et difficile a un point tel que tu deviens incapable d'economiser. D'un cote on te dit que tu es imputable et de 1'autre tu n'a pas la latitude necessaire pour poser les gestes au bon moment. Souvent les occasions se ratent parce que le processus est tellement long. o It seems to me the people in the regions are pretty much independent operators, and they value innovation and they value the ability to work one-on-one with clients. That starts to break down immediately you get into layers in Ottawa. And so at times I hear my counterparts bemoaning the fact that they're asked to deliver programs designed in Ottawa for delivery in the regions which are unfathomable in terms of the complexity and the expectations of the clients. They may work well, say, in central Canada, with larger firms, but here it just doesn't work. Orientation to People-Orientation to Rules. Field office employees see themselves as "people" people. When asked an open-ended question about what skill was most important for their duties, virtually all field office staff referred in some way to "people skills" or communications. They see themselves as oriented to the needs of clients and frequently pride themselves on their abilities to respond to those needs even when this places them on the edge of the established rules. o I go with the client. As long as I take the rules that I have to work within and bend them, twist them, do whatever, without getting into trouble, and it suits the client's purposes, then I do that. I don't care what Ottawa tells me to do. They won't put you into jail. The field office perception is that head office people value rules more highly than they value people. Field staff are generally quite understanding about this. They accept the idea that proximity to the minister makes head office people very sensitive to concerns about formal accountability and ministerial responsibility, and field staff understand 138

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the need for such values. However, they bridle when these rules get in the way of their ability to provide service, even when the rules are necessary for accountability. o There has been a change of policy over the past where we were working for the people so they were the ones to be satisfied. The policy has changed over the years to where we don't work for the people—we work for government. We are not responsible to these people—we are responsible to the government who is the employer. If you can fit in the needs of the individual within that philosophy, then it makes your work easier. You cannot go by the policies of the department only, because it will make your work miserable. You have to keep in touch with the people, and you have to maintain their sympathy. You cannot impose anything on people that they don't want. Concern for Client-Concern for Government's Political Agenda. Field staff pride themselves on their concern for the well-being of their clients. They view themselves as the conduit through which the concerns of their clients are carried to head office. Field employees feel strongly that they should be consulted about changes in policy, not just to satisfy their own egos but because they are the people within the department who have the best understanding of the service needs. o The thing I resent most about the job are those cases [where] judgments are made at the centre which do not reflect the sensitivity that I would think that field brings to those particular decisions. People [in head office] do not know enough about the issue [to make] decisions that impact on what happens locally. Employees in field offices understand that governments have certain policy needs, and they are quite willing to be responsive to them. However, field staff become a bit blase about these political agendas. Many of these people have been in place long enough to have seen several governments come and go; they are quite conscious that much of the so-called significant restructuring of programs introduced with great fanfare in the national media will have little or no impact on the way in which they deliver their programs. They quickly begin to use the latest catch-phrase or modify the trappings surrounding their programs while making few basic changes. Even when there are changes, they are usually seen as slight movements of the pendulum rather than totally new initiatives. For example, every wave of decentralization, undertaken

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as a reaction against the excesses of centralization, is followed by a trend toward centralization, undertaken as a reaction against the excesses of decentralization. Stability-Energy. Aberbach, Putnam, and Rockman contrast the orientation of politicians and public servants as characterized respectively by energy and stability.7 Politicians, particularly in a new regime, inject energy into the system, meaning that they come to office with many ideas about changes they would like to make in the existing system. Conversely, public servants provide stability. They tend to understand why things have been done in a particular manner in the past, and they sometimes try to discourage politicians from making too many changes too quickly. These same two traits could be used to characterize head office people (close to politicians) and field office staff. Field staff recognize that while they have the luxury of responding somewhat slowly to the latest political innovations, head office people must take these innovations seriously. Field staff understand the need for change, but they also feel some obligation to buffer their clients from too-rapid policy changes: o Je trouve cela difficile de travailler comme fonctionnaire et d'avoir a composer avec la dynamique politique du gouvernement. Je comprends que le gouvernement c'est politique mais je trouve cela choquant. Une journee, on s'en va vers la droite, le lendemain vers la gauche, le surlendemain on s'en va tout droit et ainsi de suite; cela ga me pue au nez, j'ai bien de la misere avec ca mais, je dois vivre avec c.a. Done j'essaie dans la mesure du possible d'attendre que leur position politique soit bien assise pour commencer a travailler. Head office people sometimes see this as retrogressive obstructionism, which it sometimes is. However, usually this slowness to move stems from the fact that field staff have seen waves of change sweep down from on high before; they simply want to make certain that this latest round will last before they inflict major changes on their clients. Tolerance of "Politics." Field office people view head office people as being highly "political." They do not usually mean this in the partisan sense of the term but rather in the more general sense of moving ideas forward by subtle negotiations and agreements with a wide variety of attentive groups. For one respondent, being in the field meant being o free from a lot of internal political crap. I don't mean the politics of the elected people, more like in-house departmental politics. When 140

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you are out in the country you can wash your hands of all that. A lot of game-playing goes on in Edmonton. It is not productive. Field staff generally do not speak negatively of this form of politics. They understand why this mode of operation is necessary in the head office milieu which involves dealing with politicians, other departments, central agencies, and interest groups. Another worker said: o They do understand what we do [but] the interest isn't there. I think they've got tied up in managing and not in the work. They'll come down and look once in awhile, but they're so busy with managing, finding money, manipulating money, setting policies, things like that, that on the working level, you don't see them. Field staff understands the importance of this kind of political behaviour, and they are appreciative that someone in their department looks after this. They are equally glad that it is someone else. Field officials generally view themselves as no-nonsense, results-oriented people who do not have the patience for this sort of arcane interaction: o I wouldn't want to spend my career up there [in Ottawa] because I couldn't stand the (trails off) ... Our directorate in Ottawa is very clearly politically motivated. Because they deal with our federal regulations, and they also deal with each and every province and territory who also promote our regulations ... It's a full-time confrontational basis with those people. And when you're dealing with all the different provinces and all have different ideas ... I'm not cut out for that. I would rather have somebody say, this is what it is, go do it. I've sat in on about four of our provincial-territorial ... meetings and it's not my cup of tea ... How can you be going in fifteen different directions ? ... Trying to appease some of the provinces can be [very difficult]. I let our chief and our regional director look after that. I don't have a whole lot of time for that kind of crap. Orientation to Geographic Area. Many people in field offices consciously chose their jobs for geographic reasons.8 In some cases, they are returning home after unhappy or unsatisfying stints in head office. In other cases, they have never left home and have no desire to do so. In still other cases, they have taken jobs in a number of different locations over their careers and finally arrived in what they and their families regard as the perfect spot. And finally, some people are not totally satisfied in their current location, but view it as the best possibility for 141

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a variety of family reasons, e.g., spouse's employment, children's situation in school. There can also be some antipathy to the capital city. This can be based on the perceived working environment there. o I don't [want to advance in the organization.] For me to advance within the department I would almost have to go to Fredericton. I have always described Fredericton as a glass house where one has to be preoccupied with looking over one's shoulder for fear that someone is trying to climb the corporate ladder over your back. Or it can be based on a more generalized antipathy. In Ontario it was not difficult to find people with strongly negative views about Toronto. In some cases this was based on the traditional gut feeling toward Toronto, but in other cases, it was grounded in more practical concerns about the cost of living generally and housing specifically. While these concerns sometimes ran deeper and stronger in Ontario, they were replicated in most provinces where the capital city was seen as a large, bustling place in comparison to the smaller community in which the person was now situated. For whatever reason, many people have first chosen the geographic location in which they want to live and then sought a job there. Obviously, they have little interest in moving or would be selective about the place to which they would move: o I don't have any aspirations of being an assistant deputy minister or deputy minister or director general. I may get to the supervisory level here ... I don't think I'll progress much farther than that. And that's fine with me. I don't really care. Halifax is my home and my wife and kids are quite happy here. And I have to consider that in the move. So basically if I were to move I'd have to sit down and talk to them about it. These people are not ambitious in the conventional sense of that term, i.e., they are not intent on climbing to the top of their organizational pyramid if it means moving to what they would regard as an undesirable location. However, many are ambitious in another sense. Since they have few or no aspirations of changing jobs, they want to make their present job experience as positive as possible. This frequently means developing a very positive relationship with clients and doing everything possible to further the position of clients. 142

Dealing with Head Office o I thought quite a bit about [moving to head office]. Really due to my ... family circumstances, and the age of our children, and my own age ... I'm very comfortable here ... It's a great city to live in, and we want to stay here. So the idea of going back to Ottawa has no appeal to me ... I've turned down that offer ... several times and been glad every time that I knew I made the right decision. Basically my objective ... is to refine my degree of satisfaction both with what I'm doing and with the impact on the industry and just do more of that over the next several years. o C'est au niveau du contenu de mes interventions. Tant que j'aurai 1'impression d'etre une des personnes consultees sur les orientations du dossier des relations de travail, cela va me valoriser. Je n'ai pas d'aspiration de mobilite, en terme de promotion. J'ai 1'impression d'avoir atteint le niveau qui me satisfait et done c'est simplement de maintenir mon influence en terme de contenu. Obviously, field staff with this sort of motivation do not switch jobs frequently. Orientation to This Job-Moving to Next Job. Field office employees now tend to remain in their jobs for extended periods. This has become more pronounced in recent years, but it has always been the case to some extent. Opportunities for field staff are frequently limited by their preference for location and their acquired specialist skills. This means that there are probably effectively fewer opportunities for field staff to move than there are for the generalists in head offices. For all these reasons, field office staff tend to become very attached to their current job and very concerned about providing clients with the best possible service. By contrast, field office staff see head office people as flitting easily from one job and even one department to another. Of course, they understand that head office people must do well in their current job in order to move to the next one, but they have some lingering concerns that this means that head office staff see their current jobs in a different manner from field staff who are proud to be in their department and in their position for the long haul. In particular, they wonder to what extent head office staff are really committed to the department: o We have an awful lot of individuals in our organization at all levels who are doing more about managing their position than they are in managing what their job is. 143

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Commitment to Department/Program. It has become the norm in some governments for professional managers, process specialists, and policy analysts who work in head office to move from one department to another fairly quickly. Since their skills are generic rather than program-specific, there are few impediments to these moves. o [Field staff] tend to be around for awhile. We've learned from each other what's done. We don't learn nearly as much from talking to the folks in Ottawa. What we find is they tend to cycle through. [This department] is kind of a way-station on their career ... A lot of us have been here for twenty-odd years, sometimes continuously in one office, and we end up tutoring them on how to do these things—not only what's here, but what's in Ottawa, too. From the standpoint of field staff, who tend to have substantive skills oriented to the department or program rather than generic skills, there is a concern about the level of commitment which these generic managers have to the program. Field staff perceive that the entire head office staff turns over about every three to five years. The attitude of field staff was not always overt resentment. Some understand the current trend toward generic management skills and that the entire department might benefit from the presence (however temporary) of highly skilled senior people with experience in central agencies and other departments. However, field staff are also acutely aware of what this does to the shared organizational reality of the department and their own promotional prospects. Many have served long enough to remember the "good old days" when the only route to the top jobs in the department was up the departmental hierarchy. They remember legendary former leaders who worked their way up from office boy to deputy minister, and knew everybody in the department. As with all mythology, one can question whether the "good old days" ever did exist in quite this form, but such perceptions are common nonetheless. The Fractured Organizational Reality. All of these phenomena add up to a fractured organizational reality. Most organizations do not seem to have a unifying organizational aura that extends throughout the organization. In many cases, field staff do not feel as though the organization has any sort of unifying theme. Generally speaking, field staff see themselves as providing continuity to the organization. They feel that they are the ones who really understand all the workings of the organization, the ones who embody its history. They frequently feel that they have a relatively clearly defined 144

Dealing with Head Office organizational reality within their office, but they see that reality as being separate from what happens at head office. It seems that for most organizations there is no unified organizational reality spanning both head and field offices. There are probably some cases where there is a field office reality, but even this is difficult to discern because if an organizational reality does not include head office, it is difficult to see what the unifying force will be. An important aspect of promoting an organizational unity is developing a good system of two-way communication. Communication is also significant in stimulating a good relationship between field offices and head office. Therefore, we asked interviewees a number of questions about how both the formal and informal communications system within their organization operated. MODES OF C O M M U N I C A T I O N

Many of our respondents reported considerable two-way contact between themselves and head office. A minority of people were absolutely forbidden to communicate with head office without going through the senior levels in the field office. A few simply had no reason to contact head office frequently. A number of senior field managers discussed sending progress reports on projects or exception reports concerning problems about which head office should be informed. They felt that it was important for them to do this but often commented that it did not result in any continuing discussion with head office about the issue. They had no way of knowing whether head office was concerned about the issue or not. Virtually all contacts were by telephone, memorandum, fax, or e-mail. There was little face-to-face contact between head office and field office staff. Some people mentioned that they had spoken to someone on the telephone for years but had no idea what he or she looked like. The relatively rare cases of personal contact virtually always came about through field office staff visiting head office. The most common reason for visiting was a training session. A few field office people mentioned visiting head office while sitting on an advisory committee that also involved head office staff. Some departments seemed to use these kinds of committees frequently to encourage advice and communication. Head office staff seldom visited field offices. For some field office people, this was a source of great dissatisfaction and an indication that head office was out of touch with and unconcerned about what happened in field offices. Most field staff were more forgiving, sensitive to the fact that there were many field offices and head office staff could not be expected to visit them all. While they did not expect visits, many 145

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more were upset at the tremendous psychic distance between head and field offices. o For example, our director of field service would only come when there's a very special occasion, like maybe bring the minister around. Other than that he would never come. Now, I think he should. But, to be fair to him, he's got a lot of other things too and when you're stuck in the office with more than you can do, it's pretty hard to get out and get all around. It would be desirable if he was somehow out and around a bit more. Mind you, I guess most often with head office people it's fine with us if they stay there. Some field offices are accustomed to what is pejoratively called the "royal tour"—a periodic visit by senior head office staff involving a quick tour of the office, superficial discussion with senior field staff, and little expression of real concern about what is happening in the office. Visitors usually sweep through engaging in perfunctory conversation with staff: o They do the walk-through. They come here and do the royal tour once a year. They just walk through and go on their way. This kind of artificial situation seemed to occur most frequently in departments where day-to-day communication between field and head offices was poor. This type of interaction created more of a sense of command performance than of an ongoing dialogue. The physical presence of senior people in field office was more of an irritant than a favour, a reminder of the unsatisfactory relationship between field and head office. During one royal tour, a group in a field office spent a considerable amount of time putting together a presentation on how, in their sparsely populated region, the rules for mileage compensation did not work fairly. The "royal" visitor listened, congratulated them on their excellent presentation, and got on the airplane back to head office. The next day the "new" guidelines came down. Not only did they continue to discriminate against rural regions—they now discriminated even more unfairly. This is a case in which no consultation would have been better than the patronizing form that it took. The royal tour can actually do harm to the senior person involved. Stories would inevitably make the rounds among field staff that this trip was a way for the senior dignitary to receive a government-paid vacation. Some officials in Alberta noted that trips were more likely to occur in ski season than at other times of the year. Another official 146

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Table 6.2 STYLES OF C O M M U N I C A T I O N

Extensive and intensive communications Pronouncements from on high Easy sharing of new ideas Open, wide-ranging discussion of new ideas at the formative and later stages Real two-way communication; feedback from field offices is solicited and taken seriously Strong informal communication network "We" make decisions

Careful control and hoarding of information Dissemination of draft policies at final stages Information passes from head office to field office with requests for feedback, but unclear whether feedback is ever considered Information communicated through formal channels only "They" tell us what to do

described an even more opportunistic relationship which was quickly identified by field staff: o It's comical ... The first thing the new premier did was get rid of [the department's deputy minister]. He then [searched] for a new deputy minister. It's amazing how much attention we got being paid to us by three people in particular who we haven't probably heard from in the last five years ... There was one fella come down last week for two days and when they told us he was comin', the same word was: "Where the hell's he been for the last ten years ?" And that's basically it, because I'm willin' to bet for the last five we never laid eyes on him, never saw his name on a piece of paper, anything like that. All of a sudden he's down telling us what a wonderful job he's been doing, and how hard he's been working for us and everything else. And by the same token, there's been two more doing the same thing. Sporadic, perfunctory efforts at communication do not work. It is important that the communication be both extensive and intensive. Table 6.2 contrasts "extensive and intensive communications" with the opposite extreme, referred to as "pronouncements from on high." The interviews reflected stark contrasts between those field staff who told us that they were constantly kept aware of developing thinking at head office and had ample opportunity to comment on ideas at the formative stage and field officers at the opposite extreme who were either not consulted or were consulted only perfunctorily.

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Table 6.3 MODES OF HEAD OFFICE-FIELD OFFICE INTERACTION

Mutually supportive Head office and field offices are in frequent contact. They each understand one another's needs and work together to arrive at mutually acceptable decisions. Unengaged Work in field office is reasonably self-contained. There are few contacts between head and field offices, and these usually result in minor incremental changes. Proactive field official Field officials know what needs to be done but lack confidence in the knowledge base of those in head office. Therefore, field officials simply do what seems necessary, even though they are aware that they are frequently operating at the edge of departmental and/or central agency regulations. Maxim is "It's easier to beg forgiveness than seek permission." Paralytic Field official must deal with several head office officials. Different head office people send different signals. Program initiatives start and stop with no warning and little explanation. Budget environment is continually changing so that field office can never plan. Field officials spend most of their time communicating with head office and very little time actually providing a service in the field.

o Moi, je trouve qu'on est pas assez consulte. Et, quand on est consuite c'est toujours trop tard et c'est souvent fait seulement par principe. Lorsque j'ai donne des feedback, je n'ai pas ete ecoute done je n'ai plus d'interet. Je ne me sens pas appuye par le central. o Ils ne nous consultent pas, ils nous informent. MODES OF HEAD OFFICE-FIELD OFFICE INTERACTION

Table 6.3 summarizes four modes of head office-field office interaction as seen by field office staff. The first three can all be viewed as positive, while the fourth is the only strongly negative relationship. However, all seemed to produce results when the participants understood one another's positions. Mutually supportive relationships exist when head and field offices are in frequent contact, understand one another's needs, and can work

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Dealing with Head Office together to arrive at mutually acceptable decisions. Unfortunately, this was probably the mode which was found least frequently. It was characterized by continual good communication flows. There was, of course, communication at key decision points or during organizational crises, but this was supplemented by continuing communications patterns between levels of the organization even during more routine times. The efficacy of the crisis-point communication was enhanced by the fact that there had been continuing communication flows and all participants knew one another well and had great confidence in one another. Field staff in these organizations were able to discuss new ideas that were under development or discussion in head office before these were finalized. This mode of interaction seems more likely to occur in organizations where there is a great deal of mobility between field and head offices. It also seems to be enhanced when the head and field office people share common professional ties. For example, this was commonly found in provincial highways departments where the traditional career pattern is for young engineers to begin their careers in a field office, move around the province in several field offices (possibly interspersed with stints in head office) as they work their way up the hierarchy, and then find themselves promoted to a senior position in head office. Because of their common professional background, they all speak the same language easily with one another. And because they have typically moved around the province on the way up the hierarchy, they know many other people in the organization. Unengaged interaction occurs when work in the field office is reasonably self-contained so that there are few contacts between head and field offices and these usually result in minor incremental changes. This style of interaction was frequently seen in departments in which field office staff spend much of their time away from their offices, frequently in the homes or offices of clients. The staff learn to be selfconfident and self-sufficient. They frequently must make very difficult decisions on the spot without reference to head office. They might have to decide whether a child can stay in an environment where he or she is potentially at risk, or whether to allow a questionable food processing facility to continue to operate and thus decide between endangering the lives and health of unsuspecting citizens or threatening the jobs of employees. They must learn to make these decisions quickly in the client's venue which is often quite hostile. A key characteristic of the unengaged mode (which separates it from the paralytic, discussed below) is that the head and field offices are generally in agreement, although their attitudes toward one another can run from the friendly to the patronizing. 149

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Many organizations lend themselves well to this form of interaction. In a regulatory environment adherence to the rule of law requires strict compliance with predetermined rules. For example, a properly trained tax auditor will know the provisions of the legislation, regulations, and interpretation bulletins so that these can be applied on the spot in an auditee's office. Resort to head office for advice is only necessary in unusual situations. Other situations are less amenable to precise rules, but the physical circumstances of making the decision preclude reference to head office. For example, a child-care worker called out in the middle of the night to visit a home where a child is at risk will simply not be able to refer a question to head office, but must make a decision then and there. At first glance it might seem surprising that this style of interaction works as well as it does, although on further inspection, it should not be so. Many examples of unengaged interaction involve highly trained professionals such as the tax auditor or child-care worker mentioned above.9 These people's training prepares them to make these kinds of decisions. There also tends to be a very supportive informal network in their work environment. Child care workers reported spending a great deal of time in discussions with peers which went something like: "What would you do if ...?" This informal socialization prepares people to make the difficult judgments required of them in the field without consultation and gives them confidence that their peers would be making the same decisions. Field proactiveness describes those offices in which the maxim is "It's easier to beg forgiveness than seek permission." In these cases, field officers feel that they know what needs to be done but lack confidence in the knowledge or understanding of those in head office. A common comment was: "Head office has no idea what we do here." Therefore, field officers simply do what seems necessary. They are aware of acting at the edge of departmental and/or central agency regulations but feel immune to criticism for a variety of reasons. Field office staff feel that they are closer to their clientele than to their superiors in head office; therefore, they are willing to put up with criticism from head office if they believe they are doing a service to their clients. This is frequently supplemented by a feeling that head office staff is unknowledgeable and/or uncaring about what goes on in the field so that slight indiscretions are unlikely to be discovered. o Most of the times when I've found myself most satisfied I haven't been given the autonomy to do that by an individual but by saying I'm going to do my job as something that is important to not become bureaucratized and eventually threadbare and bound. I'll 150

Dealing with Head Office give myself the autonomy, and if somebody wants to pull me back, that's fine. I'm not going to waste a lot of my time running around asking for permission. I know the sense of decorum and I'm sort of within the ballpark. And if there's a line there, I'll erase it. I take my own autonomy. People take their own autonomy and take their own responsibility. In some cases, field officials see head office as an obstacle: o Initially, I would say that there was not only not any support from Ottawa, there was some overt discouraging activities that went on to say: "Gee, you know, is that appropriate ? Is it in the criteria ? Should you be doing that ?" Paralytic relationships are the most problematic. These are characterized by field officers who have to deal with several head office officials, each sending different and often contradictory instructions. One official expressed frustration at receiving memoranda from five different people in head office all asking for similar information. His impression was that serious divisions at head office prevented people in virtually adjacent offices from sharing information. Therefore, they all asked him for roughly the same information. A great deal of his day was given over to responding to queries from head office rather than delivering service to clients. These responses had to be handled carefully, because the level of trust in these organizations is quite low and the field officer frequently had the feeling of being a pawn in a larger game. Thus, the field officer was quite aware that a memorandum sent to Director General Tremblay could be used to attack Director General Smith's latest initiative. Because of the high levels of organizational tension and intrigue, program initiatives start and stop with no warning and little explanation. Programs are seen not as services delivered to clients but rather as parts of the broader chess game taking place in head office. The ADM in charge of function A launches a much-ballyhooed project in order to outflank the ADM in charge of function B. However, when the funds are mysteriously cut for this project and shifted back to function B, then there is a sudden shift in what field offices are expected to do. Because this is part of a head office game and not geared to clients, no particular attempt is made to consult with field offices; they are simply told what head office wants done. Since there is no meaningful contact between field and head offices, what head office wants is sometimes not what field officers and clients feel is needed. In this environment, field officers spend most of their time communicating with head office, trying valiantly to understand the conflicting 151

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signals being sent. This means that little time is left to provide service to the public. o I'm in the office most of the time at this stage. And a typical working day involves writing at least three to five memos. And again, at this stage, I do not necessarily think that that is the most productive use of my time. And because there are so many directors in [my program] in [head office], and at this stage, there's no one director-general—he's been removed—but there remain six directors there, I'm responding almost every day to some of their requests in terms of written memos and written materials instead of actually going out and doing the type of job that we should be doing. We could be doing a lot of things that were a lot more proactive rather than reactive, but we find that the directors are not good at communicating or coordinating with one another, and that's why we respond by simply writing these memos. And again speaking about regional office versus headquarters, we also find that we're asked to respond to a lot of the memos that they send down to us which we have to do in writing, but our comments are never listened to. The start-and-stop nature of programs frequently is embarrassing to field staff. They are expected to contact clients with information about a new program and ask them to organize themselves to become involved. Then, after client groups have expended some energy and funds, the same field officer must tell them that head office priorities have changed and their efforts have been wasted. An officer who has been embarrassed in this manner will be less aggressive in spreading the news about future programs. And if the credibility of a field officer has suffered as a result of previous embarrassments, community groups might or might not be interested when that field officer tries to stir up interest in a new program. This type of interaction seemed to occur most frequently in departments without a clear mandate or with several conflicting mandates. It was also fostered in an environment where there was limited ongoing communications between head office and field offices. The trend currently in both federal and provincial departments to consolidate services into larger departments could exacerbate this sort of problem. Field staff will have greater difficulty understanding what their real role is if they are in wide-ranging, amorphous departments. They are more likely to be victims of head office power plays if the department's mandate is unclear. 152

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BREAKING DOWN THE TWO SOLITUDES

Not everyone accepts the idea that there must be two solitudes. Art Olson, an assistant deputy minister in the federal Department of Agriculture and Agri-food, has developed a unique way of breaking down barriers between head office and field offices and between separate field offices. Most ADMS have a fairly large head office staff responsible for developing new policies and other initiatives and introducing them in the field. They will work with field offices to do this, but the "champion" of the initiative will be a head office person. Contrary to the norm, Olson deliberately keeps the size of his head office staff quite small, and makes various regional directors (RDS) the champions of different initiatives. One RD might be responsible for nation-wide development of a cost-recovery policy, while another will be reviewing deregulation, and so forth. All RDS are champions of at least one such national initiative. This has a number of positive consequences. Generally, it reduces the gap in understanding between head office and field office. This gap can exist on both sides. Field officials are quick to complain that head office people do not understand field concerns, but it is also the case at times that field officers do not understand the constraints under which head office operates. When RDS are championing new policies, it is certain that those developed will reflect field office concerns. However, as these policies must also take into account the needs of head office, RDS must become familiar with certain aspects of the head office milieu. This process promotes cooperation among RDS in different parts of the country as well. Each RD needs the support of the others to implement an initiative; therefore, any RD would be ill-advised to take too belligerent a stance with regard to other regions. Of course, they will still fight for scarce resources as a part of the budget process, but when they do so, they will have to remember that they must cooperate on other endeavours. This will also allow RDS to become knowledgeable about differences in regions across the country. They will understand better the difficulties of policy development when they understand that policies are viewed very differently in different parts of the country. An obvious concern is whether the RDS will still have time to manage their region with these additional duties added. Olson sees this possible problem as actually being a positive aspect of the system. First, he does not want these people to be only managers; he wants them to develop 153

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broader policy skills. Second, it is true that they will not have enough time to handle all their managerial duties and therefore must delegate. This is beneficial in developing lower level managers—who, however, in turn, will not have time for some of their duties. This concept has much to recommend it. It likely will promote better policy development in that the new policies will reflect both head office and regional concerns from their formative stages. It is also beneficial in terms of staff development, but as the domino of delegation downward continues, the field officer at the bottom might be squeezed to find the time to provide adequate service. This approach might work with the same amount of available resources if more of these were allocated to field offices. Though not a cost-saving device, there is a real danger that it could come to be seen that way. This problem is discussed in the next chapter. CONCLUSION The relationship between field offices and head office is only one aspect of the role of field office staff, but it is a very important role, because the sound operation of field offices is essential to the proper delivery of services to the public. Head office needs to communicate with field offices to provide them with information, and it needs to receive relevant information in return. In an era when there is great concern about improving the quality of service delivery, emphasis should be placed on ensuring that field officials, who are the prime service deliverers, are given the tools to deliver these services well. Communication is of key importance, but it must be meaningful communication rather than symbolic and gratuitous, or pronouncements from on high. Head office staff need to recognize that field staff have a key role in implementation and are not simply an add-on. Field staff understand very well when they are being patronized. Good communication systems involve extensive and intensive communication on a continuing basis. When communication lines are silent for months and field staff are then suddenly sent a complex proposal and asked for their comments by next week, they understand exactly what is happening. They understand that a decision has already been made at head office and they are being asked to sign off on it as though they agree. One of the most common complaints from field staff was that unnecessary restrictions were placed on their ability to manage their operations. Field managers generally had a good understanding that some issues are of great concern to head office, and they do not resent that as field officials they must follow certain rules. However, they also understand when head office staff are imposing rules for the sake of 154

Dealing with Head Office imposing rules, and they strongly resent this. Departments should try to move as much as possible to "unengaged" or "mutually supportive" styles of interaction. Both involve developing a good understanding of what issues are of concern to head office and delegating other areas of concern to field offices.

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Chapter Seven Administrative Reform: How It Plays in the Field In effect, they are combining two jobs and keeping the same rate of pay. Revenue Canada assessor In the 1990s every province and, of course, the federal government introduced some type of administrative reform. The inspiration ranged from the largely ideological as in Alberta to reforms such as the federal government's PS2000, which were primarily administratively driven.1 As we discuss later in the chapter, the comprehensiveness of the reforms also varied from budget cuts—"doing the same with less"—to major rethinking of the role of the state in society. This chapter examines the types of administrative reforms undertaken and the way in which they were perceived in the field. These responses ranged from highly enthusiastic to plain cynical, the latter being the more common response. This chapter is somewhat short because, despite the rhetoric of reform, few reform initiatives actually made it to the field level. As one person put it, "When they say reform, I hear cutback." By the time we finished our interviewing, every province had embarked upon some type of reform initiative, and everyone we talked to had experienced some impact. This ranged from recognizing the degree to which only lip service was being paid to initiatives, with "business as usual" in the field, to major cutback or redesign efforts. Many field people were now in their second or third generation of reforms, and attitudes toward these changes seemed to be related to the number of reforms they had experienced. Those very few who could still remember the rhetoric of Glassco's "Let the managers manage," or Management by Objectives, tended to be cynical in the rather prosaic fashion of "This too will pass." As one interviewee expressed it,

Administrative Reform o Of course, too many of us maybe have seen all the angles—or think we have—from these new programs that people in Ottawa come out with and they think they're brand new. We saw that in '75. Gimme a break—here's what's going to happen. CONTEXT AND HISTORY OF REFORM INITIATIVES

The need for reform stemmed from the same basic causes in all jurisdictions—budget deficits, a perception that government is inefficient, and public unwillingness to tolerate increased taxes. The response of governments to these needs has been to change delivery mechanisms, change organizational structure, or both. The reforms have been addressed to widely perceived problems in service delivery in government. Government agencies have grown, in some cases even as their program requirements have declined and technology has eliminated certain types of positions. Some of this growth could be attributed to agency responses to what Sutherland and Doern 2 call the "control bureaucracies," or alternatively to "Parkinson's Law" in any of its formulations.3 The problem with the reforms, however, seems to have been not only that in some cases they were ideologically driven but, more importantly, that they were based upon incorrect assumptions about civil servants and their work.4 The assumptions were that civil servants are resistant to change and must be induced or coerced to embrace it, that they are not service oriented, and that they operate in a rigid, inflexible fashion. As was discussed in chapter 3, these assumptions are not supported. Secondly, many reforms have been based upon a presumption that there is "one best way" of providing a particular government service, usually one that emulates the private sector rather than designing services or structures to fit the "law of the situation."5 Finally, the ideological underpinnings of the reform movement have not necessarily been consistent. As both Doern and Aucoin have pointed out, in some cases, two theoretical approaches have been warring with one other. 6 Small, lean, and decentralized is good, yet so is competition, which implies duplication. Similarly, the desire for decentralized decision-making means a loss of accountability or control. Despite these drawbacks, there is some basis for considering government reform as a better way of reducing costs. o Circumstances are forcing us into these changes as we have to do "more with less." Utopia is doing everything with nothing, but we will never get that far. 157

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o Oui, beaucoup. Compte tenu des restriction budgetaires, il faut revoir nos processus de fagon a "faire plus avec moins." II faut etre inventif pour trouver de nouvelles fagons de faire. De plus, 1'informatique change beaucoup notre fagon de faire. o At the start of the job I was able to travel a bit, but with the cutbacks it has become hard. In September and October I had no operating budget at all—they would not reimburse me for expenditures. It was like someone in a wheelchair—you can't go out unless someone comes and picks you up. I couldn't go out into the field unless I had the money to pay for it. I felt a real feeling of inadequacy in those months, as I had made a promise to our clients that I would visit them. There has to be a better way. While reducing costs, there is also a need to retain some control over programs or continue to ensure their reliability, with the exception of the few cases in which policy termination is being considered. When considering reforms, two factors should be taken into consideration: the extent to which government control will be retained, and the cost to the government of the program after reform. Lindquist and Sica provide an inventory of the changes in delivery mechanism by province.7 We have reformulated them in figure 7.1, reflecting the degree to which they are perceived as representing an actual cost saving and the degree to which the government could be considered to retain control over the program after reform has occurred. It should be emphasized that these placements are impressionistic and, in some cases, it is not entirely clear that there was a distinction other than wording in the various approaches.8 But it is evident that quite unintentionally governments have tended to favour reforms that are high in cost and low in levels of control. This may be a product of assuming a more complex type of service than exists and, therefore, utilizing the wrong type of reform. In selecting specific types of reforms another factor to be considered in addition to cost and control is the nature of the service being provided. Some services are what can be considered "programmed technology," or they utilize what others have called a computational decision process.9 These are cases in which the broad range of possibilities can usually be predicted, and the possible range of responses delineated. These are not necessarily simple decisions. They can occur in a complex environment, but they can be expected to occur on a regular basis and tend to be independent problems rather than being linked to other processes. The opposite is non-programmed decisions in which problems are unpredictable and often will have an impact upon other 158

Administrative Reform COST TO GOVERNMENT

Tax incentives Merging systems

High

Grants/: iubsidies Co-lo nation

Partnerships Corporation Community services Low GOVERNMENT CONTROL Contracting out Privatization

Contractoroperated Loan guarantees Self-regulation

Co-production

Direct delivery Singlewindow services Crown corporations High

Commer lialization Special Operating Agencies (SOAS) User fees

De-regulation Low Adapted from Evert Lindquist and Tammy Sica, Canadian Governments and the Search for Alternative Program Delivery and Financing: A Preliminary Survey (KPMG, 1995).

Figure 7.1 ALTERNATIVE DELIVERY MECHANISMS

processes within the service. These are found in services in which processes are interlinked. The means of achieving reform in the two types of service are not the same.10 In the case of programmed technology, the reform is a process reform, that is, a change to the work process achieved by changing the actual component involved in delivering the service. Usually this involves upgrading standards and enhancing or increasing levels of discretion. Social services and highways would tend to be this type of service, and the components have been improved by raising the qualifications of those delivering the service, for example, to a Master's degree in social work or an engineering degree. The second type of service, the unprogrammed type, is far less common. Some components of health care would qualify, as does research which is not a field delivery service. In these cases it is necessary to use systemic reforms that actually change the structure of the organization and provide alternatives to individual decision-making. Perhaps because hospitals tend to think of themselves as research institutions or as unique rather than a programmed delivery service, an

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example of the difference in the two types of change comes from a recent reform in health care in Ontario. In an attempt to reduce costs, most hospitals began to replace registered nurses with less skilled registered practical nurses. They then had to build an elaborate structure to monitor and control the less skilled replacements. Thus they chose to use a systemic reform that altered the structure of the organization. Only one hospital, Mount Sinai in Toronto, correctly diagnosed the problem as a programmed versus unprogrammed type of problem in service delivery. Studies in the United States have shown that rates of mortality are lower in hospitals with a high proportion of registered nurses.n Mount Sinai kept its registered nurses as this gave it "more flexibility and productivity because practical nurses can only do a subset of the skills of a registered nurse ... Changes in health care mean that those patients who are in hospital are ill enough to justify a registered nurse." Mount Sinai's decision also meant a saving in the middle-management levels of registered nurses who used to supervise the practical nurses. Despite the superiority of process reforms for most types of government programs, reforms instituted by governments in Canada appear to have been largely systemic or structural. o A year ago we were the Department of Communications. Then Communications merged with three other departments, and part of one went to form Industry Canada, but the main responsibility and work has not changed. o We reported to a manager, and then for a time we were reporting to one person in Regina. Then they moved us out to a different department, and now we are shuffled back into the old department. We are reporting to the same manager again, and we are second priority. o We are viewed as numbers, not human beings, by the people in Fredericton doing the planning. Your interests, your feelings, your expertise are not relevant—they divide by the numbers. At the provincial level, if they want so many supervisors per unit, you could be put into another program or section you know nothing about. But it is not clear that there is a definite idea of what the "one best way is." o I report to a regional manager [in the second-largest city in the province]. My position has been juggled back and forth, and it has been awkward. At first there was a branch we belonged to, and there was a boss you were responsible to, and you knew what was 160

Administrative Reform expected of you. When that department was deleted, we were left floating around in the middle of nowhere. No one took responsibility for us, and each group reverted to a different branch with different expectations of what we would do. In fact, there are some indications that organizations are in a period of transition in which changes in structure will be followed by changes in process. o We have also had some "service through leadership" training where they are making us more accountable, [with] more authority to make judgments on our own so people will feel better about what we do. We now work on more aspects of the "file." Now we are learning each other's jobs so we can do all parts of the same "file." o Roles are much more clearly understood now, I think, because government in general is under scrutiny and people are asked to be more accountable and responsible about what they do. The problems could also reflect what came out clearly in the interviews as a lack of appreciation, on the part of those in charge of the reforms, of "public" service. o They change the postal requirements without notice from month to month. As a result something which meets last month's requirements doesn't meet this month's. So someone brings in a pallet based upon last month's requirements, and we are supposed to turn them away. This is service ! o I am sure you have heard of PS2000, that the public service should go back to what really is service to the public—servants of the public—and that approach is ingrained in this office because it is in the field. And most field offices in my experience have that in common, as distinct from large bureaucratic central offices. o They changed the licensing fees without notice (or only with the minimal legal notice) after the municipal budgets had already been set. Surely this province can figure out when its own municipalities' budgets are set! For whatever reasons, the reforms seem to be clearly biased toward structural rather than component change which involves high levels of individual training or upgrading of personnel requirements. This 161

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approach may be less popular because of the entrenchment of staff: it is easier to change the structure than the staff. Managers and reformers are constrained by personnel systems, controls, and budgets. While it is possible to be a "creative coper,"12 it is at high cost with little reward. Not surprisingly, therefore, structural changes are preferred. o The verbal commitment was there, and in many respects the authority was there ... It is becoming much more evident in the last year, year and a half, that although lip service is being paid to the same concept of having a high profile and a high degree of involvement in senior management decisions, there is a lot more that is being done at a central level that does not ask for regional input, that does not get discussed or at times negotiated. What I find upsetting is that decisions are made where it would have been better to consult with people with operational experience. They are neglecting to do that. In conclusion, however, the reform initiatives as they were implemented seem to have had either no effect or a deleterious effect on organizational morale and to have failed in their intended effect of improving anything. o Morale is generally low. Contracting out is probably costing more in some cases. There do not seem to be cuts in the senior level. Therefore, the middle is being squeezed. o There's always the big catch-all. The one people are using right now is empowerment. You say that to field staff and they say "Yeah, what do you really want ?" o L'organisation des postes est en tres grande evolution. On sent un changement au niveau de la diminution des effectifs. Depuis les dernieres annees, on n'est pas tres gate de ce cote la. C'est tres difficile de travailler. Je pense que c'est partout pareil. Canada Post seemed to be one organization that had truly reformed its mandate, albeit with difficulty. In an attempt to focus on better service it had hired new managers from outside the public service with backgrounds in the service sector. It tried to encourage managers to be more entrepreneurial and to interact with staff. This seemed to be an attempt to change both the organizational reality and the nature of the good provided. Unfortunately, many field managers interviewed felt more thwarted by their head office than they did by the entrenched unions.13 As one person put it, 162

Administrative Reform o I was a postie before I became management. I understand these guys and they have their pride. It's the guys up there I don't understand. STRUCTURAL REFORMS

The two most common structural reform proposals have been for "decentralization" and for "matrix organizations" which also decentralize the managerial structure. After a brief review of these terms we proceed to an analysis of field officers' perceptions of the reforms. Centralized and Decentralized Structures Most government organizations deliver services directly to the public, which requires that they be at least somewhat decentralized or deconcentrated. There is an important distinction between those two terms. Deconcentration refers to the geographic dispersal of employees, while decentralization refers to the devolution of real decision-making authority away from the central office. Deconcentration and decentralization are not always found together.14 For example, an organization can be both highly deconcentrated and highly centralized if the employees in the field do not have any real decision-making authority but must refer all but the most routine matters to head office. Conversely, an organization can be both highly concentrated and highly decentralized if all the units are located in one geographic location but each unit has a high degree of autonomy. The organizational problem is to establish and maintain mechanisms that ensure that officials in the field are complying with head office rules and procedures without unnecessarily restricting the freedom of field officials to be responsive to local conditions. After all, these local officials are closest to the needs of citizens and most knowledgeable about the best way to solve problems. However, they cannot be given carte blanche to do whatever they like without regard to the overall objectives of the department. The basic problem then is to design an organization that is both responsive to local needs and responsible to the authorities in the capital. A responsive bureaucracy, according to Kernaghan and Siegel, "clearly ought to be concentrating on transferring authority to the administrators down the hierarchy and out in the field; yet the historical claims for a responsible bureaucracy can best be met by retaining authority close to the top where it can be used by the minister and scrutinized by parliament."15 This can be restated as a need to develop an organizational structure that provides for both differentiation and integration.16 Differentiation refers to the necessity of having a division of labour so that each orga163

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nizational unit has a set of specified duties and responsibilities and a reasonable level of autonomy in carrying out its duties. Integration refers to the need to coordinate the activities of these separate units to ensure that the overall objectives of the organization are served. The essence of a good organization is ensuring that these two factors are in place, but that task becomes more complicated as departments are amalgamated and become larger. The question of whether a centralized or decentralized structure is most beneficial has properly been called a conundrum.17 On the one hand, a decentralized structure has the advantage of being more responsive to the needs of the client. On the other hand, accountability and control are easier with a centralized structure, and it is possible to obtain some economies of scale. The extent to which these economies are realized is not clear. There is some evidence that in large organizations, administrative costs are a greater percentage of overall costs than in smaller organizations. However, the emphasis on control that tends to go hand-in-hand with larger organization might be the culprit, not size itself.18 There is also the question of the type of service being provided and the service providers. Decentralization is easier to implement with certain types of technologies where there is a high degree of homogeneity amongst the service providers but a wide but predictable variation in the types of problems being handled.19 Social services would be a good example of a service that can be more easily decentralized. Decentralization is more problematic when accountability and control are important. Tax collection would be an example of this type of service. The best method of organization for other types of service is less clear, and it could be argued they can be organized on a centralized or decentralized basis depending upon the degree of autonomy the organization is willing to give its service providers. Table 7.1 summarizes some of the major arguments in favour of each pole. It should not be surprising that these are mirror images of one another. Much has been written about the virtues of centralization and decentralization, but this is one of those issues which is virtually impossible to resolve in the abstract. There is no such thing as an objectively determined proper level of centralization/decentralization. Most organizations move back and forth over time, influenced partly by broad environmental trends (more honestly called fads) and partly by factors specific to the organization itself. Each movement in one direction seems to plant the seeds for a return movement in the opposite direction. For example, if an organization becomes too centralized, it can lose touch with its environment and so suffer a serious crisis of existence. One of the frequent prescriptions for 164

Administrative Reform Table 7.1 ADVANTAGES OF CENTRALIZATION

AND

DECENTRALIZATION

Centralized

Decentralized

Specialists working in head office have a high level of technical knowledge about the policy area, know very little about the peculiarities of local conditions. Ensures that all decisions are made in a uniform manner and in accordance with the desires of senior management. Prevents local officials from bending approved policies at the local level without head office approval. Policies will be applied uniformly across the jurisdiction thus ensuring equity. Field office staff will need to seek permission for all except the most routine decisions.

Generalists working in the field have a good understanding of local conditions but a weak understanding of technical aspects of the policy, Allows decisions to be sensitive to the needs of local circumstances, Allows for better coordination of program delivery at the community level. Policies will be applied in a manner which reflects local conditions, thus respecting diversity. Field office staff will be empowered to make decisions locally,

this kind of crisis is greater decentralization to become more sensitive to local concerns. Eventually, excessive decentralization will result in too great a sensitivity to local concerns, leading to differential treatment of clients by different offices and a loss of accountability to the central authority. When this differential treatment becomes an issue, pressure will increase for centralization to ensure appropriate uniformity. And so it goes. There is no final answer to the question about the optimum level of centralization/decentralization. It will vary in different organizations and over time in the same organization. As a rule, however, choosing the type of reform has had less to do with meeting the needs of the situation than with the broader perception of what is appropriate or trendy. Decisions seem to have been more system driven than tailored to the specific organization. Indeed, the choices have often been the result of fads and catchy anagrams based upon one or two specific cases and taken out of context for general application. The late 1960s and early 1970s saw a wave of decentralization in government. This led to the loss of control over programs and projects, which produced the now-famous statement by the Auditor General of Canada that government spending was out of control. What followed 165

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was a tightening of rules and a general centralization of authority, which reached its apex in the late 1980s with complaints about the stultifying restrictions of the "command and control" bureaucracy. This produced the new wave of decentralization initiatives we are seeing at present. o Nous avons vecu des situations de crises et nous avons du nous adapter tres rapidement. On est tres informatise. La destratification au Quebec est en avance sur son temps. On est un modele, un chef de file pour les autres organizations. C'est fini le temps de gestion des deniers publics. Maintenant, on doit penser comme si on gerait ses propres affaires. o PS2000 had an impact. We have gone to enormous levels to empower our staff. I have set program indicators which include things like innovation, and we have really worked in terms of attempting to make it happen, despite a lot of obstacles. The Matrix Organization The matrix organization in its current manifestation is largely a product of the 1960s.20 It is the type of organization depicted in figure 7.2 which tends to be square rather than hierarchical. No one person is at the top of the entire organization but the work is organized through teams composed of people borrowed from a variety of different functional units to work on a particular project. These people tend to be equals so that team decisions are made by consensus rather than by command and control principles. The types of decisions that must be made are either ones in which each person brings a clearly recognized degree of expertise or else very minor administrative decisions. The matrix organization is associated with attempts at one-stop shopping in which representatives from a number of departments (Alberta), or parts of the same department (Saskatchewan), or federal and provincial units doing the same work (Industry) share office space and attempt to coordinate functions. While chapter 4 identified some beneficial aspects of this initiative, this chapter describes some problems. Davis and Lawrence identify three necessary and sufficient conditions for a matrix structure: outside pressure for a dual focus, pressure for high information-processing capacity, and pressure for shared resources.21 While a matrix structure is easy to develop and matrix systems are easy to design, these three conditions are necessary to produce both matrix culture and matrix behaviour in organizations. Matrix organizations, then, seem to work best in organizations where individual workers are highly trained and have tasks that are clearly

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Figure 7.2 MATRIX M A N A G E M E N T

distinct and compartmentalized. This reduces the degree of overlap and makes possible flexible or shared use of scarce human resources. Such a structure is frequently found in research organizations or in task forces with a short, discontinuous life span. It has also in the past been popular in policy planning units.22 Because such structures have no built-in "tie-breakers," or often not until very high in the hierarchy, they tend to be unstable. Either a natural leader evolves, one is appointed officially or by default, or an official reorganization restores the hierarchy and decision authority is vested in an individual or office.

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This form of organization has been rediscovered as middle managers and first-line supervisors have been eliminated from the organization chart. Unfortunately, it has been used primarily as a means of saving resources, not necessarily sharing them, and has been used in cases in which the three conditions are not met. o It is not that there are two of us running the office—there are two of us running two separate offices. The bullpen you see out there is half and half. Hers are on the left, mine are on the right—we share the waiting room, the coffee room, and the boardroom. I have given up three of my offices to her this year because her programs are expanding and mine are shrinking. There are problems. The people on the left, for example, are very sensitive to whether the people on the right are doing as much work, and vice versa. Up until five years ago, it was all under one manager. They decided to go into "program-specific management." We were split into four groups, but it didn't make sense in suburban and rural areas to move us into separate building, so they just split the staff up. It works better in some offices than others. The real problem is management communication. It can be very difficult when the other manager just doesn't want to talk to you. Where people had previously been managers it tends to work better, but they took a lot of supervisory people and made them overnight managers. They tried to establish their own authority by pushing everyone away and saying, "Go away, I can do this on my own." As a result, you watched people make all the same mistakes, not only in office management but also program management, that we had seen in the past. Don't forget, suddenly there were four times as many managers as before. The intent of the reform was to bring the program people closer together as independent but equal units. What it has done—and I've talked to a lot of people in other offices about this—has driven us further apart. Here we have spent a lot of time talking and have tried to minimize the problem. We have other offices which are completely fractured, the staff do not talk to each other. Minor issues like coffee breaks become major crises, and program delivery takes second place to a kind of sectoral guerilla warfare. o We work as a team. We were directed to work as a team. The office is run by an "office management" committee made up of one person from each agency, which has the power to decide how this 168

Administrative Reform office should operate. If something is not working well, this committee is supposed to resolve it. If they can't, it goes to the regional manager or the director of the different agencies. The kinds of disagreements have been smoking in the office, or someone not carrying their load, or someone not dealing with the public in a manner which reflects well on the offices, etc. One of the more junior clerks has, as a result, been loaded with a lot of responsibilities which are not hers and she is not paid to do. But she picked up the slack that no one else would take responsibility for, because she was physically in the office the most. Normal administrative problems often have to go as high as a director in [the provincial capital] to resolve. Some offices have had to go as high as the deputy minister to solve their problems. We are less problem-riddled because we are smart enough to avoid most problems. We had one that became really ugly in terms of a power struggle, and we didn't take it to the management committee but to that person's regional manager. Getting someone to chair the office committee has been a problem. The current head is hoping that at the next meeting this month someone else will volunteer to take it over. Neither centralization nor decentralization, either through management structures or throughout the organization, is the ideal solution. In some circumstances one will be preferred over the other. Ideally the level of centralization/decentralization should be determined by the nature of the service provided: it should be a decision thought through in terms of the needs of the type of service. More likely it will continue to be a dynamic, cyclical process with the errors of over-centralization being corrected by corresponding errors of over-decentralization. What should be clear, however, is that neither is necessarily more cost effective. Decentralization requires not only a basic critical mass but also expensive staff who are well trained and knowledgeable about how to be responsive and are rewarded for responsiveness and initiative.23 Critical mass implies the basic resources necessary to run any office, for example, a receptionist and reception area, where there are not yet any economies of scale. Control, on the other hand, with its other disadvantages, can be relatively cheap. It does not require discussion, consultation, or even explanation. As one interviewee put it, o A lot of time and energy is spent asking, "What is the better interest, why am I doing this, who is going to pay for it ?" I would like to tell them just to get on with it. 169

SERVICE IN THE FIELD HOW REFORM PLAYS IN THE FIELD

This section examines how the various reforms were perceived by those who considered themselves to be on the receiving end of the initiatives. There appeared to be three forms of reform: actual rethinking of programs and policies, organizational restructuring, and cuts in which there was no change in structure or programs but simply fewer resources being stretched. Each type includes examples of good and bad reforms—one can rethink a policy ineffectively as well as effectively. Rethinking Rethinking might be the ideal in that, in a similar fashion to policy termination, it looks at the entire role of the state in society. We tend too easily to view the current level of government intervention as the norm which has been with us for a long period of time. 24 But many of our current program structures were put in place in the 1960s and 1970s and as a result of drift, changes in societal needs, technological change and, to some degree, administrative featherbedding, are due for rethinking.25 But this type of rethinking requires wide-scale involvement to provide legitimacy; it cannot be entirely driven from the top. o The job is changing because we are putting more emphasis and responsibility on the contractor. We are moving in "end product accountability" whereby we check what the contractor has done at the end. I was very much involved in the development of this because I had seen the problems in the field over the years. PS2000, for example, was almost universally unpopular, but it was clear that in some cases the components of it were being implemented without the name being used because it did involve rethinking. An example of successful reform under the rubric of PS2000 appears in box 7.1. There was also a significant amount of ambivalence about the impact of PS2000: o Hell no, PS2000 wasn't successful. It was a joke. A lot of good ideas though. The first and biggest road block was the finance and administration road block. But we have had a reorganization. I think it has made things a lot better. I am not tied to the monitoring thing, now that technical standards are no longer driven from Ottawa. I am free to pursue the science and engineering a little bit more than I was before. So it has been great on the science side. I am not so sure about the administrative and management side.

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Administrative Reform Box 7.1

Success at Agriculture Canada—Ontario

PS2000 was being implemented and was finding favour with the front-line staff. However, these changes were not being implemented under the name of PS2000 but were referred to as changes in "our corporate culture, organizational culture or mission." One interesting innovation by Agriculture Canada was the creation of Agriculture Response Teams (ARTS), mobile groups of staff deployed to provide additional enforcement of agricultural regulations at the border. The initiative was facilitated by the deployment provision in the new legislation. Although the time involved was minimal, one day every six weeks, becoming a member of an ART was a welcome change of pace for Jim, who had been in the same job for almost twenty years. It appears that many of the PS2000 goals are being realized in this office. There has been an effort to define the mission of the department and the office, to be consultative, to empower employees, to improve communication, to encourage innovation, and to plan careers. These changes were implemented despite the strong employee resistance to PS2000. This barrier was likely overcome because reforms were not implemented under the name PS2000. Employee involvement was extensive and many of the practical initiatives were local. But not all barriers to the implementation of PS2000 have been overcome. For instance, two technical employees interviewed were quite negative about career planning. They felt there were no promotional opportunities for them because they did not have a university degree. They were aware that they could be deployed to a similar position and felt that this would only up-root their families, with no financial incentive to do so. The most significant barrier not overcome was the failure of managers to empower employees to perform their jobs. Rather than a reduction in paperwork and fewer controls on their jobs, these employees noticed an increase in paperwork and control since implementation of the reforms had begun. For example, they are now required to log their activities for every fifteen-minute interval in the workday. They now periodically receive a report summarizing the percentage of the time spent on each activity. They are allotted a specified number of hours for performing each activity and are expected to work towards meeting the time restrictions. Other examples were related to controlling spending. One employee was criticized for having his car's oil filter changed 600 kilometres too soon even though the car was in the garage that week for other repairs. A recent change in office procedure dispensed with the twelve-cent carbon copy form in favour of a cheaper single form to be photocopied twice and stapled together by the employees. These examples indicate that although managers have been given more authority, they may not choose to empower (continued overleaf) 111

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their employees but instead may impose greater restrictions so they can control the overall results achieved. In the examination of one regional office it was found that PS2000 is being implemented largely as intended. Its success is due to the fact that the term PS2000 is not being used since it is associated with a government that employees do not respect, and a renewal program they were not involved with. But local initiatives have sought to involve employees at all levels as well as their unions. This strategy has been able to overcome much of the resistance to change and to develop some new and innovative ways of involving public servants in the renewal process.! One of the interviewees gave the same impression of the department: What's the best way to answer this ? I have to admit when PS2000 came along, I never read the books. I threw 'em on the shelf. I was not optimistic they would ever be implemented, simply because, conceptually they're wonderful, absolutely wonderful, but it was so top-down driven that I saw such a battle with the unions and the rank-and-file employees by the way it came down [that there was] absolutely no chance of ever getting it brought in. So I wasn't going to spend many minutes of my life doing this. But, in fact, we are doing a lot of the things PS2000 [suggested]. Some of the flexibilities that were introduced to management have, without calling them PS2000, been put into place very smoothly and work very, very well. When you have a crash program like that, and you have bargaining agents, collective agreements, you've got to consult the people that negotiate those agreements, or they'll fight you tooth and nail. They were never given any input into that. It was a very one-sided kind of thing. It was done by deputy ministers. I think ... if they would have thought about it, they would have recognized that in the present day workforce, it goes against actually what they were trying to preach in PS2000. You use the consultative process with employees; you do transparent management; you allow employee input. And then to turn around and tell them how it's going to be, you know, well, come on. They're important. The idea was good, an excellent idea, and my guess is that employees allowed input would come around to the same conclusion, if you had raised the point. And that's the key difference. Why it takes so much for people at the top to learn those lessons, it's hard to understand. 1 Tracy Lisson, "Public Service 2000: Overcoming a Flawed Process" (Hamilton, ON : Department of Political Science, McMaster University), photocopy.

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Administrative Reform Generally, we found that rethinking worked when there was large scale involvement and political commitment. Both the Klein cuts in Alberta and the radically different changes in Saskatchewan met this criteria.26 Organizational Restructuring As has been discussed, organizational restructuring, particularly reducing the number of levels or flattening the hierarchy, was popular but such change has both positive and negative impacts. The following quotations are from two people in the same office, the manager and a more junior person: o We are moving to a flatter organization. We have 110 employees with one operations manager. Below that there is a series of department managers who are the senior staff. They may have from one to five officers below them, and below that would be all the support staff. There used to be at least two other levels, one below me and another at the level of first line program managers. o I am looking to climb up the ladder. The difficulty that I find is that somebody took three or four rungs away and all of a sudden I have to make a big leap from the bottom to about the seventh rung up the ladder, and I'm finding that difficult. The development is not there anymore. It's a matter of go out and get a certificate that you can stick on the wall and you may get the job. But it was clear that some restructuring was welcomed: o When I first started here you could not make a phone call except at breaks from the pay phone. You could not keep a spare pair of panty hose in your desk because it was not "yours." We often used to seem so cold to people because everything was so impersonal. But that is changing. We now have phones so we can call people and they can call us. People can ask questions. It is so different. It used to be like Fort Knox—things have really opened up. o On est en pleine reintegration, destratification. On est en train de revoir la fagon dont le servie peut etre donne de fagon plus efficace. Je n'aurai plus personne au-dessous de moi line, ga sera des gens staff qui offriront le service. 173

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o The Rural Service Centres started about six years ago [in Saskatchewan] to give people one-stop shopping so people didn't have to run from one town to another to get information. It has made a big difference for people. It has made it a lot easier for them. Some of it was less welcome: o The reorganization was to integrate—to develop integrative and innovative solutions to problems. All we have done now is to integrate the people into one department. We haven't got to a point where we are integrating ideas from the various departments. I don't know if we ever will. We still don't know what our budgets will be or if we will be letting people go. They just announced it one morning and that was that. o We are going through a restructuring, although most of us who have been here a long time are not pleased with it. It seems to have been put together by people who don't understand the organization. We are now supposed to learn and do more for the same amount of pay. We feel we have more than enough to handle in one day and we are being forced to do more. It is very hard to work with the act and they keep changing it—they change our forms every year. Our minds can only learn so much, and now we have to learn to do more. Doing More with Less or Doing the Same with a Whole Lot Less Unfortunately, the most frequent "reform" was the most mundane— budget cuts in which organizations were asked to do the same thing with less money, or do more with the same amount of money. The plaintive refrain of doing two jobs for the price of one voiced at the beginning of this chapter reflects this type of change. o Ca se traduit par des reductions du personnel, des reductions budgetaires et des difficultes a nous retrouver dans 1'organisation. II faut recreer nos canaux de communication. o Yeah—we just got reclassified and our point scales went down and our workload went up. You don't even want to go for coffee because you've got too much work do to. We get pretty tired of the regimentation—fifteen minutes for coffee, twenty minutes per file, how many files you have to do, and that is all we do. They are streamlining to make things faster—we are going to have to do 174

Administrative Reform everything, the checking of the calculations, the assessment of the tax. o The biggest problem in the public service of Canada is poor management. I would like to see some of those $80,000 to $100,000 a year boys and see them right in the field here for six months, just working—let them deal with a really frustrated uic claimant. Some of them are at their wits' end. They talk about the deficit but that is irrelevant—totally irrelevant—when you have no bread on the table. That's when you get to the bottom line. I would like to see these guys right at the front desk of a Canada Employment Centre. Let them see some of these guys who if they had a baseball bat would bash you over the head because they aren't getting the benefits. It's easy for them to say "cut benefits"— they don't have to live with their decision—we do. I've seen a DM in this board room and he talks a good story— that's what those guys do, that's why they are there. But when it gets down to the real field level, these guys are so far out of touch they might as well pack their bags and go to another meeting. As a rule, reform worked best when field level people were involved in the implementation and there was a clear message that the senior management of the organization was behind it. o You get a message from the president that says, "I'm behind TQM," but unless you can actually see him and look into his eyes and see this man really believes in it, I don't think we get that message. o Success is mainly due to our deputy minister. He is a very forceful man and a very good deputy. He perceived this as the way of the future and he started the process in 1989; he basically has moved it along. We are actually a year in advance of PS2000 and the same basic objectives of PS2000 are what we are doing—excellence, innovation, employee involvement, and accountability, which are the four major thrusts of PS2000. Ours is really the same thing, but it was done a year earlier. We would like to think that we may have had some impact on it occurring. o There was a reform committee [about service quality] and they did come around and ask some questions. But again, ... they forgot all about the service centres and so we had to start hammering, "Aren't you going to get our opinion ?" And some of the committees did, and some didn't. 175

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The way in which the reform was communicated and implemented tended to be far more important than the reform itself. An example of the difference in approach is illustrated by Saskatchewan and Alberta. Alberta appeared to approach reform on a provincial level with broadbased cuts. Saskatchewan, while having an overall strategy, based the reforms much more at a departmental level. This gave greater flexibility to departments to address changes which were unique to a specific department and, in some cases even individual offices. As one would expect, the reforms in Saskatchewan tended to be less high profile and incremental, but the difference in approach was more that just strategic. Earlier, the change in agriculture policy in Saskatchewan was given as an example of positive one-stop shopping. In Alberta, however, the direction taken for the delivery of agriculture services was exactly the opposite. One field worker said, o We have moved from a generalist kind of service to a highly specialized network kind of a service. Customers have to get used to this new system—where they can't get all they need in one office. No wonder there is some question as to whether administrative changes are positive or simply a management response to the perceived need to do something. o I think they really are intent on changing things, but it is such a massive organization it just takes forever and forever. And one hand is working on doing one thing which is long overdue; then the other hand realizes that the financial implications are monstrous. Once they realized how much it was going to cost, and the degree of upheaval the change was going to take, they just put the whole thing on hold. But the result while all this is going on is there are changes being made every day, and this causes a lot of problems for the staff and the public. You can never know what is correct. I wish they would think things through before they start. ADMINISTRATIVE

R E F O R M : SO W H A T W E N T W R O N G ?

A provincial social worker reflecting on the effect of reforms comments: o It's a job. I don't like to think that way. I love my work, so I want to act like a professional social worker, but my employer wants me 176

Administrative Reform to act like a civil servant. I want to respect human beings, but I'm forced to implement things which won't work. Federal civil servants echo similar sentiments: o I abhor the approach to change that changes things retroactively without some suitable period of transition. We have a new minister who has decided that she will not fund social and recreational projects because they do not fit into our new program directions. These groups had been working a long time on these projects and had put a lot of effort into them, and then, without warning, the program criteria and policy change. o I can work with change, but the way it is done shows no consideration for the client, or for the people who have to deal with the client. Yet the people formulating the reforms and implementing them were not trying to "do the wrong thing." They saw the need for change and implemented what they thought were the right actions. Peter Aucoin, in a recent book on the "new public management," comments: The designers of the new systems have tried to balance centralization to achieve strategic directions and corporate discipline with decentralization of managerial authority over the use of allocated resources joined to a greater accountability for results. For many in the trenches of government operations, however, the reality has been viewed as a massive centralization of power using both direct and indirect measures; managers have fewer resources with which to operate and yet are expected to generate even more in the way of savings but without diminishing the quantity or quality of services.27 We can conclude that a number of things went wrong. The first was the assumptions made by the designers of the reforms about what went on in field offices—the attitudes and practices of the field officers and the nature of the work itself. o The vast majority of them have either never worked in a field office or haven't worked in a field office for ten to twenty years, and so the day-to-day reality of working in a field office is totally beyond their perspective. o Head office contains too many people who either have never worked in a CEC or haven't been in one for so many years that they 177

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have forgotten what it's all about—or we have changed so much that it's not anything relevant to what they are used to. And it often reflects in their decisions and their policies that come down and creates enormous problems for us at times. The second was the difficulty of working with people who are already in place and dealing with both institutional and attitudinal resistance to change. It is not surprising that structural change rather than changes in process were preferred. These combined with the very top-down nature of reforms to produce what we call the paradox of reform or the fracturing of reform, similar to the fractured organizational reality discussed in chapter 6. The intent of reforms was to produce a new culture of "service" within the bureaucracy. Generally, this has not been successful. o About two years ago, they married us to [another department] in one of these government realignment jobs. And since then, to be perfectly honest with you, I couldn't tell you exactly what my job is. Everybody does everything, but nobody knows why they're doing it. Even in our own department ... we're on two separate floors, and although we like one another as persons, work-wise I don't think we really are an homogeneous group. We're not really cohesive ... It seems to be the opinion of everybody ... that the amalgamation never did take right, never did get put in the right perspective type of thing. We ended up training all their fellas to do everything we could do, and ending up with no training in what they were doing. So now if comes down to brass tacks ... if it came to a case of who we gonna let go, we're all living in the fear now that it's gonna be us, because they can do it all, although they don't. We can only do what we used to do. This came about because there was a plan for cross-training, but it only got halfway. The "amalgamation" took place. The top dogs are up there in Halifax, but it never ever got down to the grass-roots type of things, for some strange reason. It never covered everything. New Glasgow did it different than Sydney. Yarmouth did it different than New Glasgow. It seemed to be: "We handle it whatever way you want," and nobody really handled it well as far as we're concerned. In part, this might be a result of the types of reforms introduced. At the beginning of the chapter we discussed the difference between process and structural reform—this might be a somewhat confusing and counter-intuitive distinction. Process reform allows people to decide how to do things; structural reform forces people to change how they do 178

Administrative Reform things. Process reform changes the people or requires people to improve their qualifications and introduces pre-audit accountability; structural reform reorganizes. We observed that although process reform was more appropriate to the type of services being provided, structural reform was the option more commonly chosen. The comments we heard from our interviews reinforced this point. Few people were suggesting that reform was not necessary or inevitable; it was the type of reform and the method of implementation that were problematic. These findings are also supported by a recent federal government study, Serving Canadians: 1995 Survey of Practices in Support of Quality Services in the Federal Government of Canada, carried out by Statistics Canada.28 The report divided reforms into four categories—leadership, employee involvement, process improvement, and client focus—each of which was broken down into actual activities. Consistently, those areas in which the field staff actually had input into reform and some control over the process were the reforms reported as being relevant for improving quality. But the opposite was also true. For example, among field offices, 76.4 per cent of respondents reported having a "mission statement" under leadership, but only 22.3 per cent reported actually involving field level management in its development. Similarly, 84.2 per cent had "quality training for employees" as part of their employee involvement but only 31.9 per cent had meetings with employees about their training needs. Clearly, the practices being used are not those that consistently emphasize field level input. The quotation that started this section about wanting to act like a professional but being prevented from doing so by reforms summarizes the problem. Reforms seen from the top as empowering and encouraging improvements in service delivery are often seen in the field as impediments. In cases where spontaneous improvements have already been made in the field, the reforms are seen as a means of inhibiting them. o If I had a new idea, it would be a slow process to implement it. I would put together a package and present it to the analysis centre in head office, on something that works in an urban market in Ontario. If they liked the idea they might develop guidelines, and then they might send out a national mandate. It would be slow. They would pull people in from other field offices to review it. By the time it got back here, it would be rules that had to be followed in every market and might not work here any more—like how many association functions I must attend in a year, whether they are good or not. Usually what I do if I have a good idea is spread it around our informal network and not tell region or head office. Or I just try it on the manager here and do it.

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Although specifically designed structural reforms have had limited success, it is evident that changes are occurring in the delivery of services. The type and degree of success seem to vary by government and by department, even by office. Managers themselves are caught to some extent within a straitjacket of rules that prevents the exercise of discretion and affects morale. The distrust of government and distrust of civil servants generally makes reform that could eliminate the rules difficult to achieve. The most satisfactory form of reform would not be structural but would allow change in the people management systems that would provide better training and more creative selection criteria. This might have been one of the intents of many of the reforms; certainly it was an aim of PS2000. However, the inevitable transformation of change into rules and rigidity as it moves down the hierarchy and the threatening environment that made the reforms necessary have also made reform almost impossible. In the end, it may be that radical reform cannot take place smoothly at the same time that there is pressure to reduce costs, because in the words of that expert administrator, Sir Humphrey, "It takes money to do things cheaply." EPILOGUE — L A RELEVE

The interviews for this research were completed before the federal government began its latest reform initiative—La Releve—in January 1997.29 Therefore, nothing that is said here can be seen to reflect on this latest approach. However, the approach of La Releve meets many of the criticisms made in this chapter of previous reforms. Certainly the performance measurement aspects of the reforms are positive.30 La Releve seems to be process-oriented rather than structural and has provided a place for the involvement of field offices. However, the only fair comment that we can make at this point is that it is too early to tell.

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Chapter Eight Bureaucrats Are People Too Q: Why doesn't the civil servant look out her window in the morning ? A: So she'll have something to do in the afternoon. The Globe and Mail (26 February 1994) ran a contest to determine the most successful line to silence a chatty seatmate on an airplane, bus, or train. One of the winning entries was: "I'm with Revenue Canada. What do you do ? I called a civil servant one morning to discuss a rather complicated matter. At the end of our discussion he commented on how complex it was and said that he needed some time to think about it before he could give me an answer. In fact, his exact words were: "I'd like to sleep on it. Can I get back to you this afternoon ?" In the 1990s it has become improper to make jokes based on gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, skin colour, religion, or such mental or physical characteristics as "appearance-impairedness."1 The only groups that can now safely be maligned in jokes are lawyers, white Anglo-Saxon male heterosexuals, and civil servants. Not only is it acceptable to make jokes about public servants but people are allowed to discuss public servants in such sweeping terms and with such invective that if the same type of language were applied to another societal group, the speaker could be accused of fomenting hatred. To make matters worse, the people directing the strongest invective are often not drunken, irresponsible callers to radio talk shows but the public servants' own employers—their political masters. It is not easy being a public servant in the 1990s. The public blames civil servants for increasing (or decreasing) the deficit, too much (or too little) censorship at the borders, excessive (or miserly) spending on social programs, too many (or too few) refugee claimants being accepted, global warming, the weather, and just about everything else. While most important decisions are made by politicians, field level public servants are the people on the front line who are obligated to

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carry out those political decisions. Public servants in the 1990s are receiving increasing levels of abuse not only from the general public but also from their political masters. To make matters worse, this is occurring at a time when two of the major factors that made public employment attractive—security of tenure and good working conditions—have generally eroded, although the public is not aware of this shift and sometimes expresses envy at the deemed privileged position of public servants. However, a new joke making the rounds is that there is no concern about organized crime infiltrating the Canadian public service— the working conditions are too lousy and the jobs are too insecure. The public's attitude to government bureaucracy is ambivalent. On the one hand, most members of the public hold a generalized view that government organizations are inefficient and insensitive. On the other hand, when asked about specific interactions with bureaucracies, most citizens express the view that their own personal interactions with government officials have generally been positive.2 What accounts for this ambivalence ? Marketing literature provides an important insight. In the first place, it has been found that customers who are dissatisfied with their treatment will tell more people than customers who are satisfied.3 This means that bad news travels faster than good under any circumstance; but given the predilection of the media to report government horror stories, bad news about government will travel even faster. Secondly, comments about a product are more likely to be accepted if they fit the listener's preconception.4 Finally, as a form of Murphy's Law, given the number of contacts most people have with government, the probability of having a negative experience at some point is high.5 So, government services (and by extension the people who deliver them) get hit with a one-two punch. Citizens are more likely to hear negative stories about government, and the fact that they have heard previous negative stories makes it easier for them to believe subsequent ones. Therefore, people are more likely to believe that their repeated positive experiences with government services are anomalies, regardless of how many times they personally experience the "anomalous" behaviour. This chapter looks at bureaucrats as people. Classical theories of organization viewed the bureaucrat as a slot on an organization chart— an automaton whose entire existence was defined by a job description. In fact, early ideas about bureaucracy tended to view the bureaucrat as her or his position. If the person also had a life outside the office, that was of no concern to the organization. Even allegedly more caring organizational theories that focused on the "whole person" were usually geared to figuring out how to manipulate workers to extract more work. 182

Bureaucrats Are People Too Whereas previous chapters have discussed what people in field offices do at work, and their attitudes toward their clients and head office, this chapter provides a very personal glimpse of the feelings and attitudes of field office staff. It focuses more specifically on the perceptions they have of themselves as members of a broader community. It begins with an explanation of why public servants in field offices live in a very different world from that found in capital cities. The remainder of the chapter focuses on the related problems of balancing the job and family life and maintaining a social life in a sometimes hostile environment, and deals with how bureaucrats are coping with the sport of the 1990s—bureaucrat-bashing. Gaining an insight into these personal aspects of the bureaucrat's life is important for two reasons. First, it rounds out our description of who these people are and what motivates (or demotivates) them in their work lives. Second, and more importantly, these personal attitudes must affect how people perform their jobs. For example, we describe an employee who lies about her job so that her social acquaintances will not know that she works for government. When someone feels that she must lie about how she spends one-third of her life, this must have profound implications on how she spends that time. Thus, separating job and personal life, as many discussions of organizational behaviour do, is simply not plausible and does not tell the entire story. LIFE IN THE FIELD

Public servants are people too. What impact does being a public servant have on their private lives and those of their families ? How do they deal with bureaucrat-bashing ? Working as a government employee in a field office and living outside the capital city is very different from working in the capital city.6 Virtually all capital cities in Canada are "government towns." The possible exceptions are Edmonton and Toronto, but even in these cities there is a significant critical mass of public servants because both cities are major federal government centres as well as provincial capitals. In capital cities, the business of government is central to the activities of the city. A significant index of this is the content of local newspapers. Newspapers in cities like Regina, Ottawa, and Halifax devote major attention to the civil service, while in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, and Montreal, there is more coverage of business and international news. Of course, there will always be some discussion of government policy, but in the latter group of cities, the discussion is at the broad policy level. In government cities, newspapers are more likely to report on the inner workings of the public service, speculating about bureaucratic 183

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appointments, offering insiders' views on the impact of the latest policy shift on the careers of specific public servants. A government city is like any other company town, in which a large group of people who work for the "company" associate with one another both inside and outside the office. In Ottawa, the " RA" (Recreation Association) provides curling rinks, bowling lanes, ball diamonds, and dining and drinking facilities. Most capital cities have a credit union operated by the public servants. Thus, even in bad times (such as the public service is experiencing now) public servants in capital cities have a place where they can huddle together and provide one another with significant informal support systems. They can discuss how they are over-worked and under-paid and generally misunderstood. They are united in their opposition to local media personalities who score points by criticizing public servants. This produces a form of garrison mentality. A public servant with experience both in and out of Ottawa described this situation, unconsciously echoing the results of the Globe and Mail contest above: o You can get on an airplane and talk with the individual next to you. As soon as you say you're from a federal department, that's the end of the conversation, particularly if you happen to be with Environment, and he happens to be with industry ... If you're working in Ottawa, you don't get that so much ... When you go to a party there, "What classification are you ?" that's the first question everybody asks. Life outside capital cities is different. Civil servants work in small offices. People in different departments frequently do not know or do not get along easily with one another. The professional gulfs between a customs officer, a veterinarian, and a social worker make it difficult for them to establish common cause. It is harder for specialist field officers to see themselves as public administrators. H.R. Baker describes a series of meetings held in small towns in Saskatchewan to acquaint the public with the government services available to them. When the local public servants attended the meeting, Baker noted, "Although the field workers were all helping to service the same community, they frequently did not know each other personally."7 Not only do field level public servants sometimes have difficulty relating to one another but they can frequently have an uneasy relationship with the broader community in which they reside. People with regulatory responsibilities may feel that they must keep themselves somewhat aloof from their neighbours. Members of the community may be reluctant to become too close to government officials for fear 184

Bureaucrats Are People oo that they will inadvertently disclose something "wrong," as if all civil servants were ever-vigilant police officers. The public tends to view public servants as being in a privileged position, akin to winning a lottery or being called to the Senate. In many places civil servants are the economic elite. Not only do they make more money than most other people but there is still a sense that they possess a security of tenure not enjoyed by their neighbours: their employer will not go bankrupt, and they will have twelve months of work every year for the indefinite future. Of course, this latter point is not as accurate as it once was, but in this environment, there will be few shoulders for under-paid, over-worked public servants to cry on. Public servants understand that even in the current situation they are still relatively privileged. When asked about the best points of her job, one worker was quite succinct. o The wages. Definitely for the type of work that I do, I would say that I make an okay wage. As long as they are able to keep their jobs, public servants are paid at least adequately and few face periodic lay-offs. And when they lose their jobs, although their parachute is not as golden as some senior executives', it is probably better than many similar arrangements in the private sector. All in all, while their jobs are not as secure as they once were and as the general public thinks they still are, public servants still fare better than most other workers. Public servants are also frequently on the receiving end of the generalized anti-government feeling prevalent in the private sector. In "business" cities there is a feeling that the private sector is more efficient than the government sector and that if government would just get off our backs, we could earn a lot more money and make Canada a better place to live. The accuracy of this claim is arguable, but it is clearly the dominant mode of thinking in many places. In other words, public servants are viewed as lazy, inefficient, and incapable of obtaining productive work—"an easy target," as one described it. o There is definitely a stigma against being a public servant. I have to literally argue and justify my place at the table with people in the private sector until they get to know me. There can even be a partisan and/or a regional element here. Westerners typically view the federal government as a Liberal, easterndominated government too sympathetic to the needs of Quebec and Ontario. Individual public servants, working in offices plastered with 185

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bilingual signs, are the embodiment of that evil. And even though Canada generally prides itself on having a highly professional, nonpartisan public service, it is apparently not unusual for public servants to be criticized for the policies adopted by the government currently in power. o The other thing that affects us at the provincial and federal level is programs. I get a lot of ranting, sometimes very unpleasant, about "I don't really like that program;" "I don't know why the hell you're not helping my type of situation, my age group;" or "All these damn lazy people on social welfare." You know, you get a lot of that kind of crap. A lot of when you talk "government," they are directing it to you. You're a government employee. It doesn't matter you're provincial versus federal or it's a federal program, it's you they're really trying to get at. o [We feel the local pressure] when government introduces a new regulation or a fee. People used to get their water sample for nothing. Now it is $35 for a water sample. They used to be able to install a sewage system free of charge. All of a sudden government comes in, and it is $100. People cannot have access to politicians as easily to let out their frustrations. The first contact they get with government is civil servants, and even though civil servants are not responsible for government policies, we sort of get the flak for it. These kinds of attitudes become even more pronounced when the public servants have a regulatory role that requires them to make decisions about benefits fellow-citizens will receive or penalties they will bear. Field level public servants are uniquely positioned to see the impact of government services on people's everyday lives. On the one hand, they understand the frustrations of people in dealing with government, and they tend to be generally sympathetic to their grievances. This was highlighted in chapter 3 in the discussion about the reluctance of field level public servants to implement changes in programs which would have a detrimental effect on their own community. On the other hand, they recognize that government services must be provided in a fair and even-handed manner to all, even if this means that some people in the community will be hurt by a policy. Field level employees are in the political limelight in ways that might not affect people in the capital city. In small towns where policies developed in the capitals have a great impact, the local public servant, who is really just the bearer of the news, personifies the policy to local people. When someone in Smallville is denied welfare, she does not see 186

Bureaucrats Are People Too it as the inexorable outcome of the application of policies established elsewhere; she sees it as the capricious decision of the person on the other side of the counter. Thus, field level public servants carry a heavy burden because of their position between the impersonal rules promulgated in a faraway head office and the very personal needs of the local community. Administrators in the field who deal directly with the public, like many of their colleagues in Washington, live in glass houses. They are not exposed as immediately to the glare of Congress and a national press; but they do work under a public scrutiny which is just as unwavering and which can be equally punishing. Perhaps more so, for the field administrator, especially the man whose work is in a rural area, must live with the community he serves. The people he sees in his office during the day are his neighbors at night; the people he offends in the line of duty are those he must get on with socially; the people who ask favors of him are his fellow-members of Rotary, church, or golf club. It is in the nature of his job to work with the public rather than with civil servants, to serve, haggle and persuade rather than to manage. His day will include meetings with his advisory committee, tangling with the county board, steering shy of a partisan appeal for employment or for special treatment, speaking to the Lion's Club at noon or lecturing to the Women's Club at night.8 BALANCING FAMILY AND JOBS

The title of this chapter was a reminder that bureaucrats are people too. Some might be surprised that not only are they people but they have the same sorts of problems in balancing family and job as anyone else. This section examines how they handle these two components of their lives. People approach their jobs with varying degrees of commitment. A stereotype of public servants is of time-servers who are not committed to high levels of service. As with all stereotypes, there are some people who fit the mould. o I have my nights and my weekends. When I go home at night, I leave it all behind me. I took the lazy man's way of making a living—you come in at eight and you leave at five. In response to a question asking about the activities involved in a typical workday, virtually all claimed that they worked hard. Many of 187

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the complaints and concerns of public servants were similar to those heard in most organizations in the 1990s. Organizations are being downsized, meaning that staff complements are being reduced while the workload remains the same or increases. Technology is being introduced which purports to make the increased workload easier to handle but in fact (as chapter 5 discussed) can impose an additional workload. People feel that they work very hard, and they wonder if the trade-off with family life is worth it. o If I had to do it all over again I would not give up so much of my family time. Too many times I found myself coming to the hockey rink late after being out of town and then sitting in the stands with my briefcase open, doing my mail while my son played. In a contrast to this man's regrets, many people have decided to place their family life first and put their careers on hold for a time. This view was expressed more frequently by women than by men. o I'm at a good point in my career. The job is OK challenging. It's not horribly challenging for me. I've had other jobs at the ministry that I've liked a lot better in terms of career growth, career potential, and all those kinds of things, but at the point I'm at in my life where I've got two small kids at home, it's OK. It's just enough challenge to keep me going for the eight hours that I'm there, but I don't have the energy or the ability to take home another eight hours worth of work. So for the next few years then, I think that's going to be OK. And that was a real conscious decision for me to take this job right now. o I must say that since I've had kids I talk about work a lot less. Three years ago I was such a totally different person about work. I was "Where can I go next? I want to do this, I want to do that." It was sort of like a real career. I've slowed down a lot ... It's not that you don't have a career goal, it's just that you slow down a lot. However, family concerns played a role for men as well. o You know, I had kids in four different cities in eastern Canada, and when I came here, I said, "Until my kids leave, then I'm not leaving." And I was quite happy in my [former] job, perfectly happy. As circumstances turned out, I was happy to get this job too, but I wasn't preoccupied with the notion that I had to become a [senior] 188

Bureaucrats Are People Too manager. I loved what I was doing, but obviously I like this job better. But I respect that my wife has a career. She's in the health care business. It's pretty tough to start over when you've got tenure. You know, she's got sixteen years here. If you give up a nursing job, it's almost like teaching, maybe worse now, to get back in. While the work environment obviously weighs heavily on public servants, there is also a real sense that family considerations are important. However, in addition to a family life, most also maintain a social life both inside and outside the office. THE BUREAUCRAT AFTER HOURS

Not surprisingly, the social lives of public servants showed a wide variance. Many were involved in church and community organizations, from social-activist kinds of groups to coaching youth sports. In some ways the profile of activities of public servants looked very much like the profile of other people. Some people like to come home from work in the evening and spend all their time with family while others are inveterate joiners. We found both extreme types and all ranges in between. Many public servants felt that their employment had little impact on their social lives, but for a substantial number the opposite was true. Often it was difficult to leave the job behind at the office. Field offices are different from head office in that field officers have much more direct and extensive contact with the citizens whose lives they regulate. This means that they are recognized in the community. o When I was [in a particular location], which is more of a smaller rural type area, to be an engineer there was considered, you know, to be almost like the mayor. Everybody knew you, because highways played a very big part in some of these rural areas, and you were very high profile. As such, you got a lot of calls at home at night, a lot of calls. o I live in a small village and they know I work here. They will get me in the corner store and start asking me questions: "Am I eligible for this or that?" I always tell them to come into the office and we will talk about it more. People who have regulatory and enforcement responsibilities have an even greater problem.

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o When you are a conservation officer, when you put on that uniform you assume that role. You don't go home at five o'clock and stop your job. Your job is continuous. Everyone knows you the day you arrive there, and they know all about you. Your family is very much involved in the job, your whole family takes on the identity of that job. A related problem is that public servants see and hear things that they would rather not be privy to. Customs officers were particularly conscious of being in this position. o I find it funny, not funny, but you go to a party, you automatically notice American booze, and smoking, everybody's smoking, and you feel like, ah gee, you're always married to the job kind of thing. You're always thinking this. People hide things from you ... I think most customs people stick with other customs people. You know, they have a social life that way. A provincial government employee in the social services area expressed similar feelings: Do you talk about your job a lot with other people outside your organization ? o I try not to ... I don't mind the odd time providing some general information ... But I really try not to, because it's so awkward when you find out that somebody's committing fraud. That's the biggest thing. It's not rampant, but it's there, and we all know somebody ... who's collecting and shouldn't be, and that kind of stuff. And I'm obligated to give that information, and I will give that information to my employer without hesitation. So I prefer people don't talk to me about social services when I'm around. Of course, the most difficult situation is when one's political masters misuse their authority in ways that undermine the professionalism of conscientious administrators. One person told us about the sort of situation which field staff find very demoralizing. A prominent member of the party in power owed a significant amount of tax money, and the worker's department was pursuing the usual collection activities. After some discussion with the minister, the department was asked to moderate activities in exchange for a token payment from the individual. The person who related this story was clearly angry because he felt his professional discretion was being compromised. In a later interview, another worker in the same department talked about how difficult it 190

Bureaucrats Are People Too was to deal with the tears of people who owe taxes when he had no choice but to demand payment even when he knew that this would put the family business out of operation. The juxtaposition of events such as these has a significant impact on the morale of professional public servants. A similar incident of favouritism became public and caused considerable outrage on the part of a group of employees. A group of federal employees who handle unemployment insurance claims are angry that the Justice Department won't prosecute the daughter of Senator Therese Lavoie-Roux for alleged ui fraud. In a letter to a Reform party MP, 13 workers with the Human Resources Development Canada office in Cranbrook, B.C., say the case has made them ashamed to work for the federal government. Ms Lavoie-Roux, a senator from Montreal, admitted last week she helped her daughter Elizabeth Roux collect unemployment insurance benefits while she was studying at the University of Southern California from September 1994, [sic] to January 1995. RCMP investigators alleged Ms Roux obtained $5,500 in benefits through deceit and suggested fraud charges be laid, but a Justice Department lawyer decided against taking legal action.9 Public servants in those provinces where there is still significant political influence in hiring decisions expressed dissatisfaction about being required to hire particular people for political reasons unrelated to merit. It was then very difficult to fire or discipline these employees. Traditions in this regard might be changing a bit for the better. o I've been told by the politicians: "We'll help 'em get the job, but we're not going to help 'em keep the job." And I think that's valid. I respect that. I don't have a big problem with that, especially when it comes to seasonal [workers]. I really don't have a problem with that at all, but don't let me down if I've got to get rid of someone. It's a reflection on me if they're doing a bad job; they're out of here. o I was asked, no, told, to find a job for the minister's daughter. That is very unprofessional, particularly when this agency is trying to emulate better business practices. There was concern that such practices caused problems of efficiency. However, generally the hirings were for labouring and operative jobs rather than for key decision-making roles, which limited the impact of 191

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this activity on the efficiency of the organization. In provinces where these practices were found, the method of operation was such a longstanding tradition that most public servants accepted it philosophically. For many, the major concern was not with the impact on efficiency but the taint left on the professionalism of all public servants. o I know there are people that look at me and say, "Oh, are you ever lucky the Liberals are back in," because I happened to go to work for the government when [name of premier] was in power. But it had nothing to do with [the premier]—it just happened to be that they were setting up a new education system in the province and I was there and they came after me, as a matter of fact. And I said, fine. I'm personal friends with [name of minister] who was ... the minister of Municipal Affairs in the last government. And that was a personal thing before he ever got into politics. So people say, "Oh, you know [the minister], you're buddies." And I say, "Yeah, and we have been for twenty-five years," and that kind of puts the end to that conversation type of thing. As long as people realize that you don't play the game, and I've watched it very, very carefully. Of course, if public servants hold others to a high standard, they must meet that same standard themselves. A number of examples were given of ways in which civil servants were conscious of the public's view of their work. o I shouldn't say I've never changed my lifestyle because I was a public servant. I had to be maybe a little more careful. I had a sailboat when I lived in [x] and I would take an afternoon or a day someday. My work was done, I'd take an afternoon, and I'd go sailing. But I had to make darn sure that if I was out sailing I was off on vacation, because everybody knew what you were doing ... I couldn't say, "Well I went into work early this morning and I worked three hours this morning early and worked three hours yesterday morning, so the government owes me six hours." You can't say that because the public isn't aware. You had to set an example. o It [bureaucrat-bashing] bothers me to a point where ... I preach to [my staff] that they are in the eyes of the public and the public are paying for it, and be conscious of it all the time. I don't want to see people leaning against a building on a nice sunny day. There is no way you will ever change people's perception of government. It is branded into them. "Heh, we are useless, no good. We come in at 192

Bureaucrats Are People Too 10 o'clock, and we usually go home at 3 o'clock." I make a joke out of it. A Crown attorney discussed his social life in this way: o What activities outside the job ? With my job, because of the nature of my job, I can't be seen in a public bar taking a drink. I can't be seen doing virtually anything ... I mean it's kind of a public trust that Crown attorneys are expected to behave well, expected not to be seen speeding ... For example, a common thing with me is I'll drive out of my subdivision and observe people that know who I am and know my car sheepishly putting on their seat belts as though somehow I investigate these offences. I could care less, but they don't know that. They perceive me as some figure of authority ... So in answer to that question: What social life ? You know, you can't be seen in a public bar, you can't be seen having a few drinks, you can't be seen speeding, you can't be seen doing anything anywhere because the rumour mill starts and "Oh, did you see [Smith],10 the Crown attorney ? He was just shit-faced at the function." For people in correctional services, visiting bars poses a somewhat different problem: o Working our particular business, it has an impact on where I go and what I do. You tend to be a lot more like the police in terms of not socializing with a large number of people. There are places in town that I won't go. Not that I'm nervous to go to 'em, but if ... we walk into a tavern, for example, 10 per cent of the population might run out the back door. You just don't want to make people uncomfortable. o I can't go off to a pub and have a beer in many parts of this town because there's too big a chance that somebody all drunked up that I let out is going to punch my lights out. You are expected to conduct yourself in such a way, not do any embarrassment on the institution. Another field officer felt that his position as a safety inspector made it difficult for him to shop at the local building centre and drive a hard bargain when he was making a purchase: "I hesitate to do it, but then everybody does it, right? Like I don't want no favours from him, because I'm not gonna give him any favours." 193

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Some field officers experience a double bind in that not only do they bear the stigma of being a public servant but their position in the public service is such that not even other public servants are sympathetic to their activities. The Crown attorney quoted above had a perspective on this: o We're over-worked, under-paid, and aside from that, I don't know, we all must have a little bit of masochism in us, Crown attorneys, because we have no friends. The police don't like us because oftentimes you'll criticize their behaviour. Witnesses often don't like us because we will not let them try to fabricate or stretch the truth or not tell the whole truth. Judges tend not to like us because they're very stubborn about Crown employees going forward with inappropriate cases even though they, from their seat, don't see the whole picture and may have a different perspective. And even the public that I see on my drive to work scrambling to put on their seat belts, they find it no doubt an inconvenience that they happen to run into [Smith] going by. A safety inspector had a similar story of being squeezed between two groups. o You're always the SOB in some cases, right ? If I am going on a job and I'm making 'em wear their hard hat, I'm the SOB. I get flak from workers; I get flak from unions. Now, if I don't go on the job and something happens, if I didn't show up, the first thing they'd say is: "Where's that government fella ?" So if you know how to win, tell me about it. Another kind of conflict comes about when field officers want to work with voluntary associations related to their work but cannot do so because their employment responsibilities conflict with the groups' activities. People are frequently drawn to a particular kind of employment because of their general interest in an area. For example, a correctional services employee spoke at length about her long-time interest in dealing with offenders and social concerns in general. She lamented that her current government employment made it impossible for her to be involved in this field because her department awarded contracts and grants to the kinds of organizations she would like to join. People in amateur sport also spoke about this problem. BUREAUCRAT-BASHING

Many of the problems experienced by bureaucrats in their family and social lives come together in the recent trend toward bureaucrat194

Bureaucrats Are People Too bashing. The jokes at the beginning of this chapter are a reminder that public servants are one of the few groups in society that can safely be made the butt of jokes. In fact, in recent years it has become fashionable to attack public servants for all manner of presumed evils. n Most public servants we interviewed agreed that some of the attacks may be justified, but many people lose all perspective and boldly tar all public servants with the same brush. This can have serious consequences on the morale of present public servants and could have implications for the future of the public service if it discourages the best and the brightest from joining. John Manion, a highly respected senior public servant who entered the public service in its golden era and retired in the 1990s, put the case well: "If our public services are perceived to be second-rate at home, unfortunately they will become second-rate. We cannot continue to maintain the quality of the public service if we cannot continue to attract the best young Canadians to our ranks. They will not devote their lives to serving people who demean them."12 It was clear that bureaucrat-bashing was damaging to some. One officer said: o I don't mind it—the bureaucrat-bashing—for myself, but I mind it when they take it out on my family. When the last strike was on, my kid came home from school and someone had said his dad had called me a f—ing leech. And I wasn't on strike; I'm management. How did public servants deal with bureaucrat-bashing? In the extreme case, we met a number who simply lied about their employment in order to avoid the stigma. o Sometimes it bothers me. When I worked as a ui agent I didn't like sharing that with people. o There's a lot of people who in their social life, or if they're going casually to a social function, do not tell people who they work for, especially Revenue Canada-Taxation. Everybody's got a story or whatever. It seems to get a different attitude. You get the jokes. So sometimes people just don't tell them. It makes it easier. Another Revenue Canada worker solved the problem by admitting that she worked for government but lying about the department. o When people ask me where I work, I say Veterans Affairs because no one dislikes them. I never tell people where I work, although 195

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I'm not ashamed of it—it is a job that has to be done. I sometimes will point out that I don't write the laws—we administer it. Public servants reacted to bureaucrat-bashing in different ways. Many claimed it had very little effect on their lives. The difference between those affected seriously and those who took it more lightly can be explained to some extent by the department for which they worked and to some extent by individual personalities. People involved in such fields as food inspection seemed to be viewed very positively by the public. o Most people when they find out what I do are extremely interested. They always ask me: "Is this safe ?" or "What about this manufacturer? What's he doing?" (He laughs in obvious enjoyment.} And an employee at a Canada Employment Centre felt that the image of his department had improved so that there was no longer the same stigma that there had been: o We don't get that much like we used to. There are certain government organizations that probably take much worse a beating than we do. And I think it's because we are so proactive in the business community and the community at large, and we work very hard to educate people about what we do and the impact that we have. I don't go to parties anymore and say that I work for an insurance company. I tell them the truth, and I don't find that to be a negative thing. I think the public really does recognize what we do. Many people argued that they had a clear conscience because they and their colleagues work hard and make a significant contribution to the public good. o The people here are here at seven and still here at seven at night. I would like the public to see that, particularly when there are less and less resources and more demands. If they were not committed, they would be gone. No one in the corporate sector expects people to work those kinds of hours and not get paid. Yet by choice people do that, because of their commitment to what they are doing. Nobody sees that. My usual response [to bureaucratbashing] is to ignore it. There is nothing you can do about it. It does not affect staff morale on an ongoing basis, but when it blows up in the press, it bothers them because they know how hard everyone works. 196

Bureaucr s Are People Too o It is maybe possibly justified in some departments. My co-workers, I can say that 95 per cent of them are very diligent. They give a lot of themselves to their job. They are very dedicated and very hardworking. If the public likes to bash bureaucrats for political reasons, I think that is more a political bashing of a certain party in power. It is certainly not justified in a lot of cases. o When I hear some of the comments about lazy civil servants I cringe sometimes. But when I see the work my staff does and compare it to some businesses, I don't know how "business" has become such a holy place when what goes on in some of them is unbelievable. Some people took a more defensive stance with the public and tried to turn the allegations around to educate people. o I am proud of what I do. I work very, very hard at what I do. I think I have done some very important things for the ministry that I work with. I think we do a professional job and I've got a thin skin about those kinds of generalizations and I confront people on them. If someone makes a snide comment to me in either a professional or a social situation, I respond to it. o You try to give them a bit of direction of what the reality is, because most of it is second-hand information, or they don't know the rationale behind something, so you try to give them some of that insight. I think everyone thinks we are getting free air fares whenever we go on holidays, but we are not air carrier employees. That is one of the biggest myths I have encountered. In many cases, the bureaucrat-bashing tends to create a bond between people in offices. o You get really defensive after you've been with the government for awhile about bureaucrat-bashing... I try to educate in a nice way about it, but I think it's difficult, because it's very personal what you do for a living. I think that what people do in the office is they tend— it almost becomes glue. "Oh, yeah, my sister-in-law said this." "Yeah, well my brother said that." And you talk about it, and you get it out of your system, and then you can go on. But it's unfortunate. Many people saved their greatest fury for attacks on them by politicians, feeling that this was the most damaging of attacks: 197

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o The worst part of being a federal civil servant now is the continual constant haranguing and bashing—not from the public, it's from the government, the people that pay our salaries. The government of the day [referring to the Mulroney government] has done more to eviscerate the spirit of professionalism in the public service. People don't really care any more simply because nobody knows if they're going to have a job tomorrow ... The worst, the worst people are those individuals in government. We watch the patronage stuff; we watch the National Parole Board, for example, go from about 65 to 70 per cent people with some criminal justice background to being probably 2 or 3 per cent with a criminal justice background. o Public service bashing is a national pastime. If you want to get elected you simply get up and bash public service and you get elected, especially in the West. (He mentions the Reform Party.) Politicians have a right to expect that public servants will work loyally and provide a full day's work for a full day's pay. Public servants understand that, and they were some of the harshest critics of their colleagues who were not working diligently. However, they strongly resented politicians who scored political points by tarring all public servants with the same brush. The feeling was that it was difficult enough to be a public servant in the 1990s without having your own employer criticize your performance in a less than knowledgeable manner. CONCLUSION All public servants feel that they are in a difficult position with the general public, seen as over-paid, under-worked timer-servers employed by organizations that do more harm than good. This perspective surely has an impact on all public servants, but it affects people working in field offices more than those working in capital cities because field officers have fewer support systems around them and must spend more time in an environment that can be quite hostile. As discussed earlier, this cannot help but influence how people carry out their day-to-day activities. Of course, most public servants are highly professional people who have learned to deal with this attitude, and they are careful not to let it colour their outward dealings with the public; but it is inconceivable that it does not have some influence on them.

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Chapter Nine

Where Do We Go from Here ? Implications for Implementation and Management Theory At the end of our research, and this book, we know a great deal about the field-level civil servants who do a sometimes difficult job under less than ideal conditions. At the same time we have found, not to our surprise, that the management, implementation, and human resource problems that were around when the pyramids were being built are alive and well. The ironic lament "we get the job done in spite of all the support systems" remains a realistic one. But the job is getting done, and done well and enthusiastically, after more than a decade of government cutbacks and reforms. This leaves us optimistic about the future of public service delivery in Canada. To this point this book has identified a number of characteristics of public servants who work in the field and some of the problems that they face. In this final chapter we provide some recommendations to improve the provision of public service and the relations between field and head offices. Most of these recommendations are directed at senior managers who can make changes in the roles of field officials, but some are directed at the field officials themselves, and a few are directed at our political science colleagues who do research on government. WHAT WE NOW KNOW

Field-level public servants are an important part of the governing process both numerically and in terms of their key role in ensuring that services are delivered properly. They deserve greater attention than they have been receiving.

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When more studies are done of what people actually do, it will become apparent that there is no such thing as a typical public servant or a typical government job. There is instead a rich variety of different kinds of people and jobs. This sounds simple and self-evident, but many recent attempts at reforming the public service have been broad-brush approaches that ignore very important differences between head office and field offices, and among field offices in different departments and different areas of the country. This study should serve as a reminder of the huge variety of field office arrangements. Our overall conclusion about field offices is that they largely contain dedicated individuals seriously trying to do the best job they can, at times in the face of what they consider to be daunting obstacles. o You get irritated after awhile that the biggest enemy is your employer. The worst part of being a federal civil servant now is the continual, constant haranguing and bashing—not from the public; it's from the government, the people that pay our salaries. Almost without exception the people we spoke with were very concerned about the welfare of the citizens they serve and firmly committed to providing the highest possible level of service. In many cases, they were approaching the current financial restraint with the idea that they would do everything they could to limit the effect of the cutbacks on their clients. This is evidenced by the commitment to change that most of the field officials exhibited. They were supportive of budget cuts, having recognized that there was slack in the system and changes had to take place. Often we were spontaneously offered, as the first people who had ever asked, examples of ways in which a service could be provided much more economically. As people who have worked inside the system for years, they were aware of the problems, and many had introduced, or tried to introduce, innovative measures to improve service even though such changes had not been sanctioned by their superiors. Many were, in fact, prepared to lead the way with a surprising entrepreneurial fervour but felt that they had been ignored. A classic example is head office's recent discovery of customer service or service to the public. Field office staff feel that they have spent years trying to convince head office that service to the public is important, while head office has been tirelessly inserting as many obstacles as possible to prevent them from providing good customer service. After this history, it is easy to imagine how field staff feel when they see large amounts of scarce funds spent on expensive consultants and glossy 200

Where Do We Go from Here ? publications to convey to them exactly the same message they have been struggling in vain to convey to head office for years. Many spoke ruefully about the resource problems they faced but recognized that there was a need to reduce spending. What was perhaps most frustrating to them was the way in which spending decisions were made and communicated. One example was an announcement by a minister on a Friday evening that a large number of field offices would be closing. Those affected found out about it by reading the Saturday newspaper on a long weekend. In discussing the relationship between democracy and public policy, deLeon has suggested that government and bureaucrats have "found themselves effectively sequestered from the demand needs and (most critically) the values of the people they are reputed to be helping."1 While this might be true at the level of senior bureaucrats, we found it to be simply untrue at the field office level. The point that "we pay taxes too" was made to us repeatedly when discussing cutbacks and change. One of our main interests has been in the degree of discretion exercized by people in the field. We have focused on administrative discretion and what we refer to as policy discretion. In terms of administrative discretion, regardless of the level in the organization, field workers have considerable flexibility in the organizing of their days. Administrative flexibility, however, is often greatest in the lower levels where pressures of meetings with others take up less time. But generally the day was driven by the needs of the clients. The actual work being done was changing over time, in part due to technology, but in part because the incumbents were changing it themselves. Again, as long as the work gets done, field workers seem to have considerable scope for self-definition of "client service," although this appears to be declining as work-loads go up and the controls associated with administrative reforms become more stringent. We found huge variation in the extent to which the "electronic revolution" was in place. But where there are e-mail, computers, and so forth, they are considered to be very useful for internal communication and helped produce a sense of organizational unity. There was less unanimity about their utility for external communication with the client. Those who have access to computers and are computer literate can benefit from the new systems, but for those without access or technological skills, the result can be a two-tier system of service. It was in the area of policy discretion that there was the most variation, although we found a surprising degree of discretion being exercised. This produced huge variations in program delivery across offices 201

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due to differences in interpretation of guidelines. But the use of discretion did not follow any pattern. It was not found to a greater extent among older or more senior employees. Often younger, more junior people were more (or less) willing to use "creative interpretation" of rules. It was found as frequently in rule enforcement in social services as in the harder services such as transportation or natural resources. Surprisingly, the degree of internal controls also seemed to have no impact. When it was felt necessary, a way could be found around the rule. The only consistent finding was that all the respondents reported some degree of policy discretion. The only limitation seemed to be the personal inclination of the employee to use her or his judgment. More importantly, discretion was almost always exercised to the benefit of the client, not used particularistically. We heard of no examples, either by the individual themselves or in the recounting of stories about other people, where discretion was not used for the benefit of the organization's goals—albeit the field employee's interpretation of benefit and goals. This latter finding is not surprising when the organizational milieu is taken into consideration. Civil servants act within the norms of their own society ;2 they both exercise discretion and react to reform within the contexts of these norms. The idea of equity in public service, we would argue, is a strongly held value in Canada—certainly our results would indicate that this is true. The exercise of discretion, therefore, will be constrained by ideas of equity and fairness.3 The limitations by cultural value evident in the exercise of discretion also explain why in some small towns there was an unwillingness to implement policies, particularly regulatory policies, as intended. We discussed in chapter 4 how in some cases rules were relaxed or reinterpreted. Turning a blind eye to farmers shooting geese out of season when they were eating the farmer's crops may be an attempt to merge narrow community values with broader societal ones. This may also explain why we found few program appeal processes, and those that existed were not communicated to the clients unless specific requests were made. Most people indicated that some form of informal appeal route would be created if needed. At the same time there was little evidence that formal appeals processes, if they existed, were used; even less frequently were they successful. This would seem to indicate that individual clients were satisfied with services being received, and the degree of discretion exercised was consistent with clients' expectations. Finally, not only is the exercise of discretion not hierarchically differentiated but there is also apparently little correlation between administrative and program/policy discretion. Often there is a great deal of program discretion but almost no administrative discretion. In other cases, individuals could make changes in their own job 202

Where Do We Go from Here ? or their own office but considered themselves to have little impact when it came to making changes to overall programs or policies. The gloomiest picture was in the area of human resource management. Gender problems still seem to exist, but are more subtle and presumably more difficult to resolve. There is a considerable resentment of affirmative action programs, particularly when they produce an age discrepancy—the young woman bossing the older man. When problems or misunderstandings occur in human resource management, particularly if the problem is the immediate supervisor, there is little recourse to a solution or a hearing. Professional human resource staff seem to be absent from field offices, and if someone is doing the job, it is often someone who has drifted into the position from somewhere else in the organization. Human resource staff at regional or head offices are viewed as distant, unconcerned, and generally just not relevant to the problem at hand. These problems were expressed even within unionized organizations. Almost no one received extensive job training when starting a new job. Ongoing training was limited to information about program changes, and even that form of training was perceived to be deficient. Employees are generally expected to figure out changes on their own time. A reasonable amount of generic supervisory and management training did appear to be available, but this was also not considered to be particularly useful. Very few people receive formal performance evaluations and when they are carried out, they are considered to be ineffective. Finally, few people reported anything in the way of formal career development planning. Despite "empowerment," "decentralization," "TQM," and a myriad of other buzz words, acronyms, and improvements in communication technology, the gulf between head office and the field remains. Field workers have a strong perception that George's Law (named after the deputy minister who explained it), "the ability to understand the situation is directly proportional to the distance from head office," was believed by people in head office. Field people felt head office believes that field officers do not know what to do or how to do it. This perception existed almost everywhere but varied in intensity by province, department, and functional area. Surprisingly, these feelings of lack of efficacy were not directly related to the size of the government or department. The exception was Prince Edward Island: having a very small size seems to be of benefit in terms of a unified perspective within the organization. Another factor that led to a unified perspective was found in provinces and departments where head office people had had significant relatively recent work experience in field offices. Unity was also strengthened when there was a strong educational or functional 203

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technology. The cla ic example of this was the unifying effect of engineering in highways departments. The fractured organizational reality was reflected in attitudes toward reform. Field office people tended to be cynical about staged field trips or "window-dressing" reforms. When reforms were simply a means of cutting costs, and head office pretended otherwise, field people thought that the people at the top implementing the reforms must believe they, the field staff, are rather stupid. Reforms were implemented enthusiastically when the field office staff were able to choose the way they did things to make the system work more effectively. In some cases such reforms had no official sanction but were considered by the staff to be legitimate. Our findings on innovation were somewhat at variance with those of Gow,4 although they coincided with his to the extent that we found field people tended to turn to their peers for assistance and new ideas. However, we found that there was little transmission of innovations across governments, or even departments, except in those functional areas with a strong technology and strong personal ties between individuals, or when trendy new panaceas swept across from, usually, the private sector. Field officers were, however, practical in their approach to reform, and while not averse to theoretical solutions, they were wary of both consultants and "quick fixes" from on high. Findings about attitudes towards the future were also, for the most part, rather gloomy. Few individuals could see a "career path" for themselves because they had peaked or could see no future in government service. While older individuals had enjoyed their career and felt they had worked in a good cause, few would want their children to follow them into government service. To try to give an idea of the people themselves, the overwhelming impression was that they were "nice people." They were happy to give us their time and to tell us their stories. It could be argued that a finding of "niceness" is in part due to sampling error but, as we pointed out in chapter 2, most were contacted without any warning, and our response rate was so high that there was little opportunity for self-selection bias. In addition, the research technique of lengthy interviews involving "telling stories" tends to produce quite accurate results about the people themselves.5 Almost without exception, field people want to stay in the field. The image of capital cities being filled with mindless functionaries is not limited to people in the private sector! At the same time, they were generally not bothered by bureaucrat-bashing, as they took pride in their job and the service they provide. They are surprisingly supportive of government cutbacks. In their personal lives, they do not see the 204

Where Do We Go from Here ? people they work with very much away from the office or have much contact with other civil servants. The exceptions to this were those occupations with a strong internal culture, particularly those involved in compliance, who spent much of their time with their peers. Few were active in any professional activity outside the office, or even during office hours, because professional activities were not paid for by their employer. An exception was people in positions that need regular accreditation—but the minimum training or activity to meet the standard was all that was allowed. Expenses related to professional interaction seem to have been one of the first areas of budget cuts. But there was also a high degree of voluntarism in other ways. Many respondents did some form of community work, for service clubs, churches, or related to their children's activities. Even the most conservative time-servers, made cynical by the years, tended to channel their organizational abilities and sense of public service into some form of community service. Among the older groups there was some indication that their dedication to their job, but not necessarily to the client, had not been appreciated by the organization. Among the younger people, family was more important than job. The age group 25-34 was particularly interesting. By far the best educated group, they clearly also have a very different value system from that of the generation before them. Almost without exception, everyone we talked to put family before their work. They also have little sense of organizational loyalty. They have seen how "downsizing" and "rightsizing" have left another generation in their fifties—in some cases their parents, who had made family sacrifices for their work—abandoned by the organizations to which they had given so much. This is not going to happen to them. The implications for organizational structures in the future are profound. Most of those interviewed understood that words like "culture" and "empowerment" are code words for getting people to do more for less. Because they are well educated, they are less likely to be manipulated by buzz words or cheerleading. B A C K TO THE F U T U R E I I M P L I C A T I O N S FOR IMPLEMENTATION AND MANAGEMENT THEORY

Academics have not paid much attention to field-level public servants. Political scientists have usually focused on the high-profile legislators, cabinet ministers, or deputy ministers. The introduction to this book mentions some twenty-year-old studies of specific departments, but this is the first study which provides a broad-scope portrait of all types of field-level public servants. Recent interest in implementation and 205

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service delivery has focused some attention on what happens in the field, but these studies have not looked at all the pressures facing public servants. They have frequently arrived at the quick conclusion that implementation has not been handled properly, without digging deeper to determine what pressures on field-level public servants could be causing the problem. Denhardt points out that many of the current management and public policy theories seem to be ignoring forty years of organizational theory.6 For example, in looking at the role of the field officer thirty years after Kaufman's original study,7 Tipple and Wellman comment: "Kaufman portrayed the ranger as executive, planner, and woodsman whose chief responsibility was to shape elaborate, detailed directions from above to meet the needs of the local situation."8 This is not dissimilar to Follett's "law of the situation."9 Kaufman focused on the need for voluntary conformity so that "the Rangers handle most situations precisely as their superiors would direct them to if their superiors stood looking over their shoulders."10 This voluntary conformity was instilled through the sharing of professional norms, yet we have found that among the first sacrifices of budgetary restraint were professional associations, training, and field/head office meetings and interchange of staff, the main routes for achieving the shared values that provide such voluntary conformity. This view is supported by our finding that the strongest culture and sense of professionalism and coherence were found in those organizations with a dominant technology and shared education. While the complexity of problems and desire for amalgamation of departments make large homogeneous organizations a thing of the past, trying to organize at the sub-unit level on the basis of some common factor is also a theoretical insight from the 1920s.11 Like administrative prescriptions, the situation in implementation has not changed much over the years. Linder and Peters note an apparent unwillingness to learn from the lessons of the past.12 As administrative reforms are introduced based upon untested assumptions and unevaluated experiments, new programs are implemented without consideration of the varying field offices' circumstances or previous experiences. Implementation of a program will be different in a small town and a large city. It is not that implementation should be either a top-down or bottom-up driven process, but rather the process of implementation should be driven by the needs of the program, the client, and the location. This is far more reminiscent of the form of process theory outlined by Mohr13 than the causal frameworks associated with the administrative reform movements of the business-driven model. One of Canada's most notable management scholars has recently called for a return to a 206

Where Do We Go from Here ? similar "normative model" based upon values and judgment about the situation.14 Ironically, this is the model we found to be used most often in the field, but which administrative reforms with their routinization of "customer service" are attempting to drive out. The type of balance of expertise and values espoused by Mintzberg is eerily reminiscent of the "sala" form of administration suggested by Riggs in the 1960s. It is also not dissimilar to the argument made elsewhere that in implementation "we can learn more from an examination of our success rather than our failure."15 Thus, it would be better to isolate those factors in implementation that worked well, and under what conditions they worked before using them as generalized prescriptions. LESSONS L E A R N E D

We turn now to some modest prescriptions. Many of the problems have relatively simple solutions. It is indicative of the neglect of field offices that these simple ideas have not already been implemented. Recognize the importance of field offices. It seems silly to say something this basic, but an overwhelming conclusion of our study is that it needs to be said because people at head office frequently forget how important field offices are. In terms of management, the lessons are quite simple: Be honest, pay attention, don't patronize, and recognize reality. Rather than treating field offices as either an alien form of organization or the enemy, a recognition that there is one organization, not two, would go a long way to reduce the cleavage in the fractured organizational reality. The majority of government employees work in field offices, and most services are delivered there. Given the increased emphasis on service to the public, this means that the needs of field offices should be more important than those of head office. The current attitude is that field offices are in place to do the work of head office. Maybe this relationship should be inverted, and head office should be seen serving field offices. Whenever head office is about to do something, a good question to ask would be: How does this help field offices deliver service ? Include field offices in administrative reforms. Chapter 7 made it clear that many of the major administrative reforms such as the federal government's PS2000 had not penetrated to field offices in a meaningful fashion. The federal government's latest initiative, La Releve, seems to be making a stronger effort in this direction, but it is too early to judge how effective this will be. It will be easier to effect this inclusion if the suggestions for improved communication discussed later are implemented. One of the problems 207

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with trying to include field offices in reform efforts now is that the communication channels between the two solitudes are so atrophied that they have difficulty communicating with one another. As has been mentioned, a good example of this is head offices' recent discovery of the importance of "customer service" and the patronizing way in which this was imposed on field offices. There seemed to be no understanding that field offices were cognizant of its importance for years and had been having difficulty convincing head office of its importance. Consider co-location or one-stop shopping. In considering administrative reforms, one of the changes that should be pondered is the colocation of related offices. This seems to have worked well in British Columbia and Prince Edward Island. It has proven to be beneficial to citizens who can obtain service from several departments in one location, and to the departments themselves which can benefit from the increased efficiency of shared common services. However, this should be done as a means of improving service, not as a cost-saving device alone. While successful in some provinces, this was less so in others. It was succesful where there was a commitment on the part of staff, a true integration of service, and extensive training. Dividing an office in half is not the same as co-location. Currently governments seem to be moving away from co-location in the direction of fewer, larger offices—in the interests of administrative efficiency. This may be short-sighted. Significant economies might be gained from sharing common services and from clearing up issues more quickly when several departments are located in one physical location rather than passing a file back and forth between several locations while the citizen waits for an answer. Radically reduce the size of head offices. Currently most assistant deputy ministers and directors general maintain large staffs in their offices in the capital city. These people act as a buffer between senior managers and field staff. They also spend a great deal of their time considering new policies, policy changes, or changes in administrative rules. After much consideration at head office, these changes are sent to field offices for their consideration. Why can't policy and administrative changes originate in field offices ? After all, if they are going to be implemented in field offices eventually, why not allow them to flow from field offices in the first place ? This is not such a radical suggestion : chapters 6 and 7 described how this is already done in the federal Department of Agriculture. The obvious problem with this is that field staff do not have the same broad view of departmental and governmental priorities as those in head office. But moving responsibility for policy development will give 208

Where Do We Go from Here ? people in the field this broader view. It will also require staff in different field offices to work with one another, which would be very beneficial. Establish real two-way communication systems, not systems emphasizing pronouncements from on high. Good communication systems involve extensive and intensive communication on a recurring basis. When communications lines are silent for months and field office staff are suddenly sent a complex proposal and asked for their comments by next week, they understand exactly what is happening. They understand that a decision has already been made at head office and they are being asked to sign off on it as though they agree. This implies that the priorities and time of people in head office are far more important than those of people in field offices. Admittedly, this type of thing also happens in head offices, but usually people in head office have some inkling of new developments. When such surprises are sprung on field staff, they serve as one more example of the insensitivity of head office to the capabilities of field staff. In discussions on this point, one response has been "but the minister demanded it." It is true that ministers sometimes do not understand the length of time needed to change policies. However, it seems surprising that head office staff are unable to explain to the minister how the policy being developed will be improved by inviting input from field staff. After all, ministers are from "the field" themselves; their constituency work sensitizes them to the problems that arise in field offices when policies are formulated in a purely top-down fashion. In cases where ministers do want something instantly, if there were valid reasons for delay they could usually understand it, in the same way that people in the field can understand genuine crises as distinct from manufactured ones. Meaningful communication is ongoing communication throughout the development of a project. It involves keeping communication lines open even when the news passing through those lines is not earthshattering. A telling indication in interviews was a respondent's use of either "we" or "they." Respondents frequently reflected a great deal of pride in their department when they said that "we" were involved in making a decision. Other respondents referred to the manner in which "they" made decisions and passed them down. The difference in one word spoke volumes. Keeping the communication lines open means encouraging a meaningful two-way flow of communication. There are many ways of doing this. Some departments had a system of departmental committees consisting of both field and head office people meeting to discuss ongoing developments. Rotating the membership of these committees maximizes the 209

SERVICE IN THE FIELD

number of people who will be involved in the process over the years. Other departments took advantage of training sessions or periodic meetings to share information about developing issues with staff. None of these will be effective unless head office makes a sincere effort to communicate important information in a meaningful manner. Field office staff are quick to understand when committees or training sessions are just matters of going through the motions. It was clear in our discussions that field staff were responding to past patterns of communication—either good or bad. To be effective, channels of communication must be kept open and staff must understand that they are significant. A quick attempt to establish meaningful communication on a one-shot basis will not work because field staff will still be responding to the long-term pattern, not the one isolated event. It is true that a limitation of field officials is that they do not have a broad understanding of the entire organization. However, this can be remedied by enhancing communication so that people in one area of the organization have a better understanding of what is happening in other areas. Skip the royal tour. Many field office staff described what was called in a number of departments "the royal tour"—an annual or periodic visit by the deputy minister or other senior official, sometimes with an entourage. The visitor(s) usually swept through the field office, engaging in perfunctory conversation with staff. This kind of artificial situation seemed to occur most frequently in departments where day-to-day communication between field and head offices was quite poor. Thus, staff really did have a sense of noblesse oblige, that the visit was more a command performance than part of an ongoing dialogue. The physical presence of senior people in the field office was merely a reminder of the poor relationship between field and head office and thus more of an irritant than a favour. The royal tour can actually do harm to the senior person involved. In several departments in several provinces, we heard that these tours were made as a way of providing the person with an expense-paid vacation. Somehow, this does not seem likely, but the fact that it is frequently repeated by staff damages the image of the senior person. This does not mean that head office staff should never visit field offices. On the contrary, these visits can be highly beneficial, as a part of a good two-way communication system. However, when they are used instead of good day-to-day communication, they are counterproductive. Rotate staff among field offices and between field and head offices. A strongly unified organizational perspective developed when many people in the organization knew one another and understood one 210

Where Do We Go from Here ? another's job. The gulf between field and head offices was widest when there was a sense of a clear pattern of "us" and "them." This would be fruitful for people from both field and head offices. People from head office can benefit from seeing up close the problems that field staff must handle on a day-to-day basis.16 Field staff will benefit from head office experience by obtaining a broader view of departmental and governmental goals.17 We found that people were reluctant to move later in their careers, when they had families and strong ties to a particular place. However, a system of rotating people early in their careers could have lasting benefits, because people will have had at least a limited opportunity to see how the other half lives. They would also meet others in the department, so that relationships could develop over the years. In the current environment of two working spouses, this is probably one of the most difficult recommendations to implement, but should be attempted as much as possible. Limit the number of "outsiders" in head office. Real benefits are associated with moving people through a number of different departments. The department benefits from constantly having new blood bringing in new ideas. However, when the situation develops that hardly anyone in head office has recent field office experience, it creates a real divide between field and head offices and adds credence to the claim of field office people that "they don't really understand us." Maintain unity of command as much as possible. The traditional concept of unity of command stipulates that each subordinate should report to one, and only one, supervisor. But complex modern organizations make it almost impossible to maintain this neat relationship in practice. Several head office people will have an interest in different aspects of what is occurring in the field and so will need to contact field staff directly. In the current environment, field staff feel hard-pressed just to deliver services to clients; numerous overlapping requests for information from head office distract field officials from delivering services. As much as possible, all head office contacts with field offices should be cleared through one person in head office to ensure that the request is absolutely necessary, to determine that the information could not be obtained in some other way, to consolidate several related requests, and to monitor the demands that head office is making on field offices. Improve the system of human resource management. This means better training, performance appraisal, and career development. We found cases where there were many training programs, and they were very effective in one aspect of the person's work. But we frequently heard of major gaps in the training provided. A typical case was the provision 211

S E R V I C E IN THE FIELD

of extensive training in the substantive work of the department, e.g., in administering the act, but very little training available to people becoming supervisors or managers. It is not an overstatement to say that meaningful performance appraisal systems simply do not exist. In some cases people go through the motions, and in many cases even that does not happen. Performance appraisal is very difficult to implement because there are few incentives to establish such a system, and marly disincentives. For example, small offices can develop problems due to over-familiarity and lack of privacy. There is a need for a clear chain of command and appeal on personnel matters which ensures confidentiality and spares reprisals. Coupled to this could be more meaningful career development counselling that recognized the reality of downsizing. Similarly, a sense of lack of mobility could be overcome by the creation of more accessible opportunities for movement and growth in the same location, and by making movement between departments or even levels of government easier. In terms of performance appraisals, if there is no merit pay to be earned, no career development opportunities, and a quota on the various categories of "merit," it is questionable whether they serve any purpose. In cases where an informal mentoring system can improve performance, it should be done. If the concern is a "paper trail" for dismissal or "red circling," more meaningful evaluations with someone outside the office in attendance would provide more legitimate grounds. Recognize the unique perspective of people who work in field offices. The traditional idea of career development is that people start relatively low in the hierarchy and move steadily upward, which ultimately involves a move to head office to attain the pinnacle of the organization. Many people who work in field offices have made a conscious decision to opt out of this escalator. It is a general trend that people are less attached to organizations than they used to be. This has come about in part because young people coming into the workforce have seen their parents downsized out of jobs that they thought they would hold until retirement. The young people to whom we spoke also emphasized the importance of family in making career decisions, especially ones that involved moving house. The increasing number of families in which both spouses work outside the home raise significant practical barriers to moving every time one spouse can improve her or his position. All of this means that many employees want to have a full and challenging career within a field office. Of course, an organization cannot be expected to change the entire rules of the game to meet the needs of these people, but they constitute a valuable resource, which an organization would be foolish to under-use. Except for the most senior lev212

Where Do We Go from Here ? els, there is no reason why the majority of senior positions should be in the capital city.18 One way of using them has already been discussed. Some of the policy and planning functions currently lodged in head office could be moved to field offices. A system of job rotation could be initiated both within field offices and between head and field offices. We heard of some examples of this, but it is not used very widely, in spite of major benefits from moving people around in this manner. One change that would improve the work environment for field office staff would be for administrative and program discretion to be brought more in line with each other. That is to say, administrative discretion should be loosened to match the level of program discretion. In a nutshell, let the managers manage. Field managers generally have a good understanding that some issues are of great concern to head office, and they do not resent the fact that as field officials they must follow certain rules. However, they also understand when head office staff are imposing rules for the sake of it, and strongly resent this. Departments should try to move as much as possible to the "unengaged" or "mutually supportive" style of interaction. Both require developing a good understanding of what issues are of concern to head office and delegating other areas of field offices. We give the last word to the field: "I do my best to make my clients happy. That is my job."

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Appendix

METHODOLOGY

1

Interview questionnaire

215

2 Material sent requesting an interview

222

3

Letters requesting contacts

228

4

Interview schedule

230

INTERVIEW QUESTIONNAIRE QUESTIONS

ABOUT THE JOB ITSELF

1

What are the duties of your current position ?

Enquire about previous positions as well, particularly if he or she has been in this position a relatively short period.

2

Describe a typical day in your working life.

Find out how much discretion the person feels he or she has in organizing the workday. Find out about: • fixed hours of work • amount of privacy Prompt for the time distribution in several respects : internal vs. external telephone, meetings, writing memos, processing files

APPENDIX

3

What skills would you say are most important in your job, e.g., • verbal communication • written communication • technical knowledge

This is meant to be used in recommending curriculum and in advising students.

4

In addition to your routine contacts with clients, do you have very many contacts with client groups or pressure groups ?

Find out what sorts of groups and the nature of the relationship, e.g., confrontational, mutually supportive. Assess whether there is an on-going relationship or just sporadic contacts.

If respondent has been in the same position for an extended period : 5 Do you still enjoy the job as much as you did when you first started ? How has the job changed over time ?

Try to assess if the respondent is concerned with finding new approaches to the job or whether he or she is just going through the motions until retirement.

6

How many people are employed in your office ?

7

What is the distribution by gender ?

8

Have there been any major concerns about gender issues in your office ?

Identify specific issues and try to determine the depth of the person's feelings about gender issues.

9

What type of secretarial and clerical support do you have ?

Determine whether the person feels the support is adequate. Some people say that some technological innovations such as voicemail actually create more work for them.

10

How much training did you receive when you started this job ?

Prompt for information about written versus personal instruction. Also delicately discuss the perceived adequacy of the training.

11

Do you receive any sort of ongoing training ?

Discuss both specific job training and general training, e.g., supervisory skills. Discuss how he or she is informed of changes in programs and procedures.

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12

If you had a problem or needed advice, what would you do ?

First, note whether person can respond fairly quickly as though this occurs often or if he or she has to think about this. Note whether answer relates to supervisor, peer, or head office. Ask why this would be the best source of information.

13

How do you handle a disgruntied client ?

See if the person suggests informal methods of working something out or refers to legal avenues.

14

If a client was unhappy about a decision you made, what avenues of appeal would he or she have ?

This can determine how much discretion the officer has. Discern how easy the avenue of appeal is and if the client is routinely informed of it.

15

Has there been any concern about physical security in your workplace, for example, concern about actions of disgruntled clients ?

Try to assess how deeply felt this concern is. Determine whether management has taken any steps to deal with this concern.

16

If you had an idea which would improve the way you do your job, how would you go about implementing it ?

Note how severe the constraints are. Note the source of the constraints— head office, immediate supervisor, etc.

17

What do you consider to be the good points about your job ?

Prompt person to discuss the most rewarding experience he or she has had.

18

What do you consider to be the bad points about your job ?

Prompt person to discuss the worst experience he or she has had.

19

How do you evaluate your work and how is it evaluated by others ?

Find out what he or she feels is really important about the job. Note whether responses relate most to serving clients or completing paperwork or pleasing superiors, etc.

20

How would you characterize the main goal of your job ?

As with the previous question note whether responses are more peopleoriented or process-oriented.

21

How would you characterize the main goal of your organization ?

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APPENDIX

22a Would you say that your organization has a way of doing things which differs from other organizations ? For example, if you went into an office of your department in another city do you think that you would recognize it right away ?

Prompt the person to describe the culture. Culture refers to a general environment throughout the organization.

22b Does this same "way of doing things" exist throughout your organization, i.e., in other offices and head office ?

Find out what he or she feels is the source of the culture, the overall organization, the immediate supervisor, etc. Some people have suggested that this has changed in recent times. Prompt experienced people to see if this is accurate for their organization.

23a How much supervisory responsibility do you have ? 23b How much time is taken up by these responsibilities ? 23c How much authority do you have in selecting employees to work for you ? 24a Do you feel that the broader political environment affects your day-to-day activities ?

Find out if the person knows the names of the minister and deputy minister.

24b If the government of the day changed, would it have much impact on your working environment ? 24c Do you have any contact with the local member of parliament ?

Discuss the nature of the contact. Assess whether there is an on-going relationship or just sporadic contacts.

QUESTIONS ABOUT CENTRAL OFFICE/FIELD RELATIONS

25

218

How frequently do you have contact with people from head office and what is the nature of the contact ?

Determine if the mode of interaction is formal (exchanges of memos) or informal (phone calls). Assess whether the person actually knows people in head office or is simply mentioning position titles.

APPENDIX

26

Are you asked by head office to provide any feedback about how policies are working or what changes could be made in operations ?

27a What sorts of reports do you prepare for head office ?

Discuss frequency and types of reports. Determine whether person sees head office/field office relationship as: • mutually supportive • unengaged • "in spite of" • paralytic

27b Do you feel that these reports are relevant in that they measure what you really do ?

Find out whether the person feels this is meaningful or whether he or she is just going through the motions. Determine whether there is any sort of meaningful feedback.

28

Many governments have undertaken broad-based organizational reforms in the last few years. Have any of these reforms affected your day-today activities ?

This is a reference to PS2000 for the federal government. Make certain that respondents know that you are not referring to the recent integration of departments, although if they want to discuss this, that is OK.

29

Do you feel that people in head office really understand your problems ?

30

Do you feel that people in head office really understand the problems of your clients ?

31

Staff in field offices are sometimes viewed as being torn between the specific rules adopted in head office and the needs of the clients they deal with directly. Do you ever feel that sort of pressure ? If so, how do you resolve it ?

Prompt for specific examples of this tension which can be used in the book.

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APPENDIX

32a Do you know very many people in other field offices ?

Determine how frequently there are staff meetings and how much information is shared among field staff on an ongoing basis.

32b How would you typically get to know these people ? QUESTIONS ABOUT THE WORK

THE I N T E R G O V E R N M E N T A L ASPECTS

33

How frequent are your contacts with officials of federal/ provincial/municipal governments ?

34

Do you have fairly broad discretion to make decisions on matters which touch on intergovernmental relations ?

35

To what extent are your interactions with other governments monitored or mediated by people at your head office ?

OF

Find out how sensitive head office is to intergovernmental dealings.

Q U E S T I O N S A B O U T I N T E R A C T I O N WITH E N V I R O N M E N T

36

What are the advantages and disadvantages of working in a field office ?

Probe for feelings of isolation or alienation.

37

Why did you take this particular job ?

Find out if the person really wanted to work for government or just sort of fell into this job, etc.

38

What would you expect your normal career development pattern to be ?

Probe about whether the person is more oriented to working for this department or oriented to this geographic location.

39

If you were looking for another job, would you want to stay in government ?

Assess attachment to government as such or whether the person is just looking for the best job regardless of the employer.

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APPENDIX

40

To what extent does your government position affect your involvement in community activities and your personal life ? In this age of bureaucrat-bashing, is it difficult to keep your morale up ?

41

How frequently do you interact with people in your office outside of normal work time ?

42

Can you provide me with a brief description of your public service career ?

Find out how frequently the person had to move and what effect this has had on the person's personal life, e.g., strains on marriage. Assess whether the person still has a strong attachment to a particular geographic location or would be willing to move other places.

43

What sort of formal education have you had ?

Determine level of education including professional certification. Also determine whether person was educated in a number of different geographic areas.

44

Are you active in professional and/or community associations ?

Find out how active the person is.

Revised April 1994 The letters and other material were all translated into French because these were sent to respondents. This questionnaire was not translated because it was never seen by respondents. It was used only by the PHD student who conducted the interviews with francophones. Since he is fluently bilingual, there was no need to provide a formal translation. Because of the open-ended nature of the interview process, questions were seldom asked exactly as written anyway, in either English or French.

221

APPENDIX M A T E R I A L SENT R E Q U E S T I N G AN I N T E R V I E W

Dear

:

I am wor ng with another researcher on a major research project which will analyse the role of field-level public servants in the administrative process. A detailed description of the project is attached. The study involves interviewing approximately 200 field-level employees of federal and provincial governments across Canada. You have been recommended to us as someone who could make a contribution to our survey. I will be in our area on [DATE] and would welcome the opportunity to interview you at that time. The interview will require approximately 60 minutes of your time. The questions will be of a very general nature and will deal with how you view your work as a field-level official. There will be no questions of a sensitive nature about confidential aspects of your work. We will be very careful to preserve the confidentiality of your responses. Please see the attached statement on confidentiality. The interview can take place at your office or at some other location of your choice. I can be available either during working hours or at some other time, whichever is better for you. I appreciate that this project will require a certain amount of your valuable time. However, I feel that this is a very worthwhile project in that it will identify the frequently overlooked contribution made by field-level employees to the administrative process. Your contribution will assist us greatly. I hope that you will be able to take part in this. I will be calling you in the next week or so at xxx-yyy-zzzz to arrange a time and place for an interview. If you would like to contact me please feel free to do so at (yyy) xxx-xxxx (home) or (yyy) xxx-xxxx ext. zzzzz (office). Sincerely,

Associate Professor of Politics

222

APPENDIX S E R V I C E IN THE F I E L D I F I E L D - L E V E L STAFF IN THE A D M I N I S T R A T I V E PROCESS

A Research Project by Barbara Wake Carroll Department of Political Science McMaster University

David Siegel Department of Politics Brock University

As teachers of public administration, one of the most common questions we hear is: What does a typical civil servant's workday look like ? It is frequently difficult for people without work experience to relate the academic literature on administrative theory and program implementation to what civil servants actually do on a day-to-day basis. The academic literature is primarily concerned with the role of deputy ministers and other senior officials, but there is little discussion of the activities of people who actually deliver services. The purpose of our study is to fill that gap by writing a book about the role of field-level public servants in the administrative process. We are trying to capture the general tone of what it is like to work in a field office and discover how field-level staff go about the delivery of services. The study will involve interviewing approximately 200 field officials employed by federal and provincial governments across Canada. As much as possible, we would like these people to tell their own story. Questions will be asked about the job itself, about their relations with clientele, head office, other government departments, and other governments. Interviews will require 60-75 minutes, and can take place in the workplace or in some other location of the interviewee's choice. The interviews will be completely confidential. In order to heighten the reality of the finished product, we would like the interviewee's permission to quote their words directly in the text, but the individual contributors will remain anonymous. We are independent, university-based researchers. We are pursuing this research under the auspices of a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. We are not undertaking this work on behalf of any government organization. We think that field-level public servants have a very important story to tell. We need their cooperation in elaborating on it. A N O T E ON C O N F I D E N T I A L I T Y

The questions you will be asked will deal with your general working environment and your general feelings about your work as a field-level public servant. You will not be asked any questions about confidential aspects of your work such as the handling of individual cases. We would like to make an audio recording of our conversation to ensure accuracy in working with your comments. The only people who will have access to the recording will be the two researchers and possibly a secretary who will

223

APPENDIX

prepare transcripts of some interviews. In fact, we will not even disclose the names of those who participated in the study. Portions of some interviews are likely to be quoted directly in the book we plan to publish. The sources of these quotations will be identified in a general way such as "a federal public servant working in Alberta" or "a provincial official in a social services department." Care will be taken to ensure that the identities of people quoted cannot be inferred. BIOGRAPHICAL

NOTE

Barbara Wake Carroll Barbara Wake Carroll is currently an associate professor of Political Science at McMaster University in Hamilton. She has also worked for the federal government in both field and head offices and for the governments of Alberta, Manitoba and New Brunswick. She is the author of the book the Biases of Management, and the co-author of the monograph The Role of BIA 's in the Municipal Decision-Making Process. She has written extensively on public administration, organization theory, and public policy. DAVID SIEGEL

David Siegel is currently an associate professor of Politics at Brock University in St Catharines. He has also worked for the federal government in both field and head offices and for the City of Toronto. He is co-author of the book Public Administration in Canada and co-editor of the monograph, Agencies, Boards, and Commissions in Canadian Local Government. He has written extensively on public administration, local government, and financial management and budgeting. He has a PHD in Political Science from the University of Toronto and an MA in Public Administration from Carleton University. He is also a Certified General Accountant.

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28.11.94 Monsieur Avec un autre chercheur, je fais des etudes au sujet des gens qui ceuvrent dans la fonction publique. Vous trouverez ci-joint une description detaillee de ce projet. Nous nous entretiendrons avec deux cents fonctionnaires des gouvernements federal et provinciaux dans toutes les provinces. Nous esperons que vous voudrez bien collaborer a nos recherches car vous nous avez ete presente comme une personne prete a contribuer a notre etude. Les entretiens durent une environ heure. Les questions sont d'ordre general et portent essentiellement sur vous et votre travail. Cependant, nous ne vous poserons aucune question de nature confidentielle ou personnelle (cf: "au sujet de la confidentialite"). Malheureusement, il ne nous sera pas possible de faire tous les entretiens et c'est done un collegue, M. Eric Montpetit, qui fera la plupart des entretiens au Quebec. II prepare une these de doctorat a 1'universite McMaster apres avoir obtenu une maitrises en sciences politiques a 1'universite Laval. II sera au Quebec pendant le mois de decembre et il aimerait pouvoir s'entretenir avec vous pendant cette periode au moment qui vous conviendra, en dehors ou pendant vos heures de travail. Je sais que cette etude demandera un peu de votre temps. Cependant nous pensons que cela en vaut la peine et que vous voudrez participer car, trop souvent, les etudes n'accordent pas a vos services la place qu'ils meritent. M. Montpetit vous telephonera au FiELD(ph) dans les deux prochaines semaines pour prendre rendez-vous. Si vous avez des questions n'hesitez pas a me contacter au (yyy) xxx-xxxx (chez moi) ou (yyy) xxx-xxxx poste xxxx (bureau). Veuillez agreer Monsieur, 1'expression de mes salutations distinguees.

Barbara W. Carroll Professeur agrege

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APPENDIX LES B U R E A U X O U V E R T S AU P U B L I C I LE ROLE DES F O N C T I O N N A I R E S DANS LE PROCESSUS ADMINISTRATE

II est frequent que nos etudiants nous demandent: "Qu'est-ce qu'un fonctionnaire fait? Quelle est sa journee typique?" II est sou vent difficile pour les etudiants qui n'ont jamais travaille de comprendre le role des fonctionnaires et d'etablir un lien entre la theorie et la pratique. De plus la litterature sur 1'administration publique s'interesse, pour une grande part, au role des hauts fonctionnaires. II y a, et c'est regrettable, peu d'ecrits au sujet des gens qui assurent les services aupres du public. Nous voudrions done combler cette lacune en ecrivant un livre sur ces personnes. Un livre qui expose leurs idees et leurs agissements en utilisant le vocabulaire qui leur est propre. Nous nous entretiendrons avec deux cents fonctionnaires des gouvernements federal et provinciaux. Nous leur poserons des questions au sujet de leur situation, leurs relations avec les autres gouvernements et departements, les relations a 1'interieur de leur departments, et leurs relations avec leurs clients. Les entretiens dureront de soixante a soixante-quinze minutes. Us pourront avoir lieu dans le bureau ou n'importe ou ailleurs selon le desir des fonctionnaires. Les entretiens seront confidentiels. Nous voudrions, cependant, obtenir 1'autorisation des personnes de citer leurs paroles dans notre texte. Mais, tout en preservant leur anonymat. Nous sommes des chercheurs universitaires et independants aucunement lies au gouvernement. Nous faisons cette recherche grace a une subvention du Conseil de recherche en sciences humaines du Canada. Nous croyons que les fonctionnaires en contact avec le public pourront nous donner de tres riches informations. Mais, une entiere collaboration de leur part est necessaire pour parvenir a un bon resultat. UNE R E M A R Q U E A U S U J E T D E L A C O N F I D E N T I A L I T Y :

Les questions que nous vous poserons concerneront votre environnement au travail en general et vos sentiments envers tous les aspects de votre travail de fonctionnaire. Mais, nous ne vous poserons aucune question de nature confidentielle ou personnelle. Nous voudrions vous enregistrer pour ne pas trahir ulterieurement votre pensee. Les seules personnes qui ecouteront ces eventuels enregistrements seront les deux chercheurs et M. Montpetit. Les chercheurs feront la transcription et la traduction eux-memes. II est possible qu' un entretien soit cite dans notre livre mais les references de ces citations resteront tres generates. Si vos propos etaient cites les references ne permettraient pas de deduire votre identite, par exemple: "un fonctionnaire federal travaillant en Alberta" ou "un fonctionnaire provincial travaillant aux services sociaux." Nous vous assurons que votre participation restera anonyme. 226

APPENDIX NOTE BIOGRAPHIQUE SUR LES A U T E U R S :

Barbara Wake Carroll Barbara Wake Carroll est professeur agrege de sciences politiques a I'universite McMaster. Elle a travaille dans les bureaux centraux et autres pour les gouvernements du Canada, de I'Alberta, du Manitoba et du Nouveau-Brunswick. Elle est 1'auteur de The Biases of Management et le coauteur d'une monographic, The Role of BIA 's in the Municipal Decision-Making Process. Elle a considerablement ecrit sur 1'administration publique, les theories d'organisation, la bureaucratic et la politique du logement. Elle est docteur es sciences politiques de 1'Universite Americaine de Washington, D.C. et a obtenu une maitrise d'administration publique a 1'universite Carleton. David Siegel David Siegel est professeur agrege de sciences politiques a 1'universite Brock de St Catharines. II a travaille pour le gouvernement federal dans les bureaux nationaux et autres. II a aussi travaille pour la ville de Toronto. II est le coauteur du texte Public Administration in Canada et le coediteur d'une monographic, Agencies, Boards and Comissions in Canadian Local Government. II a considerablement ecrit sur 1'administration publique, 1'administration des villes et les finances publiques. II est docteur es sciences politiques de 1'universite de Toronto et a obtenu une maitrise d'administration publique a 1'universite Carleton. II est aussi un c.g.a.

227

APPENDIX LETTERS REQUESTING

CONTACTS

Date Dear

:

I am working with another researcher on a major research project which will analyse the role of field-level public servants in the administrative process. A detailed description of the project is attached. The methodology of the study involves interviewing approximately 200 field-level employees of federal and provincial governments across Canada. We would appreciate your assistance in identifying some potential interviewees. A profile of the sort of person we are seeking is attached. The ideal candidates are "average" field-level public servants. We are not seeking only the "best and the brightest," although people who are reasonably articulate and thoughtful will make good interviews. It would be helpful if you could suggest some potential interviewees, providing us with the name and as much information as possible about position, address, and telephone number. We are asking that you not discuss this request with the people whom you suggest. First, we will probably not be able to interview everyone who is recommended to us. Second, and most importantly, we feel that we will establish our best rapport with interviewees if we approach them cold as independent researchers. We do not want to convey the impression that we have been sent to them by senior people in their organization. We will not indicate to people how they have been selected for this project. If you have any questions or comments about this request, please feel free to call me at my home (yyy) xxx-xxxx or my office (yyy) xxx-xxxx Ext zzzzz. Sincerely, P R O F I L E OF PARTICIPANTS IN THE STUDY

The object of this research is to describe the role of field-level public servants. The participants we are seeking are employees of federal or provincial operating departments with significant experience working outside of the head office. In particular, our study focuses on public servants who are actively involved in program delivery and implementation. A basic criterion for selection of the interviewees is that the person has direct contact with the public, and that her or his primary responsibility is service delivery. Those surveyed will range upward from first-line supervisors (i.e., not counter clerks or secretaries) and field officers to the level of local office head. We are also interested in interviewing professionals with discretionary authority, even though they do not have supervisory responsibilities. Thus, our work will include people who have supervisory responsibilities and discretionary authority, but who do not have on-going daily contact with or supervision from their head office.

228

APPENDIX

10/11/94 Cher

:

Comme vous le savez, Barbara Carroll et moi faisons des etudes au sujet des gens qui ceuvrent dans la fonction publique. Vous trouverez ci-joint une description detaillee de ce projet. Nous nous sommes deja entretenus avec deux cents fonctionnaires des gouvernements federal et provincaux dans toutes les provinces sauf celle du Quebec par laquelle nous terminons notre etude. Cette recherche etant independante nous ne voulons pas demander aux hauts fonctionnaires ou aux commissions de la fonction publique une liste de noms car, comme vous le savez, elle serait partiale. Vous vous demandez done quelles sont les personnes avec qui nous voulons nous entretenir (cf: profil des participants). L'ideal serait une personne dans la norme, pas necessairement un employe modele mais simplement une personne capable de s'exprimer clairement (les entretiens auront lieu en frangais). Si vous connaissez parmi vos amis, anciens etudiants, voisins ou autres quelqu'un correspondant a ce profil, priere de nous communiquer les noms, litres, adresses et numeros de telephone nous serait d'une aide precieuse. Nous ne dirons pas aux participants comment ils ont etc choisis. De votre cote nous vous demanderons de ne pas dire aux personnes que vous nous indiquez qu'elles sont susceptibles de participer a notre etude. D'une part parce que nous ne pourrons pas nous entretenir avec toutes les personnes proposees et d'autre part parce que la spontaneite est une qualite majeure que nous voulons preserver. Merci de votre collaboration, David Siegel

UN PROFIL DES PARTICIPANTS

Le but de cette recherche est de faire une description du role des gens qui assurent les services aupres du public. Les participants potentiels doivent etre des fonctionnaires des gouvernement federal ou provincaux des ministeres de ligne (pas des ministeres centraux) qui ont une experience professionnelle significative en dehors des capitales, qui ont un contact direct avec le public et dont le service direct est la principale responsibilite. Ils peuvent etre entre le rang de chef de bureau local et d'agent de programme; ou bien des professionnels comme les assistants sociaux (pas de secretaires ou de clercs). Essentiellement, done, des personnes qui ont une discretion administrative et politique, c'est a dire qui ont le pouvoir de prendre des decisions administratives et politiques independamment de leur bureau central.

229

APPENDIX INTERVIEW

SCHEDULE

1993

July August October November November and December

1994 January February April June July

Introduction of Rae Days Ontario Pre-test of questionnaire in Ontario Manitoba interviews Liberals elected in federal election Nova Scotia and Newfoundland interviews

December August 1993 to December 1994

New Brunswick reforms announced New Brunswick interviews Ralph Klein reforms in Alberta Alberta and Saskatchewan interviews British Columbia interviews PQ elected in Quebec provincial election Quebec interviews Ontario interviews

1995 October

Prince Edward Island interviews

230

Notes INTRODUCTION

1 Graham, Lights of the Inside Passage. 2 Little, '"No Car, No Radio, No Liquor Permit.'" 3 Lambert and Pross, Renewing Nature's Wealth; Kaufman, The Forest Ranger. 4 Blau, The Dynamics of Bureaucracy. 5 One of the best comparative discussions of the role of field level officials is found in Smith, Field Administration. 6 Royal Commission on Government Organization, Management of the Public Service, 1: 26-7. 7 Lambert and Pross, Renewing Nature's Wealth, xv. 8 Drabek, "The Ontario Department of Land and Forests, 1941-67; Gardner, "The Field Service of Ontario Government Departments"; Grove, English Regional Government; Carey, "Central-Field Relationships in the War Production Board." 9 Tindal, "Regional Administration"; Fesler, "Federal Uses of Administrative Areas"; Fesler, "Standardization of Federal Administrative Regions." 10 Controversy surrounds the use of the word "client" as opposed to "citizen." The word client will be used fairly frequently in this book for several reasons. First, some of the officials we will be discussing ordinarily work with many people who are not Canadian citizens. Also, the word client captures the one-to-one relationship that we are discussing in ways that the more general word citizen does not. 11 Aucoin and Bakvis, The Centralization-Decentralization Conundrum, chapter 3. 12 Direct quotations from public servants who were interviewed are used throughout the book. They are not formally cited, and for reasons of confidentiality, they are not identified. In fact, in some cases, certain non-consequential aspects of the quotations are changed to preserve confidentiality. 13 Terminology is a problem in referring to field offices because every government uses different words to describe particular organization structures and processes. We have tried to use words that are familiar and reasonably

NOTES TO PAGES

7 7-27

similar to those used by most governments. We will define terms as we use them, which will not necessarily be consistent with how they are used in any or all governments. In this case the term "regional office" is used as it is employed by many federal departments with a three-level hierarchy of head office; regional offices, which are responsible for a number of district or field offices; and district or field offices, which are the actual locus of client contact and service delivery. Many provincial departments have only a two-level hierarchy in which the field offices are called either regional or district offices. CHAPTER ONE

1 Hodgetts, The Canadian Public Service, 221. 2 Doherty, Slaves of the Lamp, 9, 16, 50, 69, 90, and passim. 3 Hodgetts, McClosky, Whitaker, and Wilson, The Biography of an Institution. A similar situation seems to have obtained in Ontario. See Hodgetts, From Arm's Length to Hands-On, chapter 6, 185, 204, and passim. It is more difficult to find similar information for other provinces, but it is likely that the situations were fairly similar. 4 Hodgetts et al., The Biography of an Institution, 9 and chapter 1 passim. 5 Graham, Lights of the Inside Passage, 19. This book also provides numerous examples of another type of patronage in which the job of lighthouse keeper is passed from one family member to another, e.g., 27. 6 "Nice Going, Nova Scotia," editorial, Globe and Mail, 22 March 1997. 7 Bowland, "Geographical Decentralization in the Canadian Federal Public Service," 324; Hodgetts, From Arm's Length to Hands-On, 86 and 88. These figures should not be compared directly with the more recent figures presented below. The authors of these studies admit that the numbers are not totally reliable and the two sets of data have not been prepared on a consistent basis. However, they provide an indication of the order of magnitude of the numbers. 8 See also Siegel, "The Changing Shape and Nature of Public Service Employment." 9 Hodgetts, The Canadian Public Service, 221. 10 (Chicago: Bonus Books, 1989). 11 Graham, Lights of the Inside Passage, 31, 65, and passim. 12 Platiel, "Protesters Still Camped in Government Office." CHAPTER TWO

1 Matthews and Phyne, "Regulating the Newfoundland Inshore Fishery." 2 Lemon, "The Canadian Forest Ranger." 3 Drabek, "The Ontario Department of Land and Forests, 1941-67"; Gardner, "The Field Service of Ontario Government Departments"; Pross, "The Development of a Forest Policy." 4 Bryman, Doing Research in Organizations, 9-10; Berg, Qualitative Research Methods for the Social Sciences.

232

N O T E S TO PAGES

27-45

5 Doern, The Road to Better Public Services; Rhodes, "Reinventing Excellence, or How Best Sellers Thwart the Search for Lessons to Transform the Public Sector," 281-99. 6 Dunsire, "Administrative Theory in the 1980s," 17-40. 7 Newland, "A Field of Strangers in Search of a Discipline." 8 Allison, "Public and Private Management"; Stout, Management or Control; Jonsson and Lund, "Myths and Wishful Thinking As Management Tools." 9 Baxter-Moore, Carroll, and Church, Studying Politics. 10 Carter, "The Behavioral Theory of the Firm and Top Level Corporate Decisions"; Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia. 11 Bryman, Doing Research in Organizations. 12 McCracken, The Long Interview. 13 Northrop, "Gender, Gender, Gender." 14 Bouchard, "L'imputabilite administrative"; Carlisle, "The Effect of Cultural Differences on Managerial and Industrial Relations Policies and Practices" ; Carroll, The Biases of Management; Merkle, Management and Ideology. 15 Bilingual readers might note that some of the language in the French quotations is somewhat more informal than might be expected. We attribute this to the over-surveying of younger civil servants in Quebec, and the relative youth of the interviewer which would have made more informal language appropriate. 16 Perrow, Organizational Analysis; Grusky, "Corporate Size Bureaucratization and Managerial Success." 17 This statement is not meant to understate the importance of native people as public servants or to suggest that they do not have unique problems in the workforce. Almost certainly they do. However, this book is focused on field level employees, and the fact is that native people constitute a fairly small percentage of this group. 18 The categories used are those established by Statistics Canada for preparation of its financial management statistics. 19 Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, Issues Facing Professional Employees in the Federal Public Service. CHAPTER

THREE

1 Shafritz and Ott, "Organizational Culture: Symbolic Management and Organization Theory," in Shafritz and Ott, eds., Classics of Organization Theory, 3rd ed., 481. 2 Peters and Waterman, In Search of Excellence (New York: Harper Row, 1982). 3 Dunsire, "Administrative Theory in the 1980s." 4 Barney, "Organizational Culture: Can It Be a Source of Sustained Competitive Advantage"; Smircich, "Organizations As Shared Meanings," 55-66. 5 Ban, How Do Public Managers Manage ?; Barrett, "Information Technology and Organizational Culture."

233

NOTES

TO PAGES

45-73

6 Keraudren, "In Search of Culture." The confusion in the approach to culture is exemplified in the fourth edition of Shafritz and Ott in which there are two sections devoted to culture. One is on culture as evolutionary and "sense making," the other is on cultural reform movements that are about prescriptive management tools. See Classics of Organization Theory, 4th ed. 7 Wildavsky, "Choosing Preferences by Constructing Institutions," 5. 8 Barney, "Organizational Culture." 9 Ibid.; Putman, Leonardi, and Nunnett, "Institutional Performance and Political Culture." 10 Perrow, Complex Organizations, 88-9. 11 Dunsire, "Administrative Theory in the 1980s," 31; Newland, "A Field of Strangers in Search of a Discipline"; Stevenson, Pearce, and Porter, "The Concept of the Coalition in Organization Theory and Research." 12 Barnard, The Functions of the Executive. 13 Ibid., 40-1. This is very similar to the definition of culture used by Wildavsky, cited earlier. 14 For a more detailed discussion of this interpretation of Barnard's work, see Douglas, "Converging on Autonomy," and Williamson, "Chester Barnard and the Incipient Science of Organization." 15 For a discussion of bureaucratic values, see Kernaghan and Siegel, Public Administration in Canada, chapters 12 and 14. For a discussion of the ethical problems facing civil servants, see Kernaghan, "Codes of Ethics and Administrative Responsibility" and "The Conscience of the Bureaucrat." For a discussion of the clash between organizational culture and the values of those who work within the organization, see Grosenick, "Governmental Ethics and Organizational Culture." 16 Czarniawska-Joerges and Wolff, "Leaders, Managers and Entrepreneurs On and Off the Organizational Stage"; Finlay et al, "Organizational Structure and Job Satisfaction." 17 Customs and income tax have always operated as virtually separate departments even though they are under the same minister. This work was done just before the consolidation of these two departments with the GST group was being effected. 18 For an example of organizational change that tried to break this we/them mentality, see Vantour, ed., Our Story. Our respondents, however, were not as positive about the change as those cited in the book. 19 Parkinson, "Injelititis or Palsied Paralysis." 20 Gouldner, Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy. 21 Ibid.; Kaufman, Time, Chance and Organizations; Kelly, "Theories of Justice and Street-Level Discretion"; Weissert, "Beyond the Organization." CHAPTER FOUR

1 Kaufman, The Forest Ranger; Lipsky, Street Level Bureaucracy; Matthews and Phyne, "Regulating the Newfoundland Inshore Fishery"; Moore, "StreetLevel Policymaking."

234

NOTES

TO PAGES

73-113

2 Merton, "Bureaucratic Structure and Personality" ; Blau, The Dynamics of Bureaucracy. 3 Lipsky, Street Level Bureaucracy. 4 Ibid.; Prottas, People-Processing; Little, '"No Car, No Radio, No Liquor Permit'"; Moore, "Street-Level Policymaking"; Kelly, "Theories of Justice and Street-Level Discretion." 5 Thompson, Organizations in Action. 6 Ham and Hill, The Policy Process in the Modern Capitalist State. I Thompson, Organizations in Action, 17. 8 Merton, "Bureaucratic Structure and Personality." 9 Downs, Inside Bureaucracy; Moore, "Street-Level Policymaking"; Britnail, "Caseloads, Performance and Street Level Bureaucracy." 10 Moore, "Street-Level Policymaking," 197. II A reference to the fact that the head office of Veterans Affairs is in Charlottetown. 12 A listing of all the services available is contained in Department of the Provincial Treasury, Regional Services Centres: Model for Future Service Delivery (February 1995), appendices 2 and 3. 13 Ibid., 20. 14 West Prince Regional Services Directory (September 1995). 15 SDL Systems Research Group, "Evaluation of the West Prince Regional Services Centre: April 1, 1972-March 31, 1973" (n.d.); Robert O'Rourke and Robert Ellison, "West Prince Services Centre: A Final Evaluation" (n.d.). 16 "Regional Services Centres Assessment," (n.d., 1986 ?), 5. 17 Ibid., 39, 135, and 143. 18 The only good analysis of the history of this organization is found in: Anholt, "Friends of the Government." For a more recent commentary, see Mitchell, "Rebuilding the B.C. Government Agents' Branch around Customer Service." 19 Smith, Field Administration, 46 ff; Roy, "The Steel Frame." 20 Anholt, "Friends of the Government," chapter 1. 21 Ibid., 51 and passim. 22 Freeman, "The Walls Come Down." 23 Bendor, "Formal Models of Bureaucracy"; Hill, "Why So Much Stability?"; Hill, "The Policy-Implementation Distinction." CHAPTER FIVE

1 Milakovich, Improving Service Quality, chapter 4, 75. 2 Statement by David Gunn, Toronto Transit Commission, in CBC interview, 10 July 1996. 3 Barrett, "Information Technology and Organizational Culture: Implementing Change," 367, 372. 4 Katz, "Triumph of the Swoosh." 5 O'Shaughnessy, Analysing and Controlling Business Procedures, 45 ff. 6 Canty, "Evaluation of an Open Office Landscape"; Becker, Workspace, 68.

235

NOTES

TO PAGES

113-56

7 Becker, Workspace, 131. 8 "Gopher It," Globe and Mail, 4 November 1997. 9 Murphy and Cleveland, Understanding Performance Appraisal, 4. 10 A good history of the process is found in: ibid., 5 ff; DeVries, Morrison, Shullman, and Gerlach, Performance Appraisal on the Line, chapter 2. 11 Bourgault, Dion and Lemay, "Creating a Corporate Culture." 12 One sometimes hears of systems in which subordinates evaluate the performance of superiors. No one told us of such an arrangement in their organization. 13 Daley, Performance Appraisal in the Public Sector, 29-31. 14 Ibid., 137-8. 15 Treasury Board, Treasury Board Manual (no date), chapter 1-9, A-3 and A-4. 16 Kernaghan and Siegel, Public Administration in Canada, chapter 23. 17 Carroll, The Biases of Management, 96-100. 18 Landau, "On the Concept of the Self-Correcting Organization"; Ventiss and Luke, "Organizational Learning and Public Policy." 19 In a recent survey of performance measures or appraisal systems in eighteen u.s. government organizations, every one made use of an acronym which was often unique to the organization and not intuitively obvious, p.A. Times 20, no. 5 (May 1997): 1-2. CHAPTER SIX

1 One of the few authors who has considered seriously the problem of head office-field office organization structure is I.E. Hodgetts. Much of the analysis in this section is based on his The Canadian Public Service, chapter 10. 2 One of the best overviews of this entire centralization/decentralization issue is contained in Fesler, "Field Organization." See also Carey, "CentralField Relationships in the War Production Board." 3 Hodgetts, Canadian Public Service, 237-8. Emphasis in original. 4 The significance of the concepts of differentiation and integration has been developed more fully in Lawrence and Lorsch, Organization and Environment. 5 Fesler, "Field Organization," 263. 6 Zussman and Jabes, The Vertical Solitude, chapter 4 and passim. 1 Aberbach, Putnam, and Rockman, Bureaucrats and Politicians in Western Democracies, chapter 4 and passim. 8 Drabek, "The Ontario Department of Lands and Forests," 145. 9 This involves what Carroll has called the exercise of pre-audit professional accountability. See Carroll, "Administrative Devolution and Accountability." CHAPTER SEVEN

1 PS2000, introduced in 1990, was an attempt to reform and revitalize the federal public service. It had limited success and effectively died out by 1993. See Canada, Public Service 2000: The Renewal of the Public Service in Canada; Canada, Public Service 2000: A Report on Progress. See also Kernaghan,

236

N O T E S TO PAGES

157-81

"Public Service 2000"; Mclntosh, "Public Service 2000"; and Rawson, "Public Service 2000." 2 Sutherland and Doern, Bureaucracy in Canada, 8. 3 Breton and Wintrobe, "Bureaucracy and State Intervention." 4 Koehler and Pankowski, Quality Government. 5 Follet, "The Process of Control." 6 Doern, The Road to Better Public Services; Aucoin, The New Public Management. I Lindquist and Sica, Canadian Governments and the Search for Alternative Service Program Delivery and Financing. 8 The matrix was created by asking academics and practitioners attending a seminar at the Canadian Centre for Management Development in February 1996 to rank the various reforms on the basis of the two criteria of cost and control. 9 Simon, Administrative Behavior; Thompson, Organizations in Action, 134-6. 10 Heimann, "Different Paths to Success." II Coutts, "Hospitals Replace Registered Nurses." 12 Ban, How Do Public Managers Manage ?, 13. 13 For a discussion of labour-management problems in Canada Post, see Lewis, "Attitudinal Militancy in a Canadian Postal Plant." He also outlines attempts at reform, many of which were welcomed positively by the unions. 14 Kernaghan and Siegel, Public Administration in Canada, 56-60. 15 Hodgetts, The Canadian Public Service, 237-8. 16 The significance of the concepts of differentiation and integration has been well developed in Lawrence and Lorsch, Organization and Environment. 17 Aucoin, "Administrative Reform in Public Management." 18 Carroll, The Biases of Management, 43-4. 19 Thompson, Organizations in Action, 76-82. 20 Banning, "Canadian University Services Overseas and Administrative Decentralization." 21 Davis and Lawrence, The Matrix Organization—Who Needs It ? 22 Prince and Chenier, "The Rise and Fall of Policy Planning Research Units." 23 Fesler, Area and Administration. 24 Kaufman, Time, Chance, and Organization. 25 Carroll, "Program Drift"; Savoie, Globalization and Governance; Peters, The Policy Capacity of Government. 26 For a summary of Saskatchewan reforms, see Cohen, "Prairie Sun." For details on the major rethinking of Saskatchewan agriculture, see Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food, Agriculture 2000. 27 Aucoin, The New Public Management, 10. 28 Johanis, Serving Canadians. 29 Government of Canada, La Releve. 30 Carroll, "So What Are Results Anyway?" CHAPTER EIGHT

1 Freedland, "Seeking Rights for Ugly Americans."

237

NOTES

TO PAGES

182-213

2 Goodsell, The Case for Bureaucracy; Zussman, "The Image of the Public Service in Canada," 77; Zussman, "Government Service to the Public." 3 Coca-Cola Company, "Measuring the Grapevine: Consumer Response and Word-of-Mouth" (Coca-Cola Company, 1981). 4 Wilson and Peterson, "Some Limits on the Potency of Word-of-Mouth Information." 5 This is referred to as "Gentry's paradox," after the student who first brought it to our attention. 6 Some insights into the perspective from Ottawa are found in Brown, "Decentralization and the Administrative Ecology of the National State in Canada." 7 Baker, "The Impact of Central Government Services on the Small Community," 104. 8 Crooks, Lakin, and Pratt, "Three Cases in Field Administration," 1. 9 "ui Workers Angry over Fraud," Hamilton Spectator, 24 July 1996. 10 As stated earlier, all names have been changed to ensure confidentiality. 11 Bureaucrat-bashing is not a new sport—it seems to be almost as old as confederation. See Doherty, Slaves of the Lamp, 69, 90, and passim. 12 Manion, "New Challenges in Public Administration," 237 (emphasis in last sentence added). CHAPTER NINE

1 deLeon, "Democratic Values and the Policy Sciences," 887. 2 Peters, The Politics of Bureaucracy, 40-2; Kernaghan, "The Conscience of the Bureaucrat." 3 The research methodology was such that if there were cases of particularism, we should at least have heard of them second-hand. 4 Gow, Learning from Others. 5 Faraday and Plummer, "Doing Life Histories," 773-7. 6 Denhardt, Theories of Public Organizations, 163. 7 Kaufman, The Forest Ranger. 8 Tipple and Wellman, "Herbert Kaufman's Forest Ranger Thirty Years Later," 422. 9 Follet, "The Giving of Orders." 10 Kaufman, The Forest Ranger, 222. 11 Hammond, "In Defence of Luther Gulick's 'Notes on the Theory of Organization.'" 12 Linder and Peters, "A Design Perspective on Policy Implementation." 13 Mohr, Explaining Organizational Behavior, esp. chapters 1 and 2. 14 Mintzberg, "Managing Government, Governing Management." 15 Ayubi, "Policy Developments and Administrative Changes in the Arab World," 40. 16 Fesler, "Field Organization." 17 Savill, "To Treasury Board and Back." 18 One of the reasons why the hierarchy might be biased toward having positions with higher classifications in Ottawa is the nature of the classification itself.

238

Bibliography

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Index Aberbach, Joel D., 140 activity report, 59 administrative reform, 27, 156-80; history, 157-63; rethinking, 170-3; structural, 163-9, 173-6 after-hours activities, 189-94 age, 40 agriculture, 19 Agriculture and Agri-food, 153 Agriculture Canada, 55, 171 alienation, 63 alternative delivery mechanisms, 159 appeals, 86-7 application software, 106 appraisal. See performance appraisal auditors (tax), 19, 150 Baker, H.R., 184 Barnard, Chester, 46, 47 biologists, 7, 21, 23 Blau, Peter, 73 British Columbia Agents Offices, 92^ Britnall, Michael, 78 Bryman, Alan, 27 buildings, 17, 99, 123 bullpen office configuration, 111 bureaucracy, 7, 182 bureaucrat-bashing, 192, 194-8, 204 bureaupathology, 25 Canada Employment Centre, 49, 50, 65, 196 Canada Post, 22, 37, 162 Canadian Wildlife Service, 122

career development, 123-7, 203, 204, 211, 212 central agencies, 109, 129, 141, 144, 148, 150 centralized and decentralized structures, 163-5, 177 child care/protection workers, 11,19, 25, 150 Coast Guard, 22 co-location, 90, 122, 208. See also one-stop shopping Commissioner of Official Languages, 24 communication, 56, 145-8, 149, 168, 201, 208; "people" skills; 70-2, 138; systems, 58-60, 209; two-way system, 210 community service, 205 computers, 106-10, 201 conflict-resolution skills, 71 Conseil du tresor, 138 conservation officer, 75 correctional services, 23, 193 Crown attorney, 193, 194 culture, 205 customer service, 207 Customs, 19, 55, 56, 190 cutbacks, 204 Davis, Stanley M, 166 decentralization, 203 deconcentration, 16-17, 163 deLeon, Peter, 201 Denhardt, Robert, 206 differentiation and integration, 131

INDEX

discretion, 72-8; administrative, 806, 201, 213; policy, 74-8, 83-6, 201, 213 Doern, G. Bruce, 157 doing more with less, 174 Downs, Anthony, 78 Dunsire, Andrew, 27 education, level of, 40, 74 e-mail, 107, 109, 201 employment equity, 98 empowerment, 203, 205 energy, 140 environmental agencies, 77 family, 126, 183, 187, 205 family services. See child care workers fax machine, 106 federal-provincial, 55, 62; business centres, 94-6 Fesler, James W., 131 Fisheries and Oceans, 26, 55 food inspection, 13, 19, 21 formal and informal organization, 46 furniture, 114 gender issues, 7-8, 26, 32, 40, 203 geographic considerations, 126, 141 Glassco Commission, 3, 156 Graham, Donald, 15 Hawthorne experiments, 98 head office-field office interaction, modes of, 148-54 health care, 160 highways departments, 19, 23, 55, 65, 70, 86, 149, 189, 204 Hodgetts, I.E., 131 housing, 55, 56, 66 human resource management, 51, 203, 211 Human Resources Development Canada, 191 immigration, 15, 19, 25, 63 Institute of Public Administration of Canada (IPAC), 33 interviewer effect, 32 interviewing, elite, 28

o