Rule Bending Research Articles

Does digital government hollow out the essence of street‐level bureaucracy? A systematic literature review of how digital tools' foster curtailment, enablement and continuation of street‐level decision‐making

AbstractThe growing use of digital tools in policy implementation has altered the work of street‐level bureaucrats who are granted substantial discretionary power in decision‐making. Digital tools can constrain discretionary power, like the curtailment thesis proposed, or serve as action resources, like the enablement thesis suggested. This article assesses empirical evidence of the impact of digital tools on street‐level work and decision‐making in service‐oriented and regulation‐oriented organisations based on a systematic literature review and thematic qualitative content analysis of 36 empirical studies published until 2021. The findings demonstrate different effects with regard to the role of digital tools and the core tasks of the public administration, depending on political and managerial goals and consequent system design. Leading or decisive digital tools mostly curtail discretion, especially in service‐oriented organisations. In contrast, an enhanced information base or recommendations for actions enable decision‐making, in particular in regulation‐oriented organisations. By showing how street‐level bureaucrats actively try to resist the curtailing effects caused by rigid design to address individual circumstances, for instance by establishing ways of coping like rule bending or rule breaking, using personal resources or prioritising among clients, this study demonstrates the importance of the continuation thesis and the persistently crucial role of human judgement in policy implementation.

Better to bend than to break? Effects of rule behavior on dominance, prestige, and leadership granting.

How people handle rules can influence their social standing in the eyes of others, including their appeal as leaders. It stands to reason that people prefer to grant leadership to individuals who follow rather than break the rules. However, preferences for rule abiders are less evident than one might expect. To enhance understanding of people's responses to (counter)normative behavior, we (a) introduce the concept of rule bending-behavior that infringes a rule without technically breaking it-and (b) draw on the dominance/prestige framework of social rank to illuminate the underlying processes that drive responses to such behavior. In two experiments (Study 1: N = 149; Study 2: N = 480, preregistered), we show that rule breaking (compared to rule abiding) signals relatively high dominance and low prestige, which undermine leadership granting to rule breakers. We further found that rule benders are seen as relatively high on both prestige and dominance, which renders them more attractive as leaders than rule breakers. Finally, we show that the attractiveness of nonabiders as leaders increases under competition when their apparent dominance becomes an asset. We discuss how rule bending relates to rule abiding and rule breaking and consider implications for understanding and managing rule-bending behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Conceptualizing the bending and breaking of rules in the heavy goods transport sector

Heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) are a critical factor in road traffic safety for “Vision Zero-events”, defined as road accidents with fatalities and serious injuries. The bending and breaking of safety-related rules in the HGV-sector, such as not following rest and work hour regulations, not securing cargo sufficiently, or not following the regulations concerning cabotage, in the commercial goods transport sector is a cause for concern and has in a very limited degree been studied as a system problem. This paper suggests that deregulation and international competition in the transport sector are bringing about a working climate where even serious safety-minded actors in the HGV business find themselves needing to cut corners to stay in business. The current situation in the Norwegian HGV sector is such that the organization of the business, the market development and the regulatory regimes are in effect transferring the responsibility for traffic safety vertically downwards to the actors at the lowest levels of the transport system. These actors are the truck drivers, who often bend and break rules to perform their work on time. This paper presents a scoping study designed to address the concept of rule bending in the HGV transport sector, using a combination of peer reviewed literature and a heterogeneous sample of grey literature from the transport sector. The scoping study shows how the scientific literature discusses violations and transgressions as both intentional and nonintentional acts but does not adequately describe how certain types of behaviour differ from overt violations and transgressions. The actions are simply considered violations that are devoid of meaning and both systemic and cultural context. We suggest a conceptualization of rule bending and rule breaking as “Adaptive Non-conforming Behaviour (ANB)” that builds on the context found in the grey literature. Further, the conceptualization provides a framework for the recognition of ANB, dimensions for further study and an outlined research design. We believe there is a need to increase system knowledge because safety analysis lacks in-depth insight into how the system affect the working practices in the HGV sector. The justification of the ANB approach is that it can be incorporated into safety and risk assessments of the transport sector, to provide a framework for context-sensitive studies that are non-normative, less concerned with violations as rule breaking, and more concerned with rule bending as a system wide problem.

Compound and ambiguous meanings in Danish cross-dressing comedies

Focusing on two Danish cross-dressing comedies, Min Kone er Husar! (‘My wife is a hussar!’) (1935) and Solstik (‘Sunstroke’) (1953), the article investigates various strategies for playing with and challenging sexual identity and gender to create compound and ambiguous meanings. In view of the comedy genre’s self-conscious openness to performance and intertextuality, the meaning of the main character’s cross-dressing on a plot level may be modified or contradicted by the actor’s star persona. That supporting characters may be transgressive in their own right points to the pervasiveness of sexuality and gender play in cross-dressing comedies. Fictional settings underscore this perception; they are not mere backdrops, but seem to actively invite identity play and rule bending.

Match Fixing or Playing the Game? The 1956 US Men's Olympic Water Polo Trials

Abstract Members of the Southern California Water Polo Club entered Melbourne's Olympic pool knowing that some questioned if they were the rightful representatives of the US. Their path to Melbourne involved allegations of match manipulation at the Olympic Trials. This research note explores a shrouded piece of US Olympic history and analyzes linked, intriguing stories. How did events bring former Amateur Athletic Union president Jeremiah Mahoney to threaten legal action against International Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage? Why did Mrs. M. A. Koblish make it her mission to hold US sport officials to account for ignoring the alleged match fixing? Olympic match fixing, and the focus it receives in Olympic circles, is a result of the increasing possibilities for reward and the heightened value placed on winning in contemporary society; however, this episode reminds us that the tentacles of “rule bending” stretch back in time.

Good death disrupted: Nurses' moral emotions navigating clinical and public health ethics during the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic.

To explore the moral emotions that frontline nurses navigated in endeavouring to ensure a 'good death' for hospital patients and care home residents during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Under normal circumstances, frontline staff are focused on clinical ethics, which foreground what is best for individuals and families. Public health crises such as a pandemic require staff to adapt rapidly to focus on what benefits communities, at times compromising individual well-being and autonomy. Visitor restrictions when people were dying provided vivid exemplars of this ethical shift and the moral emotions nurses encountered with the requirement to implement this change. Twenty-nine interviews were conducted with nurses in direct clinical care roles. Data were analysed thematically informed by the theoretical concepts of a good death and moral emotions. The data set highlighted that moral emotions such as sympathy, empathy, distress and guilt were integral to the decisions participants described in striving for a good palliative experience. Four themes were identified in the data analysis: nurses as gatekeepers; ethical tensions and rule bending; nurses as proxy family members; separation and sacrifice. Participants reflected on morally compromising situations and highlighted agency through emotionally satisfying workarounds and collegial deliberations that enabled them to believe that they were party to painful but morally justifiable decisions. Nurses are required to implement national policy changes that may disrupt notions of best practice and therefore be experienced as a moral wrong. In navigating the moral emotions accompanying this shift, nurses benefit from compassionate leadership and ethics education to support team cohesion enabling nurses to prevail. Twenty-nine frontline registered nurses participated in the qualitative interviews that inform this study. The study adhered to the Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research checklist.

Rule bending on the frontlines of public service delivery: How and why caseworkers favor the strong

When facing a disobedient client, caseworkers are often required to impose sanctions. Even when sanctions are explicitly required by law, however, research shows that caseworkers may turn a blind eye. Why so? This study asks how certain clients can merit themselves to avoid sanctioning. Theorizing from the notion of client deservingness, we develop a theoretical account of how certain client attributes cause frontline workers to bend the rules. Drawing from a novel conjoint experiment among Danish unemployment caseworkers (n = 407 with 1,210 observations), we show how caseworkers tend to favor stronger clients when bending the rules in clients’ favor. Clients who appear motivated, who have not been sanctioned in the past, and who have more past job experience are all less likely to be sanctioned. Our findings reveal a paradox: Although welfare usually targets clients in need, avoiding welfare sanctions seems based on client resources. Consequently, caseworker rule-bending can have unintended distributional consequences since stronger clients are those who can get away with disobedience.

The research conduct spectrum for surgeons: your career in their rule bending hands?

The research conduct spectrum for surgeons: your career in their rule bending hands?

Identity salience moderates the effect of social dominance orientation on COVID-19 ‘rule bending’

Amidst the economic, political, and social turmoil caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, contrasting responses to government mandated and recommended mitigation strategies have posed many challenges for governments as they seek to persuade individuals to adhere to prevention guidelines. Much research has subsequently examined the tendency of individuals to either follow (or not) such guidelines, and yet a ‘grey area’ also exists wherein many rules are subject to individual interpretation. In a large study of Canadians (N = 1032, Mage = 34.39, 52% female; collected April 6, 2020), we examine how social dominance orientation (SDO) as an individual difference predicts individual propensity to ‘bend the rules’ (i.e., engaging in behaviors that push the boundaries of adherence), finding that SDO is significantly and positively associated with greater intentions toward rule-bending behaviors. We further find that highlighting a self-oriented or in-group identity enhances the relationship between SDO and rule-bending, whereas making salient a superordinate-level identity (e.g., Canada) attenuates this effect. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Imperial Bending of Rules: The British Empire, the Treaty of Lausanne, and Cypriot Immigration to Turkey

ABSTRACT The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne has been the most consequential treaty for the Eastern Mediterranean during the past century. It established the borders of the newly founded Republic of Turkey and defined its relations with Cyprus. Yet, a provision of the treaty has escaped scholarly scrutiny. This analysis explores the violation of Lausanne’s Article 21 that provided for emigration of Moslem Cypriots to Turkey by British Imperial officials in Cyprus. There are three significant issues about Moslem Cypriots acquiring Turkish citizenship. First, it demonstrated the newly formed Turkish Republic’s stance towards the Moslem community of the former Ottoman Empire. Second, it underlined the aspiration of a large portion of Moslem Cypriots to join newly formed Turkey. Third, and most important, it upheld British Imperial strategy on the island and the significance of the continuation of the existence of a Moslem minority. The value of the Lausanne treaty for Cyprus and the relationship between the British rule and the Moslem community of the island was paramount.

Peru to punish bending of clinical-trial rules

Letter to the Editor

Death by a Thousand 10-Minute Tasks: Workarounds and Noncompliance in University Research Administration

The article examines administrative workarounds in the context of university research administration. The empirical results from 116 semi-structured interviews with academic researchers with active National Science Foundation awards are framed by a “Rules Response” model positing relationships among rules compliance requests, administrative burden, red tape, and response choices, including compliance, appeal, rule bending, rule breaking, and workaround behaviors. Propositions are presented and reviewed in light of empirical results. The article concludes with implications of empirical results for improving the Rules Response model and a more general discussion of research needed to improve the understanding of both rules compliance and workarounds.

Workplace fiddles in the shipping industry

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the ways in which workers employ rule breaking, rule bending and deviations from management defined norms in the workplace and the impact this has on their occupational health and safety (OHS) experiences.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses qualitative semi-structured interviews conducted with 37 seafarers working on board four vessels engaged in international trade. The data were recorded, transcribed and thematically analysed using NVivo software.FindingsThe findings indicate that seafarers utilised workplace fiddles – which included rule breaking, rule bending and deviating from management defined norms – in order to engender a workable system in which they could remain safe but also profitable to those who controlled their labour. Moreover, the findings suggest that shore-side management deflected the responsibility for rule violations by deferring many of the decisions regarding features of life on board – such as the scheduling of work hours – to the senior officers on board.Originality/valueThe paper sheds light on where, in practice, responsibility for OHS lies in the international shipping industry, an industry in which workers experience relatively high rates of work-related fatalities, injuries and mental health conditions.

Conferred ownership: approval of financial statements by small charities

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate how trustees of small English registered charities understand and own the reporting and accounting requirements with which their charities must comply. Design/methodology/approach The research described is a multi-pronged qualitative and inductive study of three small Yorkshire charities as they approve their annual accounts. The case studies are based on observations of trustee meetings and interviews with a range of trustees and their independent examiner or auditor. The use of a practice lens focuses on the behaviours of individuals to understand the sense that they make of their charity’s accounts. Findings Trustees' understanding of their financial statements is limited; they tend to rely on key individuals who have knowledge. Group responsibility creates a shared way of understanding the financial statements. Treasurers and independent examiners simplify information for the trustees even resorting to corner cutting and rule bending. Narrative reporting is given very little attention. Trustees read their financial statements as a report to them not by them; accountability notwithstanding, thus ownership of their financial statements is conferred not intrinsic. Research limitations/implications The findings are drawn from three specific case studies and therefore cannot be generalised, but they offer rich qualitative insights into small charities’ accounting and reporting. Originality/value This research provides a unique multi-viewpoint analysis of charity practices, and through its use of a practice lens dives deeper into examining trustees’ understanding and behaviour.

Ambivalence in environmental representation


 
 
 In this paper, we examine the phenomenon of representation through the theoretical lens of ambivalence, concentrating on the people involved in representation: representatives . We argue that the theoretical concept of ambivalence can be helpful in analysing and understanding the various tensions environmental and other representatives encounter in their practice . Based on the concepts of “sociological ambivalence”, “ideological dilemma”, and “the organizational centaur”, as well as on insights from social studies of science and sustainability studies, the paper develops a typology of three potential sources of ambivalence: role conflicts, value conflicts, and conflicts between goals and means . In addition, the paper identifies various ways of co- ping with ambivalence, including the construction of meta-norms, organizational and network support, pragmatism, drawing boundaries for reasonable and acceptable actions, rule bending and discursive negotiation . The paper concludes that the concept of ambivalence adds crucial insights to the positions, practices, and challenges of environmental representatives and notes that ambivalence is not only a matter of tensions and conflicts but can be a source of reflexivity, learning, and agency.
 
 

New Public Governance in the Baltic States: Flexible Administration and Rule Bending

The New Public Governance approach advocates a more flexible and participatory public administration as means to higher efficiency and increased legitimacy. Increasing flexibility and thereby public employees’ discretion, however, may pose a risk to equality and impartiality, core values in democratic and rule-of-law societies. Using a survey among Baltic public employees, this article explores this risk. We ask whether public employees’ preferences for flexible rule application go hand in hand with acceptance of bending the rules, even if it means a breach of impartiality. We find that this is the case. We also find that contrary to what the New Public Governance approach expects, neither citizen participation nor generalized trust works as a control on rule bending. On a positive note, however, we find that control mechanisms associated with Weberian Public Administration lessen acceptance for bending the rules.

Fear in Bureaucracy: Comparing Public and Private Sector Workers’ Expectations of Punishment

When employees fear punishment for taking initiative, organizations are likely to be less effective and, equally important, such fear extracts a human toll, often contributing to a variety of manifestations of unhappiness including diminished health. We focus on two different types of fears of punishment, fear of being punished for presenting new ideas and for bending organizational rules. Employing Mechanical Turk crowdsourcing data from 1,189 participants in the 2015 survey of National Administrative Studies Project Citizen, we test hypotheses about possible differences in fear of punishment according to sector (government vs. business), general risk propensity, views about coworkers, job clarity, gender, and whether respondents are members of an underrepresented racial or ethnic minority. Using nested robust regression models, we find that the two different types of fear of punishment are predicted by different variables. Sector has no bearing on fear of punishment for presenting new ideas but is a major predictor of differences in fear of bending the rules, with government employees being more fearful. While gender has no significant effects, being a racial minority is closely related to fear of presenting new ideas. Having a negative view of one’s fellow workers, particularly one’s supervisor, is associated with greater fear of punishment from both rule bending and presenting new ideas. Those with a clear organization mission and job clarity are less likely to be afraid of punishment for proposing innovative ideas but not necessarily for bending rules. We suggest that the results have implications for managerial practice and human resource reform.

Administrative Processes as an Anti-Corruption Tool? A View from Public Employees in the Baltic States

AbstractMany studies have documented the negative effect of corruption on development, economic growth, and democracy. Independent anti-corruption agencies are often recommended as the tool to curb corruption. However, their efficiency depends on the political will to allocate authority, powers, and resources. Moreover, setting up new institutions is always costly and accordingly problematic to low and middle income countries. The present study suggests that public administration processes in their own right are a tool to combat corruption. The article uses a survey with responses from 1706 public employees in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Using OLS regression, the study confirms others findings that strengthening meritocracy is an important factor in curbing corruption. It adds to this that enhancing monitoring is a factor just as effective against corruption as meritocracy. It adds attention to the reverse effect associated with hierarchical organizations, norms accepting rule bending, and network decisions. Finally, addressing salaries’ and performance payment’s impact on corruption the study finds no relation.

Formal and informal inter-organizational coordination: How nurses adapt in complex pathways.

With the coordination of health care services becoming increasingly complex, the challenges of fragmentation cannot be solved by administrative restructuring alone. Attention must also be given to the coordination practices of professional groups, and, in this respect, the nursing profession is a particularly interesting case. Based on a qualitative case study of Danish nurses in hospital, municipality, and general practice, this article addresses the following question: How does the nursing profession practice formal and informal inter-organisational coordination in complex pathways, and what is the interplay between the 2 types of coordination? The findings contribute to our knowledge of coordination at the operative level of health care by identifying specific informal practices in inter-organisational coordination and by showing how informal coordination is activated to support formal coordination in a concurrent organisational and professional ambition of integration. The nurses studied here proved very loyal to formal inter-organisational coordination mechanisms, prioritising them as first choices of action. When formal procedures were found insufficient, however, the nurses temporarily switched to informal coordination. This was triggered by random encounters with fragmentation, a strong professional engagement in making things work in the interest of the patient, and a constant striving to be on top of things. Informal inter-organisational coordination is broken down into supplementary and by-passing practices, and 4 specific by-passing practices are identified. The discussion offers insight into how a lack of agency related to formal inter-organisational coordination can be related to negotiated settlements, and informal coordination is considered in terms of "rule bending" within complex systems.

New Brooms and Old

Arvind Kejriwal is an anti-corruption crusader in India whose technomoral mission is to transform governance through the law, rendering it transparent, noncorrupt, and participatory. He was actively involved in the fight for the Right to Information Act, which became law in 2005. Dissatisfied with the workings of this law, however, Kejriwal organized the India Against Corruption movement to demand a new anti-corruption bill, which failed to pass. This essay focuses on the public discourse on corruption in the wake of the Right to Information Act and the India Against Corruption movement, and it puts law-focused anti-corruption strategies under critical scrutiny. I reveal the difficulty in delimiting corruption as well as the limits of the law in tackling it. A lack of consensus over what counts as real corruption and where its source lies complicates legal remedies. Indeed, as I argue, the law and corruption are inverted mirrors of each other. Where one is a symbol of rationalized modernity, the other reflects its dangerous underside; where one extends a formal economy of rules, the other refers to unruly practices of rule bending. Corruption transgresses and questions the very dualisms—public and private, state and society—that liberal law embodies. If the law produces corruption as a constitutive outside of the modern order, then using laws to dismantle corruption becomes a paradoxical undertaking that is bound to fail at its limits.