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Public employees are often confronted with aggression from citizens, managers and colleagues. This is sometimes a function of having a monopoly position of many public organizations. As a result, citizens cannot opt for alternative providers when not served well. This could give rise to aggression. Furthermore, increased budget cuts might give rise to higher stress, workload and consequential aggression at times. This paper analyzes articles on workplace aggression, both the three articles of this special issue and more broadly. The purpose of this paper is to provide researchers with methodological and theoretical future research suggestions for new studies on workplace aggression.

Literature review.

By taking new methodological and theoretical routes, scholars can contribute to the analysis and potential solutions concerning workplace aggression in the public sector. First, the authors advise researchers to move beyond cross-sectional surveys. Instead, diary studies, longitudinal studies and experimental methods (such as randomized control trials) should be increasingly used. Furthermore, scholars can focus more on theory development and testing. Future studies are advised to connect workplace aggression to theoretical models (such as the Job Demands-Resources model), to theories (for instance social learning theory) and to public administration concepts (such as public service motivation and trust in citizens).

This is one of the few articles within the public management literature which provides new methodological and theoretical directions for future research on workplace aggression.

Organizations are continuously under pressure to adapt to changing circumstances. Job proactivity and vitality are important in changing environments. For instance, vital employees can better deal with change because they possess more energy. However, it is still unclear how organizations can stimulate proactivity and vitality. The purpose of this paper is to connect HRM and change management by analyzing how HRM practices can stimulate job proactivity and vitality.

The authors used survey data collected in three large public healthcare organizations in the Netherlands (n=1,507) to investigate the effects of five important HRM practices on proactivity and vitality. Analyses were performed using structural equation modeling.

Results suggest that three HRM practices are particularly effective for improving proactivity and vitality: high autonomy, high participation in decision making and high quality teamwork. Based on these results, the authors discuss the possibilities of using HRM to improve employees’ abilities to deal with organizational change.

This study is one of the first to empirically connect HRM to change management. Furthermore, it uses new concepts derived from positive psychology (job proactivity and vitality) to show how HRM can be beneficial for organizational change.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of new public management (NPM) style practices on public sector managers and in particular on the stress experienced by managers in the UK National Health Service (NHS). Although, ostensibly NPM liberates public sector managers to act more like managers in the private sector, the authors argue that it can also lead to negative work outcomes and high levels of stress.

The authors used a multi-method approach, including 33 focus groups and 15 interviews involving 193 middle- and front-line managers in five NHS organisations; together with a survey of 611 managers in the same organisations. Direct and mediation effects were tested using structural equation modelling; qualitative data are used to illustrate the quantitative results.

An indirect effect, but no direct effect, of NPM use on stress experienced by managers was demonstrated. The relationship between NPM use and stress was fully mediated by a series of work outcomes, suggesting that the introduction of NPM leads to expanding responsibilities, constant pressure to meet deadlines and extended working hours, which in turn leads to high levels of stress.

This paper builds on literature that questions the appropriateness of introducing private sector principles into the management of the public sector, by demonstrating a relationship between the introduction of NPM and high stress experienced by managers. The use of a multi-method design allows both the relationship to be demonstrated and its nature to be explored.

Effective engineering asset management is essential in delivering public services safely whilst avoiding breakdowns and accidents. The purpose of this paper is to ensure asset safety and sustainability, public sector firms have to adopt new processes and practices. It is the role of supervisors to implement the changes, and as part of the new public management (NPM) public sector reforms, public sector asset managers have more discretionary power to implement further changes related to increased accountability.

The paper explores the impact of management practices on supervisor-employee relationships and employees’ perception of autonomy, employees’ attitudes towards change and their perceptions of organisational culture within Australian public sector engineering asset management organisations, and in the context of NPM reforms and consequent changes in supervisory discretionary power. Social exchange theory provided the theoretical framework and a self-report survey was administered to 149 employees.

The findings from a structural equation model indicate positive and significant relationships between the variables in this study. A finding of significant interest was that public sector employees are on average slightly dissatisfied with their supervisors and feel they have a minimal amount of autonomy in the workplace. This may represent an unintended consequence of NPM reforms.

The implication of the findings is that an effective relationship between supervisors and employees is a necessary ingredient for achieving change, and ensuring asset safety and sustainability. Social exchange theorists argue that the low level of satisfaction with the supervisors evident in this study is one factor compromising asset safety and sustainability.

The roadblocks to good supervisory relationships in the post NPM environment must be dismantled and the findings clearly indicate a need for targeted development of supervisors/management skills to ameliorate the negative effects of the NPM regime and enable effective change management.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of leadership on work-family spillovers. Specifically, we analyze the relationships between leadership (leader-member exchange (LMX) with one negative work-family spillover effect (work-family interference) and one positive work-family spillover effect (work-family facilitation). The authors hypothesize that LMX influences work-family spillover via different mediators, rather than one all-encompassing mediator, such as empowerment.

The authors hypothesize that a good relationship with your supervisor (high LMX) diminishes work pressure, which in turn reduces work-family interference. Furthermore, the authors expect that a good relationship with your supervisor positively relates to the meaningfulness of work, as you could get more interesting work and more understanding of your role within the organization. In turn, this will increase work-family facilitation. These hypotheses are tested using a nation-wide survey among Dutch healthcare professionals.

Findings of structural equation modeling (SEM) indeed indicate that high-quality LMX is negatively related to work-family interference, and that this is mediated by work pressure (53 percent explained variance). Furthermore, the authors found that a good relationship with your supervisor is positively related to meaningfulness of work, which in turn positively correlates to work-family facilitation (16 percent explained variance).

The added value of the paper lies in introducing two mediators – work pressure and meaningful work – which worked adequately both theoretically and empirically, instead of the sometimes problematic mediators empowerment and stress; a focus on healthcare professionals; and using sophisticated techniques to test the model (SEM with bootstrapping).

In Dutch detainee care custodial transport police officers experience high levels of aggression and violence from detainees. Being a first of its kind in the Netherlands, the purpose of this paper is to unravel the true nature and origins of such workplace aggression against transport officers and focuses on the role of street-level leadership and leadership by management for its mitigation and prevention.

Unique in such closed institutions as the prison system, the study employs an extensive mixed methods approach, combining observations, interviews and survey data collected among transport officers and detainees in 2012-2013.

The research shows that within the exercised street-level leadership of transport officers especially staff orientation towards detainees has great impact. Perceived inappropriate treatment is likely to increase detainees’ aggressive behaviours, with potentially detrimental effects such as heightened levels of officers’ job stress, decreased safety and decreased quality of detainee transport. The solutions offered indicate that while transport officers could benefit from a supportive staff orientation, transport police management might need to pay more attention to rule enforcement leadership within their efforts to optimize working conditions.

The major practical implication of this research is the potential impact of training in affecting the decisions of frontline public employees in a way that their street-level leadership practices manifest the organizational values and alignment with societal values to ensure an adequate public sector service delivery.

The purpose of this paper is to explore to what extent job, organizational, and personal characteristics independently contribute to the prediction of workplace victimization of local government employees in the Netherlands. The existence of interactions between personal and context (job and organizational) characteristics is also explored.

Structured survey data measured the frequency of victimization involving three types of incidents: verbal aggression; threats; and physical violence. Associations with job and personal factors and interaction effects were studied using bivariate and multivariate analyses.

Contact frequency, perceived work stress, and type of job held by local government employees are the strongest correlates of workplace aggression. Self-efficacy in employees’ conflict management skills shows an unexpected positive association with the level of experienced aggression, especially in organizations that have low levels of prevention measures.

Because of the cross-sectional design of the study, no definite causal conclusions can be drawn. Common-method bias in the measurements may have led to systematic bias.

This study presents an integrated model of correlates of public-initiated workplace aggression toward a population that is understudied: namely, local government employees. It also provides first insights into how job, organizational, and personal correlates of workplace victimization interact in this population.

The purpose of this paper is to find underlying causes of leadership failure in NPM-based reforms in the public service, and propose leadership principles to guard against such failure as leaders meet the demands of a changing, complex public service environment.

An analysis of the managerial philosophy of Dr Berwick and its effects on CMS overall performance and employee morale.

NPM-based reforms create an environment in which administrative wrongdoing can occur. The principles of leadership found in NPLT, which advocates values-based, relationship-based distributed leadership provide a template for effective leadership that can reverse and possibly prevent leadership failure due to NPM-based reforms.

The authors used a single case to demonstrate NPLT leadership principles can reverse leadership failure in a Federal Agency. No quantitative analysis is attempted in this paper. The authors choice of papers to use in the literature review was subjective.

This paper identifies NPM-based reforms as a partial explanation for leadership failure in the public service, and also identifies the leadership principles needed to address and prevent such failures. It provides support for the use of NPLT as a template for effective public service leadership.

The review of contemporary organisational change theories identified one theory which seemed relevant to explaining the organisational change phenomenon in public enterprises – Van de Ven and Poole’s (1995) Evolutionary Change Theory (ECT). However, further review of the management literature revealed its limitations in explaining change, particularly in public enterprises. The theory fails to identify the triggers of change and the roles of various stakeholders, and the purpose of this paper is to enhance model of the ECT and appraise it.

Researchers continue to highlight the need to examine context when examining a change process; therefore, the authors utilised a process research approach to examine changes in the New Zealand electricity industry over the past four decades. As the approach is a flexible one, it allowed exploration of the critical features of change.

Analysis revealed compelling evidence of two new proposed stages to the ECT which operated in conjunction with external environmental influences that acted as stimuli for change.

The research provided insight into the various influences on organisational change, particularly public enterprises. It confirms the previously ignored power of the external environment and the role of stakeholders in influencing organisational change.

The research advances current understanding of organisational change as it offers an enhanced model of the ECT by identifying the trigger for organisational change in public enterprises. Furthermore, it finds different stakeholder groups with the ability to influence the organisational change process.