Working, shirking, and sabotage

by Brehm, John

John Brehm and Scott Gates examine who influences how federal, state, and local bureaucrats allocate their effort by working or shirking, or even by sabotaging policy. The authors combine deductive models and computer simulations of bureaucratic behavior with statistical analysis in order to assess the competing influences over how bureaucrats expend their efforts. Drawing upon surveys, observational studies, and administrative records of the performance of public employees in bureaucracies ranging from federal agencies to municipal governments, Brehm and Gates demonstrate that the reason bureaucrats work as hard as they do is the nature of the jobs they are recruited to perform and the influence of both their fellow employees and their clients in the public. The authors show that American bureaucracies work, and that the reasons bureaucrats perform as hard as they do has little to do with the coercive capacities of supervisors. Brehm and Gates show that the real limitations on the bur