Reform Stress in the Public Sector? Linking Change Diversity to Turnover Intentions and Presenteeism Among Civil Servants Using a Matching Approach

Abstract

This paper aims to examine the effect of having experienced diverse changes over a short period of time on the turnover intent and presenteeism behavior of public sector employees. Identifying such effect has been difficult since extant research often defined and studied organizational changes as single, isolated events. Consequently, they may have failed to capture how different changes interact with one another, and what cumulative impact diverse changes have on employees. We introduce nonparametric matching, using data from the Australian Public Service, allowing us to overcome the challenge of distinguishing between the effect of change diversity and that of preexisting problems. Results show both turnover intent and presenteeism increase in organizations with high change diversity. This suggests that employees perform emotion-focused (turnover intent) and problem-focused (presenteeism) coping when faced with high change diversity, and points at the need for sufficient recovery time in between changes.

Keywords:

• Change diversity
• nonparametric matching
• presenteeism
• turnover intention

Notes

1 Information on the survey methodology is available at http://www.apsc.gov.au/publications-and-media/current-publications/state-of-the-service/state-of-the-service-2013-14/appendices/survey-methodologies

2 For instance, we tested for Gender (χ²(1)=1.72), Age (χ²(3)=.71), Classification level (χ²(1)=.01), and Having experienced an organizational change in the past year (χ²(1)=.01)

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jan Wynen

Jan Wynen is a research professor at the Department of Management, Faculty of Business and Economics, UAntwerp and is also affiliated to the Research Unit on Politics & Public Governance, UAntwerp. His main research focuses on the way organizations react, or can be organized to adapt, to changing environments.

Jan Boon

Jan Boon is a senior postdoctoral researcher at the research group on Politics and Public Governance of the University of Antwerp (Belgium). His research interests include the governance and coordination of public organizations; organizational reform, change, and innovation; and bureaucratic reputation.

Stephanie Verlinden

Stéphanie Verlinden is a doctoral student at the Department of Management, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Antwerp and research group Politics & Public Governance. Her research focuses on the impact of organizational change on organizational decision-making.