The Unbureaucratic Personality
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Issue Date
2007-06-11Author
DeHart-Davis, Leisha
Type
Article
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Show full item recordAbstract
After sixty years of scholarship on the rule-bound bureaucratic personality, this article turns attention to the unbureaucratic personality. Identified by a willingness to bend rules,
the unbureaucratic personality is thought to be influenced by individual and workplace
attributes, each which shed light on the nature of rule-bending. Individual attributes
investigated include nonconformity, risk propensity, and public service commitment, all
expected to stimulate the unbureaucratic personality. Workplace attributes include
formalization and centralization, which are expected to suppress the unbureaucratic
personality, and red tape, which is expected to trigger it. These hypotheses are tested
using mail survey data collected from employees of four cities in a Midwestern state. The
results of ordered probit modeling of the data suggest that nonconformity and risk taking
increase the unbureaucratic personality, as do red tape and centralized workplaces. By
contrast, the unbureaucratic personality appears to be lowered by public service
commitment and workplace formalization. The implications of these results for the
normative aspects of rule-bending are discussed.
Description
This paper has been accepted for publication in Public Administration Review.
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