The last few years have seen a groundswell of appreciation for not achieving a sense of purpose in our professional life but to have a strong alignment between our purpose and values and that of our employer.

While organizations do undergo changes, it’s perhaps fair to say that they don’t undertake wholesale changes in their values and philosophy all that often.  The same can’t be said in the political world, however, where changes in leaders can have a profound impact on not only what an administration tries to achieve but how it seeks to achieve it.

This has a notable impact on employees in the civil service who operate under a readily changing political class.  For instance, research from the BIO Norwegian Business School highlights how political changes influenced employees in the European Commission.

Political influence

The analysis revealed that employees did indeed appear to change their attitude depending on the political leader they worked under.  For instance, when the leader was from a more Eurosceptic country, such as Sweden or the Netherlands, they would adopt a similarly negative opinion about the EU into their own attitudes.

“Our analysis suggests that new leaders are equally prone to induce shifts toward and at odds with those of the organization,” the researchers say. “This has considerable implications for organizations intending to shift course as part of organizational change processes.”

It’s a topic further developed by a second study from researchers at the Kellogg School.  The researchers crossed the pond for their analysis and looked at the impact a change in the president has on federal employees who may not share the newcomer’s political views.

An impartial service

Suffice to say, the job security of these civil servants seldom relies on their political affiliation, and indeed, the very design of the civil service is such that employees are shielded from any partisan intentions towards them.

The ability to protect senior civil servants from any politically motivated appointments is done to ensure that the machinery of government doesn’t grind to a halt with each change in administration.  It also helps to ensure that HR decisions are based more on merit than political affiliation or ideology.

It does, of course, also ensure that in any administration there are likely to be a decent number of civil servants who object to the policy objectives of that administration.

Political preferences

The researchers began by collecting data on the political preferences of the civil servants to understand how often political misalignment occurs.  They then gauged how procurement officers in particular were affected by any political misalignment that occurred.  In other words, did their performance suffer?

Interestingly, the answer seems to be yes, as when political misalignment occurred between 2004 and 2019, cost overruns were around 8% higher than when the procurement officers were aligned politically with the president.

“In relative terms, you perform worse when you’re not politically aligned with the people at the top,” the researchers say. “And since these misalignments are unavoidable in a bureaucratic system that insulates civil servants, that suggests there is a cost, along with all the benefits.”

Partisan appointments

The study also found, however, that the civil service was not entirely Weberian, as each new administration would routinely distribute high-level appointments to politically friendly individuals.  For instance, when Democrats were in office, the number of Democratic political appointees grew by 152% on average.  When Republicans were in office it was even worse, as political appointments grew by 504%.

This doesn’t appear to be the case lower down, however, with career civil servants largely insulated from political cycles, with the proportion identifying as both Democrat and Republican staying constant throughout the study period.

What is less equal, however, is the distribution of Republicans and Democrats throughout the civil service, with Democrats outnumbering Republicans in practically every department, with this distortion especially prevalent in senior positions.  The researchers are at pains to point out that this doesn’t mean that the civil service has an inherent liberal bias but more a reflection of the different characteristics of Democrat and Republican supporters.

For instance, Democratic bureaucrats were 8% more likely to have a post-graduate degree than their Republican peers, which the researchers believe may partially explain the number of Democrats in the higher echelons of the civil service.  What’s more, the data suggest that Democrats were nearly 5% less likely to quit than their Republican peers, which can also play a role in a profession where longevity still counts.  That such differences appeared to make a difference to performance is important, the authors suggest.

Affecting performance

“Think of it this way: if the government writes a contract for $100, it usually ends up paying $112. But if the procurement officer isn’t politically aligned with the administration, it ends up being $113,” they say. “That looks like a nudge. But government procurement is a huge chunk of the U.S. economy. If you extrapolate that nudge across the entire government procurement sector, then we’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars.”

The problem seems to be caused by moral considerations, as when the civil servants were politically aligned with the administration, their agreement with statements such as “the work I do is important” and “I’m willing to put in extra effort to get the job done” rose considerably.

The researchers don’t, however, notice any apparent influence of the administration itself on the ideology of the civil servants, as appeared to be the case in Europe.  Nonetheless, given that not only is purpose so important for the motivation and performance of employees, but also in a world in which organizations are increasingly taking a stance on social issues, the findings of both studies will be of interest to managers even outside of the political sphere.

“Within any company of a certain size, the employees are going to have different political viewpoints, and not all of them are going to line up with the company,” the researchers conclude. “To what extent do those politics influence workplace performance? Nobody knows yet. But our research on the federal bureaucracy suggests that maybe something similar is going on in the private sector—we definitely need more research along these lines.”