The Handbook of Public Sector Communication

8Formal and Functional Social Exchange Relationships in the Public Sector

Ben Farr‐Wharton, Yvonne Brunetto, and Kate Shacklock

Introduction

Public sector communication refers to the exchanges that occur between the people responsible for public administration, governance, policy and service delivery, and the broader public whom they serve. This chapter focuses on the behavioral elements that shape, and are shaped by, public sector communication. Published studies that focus on behavioral elements of public administration are few in number when compared with more prominent themes like policy analysis, networks, and modeling. This presents a void in the literature, since trail‐blazing scholars, such as Herbert Simon, Dwight Waldo, Michael Lipsky, and their contemporaries, have positioned the behavior and psychology of front‐line public sector employees as fundamental lynchpins between policy intentions and desired outcomes (such as delivering public value). Building on Lipsky's (1980) “street level bureaucrat” theory, the chapter herein highlights the power of front‐line public sector employees, through their communication, in diluting or ruining “good intentions” (policy or service directives) or innovating, enhancing, and improving ill‐conceived plans through autonomous decision‐making.

To explore these issues, the chapter examines social exchange relationships, because such relationships underpin the pathways and networks through which communication takes place. The seminal ...