The Impact of Political Change on Workplace Satisfaction in Federal Agencies

• In Event: Bureaucratic Agencies and Political Pressures

Abstract

While job satisfaction has been widely studied by public management scholars, little research has examined the impact of external political events on the federal workforce, and specifically, how political changes might affect satisfaction over time. Using data from the U.S. Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) spanning sixteen years (2004-2019) and three presidential administrations, we employ hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to investigate how presidential elections affect workplace satisfaction at the agency level. We find that workplace satisfaction does shift in response to presidential elections but there is a lag effect, after which time satisfaction begins to revert to baseline levels. Testing the environment-organization fit theory, we further find workplace satisfaction is largely unaffected by federal agency’s ideological alignment with the President’s party. These findings may be indicative of the enduring commitment to neutral competence among civil servants and resilience of the bureaucracy in the face of ongoing political change.

Authors

• Tianshu (Tina) Zhao, California State University Long Beach

• Kelly LeRoux