Florian Keppeler

#Wilmasreview #PoliSky Wilma shakes the dust off her fur 🐶 . Some public employers would love a shake like that: can their job ads shake off the sometimes dusty image of public service? 1/🧵

💡Writing a public job advert? Explain why the job matters, not just what it requires. Who sleeps safer because of that night shift? The authors add a warning: too much pathos can sound insincere, so be honest. 🐾 6/🧵

doi.org<em>Public Administration Review</em> | ASPA Journal | Wiley Online LibraryTo compete in the “war for talent,” public sector employers must demonstrate advantages over private employers. While public service motivation (PSM) predicts sector preference, scholars disagree on ...

doi.org/10.1111/puar... Wilma, PhD (Pretty Helpful Dog) and #PostDog @au.dk End/🧵

#Wilmasreview #PoliSky Wilma shakes the dust off her fur 🐶 . Some public employers would love a shake like that: can their job ads shake off the sometimes dusty image of public service? 1/🧵

➡ The public sector does signal public service motivation more often than the private sector, across all its facets. But the tone remains dry. Even night shifts and on-call duty, which could be presented as a commitment to others, are mostly presented as obligations. 📜 4/🧵

➡️Many public perks are cheap signals: pay 'according to the collective agreement', statutory leave and 'we serve the public interest'. As they are required by law or used by everyone, they may hardly set an employer apart. In contrast, private ads highlight boni, career plans and company cars. 🚗 5/🧵

#Wilmasreview #PoliSky Wilma shakes the dust off her fur 🐶 . Some public employers would love a shake like that: can their job ads shake off the sometimes dusty image of public service? 1/🧵

In a new study published in @pareview.bsky.social , Gießmann and Drathschmidt compared almost 7,700 German job advertisements from the public and private sectors using text mining and manual coding. They find: 2/🧵

➡ Each sector has its own language. Public sector ads use 'Beamtendeutsch', referring to career tracks, pay scales and complete documents. Some demand applications on paper. In contrast, private ads use anglicisms and say just WhatsApp us. 🗣️ 3/🧵

#Wilmasreview #PoliSky Wilma has had a long day as head of the household. She has guarded the door, supervised dinner and kept an eye on every visitor. Now she is lying flat out on the floor. Is being in charge worth it? 😴 1/🧵

💡 The authors argue that leadership stress is also a design question. Strong cabinets and capable bureaucracies may spread the burden so that no single person carries it all. 6/🧵

🔗 doi.org/10.1016/j.le... Wilma, PhD (Pretty helpful Dog) and #postdog 🐾 @au.dk End 🧵

doi.orgRedirecting

➡️ The disparity is evident in deaths from illness rather than assassinations, accidents or suicides. 🩺 4/🧵

➡️ The penalty was largest in poorer countries and in economically or politically turbulent times. ⚠️ 5/🧵

A new study by Varela, Beuter and González compared more than 600 candidates for head of government in 37 countries between 1900 and 1938. They examined elections that were so close that the outcome was almost a coin toss and find: 2/🧵

➡️ Power comes at a cost: Winners by a narrow margin lived 4.4 years less on average than losers after the election. ⏳ 3/🧵

#Wilmasreview #PoliSky Wilma 🐶 just jumped high, maybe higher than ever. Impressive! Did she do this alone, or did she have some help? 🤔 1/🧵

💡 Organisations that want their staff to use LLMs may want to say so explicitly. Without a clear policy, employees who use AI openly may pay for it in trust and career prospects. 6/🧵

🔗 doi.org/10.1016/j.le... Wilma, PhD (Pretty helpful Dog) and #postdog 🐾 @au.dk End/🧵

#Wilmasreview #PoliSky Wilma 🐶 just jumped high, maybe higher than ever. Impressive! Did she do this alone, or did she have some help? 🤔 1/🧵

➡️ Professors rated real conference papers by PhD students: the larger the share of text flagged as AI-written, the less they trusted the author. Lower trust in turn dragged down ratings of performance, citizenship and promotability. 📉 4/🧵

➡️ Saying nothing is nearly as bad as saying no. Without any policy, the trust penalty was about as large as under an outright ban. Only when the organisation explicitly encouraged LLM use did the gap disappear. How important the task was and supervisors' own LLM experience barely mattered. 📜 5/🧵

#Wilmasreview #PoliSky Wilma 🐶 just jumped high, maybe higher than ever. Impressive! Did she do this alone, or did she have some help? 🤔 1/🧵

Managers face the same question when an employee hands in great work today. A new study by Samuel Meyers, Roman Briker and Yochanan Bigman finds: 2/🧵

@thepeoplelab.bsky.social

➡️ Invisible help costs trust: When a detector flagged the employee's work as AI-written, only 24% of supervisors took their word for it, compared with 68% when the employee wrote it themselves. Only copying a colleague's work did worse. 🕵️ 3/🧵

Florian Keppeler reposted

The People Lab

What does it take to recruit and retain a strong public workforce, increase access to government programs, and get good evidence into practice? We’re hiring researchers to help us answer questions like these! Learn more and apply 👉 peoplelab.hks.harvard.edu/careers/

#Wilmasreview Wilma 🐶 has an impressive CV: expert nose, years of sniffing experience, efficient removal of food leftovers. But that's not why we love her. It's the head tilt. She listens 👂 1/🧵

➡️ Writing a public sector job ad? Next to the degree requirements, consider saying explicitly that the job is about listening and serving. The authors argue that, otherwise, you may not attract the people that citizens hope to meet at the counter. 5/🧵

🔗 doi.org/10.1111/puar... @pareview.bsky.social Wilma, PhD (Pretty helpful Dog) and #postdog 🐾 @au.dk End🧵

➡️ Job ads sell credentials. Expertise and dedication show up in almost all ads. Responsiveness and honesty trail far behind. 📋 3/🧵

➡️ Citizens rank it differently. Asked about the ideal public servant, citizens put dedication, serviceability and honesty on top, and expertise last. The two rankings barely overlap. 🤷 4/🧵

Do public employers look for the same thing citizens do? A new study by Melissa Satzger Grøn and @dominikvogel.bsky.social analyses state job ads and find: 2/🧵

#Wilmasreview How did Wilma 🐶 learn to jump on large, felled trees? Not from a manual. She learned it one try at a time and with feedback (🦴). So she was puzzled to hear that most studies of humans working with AI never tell people whether they got it right. 1/🧵

➡️ The twist is that AI explanations on their own backfired. Explanations without feedback went with clearly worse teamwork, while explanations plus feedback went with better teamwork. People need feedback to learn when to trust what the AI tells them. 🤔 6/🧵

doi.orgHuman learning is an understudied but promising lever for boosting human–AI synergy | PNASHumans collaborating with AI hold the promise of achieving superior outcomes compared to either acting alone (i.e., human–AI synergy). However, the...

💡 Currently, it looks like we judge human–AI teamwork before anyone has had a chance to learn it. This is a key direction for future research. 🔬 Wilma, PhD (Pretty helpful Dog) and #postdog 🐾 @au.dk 🔗 doi.org/10.1073/pnas... End🧵

People did one short session with no practice rounds, and only 10 of the 74 studies ever told participants whether their answers were right. 😶 4/🧵

➡️ The studies that did tell people how they were doing tended to show better human–AI teamwork. The evidence is tentative, but it points in the same direction. 📈 5/🧵

A new article by @officialberger.bsky.social, @jasonburton.bsky.social, Hertwig, Kosch, @ralfkurvers.bsky.social , Kurzenberger, Lazik, Onnasch, Rieger, @annaithoma.bsky.social , @dirkwulff.bsky.social , and @stefanherzog.bsky.social discusses this: 2/🧵

➡️ A recent meta-analysis found that humans and AI working together usually do no better than the stronger of the two working alone. But most of those studies never gave people a chance to learn. 3/🧵

#Wilmasreview Wilma 🐶 has accepted that there are fences 🚧. A fence doesn't ask, it doesn't make exceptions, and it doesn't care that the neighbor's cat is getting away. So, Wilma dug a hole ... a burdensome workaround. 🕳️ 🧵

➡️ The roles changed quietly. Caseworkers became helpdesk staff teaching citizens to self-serve, or screen-level bureaucrats handling exceptions, rejections and complaints. Real discretion moved upstream to designers, IT departments, private vendors who barely appear in the studies at all. 🧩

doi.orgDoes digital government hollow out the essence of street‐level bureaucracy? A systematic literature review of how digital tools' foster curtailment, enablement and continuation of street‐level decisio...The growing use of digital tools in policy implementation has altered the work of street-level bureaucrats who are granted substantial discretionary power in decision-making. Digital tools can constr....

💡 A recommendation for practice: bring the frontline into the design phase, not into the feedback form afterwards. 📚 📄 doi.org/10.1111/spol.12991 Wilma, PhD (Pretty helpful Dog) and #postdog 🐾 @au.dk End 🧵

In contrast, in regulation-oriented organizations such as the police or customs, the same kind of tool tends to enable judgement by providing officers with better information. 🔀

5/9 ➡️ Staff does comply and cope. Rule bending, double documentation, rearranging the guided questionnaire to have a real conversation, using private phones, giving extra time to the citizens who need it most. Not sabotage: an attempt to keep human judgement alive in a system that left no room. 🐾

When public employees are limited by the digital tools they must use, they try to work around, too. A systematic review by Justine Marienfeldt systematically reviewed the research of how digital tools have changed decision-making at the street level:

➡️ The context can be more important than the tool itself. In service-oriented organizations such as benefits offices, employment services and citizen service centers, digital tools tend to restrict discretion.

#Wilmasreview Wilma 🐶 knows the drill when entering the dog forest. She's waiting for the person one level higher in the hierarchy to give a signal. 🦮 Public employees also turn to their managers when politicians start bending the rules of democracy. 1/🧵

💡 For public managers: signalling "just do what the government wants" does not buy loyalty. It pushes out precisely the people most committed to democratic values, i.e. the ones you would want to keep as a bulwark. Signalling guardianship keeps them in the building. 📚 6/🧵

📄 doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muag027 Wilma, PhD (Pretty helpful Dog) and #postdog 🐾 @au.dk End🧵

doi.orgValidate User

➡️ The manager matters: When the boss signals "always comply with the government," people head for the door. For example, in the Norwegian electoral-fairness scenario, the share considering exit rose from 53% under a "guardian" manager to 67% under a "responsive" one. 🚪 4/🧵

➡️ It runs on values: In the US sample, the effect of a manager signaling compliance depended heavily on whether staff shared those values; however, guardian signals worked regardless. Managerial authority ends where an employee's personal interpretation of public service begins. 🧭 5/🧵

A new study by Mads Pieter van Luttervelt, Mathias Rask Østergaard-Nielsen, @martinbaekgaard.bsky.social, Zuzana Murdoch and Benny Geys ran studies with Norwegian and US civil servants and find: 2/🧵