Coping with administrative tasks: A cross-country analysis from a street-level perspective

Abstract

Administrative tasks often are an unavoidable aspect of the daily work of street-level bureaucrats (SLBs). These burdensome tasks are job demands that can cause stress and put a strain on SLBs' working experience and performance. So far, few studies have searched for job resources that can help SLBs cope with this aspect of their daily work. This study analyzes how performing administrative tasks results in job stress. Participation in organizational decision-making is presented as a job resource that mitigates this impact—although, we hypothesize, less so in countries with high power distance. Using a survey dataset of 113,210 teachers across 46 countries, we find that participation in organizational decision-making indeed reduces the impact of spending time on administrative tasks on job stress. Power distance does not influence this moderation significantly but does have cross-level interactions with both the time spent on administrative tasks and the level of participation separately.