The design of opportunities for civil servants’ inter-departmental networking behavior

Abstract

Extant research has identified individual, organizational, and environmental level attributes that shape the variation in public managers’ external networking behavior. It theorized that public managers’ networking behavior is instrumentally motivated by resource deficiencies. We postulate that beyond motivation, managers’ and civil servants’ networking behavior is shaped by the structuring of opportunities for interaction ensuing from HRM policies and the spatial design of government offices. Employing a mixed-method blend of survey and focus groups with low- and mid-level Israeli civil servants in the first eight years of employment, we analyze whether and how opportunities, ensuing from their mode of recruitment and training, mobility between departments, and work at geographically central government offices enable their exchange with colleagues from other departments. We further show that underlying the association between opportunities for interaction and external networking behavior is civil servants’ sense of shared language and outlook and trust-based relations.