Policy alienation. We coined a term because we saw many Professional struggling with public policies. However, there was not a theoretical framework for understanding that. How we define policy alienation as a general cognitive state of psychological disconnection from the public professional who has to implement policies. Simply put, Professional cannot really identify which the policy he or she has to implement. Yeah, there's a large difference between being alienated from a specific policy, we call that just policy alienation, and being alienated from policies in general which means that you feel that so many policies are coming towards you. You think it doesn't matter really whether it's a good policy or a bad policy, I just cannot identify with them anymore because for instance, I do not really trust the people where the policies are coming from. It's specific policy. You can feel like in a way that's a good policy but in general level, we can say all these policies, I'm just fed up with them. It can go both ways and they're really different concepts. Yes. Policy alienation can have severe consequences both for the employee and also for the policy itself. For the employee, it can, for instance, result in stress, less job satisfaction and even intention to quit the job or really quitting the job. For the policy, it can have consequences, for instance, that people do not want to implement a policy anymore. For instance, you're going to sabotage the policy or going to resist and protest against the policy. You really see this also happening, for instance, when teachers have to implement a policy, they start protesting against it and they feel less satisfied with their job. It has real consequences both on a personal level but also for effective implementation. We also see that it diminishes well-being, and there are maybe two important reasons for that. The first is that if you feel something you have to implement, it's not meaningful so it's not good for society, but it's also not good for individual clients. You ask yourself like, "Why am I doing this work? Why should implement a policy which harms my patients?" Then intrinsically people feel like, "Oh, this is something I should not do. I should just do something which is meaningful for my patients." That's a meaningfulness dimension. The main dimension is powerlessness. We know from self-determination theory, which will also be discussed in this MOOC, that people have to feel autonomous when doing their work. If you feel that you don't have power, you're just a cork in a machine, you just have to implement things and you cannot really make your own decisions, that is something which diminishes well-being. Yes. We distinguish between two main dimensions of policy elation, which is powerlessness and meaninglessness and within powerlessness we have three sub-dimensions, and within meaninglessness, we have two. For powerlessness, we distinguish between strategic, tactical, and operational powerlessness and for meaninglessness, we have two-dimensions, societal meaninglessness and client meaninglessness. I will also give an example for each of these five dimensions. For strategic powerlessness, you feel as a professional that you cannot influence the policy or influence at national level and your professional associations, they are not sitting at the right table, they are not being asked so that's really on the national level. Tactical powerlessness is not on the national, it's on organizational level. For instance, professionals are not being asked to work in a team for implementing the policy. The board of directors just directly imposes some strategies or some policies and the Professionals just have to cope with it. Operational powerlessness is the last dimension. An example for that is that you can't feel autonomy where you have to execute the policy. For instance, a teacher, he or she has to implement the policy when delivering a classroom session. But he or she feels that she has to really just follow the rules and cannot make any deviations which will fit the student population he or she is facing. That's on the operational level, is really on the daily work to work. Societal meaninglessness and client meaninglessness are the last two dimensions. Societal meaninglessness is that you ask yourself, what is this policy good for society? For instance, does it lead to lower costs in health care? Does it lead to better educated citizens if you look at schools? Client meaninglessness is far more specific for your own clients. If I implement this policy, is this good for this specific student? I'm teaching, this is good for this specific patient, I am delivering care to. There's also a difference there and they are highly related to all these dimensions, but we can still make a distinction between all five of them. Most of the research has been focused on public organizations. However, it can certainly also exist in private organizations. For instance, when a board of directors just implements this particular policy without consulting the professionals and the professional thing this is for instance very bad for their clients or for other businesses they're working with, also push alienation can [inaudible] and where it is in a way it's in general concept which can be applied to both private sector and the public sector. I think that is a topic which is really worthy of discussion. What can help professionals and managers is looking at the five specific dimensions. For instance, strategic powerlessness. How do you make sure that professionals do not feel powerless on strategic level? What you can do is, for instance, inviting professional associations on the table where you developing policies. But this is not enough because it's not only inviting people, it's also communicating to the outside world that these professional organizations are invited and are talking because not everybody knows what's happening in these negotiations. It's not only about objectively getting people inside rooms and talking, but also communicating to larger groups. This is also what you can do on a tactical level, on an organizational level. On an operational level so on a day to day work, I think it's very important that you still give people freedom to deviate where needed. We're mostly talking about professionals who are highly educated, highly specialized, and have also an intrinsic motivation to do good at work. Leave a little bit of room for people just to make their own decisions. People like having autonomy, which we know. But it can also lead to better policy decisions because they can adjust the situation to the specific client. Lastly, we can think about making things more meaningful for clients and societies. Also talk with professionals, say, we're going to implement this policy, what would the effect be on your clients? What will the effect be according to you for society and how can we make these effects more positive?'' Also by involving professionals can also make the policy more meaningful. I would suggest in conclusion, look at these five dimensions before you implement the policies so you don't have to clean up the mess afterwards. What I would advise managers if they see professionals not complying with rules or even actively sabotaging rules, what I would always first do is is go and talk to them. Ask them, what are the reasons behind that you are doing this? Why is this something you think is good? So what do you think is wrong with the policy? Sometimes it's better to say to people, you have all these very specific solutions and you're not complying with the policy, can you help us in improving the policy. Instead of making them comply immediately. Sometimes they have very good reasons why they don't do it. This can be related to the specifics of the policy, for instance, because they think it's not beneficial for clients, but it can also be something outside. Can also be for instance that they don't know how to do it. They don't have the capacity to do it or they are far too busy other work is really overloading them so they cannot comply. First go and look for the reasons and based on these reasons, try to work out a solution with the professional, that's what I would advice. We give in this course a lot of concepts and theories. What I would advise people is to learn the theories but adjust them to situations at their work. Don't take them fully at face value, but use them in a way that benefits them. If you're at an organization and you think, I have to polish alienation concepts, but especially the autonomy part seems to be a problem here. Focus on that part and leave to the others away. Make the concepts your own. That's what I would advice.
