A Closer Look at What Goes Wrong: Public Employee Cynicism and Resistance to Administrative Reform

Despite numerous administrative reform efforts, few truly new and innovative changes are initiated, and repeated reform efforts can jeopardize the success of any new ones. Public employees become cynical and frustrated when faced with the constant parade of initiatives that come with the usual promise of imminent improvement but fail to materialize. Employees’ cynicism about administrative reform can inhibit their willingness to initiate future innovative action and plans. This study aims to contribute to a better understanding of organizational change cynicism by exploring how individual, relational, and organizational factors influence employees’ cynicism and how cynicism forms a resistance to participating in reform efforts, using data from a survey of 1,161 local government employees in South Korea. Negative affectivity, organizational identification, colleague cynicism, trust in management, perceived resource availability, and participative working environment served as antecedents of cynicism that can lead to resistance to administrative reform.