In Simple Words
Imagine a corporate headquarters instructing retail store managers to sell products as quickly as possible to minimize costs. If individual store clerks ignore corporate sales targets and instead spend hours comforting customers to make them feel happy, the frontline workers are pursuing personal preferences rather than the owner's explicit directions.
Swiss caseworkers: primary goal for lower-qualified clients
- Improve personal situation
- About 40% of caseworkers
- Long-term return to work
- About 35% of caseworkers
- Rapid return to work
- About 25% of caseworkers
Self-reported primary goals for lower-qualified unemployed clients, from an earlier Swiss survey. Shares describe priorities, not effects on finding work.
See source →Research question
Decentralized government agencies face systematic objective divergence when frontline agents pursue personal or subjective goals that contradict central statutory mandates. In public employment services, federal law prioritizes rapid and sustainable job reintegration, whereas individual caseworkers frequently prioritize client personal well-being or long-term development.
Participants
N = Swiss employment office caseworkers participating in written policy preference surveys across regional employment offices in Switzerland.
Study Design
Observational survey and field experiment comparing caseworker self-reported primary goals against statutory criteria defined in Swiss federal unemployment insurance law.
Results
40% of surveyed caseworkers stated "improving personal situation" as their primary goal for low-qualified unemployed, 35% targeted "long-run reintegration", and only 25% aligned with the federal law's primary statutory objective of "rapid reintegration".
Takeaway
Survey frontline operational staff to identify misalignment between personal caseworker goals and statutory legislation, then restructure organizational incentives to align agent decisions with principal objectives.