How do we design the delivery of public service in ways that ensure a fair treatment and more equal results for all citizens? In his research, Thorbjørn Sejr Guul, an Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science and Public Management, enquires into these questions. Learn more about his research and ambitions in this interview.
What are your research interests?
My research interests are focused on different sources of social equity in public administration. This focus adds to a historical focus on sources of general performance improvements in public administration research. The choice to deliver service in a public rather than a private context is often motivated by the notion that this leads to more fair solutions. Therefore, studying how to ensure social equity in the delivery of public service has received increasing scholarly attention in recent years. In my research, I am focusing on two important but different constructs of social equity: equality of treatment and equality of outcomes. Considering the first construct, this research focuses on (unjustified) differential treatment of citizens with different social origin (e.g., ethnicity, gender or class), and on how the organization of the delivery of public service affects the scope of differential treatment. Considering the second construct, this research focuses more on how the delivery of service can compensate socioeconomically dispositioned citizens in ways that create better (and more equal) results for these groups of citizens.
How did you become interested in your field of research?
As a master’s student in political science, I attended several courses on how the organization of the public administration shapes the relationship between public policy and the delivery of public service thereby ultimately determining who gets what, when, and how in a society. What increases and decreases the differences in outcomes across different societal groups has always interested me – in particular, I am interested in how the organization of the public administration affects these outcomes. Therefore, I feel very fortunate that I was given the opportunity to follow this track both prior to and post completion of my PhD dissertation.
What research question would you above all like to find the answer to? And why is that?The overall question I would like to address is how we design the delivery of service in ways that ensure a fair treatment and more equal results for all citizens. As mentioned, since social equity is a fundamental driver for implementing public, rather than private, solutions, it is, quite obviously, important to investigate how social equity in relation to the delivery of public service is affected by different ways of organizing the public administration.
Which impact do you expect your research to have on the surrounding society? Ultimately, I hope that the findings from my research will influence the political process such that bureaucrats and policy makers will become more aware of how the way public policies are implemented often unintendedly affects social equity in the delivery of service. Hence, my hope is that in addition to considering the fiscal and judicial consequences of, e.g., a changed funding model, more rigid rules or higher workload on individual employees, the additional consequences for social equity are also considered in future policy making.
Thorbjørn Sejr Guul is an Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science and Public Management.
