Public and Private Street-level Bureaucrats’ Public Service Motivation and Willingness to Perform Tasks in Extreme Crises: Quantitative Evidence from Norwegian Emergency-Service Workers

Abstract

Growing geopolitical instability, including Russia’s war in Ukraine and concerns about hybrid threats in Northern Europe, has intensified demands on national security and crisis management systems. These pressures highlight that national resilience depends not only on defence capabilities and technological innovation, but also on the individuals responsible for implementing public policies in high-risk situations. This group extends beyond traditional first responders to include a heterogeneous workforce of emergency-service workers (ESWs): the armed forces, police, fire and rescue services, health services, volunteers, and private sector actors in areas such as logistics, communications, energy, and infrastructure who together form the backbone of national security and defence. However, research has so far provided only partial insight into the human foundations of national resilience. Existing studies typically focus on first responders in situations below the threshold of severe security crises or armed conflict or rely on narrow, single item measures prone to social desirability bias. These approaches do not capture the contextual realities of policy implementation during extreme crises. Little is known about what motivates civilian and military emergency service workers across organisational boundaries, and how willing they are to perform their tasks when personal and operational risks escalate. This lecture reports findings from a large-scale survey (n ≈ 5 000) combining experimental and observational designs, conducted in Northern and Eastern Norway among five police districts, six Home Guard districts, and two trade unions representing transport, logistics, security, machinery, and construction personnel in the private sector. The results advance our understanding of ESWs’ public service motivation and their willingness to perform tasks under extreme crises, and provide practical implications for recruitment, HR management, and national contingency planning.