Civil Servants’ Moonlighting: Ancillary Activities in the Estonian Public Service

The prevalence of full-time jobs constitutes an important element of traditional bureaucratic model in public administration. Weber (1978:958) argues that “official activity demands the full working capacity of the official” to ensure the commitment and loyalty to the office. In Weber’s ideal type of bureaucratic organization, each staff member holds one office with specific powers and responsibilities that are clearly separated from both other offices in the organization and personal affairs. Such organization of job duties and technical skills is expected to enable actors to be isolated from external influence and corrupting pressures. At the same time, a variety of ancillary jobs of civil servants could lead to a situation where “official business is discharged as a secondary activity” (Weber, 1978:958), causing potential conflicts of interests, and problems of management and accountability. Since the end of last century, ideas and management tools related to New Public Management (NPM) have influenced civil service management practices in many countries. The aim of NPM – although often not achieved – has been to modernize the administration and make it more open and flexible. As a result, flexible employment contracts, fixed-term employment relations, project-based management practices, and flexible working hours in civil service jobs have appeared. Mobility between private and public sectors has been promoted in order to bring in competence from outside the linear career ladder of the civil service. In addition, because several functions or institutions of public sector have been privatized or outsourced (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2011), civil servants could use their competence for offering consulting-services to state institutions and also for private sector. Consequently, there are more opportunities and fewer regulations for ancillary activities in the civil service. It can be argued that the ancillary activity among civil servants carries several risks for the neutrality and professionality of civil servants (Kernaghan and Langford, 2014). Both theoretical and empirical literature on dual jobs in the civil service is rather limited. At the same time, it proves important due to potential conflict of interests among civil servants. The aim of this study is to contribute to building an analytical framework for studying types of ancillary jobs in the civil service. The empirical study will be carried out in the Estonian civil service. Estonia can be characterized as one of the most NPM-influenced civil services in Europe with decentralized and flexible employment relations which provides an interesting opportunity to explore ancillary activities of civil servants. The new Civil Service Act of Estonia came into force in 2013 which, on the one hand, deregulated further the ancillary activity of civil servants, and on the other hand, reformed the field of public ethics. The study is based on an exploratory research where empirical analysis is conducted in two phases. Firstly, a survey will be carried out among civil servants to find out the actual spread of ancillary jobs in the Estonian civil service. Secondly, semi-structured interviews will enable to analyze the types of ancillary jobs, and to discuss their consequences for public administration.