Rethinking Bureaucratic Routines for Collaborative Work: Organizational Cues for Stakeholder Engagement

Governments increasingly rely on collaborative governance to address complex policy challenges, making stakeholder engagement a core bureaucratic function. Yet, we lack an understanding of the internal organizational factors guiding these external interactions. In this paper, we examine which organizational cues shape how civil servants engage with interest groups. Drawing on survey data from Dutch civil servants (n=722), and relying on factor analysis, we distinguish procedural, ethical and social-based cues. Subsequently, multivariate regressions assess how key factors like civil servant ranking, tenure, ministry type and intensity of stakeholder engagement shape the relative reliance of different cues. Our findings demonstrate that civil servants in higher positions rely more heavily on procedural and ethical cues, while social cues seem relevant across all ranks. Furthermore, increasing intensity of stakeholder engagement also strengthens the use of all three organizational cues. Our research demonstrates the importance of better understanding how organizational context and individual characteristics of civil servants shape stakeholder engagement, and may indirectly inform lobbying strategies.