Communicating The Dissatisfaction in Workplace Among Public Sector Employees: Loyalty and Neglect as an Alternative Model of Responses

Abstract

The need for reformation in public sector management appears from the community's pressure demanding the public sector to produce quality products by applying the concept of business management to public services. However, this new discourse that attracts the attention of human resource management specialist globally faces obstacles from dissatisfied employees who are comfortable with old practices. This paper proposes the model of Exit, Voice, Loyalty, and Neglect (EVLN) as a manifestation of employees communicative responses in reacting to dissatisfaction within the Indonesian public sector setting. Path analysis is used to fit the data provided by 150 public university lecturers. The results reveal two dominant clusters: first, those who will stay in the organization but demonstrate withdrawal behaviorssuch as pretending to be sick, showing up late, putting little effort intotheir work, and frequently not to attend official meetings (neglect) and the second, those who will remain confident, assume that in the end, everything will be all right andpatiently wait and expect for betterment (loyalty). This brings the implication that in most cases, the most significant constraint to a new model is a non-technical, in the management category, such as internal employee resistance. To overcome the obstacle, public sectors require effective, knowledgeable leaders who can help spur bureaucratic action, and implement strategies that promote sustainable change.