Agency orientation and bureaucratic behaviour towards clients: evidence from a survey experiment among unemployment caseworkers

Frontline workers’ behaviour is often guided by considerations of clients’ best interests (citizen-agent orientation) rather than strict policy adherence (state-agent orientation). Using a pre-registered 2 × 2 factorial vignette experiment involving caseworkers (n = 813) at Danish unemployment agencies, we present evidence on how priming a citizen-agent versus a state-agent orientation influences conduct towards clients–and whether these effects are moderated by clients expressing burdens with policy compliance. Our findings suggest that citizen-agent priming reduces the inclination to sanction noncompliant clients, regardless of expressed burdens, emphasizing how simple prompts can shift bureaucratic decision-making towards clients.