An Educational Economic Crisis?: Research on the Effect of the Economic Crisis of 2008 on the Competencies of Financial Top- and Mid-Level Bureaucrats

The economic crisis of 2008 is a perfect example of governance failure resulting in a global economic crisis. Crises form windows of opportunity for change, while a crisis is living proof that the status quo is unsustainable. Since the economic crisis was caused by inadequate and the lack of financial regulations, countries all over the globe changed their financial policies. These policies, however, were a product of policy-makers. Since these policy-makers, or bureaucrats, bear responsibility for developing these policies, one would expect that changes also occurred at these bureaucrats. Nevertheless, literature on the effect of the economic crisis on the competencies of these bureaucrats is missing. This research, therefore, aimed to fill this gap. This resulted in the following research question: ‘How has the economic crisis of 2008 influenced the competencies of top and mid-level financial bureaucrats working at the financial ministries of the United Kingdom and Germany?’ The...Show moreThe economic crisis of 2008 is a perfect example of governance failure resulting in a global economic crisis. Crises form windows of opportunity for change, while a crisis is living proof that the status quo is unsustainable. Since the economic crisis was caused by inadequate and the lack of financial regulations, countries all over the globe changed their financial policies. These policies, however, were a product of policy-makers. Since these policy-makers, or bureaucrats, bear responsibility for developing these policies, one would expect that changes also occurred at these bureaucrats. Nevertheless, literature on the effect of the economic crisis on the competencies of these bureaucrats is missing. This research, therefore, aimed to fill this gap. This resulted in the following research question: ‘How has the economic crisis of 2008 influenced the competencies of top and mid-level financial bureaucrats working at the financial ministries of the United Kingdom and Germany?’ The expectations were that the crisis resulted in a change of the economic ideas and technical competency of these top- and mid-level bureaucrats. In order to test these expectations, a quantitative statistical large-N analysis (N = 124) is conducted. The research results were that the economic crisis of 2008 did not affect the economic ideas and technical competency of top- and mid-level bureaucrats. The conclusion on the latter, however, may be false negative. The analysis provided indications that the economic crisis actually did affect the technical competency of top- and mid-level bureaucrats. Besides that, the number of observations used for this research was relatively small. Further research with more observations is, therefore, necessary.Show less

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An Educational Economic Crisis? Research on the Effect of the Economic Crisis of 2008 on the Competencies of Financial Top- and Mid-Level Bureaucrats