Regulatory Fragmentation and Managerial Flexibility in Civil Service Governance: Evidence from Surabaya

Abstract

The splintering of regulation has become a major problem for local government administration, especially where multiple government agencies issue overlapping regulations, reporting formats and administrative standards for the management of civil servants. This paper presents a qualitative case study of Surabaya, Indonesia, that investigates how regulatory fragmentation impacts managerial flexibility in civil service governance. Data were gathered through in-depth interviews with 21 informants, observations and document analysis. The data were analysed using thematic analysis, with NVivo 14 software. These findings suggest that the high compliance costs generated by fragmentation in ministerial regulations necessitate managerial discretion and adaptive responses from public managers. These responses are expressed in compliance, adaptation and innovation. Compliance is understood as adherence to several regulatory requirements, adaptation as harmonization of procedures, intensive coordination mechanisms and recurrent monitoring activities, and innovation as implementation of the E-ABK system to support the processes of job analysis and workload analysis. The study also points out challenges such as competency gaps, reliance on taskforce personnel and institutional sustainability that can affect the long-term effectiveness of adaptive governance practices. Our study contributes to the literature on public administration by showing that regulatory fragmentation not only generates administrative burdens but also transforms managerial discretion and promotes adaptive coordination as a key mechanism of civil service governance. These findings reveal how local governments preserve governance capacity, administrative standardization, and organizational efficiency under complex regulatory circumstances.