The transition literature attributes various transition tasks to government to support socio-technical transitions toward overcoming societal challenges. It is, however, difficult for civil servants to execute these transition tasks, because they partly conflict with Public Administration (PA) traditions that provide legitimacy to their work. This dilemma is discussed in neither the transition literature nor the PA literature. In this paper, we ask civil servants about the normative arguments that reflect their role perception within the institutional structures of their ministry, when it comes to executing transition tasks. We see these situated and enacted normative arguments and underlying assumptions as implicit rules determining legitimacy. The arguments civil servants used confirm that transition tasks are currently difficult to execute within the civil service. We found seven institutionalized rules that explain this difficulty and highlight the inadequacy of civil servants to adhere to the PA traditions while trying to execute transition tasks.

中文翻译：

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了解公务员不愿执行过渡任务的原因

转型文献将各种转型任务归于政府，以支持社会技术转型以克服社会挑战。然而，公务员很难执行这些过渡任务，因为它们在一定程度上与为其工作提供合法性的公共行政 (PA) 传统相冲突。转型文献和 PA 文献都没有讨论这种困境。在本文中，我们询问公务员在执行过渡任务时反映他们在其部委机构结构中的角色认知的规范性论点。我们将这些定位和制定的规范性论点和基本假设视为决定合法性的隐含规则。公务员使用的论点证实，过渡任务目前难以在公务员内部执行。我们发现了七项制度化规则来解释这一困难，并强调公务员在尝试执行过渡任务时不足以遵守 PA 传统。