Discrete emotions such as fear are understudied in public administration, especially in extreme working conditions such as emergency response or crisis management where job demands often surpass employees’ resources to cope. In order to understand the psychological correlates of this fear, this study builds on the job demands-resources model to examine the possible antecedents and outcomes of fear among a sample of Chinese customs officers working on the frontline of COVID-19 prevention. Analysis of survey data collected from this extreme condition indicates that self-efficacy, resilience, and perceived organizational support attenuated fear while public service motivation did not. There was an antagonistic interaction between self-efficacy and resilience in affecting customs officers’ fear. In addition, fear increased turnover intention but did not relate to work engagement nor job satisfaction. These findings provide theoretical insights over understanding the fear of public employees working in extreme conditions and offer public managers practical implications over building a strong and resilient workforce during crisis.

This study examines the influence of sector stereotypes on citizens’ willingness to engage in coproduction. We explore the relationships between different sector tags and citizens’ coproduction willingness in the domains of recycling and public safety, using a 2 × 3 experimental design. The findings indicate that citizens show significantly higher coproduction willingness under the government tag compared to the nonprofit tag in recycling but not public safety. In both recycling and public safety, the government–nonprofit nexus significantly enhances individuals’ willingness to engage in coproduction, surpassing the effects of the government or nonprofit tag alone. Furthermore, volunteer experience positively moderates the relationship between the government tag and coproduction willingness while negatively moderating the government–nonprofit nexus and coproduction willingness. Individuals with varying degrees of volunteer experience may perceive coproduction initiatives differently depending on the initiating entity, resulting in differences in willingness to coproduce, possibly due to factors such as role clarity and autonomy. These findings underscore the substantial influence of sector identity on coproduction and highlight the importance of service sector compatibility for effectively mobilizing citizens in coproduction efforts.

Target setting (or goal setting) is a process of incremental adaptation. Prior studies have mainly focus on organization-level adaptation of performance target setting. Based on the geographical leadership mobility within the Chinese political personnel system, this study explores leader-level adaptation of their organizations’ performance target setting. Using a Chinese province-level panel data-set from 1999 to 2019, we empirically confirm that performance targets in one administrative jurisdiction where the current incumbent provincial governor previously served positively influence performance targets in their current provincial leadership position. Furthermore, if the performance targets in the provincial governor’s previous working locality were achieved successfully, the provincial governor will be more motivated to learn from past target-setting experiences. Finally, provincial governors show significantly different policy learning motivation in economic growth target setting before and after the reform of China’s cadre evaluation system in 2013. These findings show that local executives display conditional learning in their individual-level targets aspiration adaptation process.

The present study examines the impact of ethical leadership on job satisfaction and work-related burnout (WRB) among street-level bureaucrats through the mediating roles of public service motivation (PSM), perceived organizational support (POS), and red tape by employing social exchange, conservation of resources, social learning, self-determination, and job demands-resources theories. Data from 712 street-level bureaucrats were collected in three waves in Turkey. The findings of structural equation modeling revealed that ethical leadership not only directly but also indirectly affects job satisfaction and WRB. Moreover, ethical leadership was effective in influencing employees’ perceptions of job demands and resources in public sector organizations. The results are consistent with theoretical predictions that PSM is a motivational construct influenced by leadership and job resources, which in turn affects employee outcomes. The results also indicated that job resources (i.e., perceived organizational support) played a more significant role than job demands (i.e., red tape) in determining the effects of ethical leadership on employee outcomes.

Public sector organizations (PSOs) are subject to turbulence and constant change. A PSO’s ability to lead a coherent response to this rapidly changing environment is crucial to ensuring the continuity of public service delivery. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for dynamic leadership strategies to address turbulent events and promote resilience in PSOs. This study utilized focus groups and interview data from one large Australian PSO to examine leadership practices that were implemented to respond to a series of turbulent events. Specifically, the study adapted six robust governance strategies (i.e., scalability, prototyping, modularization, bounded autonomy, bricolage, and strategic polyvalence) to explore their pragmatic application in the context of the case PSO in responding to two turbulent events (i.e., relocation and COVID-19 pandemic). Findings show that while deploying all the strategies is beneficial, the power of polyvalent knowledge together with dynamic leadership and governance structures within PSOs is one way that PSOs can continue to respond to ever increasing environmental uncertainty and resource constraints. Practical implications are discussed.

Post-communist states have economic, geopolitical and cultural importance; however, they remain largely under-explored in public management literature. This study applies self-determination theory (SDT) to understand how work context affects perceived autonomy and intrinsic motivation in the public sector of post-communist states, whose administrative context is distinct from that of their counterparts from other administrative traditions. Using the data of 5,662 individuals from the International Social Survey Program we find that public sector employees in post-communist states demonstrate a lower level of autonomy, which in turn, decreases their intrinsic motivation. Our findings provide support to important SDT insights and have implications for public managers.

This study investigates the strategies local governments can employ to stimulate the growth of the local social economy sector—a sector associated with improving residents’ subjective well-being. Acknowledging the under-explored but potentially pivotal role of local government as a catalyst, our research uses an institutionalist lens—focusing on institutional work, support, and public-sector entrepreneurship—to examine how local governments can encourage the establishment of social economy organizations. We adopt a Partial Least Squares Model-Structural Equation Modeling approach to analyze data from 69 South Korean urban metropolitan local governments between 2018 and 2020. Our findings reveal a significant positive relationship between the regulatory, administrative, and intermediary support mechanisms implemented by local governments and the scale of the local social economy. By integrating public-sector entrepreneurship with institutional perspectives, our findings enrich existing literature and provide insight into the strategic initiatives local governments can adopt to foster social entrepreneurship.

Innovating public services contributes to enhancing citizen satisfaction and trust in public organizations. The aim of our research is to unravel how and when public sector employees’ perceptions of normative public values shape their service innovative behavior. The data were gathered from 572 employees and 68 managers from local-level governments in an Asia-Pacific setting. The positive link was observed between employee perceptions of normative public values and their service innovative behavior. Felt responsibility for change mediated that relationship. Responsible leadership was found to interact with employee perceptions of normative public values to further promote service innovative behavior.

Ensuring financial sustainability is crucial for the long-term success of any organization, as it determines whether it can continue to operate and achieve its mission. While previous studies explored how organizational resources and capabilities affect financial performance, there is limited research on how social and environmental factors impact financial sustainability. This study employs the social resource-based view (SRBV) framework to investigate whether healthcare service providers situated in low-income and minority communities with higher health risks are more financially unsustainable. Our findings reveal that hospitals’ community outreach is a crucial capability for financial sustainability, supporting the assumptions of the social resource-based view. However, the positive effects of community outreach do not hold for hospitals located within minority communities.

The need for agile and adaptable health systems to cope with disasters such as the COVID-19 pandemic is well established. Developing countries’ health systems are a mix of market, hierarchy, and collaborative arrangements. Collaborative arrangements are considered superior in responding to a crisis, but a comparative assessment of the three modes in the face of a crisis needs to be improved. Further, very little is known about the adaptation of collaborative arrangements that existed before the crisis, as extant research has primarily examined arrangements that emerged in the wake of the crisis. We assess the response of three governance modes to the COVID-19 pandemic in India. A mixed-method approach has been adopted: structured interviews with the domain experts, secondary data, and Twitter analytics framework. Both hierarchy and markets demonstrated adaptability, but market arrangements were mal-adapted to exploit the situation. Contrary to expectations, hierarchy arrangements responded with agility and delivered services substantially. Preexisting collaborative arrangements had limited adaptability due to non-convergence of expectations and reduced dependence, leading partners to choose alternative venues rather than engaging in bargaining and negotiation. The findings contribute to the limited literature on the comparative assessment of modes of governance and adaptability of preexisting collaborative arrangements.