Agency Leader Research Articles

The Influence of Work Motivation, Competence and Compensation on the Performance of Insurance Agency Leaders Through Job Satisfaction at PT. Prudential Life Assurance General Agency WOW Aini Medan

The success of the performance of the agency leader of the insurance agent will be followed by recognition or appreciation from the company in the form of bonuses and incentives provided so that this can increase the agency leader's ability to provide even better work performance and get a promotion in a career for the achievement of the agency leader's performance in the insurance company. The assessment system using grades or ranks makes employees have to meet the specified criteria, in other words, if they get an assessment of numbers 3 to 5 in each year, the agency leader will get a career promotion or level increase but if they get an assessment of criteria 1 to 2 each year in a row, they will be given demotion sanctions while the 0 criteria is mostly the case for new agents working who do not have an assessment. Good work motivation, competence and compensation are indispensable in developing productive and sustainable performance both in communication and building partnerships between an agency leader and his immediate superior leader and between the agency leader and management. In this study the authors used an associative approach to determine the relationship of each variable and the tendency of the data used was quantitative methods. The data analysis techniques used in this research are descriptive analysis and path analysis. To test the feasibility of the model using analytical techniques in the Partial Least Square method. The results in this study obtained that the performance management effectiveness variable has a positive and significant effect on work motivation, competence and compensation. Work motivation has a positive and significant effect on agent performance. The effectiveness of performance management has a positive and significant effect on competence. Agent performance has a positive and significant effect on compensation. Agent performance has a positive and significant effect on career promotion. Performance management effectiveness has a positive and significant effect on career promotion through work motivation, competence and compensation Keywords: Agency leader performance, work motivation, competence and compensation, satisfaction and career advancement

U.S. agency growth aspirations and the effect of ideological extremism

AbstractDoes ideological extremism curb a public agency's desire to grow? This article theorizes that changes in the political environment affect a public agency leader's growth aspirations. Specifically, increased ideological extremism across an agency's elected principals leads an agency leader to be more cautious and less growth‐minded. The assessments of over 10,000 American state agency leaders are studied across 11 points in time from 1964 to 2018 and matched to data capturing the leader's ideological environment. Agency leaders, who face heightened extremism from elected state officials, are found to report a reduced interest in future growth. The results are strongest during periods of divided government, which may occur because the signal sent from greater extremism is more useful to agency leaders during these periods. When aggregated across thousands of agencies, the article's findings imply a driver of slower growth in the future size and scope of government.

Self-Efficacy and Financial Literacy Influencing Employee Performance of West Sumatera Merchant Marine Polytechnic

Employee performance is influenced by self-efficacy and financial literacy. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of self-efficacy on employee performance, the effect of financial literacy on employee performance, and the effect of self-efficacy and financial literacy on employee performance at the West Sumatera Merchant Marine Polytechnic. This research is quantitative research with ex post facto methods. The population of this study was all employees at West Sumatera Merchant Marine Polytechnic. The research sample was selected by using a purposive sampling technique which only selected the civil servants totaling 73 people. The research instrument is a questionnaire. The data collection technique in this study was to distribute the questionnaire directly to the sample. The data analysis technique used multiple linear regression analysis with the help of SPSS statistics 25. The results showed that there is a positive effect of self-efficacy on employee performance, a positive effect of financial literacy on employee performance, and the effect of self-efficacy and financial literacy simultaneously on the employee performance of the West Sumatera Merchant Marine Polytechnic. So it is recommended that every employee and agency leader pay attention to self-efficacy and financial literacy factors to realize optimal employee performance.

Editorial introductions.

Current Opinion in Endocrinology and Diabetes was launched in 1994, with Obesity added to the title in 2007. It is one of a successful series of review journals whose unique format is designed to provide a systematic and critical assessment of the literature as presented in the many primary journals. The fields of endocrinology and diabetes are divided into 12 sections that are reviewed once a year. Each section is assigned a Section Editor, a leading authority in the area, who identifies the most important topics at that time. Here we are pleased to introduce the Journal's Section Editors for this issue. SECTION EDITORS Shruthi MahalingaiahShruthi MahalingaiahShruthi Mahalingaiah is an assistant professor of environmental, reproductive, and women's health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She serves clinically as a physician at the Massachusetts General Hospital in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, where she specializes in ovulation disorders, reproductive endocrinology, and infertility. Shruthi has a BA from Middlebury College. She attended Harvard Medical School and an OB/GYN residency and fellowship in reproductive endocrinology and infertility at Mass General Brigham. Her research seeks to understand the links between environmental and modifiable risk factors on human reproduction and gynecological diseases. Shruthi is the creator of the Ovulation and Menstruation Health (OM) Study and one of the principal investigators of the Apple Women's Health Study. Dominic SagoeDominic SagoeDominic Sagoe is a Professor of Psychology at the Department of Psychosocial Science, Faculty of Psychology, University of Bergen, Norway. He is a member of the World Anti-Doping Agency's Doping Prevalence Expert Group, and founder and leader of the Human Enhancement and Body Image Lab (HEBI Lab) at the University of Bergen. Dominic obtained a PhD in Psychology from the University of Bergen in 2015 with the thesis: “Nonmedical anabolic-androgenic steroid use: Prevalence, attitudes, and social perception”. His research specialization is epidemiological and psychosocial aspects of human enhancement drug (HED) use, particularly androgens, and body image. He has published numerous peer-reviewed articles in this specialty and other addictions, and has collaborated with many academics, researchers, policymakers, and health professionals around the world.

Editorial introductions.

Current Opinion in Endocrinology and Diabetes was launched in 1994, with Obesity added to the title in 2007. It is one of a successful series of review journals whose unique format is designed to provide a systematic and critical assessment of the literature as presented in the many primary journals. The fields of endocrinology and diabetes are divided into 12 sections that are reviewed once a year. Each section is assigned a Section Editor, a leading authority in the area, who identifies the most important topics at that time. Here we are pleased to introduce the Journal's Section Editors for this issue. SECTION EDITORS Shruthi MahalingaiahShruthi MahalingaiahShruthi Mahalingaiah, MD, MS is an assistant professor of environmental, reproductive, and women's health in the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public health, USA. She serves clinically as a physician specializing in ovulation disorders, reproductive endocrinology and infertility at the Massachusetts General Hospital in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. As a physician scientist, her major focus on polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS). She serves as the Director for Clinical Research for the Division of REI and seeks to create harmonized datasets for trainees, faculty and staff to explore research questions in OB/GYN. Her clinical and epidemiological research also focuses on menstrual cycle health and identifying environmental exposures associated with the development of PCOS and metabolic sequelae in order to develop risk reduction strategies through exposure modification and behavioral change. She has developed pictorial tools for population based self-assessment of androgen excess, with inclusion of broad symptoms such as scalp hair loss as well as hirsutism and cystic acne. Her research team is located at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health where she is an assistant professor of Environmental, Reproductive, and Women's Health in the Department of Environmental Health and is funded through research grants from March of Dimes, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Apple, and National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Dominic SagoeDominic SagoeDominic Sagoe is a Professor of Psychology at the Department of Psychosocial Science, Faculty of Psychology, University of Bergen, Norway. He is a member of the World Anti-Doping Agency's Doping Prevalence Expert Group, and founder and leader of the Human Enhancement and Body Image Lab (HEBI Lab) at the University of Bergen. Dominic obtained a PhD in Psychology from the University of Bergen in 2015 with the thesis: “Nonmedical anabolic-androgenic steroid use: Prevalence, attitudes, and social perception”. His research specialization is epidemiological and psychosocial aspects of human enhancement drug (HED) use, particularly androgens, and body image. He has published numerous peer-reviewed articles in this specialty and other addictions, and has collaborated with many academics, researchers, policymakers, and health professionals around the world.

Policy-Specific Expertise and the Importance of Organizational Leadership in Shared Administrative Governance: Evidence from US Federal Cooperative Agreements

Abstract This study analyzes US federal cooperative agreements (CAs) that reflect federal agencies’ willingness to invest in shared administrative governance with third-party organizations. A logic anchored in organizational economics predicts that US federal agency investments to collaborate with other non-federal organizations is positively related to an agency head’s policy-specific expertise, and that this relationship will take on greater importance when collaborating with nonprofits and private firms. These propositions are tested analyzing a novel database of 241,730 US federal CA decisions awarded by 31 federal agencies between 1988 and 2008. The statistical findings reveal support for this logic, especially for larger, more complex CAs with non-governmental organizations. The evidence also reveals that federal agencies’ CA award decisions generally have little, if any, discernible statistical association; other agency level factors such as an agency leader’s managerial skills, agency politicization, agency staff professionalism, and the loyalty of agency heads to appointing presidents (JEL H11, H57, H83, L33, & M59).

The Role of Regulatory Agencies in Agenda-Setting Processes: Insights from the Italian Response to the COVID-19 Infodemic.

International organizations such as the WHO have worked to raise awareness of the massive infodemic that accompanied the COVID‐19 outbreak and made it hard for people to find trustworthy sources of information and reliable guidance for their decisions. Our contribution focuses on the Italian case, where the Communications Regulatory Authority (AGCOM) was able to act as first mover in its field so as to strategically frame the problem of disinformation in the absence of a pre‐existing policy intervention. An emerging body of research shows that the activity of formally independent regulators is not necessarily limited to the implementation of delegated regulatory competencies. We discuss the implications of the activity of independent regulators for the fight against disinformation during the COVID‐19 pandemic. We find that as a political actor in its own right, the Italian media regulator claimed control over sectoral expertise in order to shape the crucial first steps of the response to the infodemic.

Representation, reputation and expectations towards bureaucracy: experimental findings from a favela in Brazil

ABSTRACT Symbolic representation and bureaucratic reputation both refer to perceptions of government agencies, but few studies have examined how these concepts interact. We employed a survey experiment in a Brazilian favela, a unique audience of vulnerable citizens defined by the intersectionality race, class, and spatial segregation, to probe how citizens perceive agencies with differing reputations (police versus public schools) when the agency leader is more or less representative of the favelados. We find representation enhances procedural justice expectations of the less reputable local police. Our findings highlight the relevance of representation when detrimental citizen-state encounters produce negative reputations for vulnerable citizens.

Learning from Negative Space: Categorizing Success in Arts Policy Entrepreneurship

From its inception in 1965, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has counted on its agency leaders to operate as policy entrepreneurs – working to influence the federal public policy process and advocating for increased public arts funding. Policy entrepreneurship research has largely centered on success stories (Mintrom & Luetjens, 2017), but this does not provide a full picture of policy entrepreneurship. Kingdon (2003) argues that when policy entrepreneurship fails, so does their policy initiatives, but there has not been an investigation into policy entrepreneurship that fully defines and studies policy entrepreneurship failure in context. This investigation identifies three distinct areas where policy entrepreneurs can achieve success: agency leader, advocacy coalition manager, oppositional respondent. Through the lens of policy entrepreneurship with a focus specifically on rhetoric, this study assesses John Frohnmayer, NEA Chairman from 1989 to 1992, as a case of policy entrepreneurship failure. In looking at a case of unsuccessful policy entrepreneurship, this study furthers policy entrepreneurship theory and provide arts and cultural policy scholars with a more nuanced understanding of Frohnmayer’s time as Chairman of the NEA.

SAMHSA Is Taking ‘New Directions,’ Says Agency Leader

SAMHSA Is Taking ‘New Directions,’ Says Agency Leader

Agency Leaders' Assessments of Feasibility and Desirability of Implementation of Evidence-Based Practices in Youth-Serving Organizations Using the Stages of Implementation Completion.

Background: This study examined influences on the decisions of administrators of youth-serving organizations to initiate and proceed with implementation of an evidence-based practice (EBP).Methods: Semi-structured interviews, developed using the Stages of Implementation Completion (SIC) as a framework, were conducted with 19 agency chief executive officers and program directors of 15 organizations serving children and adolescents.Results: Agency leaders' self-assessments of implementation feasibility and desirability prior to implementation (Pre-implementation) were influenced by intervention affordability, feasibility, requirements, validity, reliability, relevance, cost savings, positive outcomes, and adequacy of information; availability of funding, support from sources external to the agency, and adequacy of technical assistance; and staff availability and attitudes toward innovation in general and EBPs in particular, organizational capacity, fit between the EBP and agency mission and capacity, prior experience with implementation, experience with seeking evidence, and developing consensus. Assessments during the Implementation phase included intervention flexibility and requirements; availability of funding, adequacy of training and technical assistance, and getting sufficient and appropriate referrals; and staffing and implementing with fidelity. Assessments during the Sustainment phase included intervention costs and benefits; availability of funding, support from sources outside of the agency, and need for the EBP; and the fit between the EBP and the agency mission.Discussion: The results point to opportunities for using agency leader models to develop strategies to facilitate implementation of evidence-based and innovative practices for children and adolescents. The SIC provides a standardized framework for guiding agency leader self-assessments of implementation.

Public Demands and Technological Response: Austin Tobin, Leo Beranek and the Advent of Jet Travel

As the Luddite protests in the 19th Century and resistance in the 20th Century to building nuclear power plants illustrate, technological change often generates powerful public opposition. In some instances, however, scientific strategies, joined with sustained pressure from well-placed supporters, can be used to ameliorate the worst effects of technological change - as the case described below illustrates. When Pan Am tried to introduce jet planes for travel in the US and across the Atlantic, it generated a battle that lasted more than two years. The public agency that operated all three major airports in the New York region - the Port Authority - had been designed to encourage its officials to emphasize scientifically based analysis in setting policy; and the agency's leader, Austin Tobin, had developed a strong reputation for political independence and integrity. He also had previous encounters with the airlines, described below, leading him to be suspicious of their assertion that jet planes were not unduly noisy. Therefore, to test jet noise, he recruited the nation's premier acoustical engineer, Leo Beranek, and when Beranek concluded that jets were perceived to be much louder than expected, the aircraft industry fought back, challenging the findings, appealing to federal officials, and alleging that Tobin might be corrupt. After two years of conflict, the airplane industry capitulated, and in a few years the standards developed for the New York airports were embraced by airport managers across the United States and Europe. This paper summarises the battle that ensued between the Port Authority and the airlines, leading to the development of noise limits for operations at the New York airports during the early days of jet travel.

Adoption of innovative and evidence-based practices for children and adolescents in state-supported mental health clinics: a qualitative study

BackgroundThis study examined how mental health clinic administrators decided whether or not to adopt evidence-based and other innovative practices by exploring their views of implementation barriers and facilitators and operation of these views in assessment of implementation costs and benefits.MethodsSemi-structured interviews were conducted with 75 agency chief executive officers and program directors of 34 New York State-licensed mental health clinics serving children and adolescents.ResultsThree interconnected themes relating to barriers and facilitators were identified, namely costs and benefits associated with adoption, capacity for adoption, and acceptability of new practices. The highest percentage of participants (86.7%) mentioned costs as a barrier, followed by limited capacity (55.9%) and lack of acceptability (52.9%). The highest percentage (82.3%) of participants identified available capacity as a facilitator, followed by acceptability (41.2%) and benefits or limited costs (24.0%). Assessment of costs and benefits exhibited several principles of behavioural economics, including loss aversion, temporal discounting use of heuristics, sensitivity to monetary incentives, decision fatigue, framing, and environmental influences.ConclusionsThe results point to opportunities for using agency leader models to develop strategies to facilitate implementation of evidence-based and innovative practices for children and adolescents.

European Agency Leader Urges Long‐Term Environmental Policy

A 23 October agreement by European Union (EU) leaders to reduce domestic greenhouse gas emissions is a good example of developing and implementing a needed long‐term, sustainable environmental policy agenda for Europe. So says Hans Bruyninckx, executive director of the European Environment Agency (EEA), an EU agency.

One member, two leaders: Extending leader–member exchange theory to a dual leadership context.

In this study, we develop and test a model that extends leader-member exchange (LMX) theory to a dual leadership context. Drawing upon relative deprivation theory, we assert that when employees work for 2 leaders, each relationship exists within the context of the other relationship. Thus, the level of alignment or misalignment between the 2 relationships has implications for employees' job satisfaction and voluntary turnover. Employing polynomial regression on time-lagged data gathered from 159 information technology consultants nested in 26 client projects, we found that employee outcomes are affected by the quality of the relationship with both agency and client leaders, such that the degree of alignment between the 2 LMXs explained variance in outcomes beyond that explained by both LMXs. Results also revealed that a lack of alignment in the 2 LMXs led to asymmetric effects on outcomes, such that the relationship with agency leader mattered more than the relationship with one's client leader. Finally, frequency of communication with the agency leader determined the degree to which agency LMX affected job satisfaction in the low client LMX condition.

Promising Practices for School-located Vaccination Clinics—Part I: Preparation

A school-located mass vaccination clinic approach can enable rapid vaccination of a large number of students while minimizing disruption of their school activities and potentially reducing missed work hours by parents. During 3 consecutive influenza seasons beginning in 2005, the Knox County Health Department conducted school-located mass vaccination clinics using live attenuated influenza vaccine. Clinics were held each year throughout the county over 4 weeks in more than 100 public and private schools for more than 65, 000 students in Grades K to 12. Overall, the proportion of all students vaccinated at school each year exceeded 40%. Our experience indicated that careful and thorough planning was essential to program success. Critical planning elements included (1) initial planning with extensive lead time to find the proper lead agency and project leader and to develop sound comprehensive vaccine clinic planning; (2) developing partnerships, especially with schools; (3) communicating successfully with parents, children, school administrators and teachers, medical providers, and the community at large; and (4) educating these groups successfully, using good timing, through local media, school events, direct mailings (including parents receiving information and consent packets), and partners. We review here the details of these key planning elements.

What happened to literacy? Historical and conceptual perspectives on literacy in UNESCO

For more than six decades, UNESCO has dedicated itself to be the international agency leader in literacy, even though other aspects of educational development have received greater attention and resources by the broader international community. Resources for UNESCO's literacy work have not increased, and its programmatic activities have been increasingly debated when seen in relationship to the scope of literacy challenges across the globe. Moving forward in a time of restricted budgets will require UNESCO to strengthen itself as a professional innovator and thought leader.

Where are all the victims?

Research Summary The passage of new laws that criminalize the trafficking of persons for labor and sexual services has raised public awareness about the problem of human trafficking. In response, police must understand the problem, identify human trafficking victims, and make arrests. The numbers of victims identified to date, however, has paled in comparison with official estimates, which leads some to question the existence of a human trafficking problem. Missing from this debate is information about how frequently police encounter human trafficking and how well prepared officers are to handle these cases. Analyzing survey responses from a national sample of police agencies in the United States, we found that less than 10% of police agencies identified human trafficking cases from 2000 to 2006. Larger agencies were more likely to identify cases of human trafficking but the agency leader perception about the problem in their local communities as well as taking steps to prepare officers to identify and respond were the most important factors to increasing human trafficking identification by police. Policy Implications This study provides much needed information about why U.S. officials have identified so few human trafficking victims. By understanding how often and under what conditions police find, investigate, and prosecute cases of human trafficking we will be in a better position to identify and overcome barriers to police responses to trafficking and understand the limitations of official statistics about human trafficking. Data from a national survey also provide a baseline measure of police identification of human trafficking against which we can gauge the progress of future anti‐trafficking efforts.

Mission Accomplished: Working With State Arts Agencies

A state arts agency leader shows how TAs can help them help everyone succeed.

Leader Behavior and Subordinate Attitudes As Predictors of Leader Effectiveness and Agency Inefficiency In Public Welfare Agencies.

Employee attitude and leader behavior data were collected and aggregated in public welfare agencies. Approximately six months later independent measures of agency inefficiency and leader effectiven...