Career In Public Service Research Articles

Evaluation of Job-Related Anxiety Symptoms Among Brazilian Social Security Medical Experts

OBJECTIVES:The function of a medical expert within the scope of the Brazilian social security system consists of medically evaluating the examinee to draw a conclusive opinion on the person's working ability capacity and to characterize the disability for social security and assistance purposes. Forensic decisions inevitably converge on two opposite outcomes: concession or refusal. Rejection is against the interests of the candidates, who can direct their disappointment and dissatisfaction at the professional, exposing the latter to potentially stressful situations. The present study aimed to determine whether the prevalence of stress and anxiety symptoms is higher among social security medical experts than among medical experts in other public service careers. The study was also intended to propose organizational changes aimed at the preservation and recovery of the mental health of medical experts.METHODS:The evaluation was conducted using a specific, previously validated job-related stress questionnaire and a series of questions about subjective perceptions of work performance, labor stressors and emotional status.RESULTS:We found an overwhelming and alarming prevalence of stress and dissatisfaction related to occupational aspects among social security experts, often culminating in emotional exhaustion, a characteristic feature of burnout syndrome.CONCLUSION:There is a high prevalence of job-related stress among social security doctors in Brazil, warranting implementation of specific measures to ensure the adequate provision of social security services to the population, thus avoiding social injustice and financial damage.

Street-level Bureaucracy and Social Policy in Brazil.

This paper describes the Brazilian central government bureaucracy and people with disabilities' access to the Continuous Cash Benefit (BPC). This access depends on the Ministry of Social Security bureaucracy's evaluation of the condition of vulnerability. We performed a literature review, analysis of secondary data from time series and cross-sectional data to describe street-level federal bureaucracy. Legal documents and indicators describe the expert evaluation regimen of the Ministry of Social Security (MPS). This paper shows the uneven growth of the number of career public servants of the central government in the last two decades. The Brazilian central government has adopted the international concept of person with disabilities in the evaluation of BPC applicants. Despite this decision, it is shown that the Brazilian central government expanded selectively the career bureaucracy to work in the social area. It was found that the result of the evaluation process was quite strict, favoring applicants in conditions of extreme biomedical vulnerability. Despite adopting the social model, BPC eligibility is tied to medical diagnosis.

Building horizontal coordination in Sri Lanka

SummaryHorizontal coordination is a focal topic in contemporary public management. However, greater attention has been given to developed states while developing countries struggle to improve the quality of public service delivery amidst skills shortages and siloed organisations. This article presents a foreign‐funded training programme designed to promote horizontal coordination at the most local level of government in a developing country, Sri Lanka, and analyses the factors that contributed to its success. Using data collected through participant surveys, focus groups, and programme‐related projects, the article shows how the formation of a “locally directed, donor‐supported” programme aligned with national development priorities that enabled the country‐level partner institution to deliver a programme that improved horizontal coordination and enhanced delivery of public services. Although findings confirm the importance of contextualising programme design, content, and delivery for achieving aid effectiveness, a novel conclusion was that the participation of elected officials alongside career public servants greatly contributed to the programme's success by creating new levels of trust and facilitating more productive working relationships between key stakeholders, culminating in improved outcomes for local communities. This suggests that elected officials can play a key role in building horizontal coordination in developing nations.

Suited to Serve: The Antecedents and Perceptions of Public Service Motivation in National Service

ABSTRACT:While research suggests that public service motivation may be a dynamic trait in individuals, particularly early in their careers, other recent research has found that PSM may be relatively stable upon entry into the workforce (Vogel and Kroll 2016). To identify more precisely the decision point among individuals considering a public service career, the present study uses the antecedents of public service motivation framework (Perry 1997) to predict participation in AmeriCorps, a voluntary national service program in the United States. Findings reveal that antecedent conditions of PSM, including the prevalence of seeing family members and mentors help others as well as participation in student government, predict whether an individual will join an AmeriCorps programs. Many of these self-reported motivations support the argument that people attracted to public service hold strong other-regarding values. These findings suggest that human resources managers would be wise to consider these antecedent conditions to public service motivation when identifying pools of talent for recruiting and selecting prospective employees.

Building employability through graduate development programmes

PurposeGraduate development programmes are a well-established strategy for recruiting graduates into the sector at the start of a lifetime public service career. There are indications, however, that public sector careers are becoming less secure and less long term in keeping with overall career trends across all sectors, a trend that has seen the emergence of employment contracts based on employability rather than job security. The purpose of this paper is to explore a graduate development programme offered by a state-based Australian public sector organisation to identify the extent to which it reflects and supports the shift to an employability-based contract from the perspective of programme participants.Design/methodology/approachSemi-structured interviews were conducted with 23 participants from three intakes of a public sector graduate development programme. Data were analysed through identification of first- and second-order themes as well as cross-case comparison.FindingsFindings indicate that the one-year development programme partially supports an employability-based contract. The organisation could not promise ongoing employment and job security but did assist participants to develop skills and competencies for the future through its formal training and development programme. Work unit support for employability was, however, much more variable and depended to a large extent on line managers.Research limitations/implicationsThe study was conducted in a single organisation and only included current and past programme participants who were still employed in the public sector.Practical implicationsThe success of the programme was largely dependent on job placement and level of line manager support. Addressing these areas through better programme design and management can support the development of future leaders through opportunities for enhanced employability.Originality/valueThe study extends current research on employability by exploring how a public sector organisation provides support for graduates in a developmental programme from a participant perspective.

Assignments for Studying Frontline Bureaucracy

This article outlines a set of assignments in an undergraduate class on public policy and public administration. The assignments are designed to pique student interest in public administration, consider what it means to implement public policy at the street level, and to teach students to critically assess the purpose of public administration and the meaning of public interest. Students achieve these objectives by completing several papers throughout the course. Most students have never considered careers in public service. In these assignments, students first broadly consider public administration and then focus on a specific public service occupation. Students research a specific job; articulate its duties, compensation, and required qualifications; describe what an average day looks like; and outline the job’s challenges. Finally, students address the abstract concept of how the profession they researched contributes to the public interest.

“The Day That Changed My Life, Again”: The Testimonio of a Latino DACAmented Teacher

This article, based on the testimonio of a Latino DACAmented teacher, underscores the impacts and benefits of immigration policies for individuals and their communities. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) has benefitted about 750,000 people; most have used the benefits to pursue higher education and to enter public service careers, including teaching and nursing. Mr. Juarez’s testimonio walks us through his educational trajectory and current role as an educator. This testimonio contributes to current debates and struggles demanding the new U.S. presidential administration to maintain DACA. As researchers, we urge students, educators, policymakers, and the incoming administration to listen to the testimonios of DACA beneficiaries prior to making hasty decisions that will have dire consequences for individuals, families, and the nation, as a whole.

Thomas Jefferson’s Role in Transforming Higher Education Curriculum in the United States

For decades, public administrative scholars and historians have maintained that while Thomas Jefferson had an extraordinary substantive mind, he was not a formative figure within the intellectual, institutional, and constitutional development of public administration theory and practice. Thoroughly investigating Jefferson’s early political career does reveal that he was not interested in the daily operations of government, but as time progressed his lengthy career in public service began to transform his opinions on the relationship between good government and good administration and how sound administrative practice complemented many of the republican values espoused in The Federalist. Upon a careful examination of Jefferson’s retirement years, when he dedicated the remainder of his life to establishing the University of Virginia, the administrative genius of his mind takes center stage. In this role, Jefferson not only created Virginia’s first public institution for higher education but also dramatically reformed liberal arts curriculum standards for colleges and universities across the nation. Twenty-first century public administration scholars and practitioners should welcome this exceptional contribution to the intellectual history of American public administration with openness and with a renewed commitment to the institutional legitimacy of our field.

Sense of Community, Sense of Community Responsibility, and Public Service Motivation as Predictors of Employee Well-Being and Engagement in Public Service Organizations

Public management scholars have suggested that employee motivation can be accentuated by organizational cultures and contexts. One of the most researched topics in this regard is the concept of public service motivation (PSM). Research shows that PSM works to direct applicants toward public service careers and, once hired, can be linked to motivated activity within public-sector organizations. Similarly, like PSM, a sense of community (SOC) and a sense of community responsibility (SOC-R) have also been posited to act as powerful predictors of employee well-being and engagement. The present study demonstrates that SOC-R is a more powerful predictor of employee engagement compared with PSM and SOC. Concurrently, SOC more strongly predicts employee well-being compared with PSM and SOC-R. The findings bring additional light and clarification to the predictive power of PSM on employee perceptions and behavior, and they demonstrate that community experiences have utility in public service settings.

A Voyage Around the Harvard School

A Voyage Around the Harvard School Stephen J. Harrison When I arrived at Oxford as an undergraduate to study classics in 1978, it was only a few years after the Harvard School had been so baptized by Ralph Johnson in Darkness Visible (1976). I had the great fortune to [End Page 76] study at Balliol College, where the late Oliver Lyne (then in his mid-thirties) taught us the Aeneid, stressing in his rich and engaged tutorials the importance of verbal style, intertextuality, and potential subversive perspectives, the themes of his later Further Voices in Vergil's Aeneid (1987) and Words and The Poet (1989). The Oxford reading lists of the time were relatively conservative; Brooks Otis's expansive Virgil: A Study in Civilised Poetry (1964) and W. A. Camps's sober An Introduction to Virgil's Aeneid (1969) were our major resources, along with the commentaries of R. G. Austin and R. D. Williams and the English translation of Viktor Pöschl's book, The Art of Vergil (1962). More adventurous souls might read Darkness Visible itself or Michael Putnam's The Poetry of the Aeneid, or the volume Virgil: A Collection of Critical Essays edited by Steele Commager (1966). It was in the pages of the last that I came across the classic articles of the Harvard School (Clausen 1964, Parry 1963, and Brooks 1953). These, alongside Michael Putnam's book, seemed to have something of a common agenda: pessimistic interpretations that stressed the sufferings of war and political duty for the victor as well as the victim, through close and nuanced reading of the relevant passages. I was much impressed, and indeed wrote at the beginning of my text of the Aeneid a quotation from Clausen, the famous description of the poem as "a long Pyrrhic victory of the human spirit" (146). Between 1982 and 1986 I worked on a doctoral thesis at Oxford, a commentary on the tenth book of the Aeneid (published by OUP in 1991). I was supervised by Robin Nisbet, who under the influence of Syme's hard-edged political realism had little time for the subversive voices detected by some in the Aeneid; my introduction to the commentary shows that he had pushed me a little in his direction, and there are statements there about the politics of the Aeneid with which I might now disagree. After my appointment at Corpus Christi College in 1987, I began collecting the reprinted papers by other scholars that became Oxford Readings in Vergil's Aeneid (1990). This collection had two rationales: it put together the articles that I had found most useful in my doctoral research on and early teaching of the Aeneid, and it did not reproduce any of the pieces reprinted in Commager's 1966 anthology, thus coming across to some as anti-Harvard in its selection, which was certainly not the intention. I tried to balance this in the introduction, which attempted to give an outline of scholarship on the Aeneid in the twentieth century (up to 1988). There I suggested that for an outside observer it is difficult [End Page 77] to separate the "Harvard" interpretation from "the characteristic concerns of U.S. (and other) intellectuals in these years," and especially "America's own imperialism" (5), and argued that such views related to the questioning of all institutions in the 1960s; Vietnam was certainly in my mind. Since then I have learnt that Wendell Clausen's views were generated in the late 1940s without real political reference (see Clausen 1995); that Michael Putnam's interpretation was wholly unconnected with American foreign policy;1 and that all the major Harvard School pieces were conceived if not published before the United States' main engagement in the Vietnam War2 (though the Cold War and the Korean War might have raised similar reflections in the 1940s and 1950s). The other two Harvard authors (Brooks and Parry) were perhaps more politicized. Brooks had served in the Army Air Forces during World War II before his period teaching at Harvard in 1946–51, and in his later career in public service went on to be Assistant Secretary of the Army during the Vietnam War (1965–69...

“Uphill All the Way”: Grace Abbott and Women’s Work in Building the Welfare State

AbstractThis essay reviews the memoir-biography of pioneering social worker and public servant Grace Abbott, A Sister’s Memories: The Life and Work of Grace Abbott from the Writings of Her Sister, Edith Abbott, edited by John Sorensen. It discusses what Abbott’s career in public service reveals about women’s historic role in early social work from the Progressive Era through the New Deal, comments on parallels to contemporary political issues such as immigration policies and income disparities, and reflects on women’s distinctive place in national politics during a history-making presidential election campaign.

Millennials and Public Service Motivation: Findings from A Survey of Master's Degree Students

This paper used a sample of 194 students at public service graduate schools in the United States to compare Millennial students with Generation X students on public service motivation and its antecedents, prosocial behaviors, perceptions of the three sectors, and career plans. It found few differences between Millennial and Generation X students. Millennials reported higher levels of parental education and more volunteer work in college, but were less involved in religion and politics than older students. There were few differences in the generations’ opinions of the non-profit and public sectors. While scholars have found differences between Millennials and older generations in the general population, this survey shows that there are few differences between Generation X and Millennial students who choose to pursue a Master's degree in a public service career.

Millennials and Public Service: An Exploratory Analysis of Graduate Student Career Motivations and Expectations

Canada's public service workforce is aging, and all levels of government will experience a large number of retirements in the coming years. In an increasingly competitive labour market, governments face challenges in attracting and retaining new recruits, particularly among the “Millennial generation,” who are entering the workforce, and whose outlook on work appears to differ significantly from previous generations. What motivates Millennials to pursue a public service career? What are their expectations concerning the benefits of a career in the public sector? This study explores these questions through a qualitative analysis of written statements of Canadian Master's students seeking a career in the public service. The findings demonstrate that Millennials are motivated both by perceived intrinsic benefits, such as the opportunity to make a difference in society, as well as extrinsic rewards, such as opportunities for career advancement. In addition, many identify a public service career as a “calling”—a sense of obligation to contribute to the public interest— and the analysis reveals various events and experiences that inspire this “call to serve.” Implications for public sector recruitment and retention of Millennials are presented.

Raising the next generation of public servants? Parental influence on volunteering behavior and public service career aspirations

Purpose – While there is a large body of literature examining the effect public service motivation (PSM) has on both an individual’s career and volunteering decisions, the effects of social learning and parental influences on both volunteerism and selection into public service are relatively unexplored. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between parental volunteering and career choice, PSM, and the volunteering behaviors and career choices of their adult children. Design/methodology/approach – The authors examine data collected from first-year undergraduate students at a large, public university in the southeastern USA to examine, the impact of parents in the development of public service behaviors like volunteering and career choice. Findings – The authors find that parental influence matters in shaping voluntary behavior and career aspirations, but that this social learning is distinct by gender. Originality/value – The authors are unaware of work that directly focusses on parents’ volunteering and career choices, after controlling for PSM, on both the volunteering and public service career decisions of their children.

Public service motivation, prosocial behaviours, and career ambitions

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to examine the behavioural consequences of public service motivation (PSM) and how motivation relates to an individual’s call to serve both inside and outside of the workplace. More specifically, this study examines whether and how PSM relates to prosocial behaviours – volunteering and giving – and career ambitions to work in the government or non-profit sector among public affair graduate students.Design/methodology/approach– Logistic regression is used to examine the PSM link using a composite of the 40-item scale, each of the six dimensions – commitment to the public interest, civic duty, social justice, attraction to policymaking, compassion, and self-sacrifice – and the five-item scale from the Merit Principles Survey. The analyses draw upon data from a unique online survey of 122 graduate students in Master of Public Administration and Master of Public Policy programmes.Findings– The results indicate that people with higher levels of PSM are more likely to want to work in public service and volunteer. However, mixed results were found for the relationship between PSM and giving charitable donations and career ambitions to work in government and no link was found for career ambitions to work in the non-profit sector.Originality/value– This paper answers calls to examine the dimensions of PSM and examines Perry’s (1996) original conception. The results provide practical implications for human resource managers as well as non-profit and public managers in recruiting and retaining employees and volunteers.

The role of T.A. Smiddy in Fianna Fáil economic policy-making 1932–45

Professor Timothy Aloysius (T.A.) Smiddy was economic advisor to Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Eamon de Valera between 1932 and 1945. Notwithstanding a distinguished public service career, Smiddy’s role as the first independent economic advisor to an Irish political leader post-1922 has escaped examination in the existing literature. This research identifies that Smiddy had a real and prolonged influence on the banking and monetary policies pursued by de Valera during the 1932–45 period. Ultimately, however, the often progressive nature of his proposals was circumscribed by de Valera’s reluctance to supersede the more traditional views of the Department of Finance and the Currency Commission. This paper also identifies that de Valera took a keener interest in economic matters than has been generally assumed. However, such an interest did not result in a coherent, or consistent, Fianna Fáil banking and currency policy in the 1930s and early 1940s.

De l’utilité des lettres dans la carrière des armes. Guerre et culture écrite en France au xv e siècle

15th-century France provides a fruitful opportunity for reflecting upon the classic question of the coexistence of war and literature by observing the changing standards within the nobility to define, praise, disseminate and pursue a new model for social success that combined military and literary competencies. Suggested by a moral literature that fairly consistently and critically called upon the instructions to war lords, this phenomenon is first studied from speeches made to soldiers and from the portrait of the good captain presented in military treatises, informed by experience and a knowledge of history whose popularity is confirmed by a study of the libraries of the great officers. We then turn our attention to the literature penned by the nobility which reveals the aristocracy’s own aspirations and how writing – about war, about service to the prince, and in defense of public service careers – then became a structural element of the identity of the warrior-noble.

Professionalization and Public Service Career in Mexico—Toward a Policy of Urgent State

Professionalization and Public Service Career in Mexico—Toward a Policy of Urgent State

The Influencing Factors on the Establishment of Transition Committees of Local Governments Heads-Elect

The paper examined the factors that influenced on the decision to establish transition committees of newly elected local governments heads before they officially took offices. In the meantime the committees have been established as the occasion demands without legal grounds. The subjects of analysis were the local governments heads who were elected from the 5th and 6th local elections in 2010 and 2014 respectively. The paper initially identified whether they organized the committees or not and then analyzed political and personal factors so that which factors affected the establishment. The analysis revealed that the transition committees were more frequently established when there was regime change in the local government or when the electees belonged to the opposition party. Second, the electees who haven’t had public service careers, which is a personal factor, set up the committees more often. In conclusion the personal factors of political membership and public service career have affected the establishment of the transition committees.

A Comparative Analysis of Job Motivation and Career Preference of Asian Undergraduate Students

This article examines how various job motivators and perception toward public service affect university students’ tendencies to choose public sector jobs in a comparative context. We address this question using survey data collected from undergraduate students in China, Singapore, and Korea. The findings indicate that a positive association exists between motivation to benefit society and public sector job preference among Singaporean and Korean students, although such a relationship does not exist among Chinese students. Job security and salary are commonly important motivators for students who prefer either public or private sector jobs. Finally, the divergent characteristics of students’ career goals serve to emphasize the importance of comparative studies in identifying context-specific and context-general factors that motivate students toward public service careers.