Public Administration Literature Research Articles

Considering Equity in Public Process Improvement Trainings

Public agencies and actors must balance a variety of priorities, including equity and efficiency. A tension can arise between the potentially conflicting goals of maximizing performance and ensuring fair, just, and equitable processes, outputs, and outcomes. In much of the existing public administration literature, this trade-off is presumed to be values-based and the views and actions tied to the tension between equity and efficiency are perceived as inherently tied to value pluralism. This paper adds to the growing body of literature on the equity-efficiency trade-off with an examination of this trade-off within a procedural context. Through an analysis of a public efficiency training, the authors measure the degree to which equity is a focus in the training itself as well as the agency applications of the training. The findings indicate that equity is not a primary consideration of the training. Agency reports suggest an inconsistency in the equity focus when the training tools are applied to agency processes. These results highlight the need for a distinct and standardized equity focus in order to convey the primacy of both pillars of public governance.

Are Public Sector Employees More Honest? Field Evidence From Forty Countries

Are public sector workers more honest than their private sector counterparts? While conventional wisdom might suggest so, no direct evidence has been offered to address this question, as most public administration research has utilized indirect designs and measures. Furthermore, most studies on this topic have been conducted in a single country, thus limiting the ability to draw a generalizable conclusion. In this paper, we provide field evidence on the honesty of public and private sector workers, using data collected in 40 countries. Specifically, we analyze the data of a field experiment conducted by Cohn and colleagues (2019; N = 17,303), in order to compare the level of honesty of public and private employees across these countries. Overall, we find no significant difference between the honesty level of public and private sector workers; this is also the modal country level result. A comparative measure of corruption (Transparency International’s CPI) only partially accounts for cross-national variation in relative public sector honesty. The level of public sector honesty is mostly determined by social norms in each country. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for public administration literature.

Theoretical Advances in Our Understanding of Network Effectiveness

AbstractNetwork effectiveness is heavily theorized in the public management and administration literatures. In this article, I synthesize the literature on network effectiveness and the role of organizational theory within this literature. The review illustrates a considerable amount of organization theorizing, which suggests that the subfield of organizational theory, while not always explicit, is very much alive and well. Next, I identify what the literature does well, areas for improvement, and recent work addressing those gaps. One such gap is the mismatch between the theory in its formulation and the methods used to test said theory. While theory is configurational, testing rarely makes use of configurational methods. Further, the majority of the literature treats networks as static despite widespread recognition that networks are in fact quite dynamic. Recent theoretical and methodological advancements have been made to address these shortcomings, but these efforts continue to be the aberration rather than the norm. Finally, I provide an example of one future direction for theorizing which builds upon recent advancements. More specifically, I provide two ideal type configurational paths to network effectiveness which account for one dynamic aspect of a network, namely the sequential introduction of actors into the network.

A second-take on the role of science: the case for applying public administration theory to natural resource management

BackgroundNatural resource management theory has been informed by disciplines such as ecology, agricultural science, economics and engineering; but much less so by the literature of planning and public administration. This paper demonstrates that applying an incremental view to what is traditionally seen as a rational-comprehensive discipline provides insights into resource management theory and practice, including adaptive management.ResultsWe show how current theory and practice in natural resource management are not aligned to the degree that is routinely presumed. In particular, the prevailing focus on optimality creates conflicts, especially during democratic decision-making, whereas adopting a participatory-incremental hybrid approach should provide a superior solution, which is discussed here in the context of Life Cycle Assessment by resource managers.ConclusionResource management tends to be both incremental and participatory; and whilst decisions are strongly informed by science, on reflection, the process of formulating decisions is rarely rational-comprehensive. We suggest greater retrospective analysis of resource management decisions at a theoretical level. This may result in adoption of a theoretical framework which better supports practice, a reduction in tensions between those trained in the arts and sciences; and more ‘freedom’ in practice, through a softening of the focus on optimality.

The importance of discretion for welfare services to minorities: Examining workload and anti‐immigration attitudes

AbstractMigration influx in Western countries resulting in increasingly diverse societies results in more complex situations for bureaucrats in their client interactions in welfare organizations. The role of discretion for services to clients has received much attention in the public administration research and therefore this study explores the relation among perceived workload, anti‐immigration attitudes, perceived discretion, and perceived difficulty in working with migrants. The paper examines the function of perceived discretion as moderator or mediator variable in this constellation. The relations are examined by using structural equation modelling based on a survey among Swedish welfare bureaucrats (N = 1,319). The results show that heavier perceived workload increased the likelihood of experiencing work with migrants as difficult and that greater perceived discretion decreased the likelihood of experiencing work with migrants as difficult. The results suggest that perceived discretion functions as a mediator for the relation between perceived workload and difficulty in work with migrants: potentially functioning as a ‘buffer’ for organizational pressure. We also found that bureaucrats who hold negative attitudes towards migrants were more likely to express their work with migrants as more difficult. This paper contributes to the public administration literature by increasing our knowledge on how discretion has significance in relation to when bureaucrat's behaviour is determined by specific organizational and personal factors.

Pursuing Consilience: Using Behavioral Public Administration to Connect Research on Bureaucratic Red Tape, Administrative Burden, and Regulation

AbstractBehavioral public administration (BPA) research aspires not only to draw on developments in behavioral science but also, importantly, to address central themes in public administration. By focusing a symposium on bureaucratic red tape, administrative burden, and regulation, we encouraged BPA scholarship to engage with fundamental public administration topics that are also relevant for the broader literature on organizations and management. Indeed, the symposium contributions demonstrate how BPA can better meld the behavioral science and public administration literatures. They expand on existing conceptions of BPA, with respect to both methodology and topical focus, and provide a basis for demarcating what might and might not be usefully described as BPA. The symposium contributions provide a blueprint for how BPA research might usefully evolve and the introduction offers a philosophical reflection on the future development of BPA and behavioral science.

Developing a model of empathy for public administration

Empathy is often cited within the public administration literature, yet its uses are isolated, incidental and frequently in conflict. Like many other academic and applied fields before it, public administration lacks a clear understanding of empathy and an articulated method of incorporating the practice of empathy into public service. This article explores the concept of empathy within public administration and interdisciplinary literatures, what empathy can offer to public service, and what issues may challenge the practice empathy, in order to present a model of empathy that is situated within contexts relevant to public service. The four components of this model are: 1) an empathic opportunity triggered by an explicitly or implicitly shared emotion; 2) the identification of the shared emotion; 3) a connection with the emotion as the sharing-person experiences it; and 4) the communication of understanding from public servant to sharing-person. This model offers a offers a concrete practice aimed at improving the experience of both the empathy-giver and the empathy-receiver, rather than on changing the outcome of an interaction, in pursuit of a more relational government.

A Systematic Literature Study to Unravel Transparency Enabled by Open Government Data: The Window Theory

The opening of data has been credited for improving transparency and for providing a window on government functioning. Although this relationship is intuitively apparent, it is in fact complex and the mere opening of data might not actually yield transparency. In this paper, a comprehensive model of determinants that enable or impede transparency enabled by open government data and the expected effects have been derived by surveying public administration and information systems literature. Public administration literature tends to be focused on factors such as participation and trust, whereas information systems literature focuses on factors such as user interface, user experience, and data quality. Digital government literature attempts to bridge these elements. The Window Theory is introduced, in order to unify existing models by integrating a broad range of factors within a single model. The Window Theory can be used to develop context-dependent models that are both comprehensive and parsimonious.

Politics or Professionalism to the Rescue? The Friedrich-Finer Debate in the Context of State Intervention in Michigan

Who should come to the rescue when a local government is fiscally ailing: professionals or politicians? Michigan Public Act 436 of 2012 authorizes state government to intervene in local fiscal affairs by appointing emergency managers. Political officials and residents have resisted such interventions, arguing political officials should restore fiscal health. This conflict illustrates a classic accountability debate between Carl Friedrich and Herman Finer in public administration literature: that between technical merit and political control. Using interviews with state and local managers as well as elected officials, we explore whether bureaucrats and emergency managers view accountability differently than elected officials when under state intervention. We find emergency managers and local bureaucrats tend to adopt Friedrich's view that technical merit should drive decisions, and elected officials tend to adopt Finer's view that restoring financial health should be a politically driven process. Finally, we offer suggestions for state and local collaboration moving forward.

Engage Them through Emotions: Exploring the Role of Emotional Intelligence in Public Sector Engagement

The public administration literature has demonstrated the valuable impact of employees' engagement on public service. However, studies conventionally deal with engagement as a unidimensional construct, with few explanations for its evolution. To promote knowledge in this arena, the authors propose public sector engagement (PSE) as a multidimensional construct, comprising social responsibility, work engagement, and organizational citizenship behaviors at the individual level. The authors develop and examine a set of hypotheses proposing that PSE may be augmented by enhancing civil servants' emotional intelligence (EI) as well as their supervisors' EI. Using a two‐study multimethod approach (i.e., an experiment and a survey), the authors identify employees' and managers' high EI as a critical resource in enhancing PSE. The article concludes by theoretically framing the findings using the job demands‐resources model and illuminating the practical value to public service of better selection and training of high‐EI employees and managers.

The Bureaucratic Encounter and Shifting Social Constructions Among Migrant Youth During the DACA Application Process

This article examines shifting social constructions of the self among undocumented Latino college and university student applicants for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, in the United States. A 2012 memo issued by the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security deferred deportation action on undocumented youth who were current or former students or military veterans, and who met certain other age, length of residence, and criminal record criteria. Using qualitative data from interviews with 20 DACA applicants, this article explores how bureaucratic encounters that occur through the DACA application process inform ideas about citizenship and identity that are held by the undocumented Latino student population, and how these youth understand their relationship to the U.S. The data show that college and university students undergo a shift in their self-perception and behavior, with their social construction of themselves changing from deviant to deserving as they move through the DACA application process. We believe the analysis is relevant to the current political environment as the portrayal of immigrants is being rapidly reshaped under the Trump administration. Our analysis suggests that these changing portrayals will generate changes in the self-perception and behavior of undocumented Latino students vis-à-vis the state. Our article makes an important contribution to the public administration literature, which at present gives only limited attention to migrants and processes of “administering migration.”

Migration in Public Administration Research: A Systematic Review and Future Directions

ABSTRACTAgainst the backdrop of increasing public and social interests in migration, this article conducts a systematic review of research addressing the topic of migration published in top public administration journals since 2000. This article examines five aspects of the migration literature in public administration: the trends of migration studies, lines of inquiry, theoretical groundings, and research designs, methods, and empirical evidence. Based on the findings, the authors discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the literature and offer straightforward suggestions for future migration research in the field.

Interplay between Politics and Institution in Higher Education Reform

<p style="text-align:justify">The advent of the new economy brought university reforms to the limelight, and higher education research concentrated on the study of interactions of multi-level, multi-actor policy reforms, to the detriment of studying policy implementation. The ebbing of implementation analysis in the mid-1980s has probably put researchers off following up policies to the point of delivery, resulting in what critics dubbed a 'missing link'. Policymakers more pronounced need to evaluate the impact of the policies they adopt, inter alia, has led to a renewed interest in bottom-up implementation in other public policy fields, but not as much in higher education research. The article builds on a Network Governance-informed approach for studying policy reform in higher education and adapts it to study of policy implementation with a focus on transition systems. Witte's actor-centered new institutional framework is taken as a springboard, and some of its underlying assumptions are reviewed for that purpose, adding insights from public administration literature (NPM) and Lipsky's street-level bureaucracy (SLBy). Ultimately, it proposes a politics-institutions framework to account for the institutional change entailed to the reforms.</p>

Valuing the Transfer of Citizens’ Nonadministrative Knowledge to Government: Insights from Political Philosophy

This theory-building essay aims to conceptually articulate the valuing of the transfer of citizens’ nonadministrative knowledge to government. Two ways of valuing, instrumental and normative, are identified and examined in public administration literature. I argue that public administration lacks an understanding of the distinctive normative or democratic significance of citizens’ nonadministrative knowledge. To fill this gap, selected critical theory, postmodern, and pragmatist philosophical approaches to the valuing of citizens’ knowledge are examined in relation to two kinds of knowledge transfer in citizen-government exchanges: administrator knowledge transfer and citizen knowledge transfer. The review suggests that the normative valuing of citizen knowledge transfer requires the empirical and proactive examination of contemporary forms of citizens’ knowledge; that administrator and citizen knowledge transfers should be investigated as interconnected phenomena in an integrative approach, which implies a greater attention to conflict over knowledge; and that the greater normative valuing of citizen knowledge transfer could stimulate its instrumental valuing.

Science V. Significance: Examining the Role and Application of Statistical Significance Testing in Public Administration Research

In the past fifty years, a notable body of literature has called into question the utility of statistical significance testing, as well as the deference granted it by quantitative researchers in the social sciences. While much of this literature has emerged from fields on the periphery of public administration (i.e. economics and psychology), recent evidence has suggested that PA scholars may also be over-reliant on significance testing in the conduct of quantitative research. Although significance testing is perceived by many as lending scientific credence to empirical analyses, critics have argued that it is not a sufficient means of generating actionable knowledge or informing public sector decision-making. This article reviews common misconceptions about significance testing and assesses current practices in the public administration literature. The use and application of significance testing in two of the field's leading academic journals is reviewed, and recommendations for enhancing the quality and impact of PA's quantitative research are offered.

Innovation Potential of the Modern Russian Civil Servants in Public Administration

Innovation can be defined as a change in technology—more simply stated, in the way government workers/civil servants/public administrators do their jobs—whether the technology relates to a process, computer hardware or software, or the human side of the government enterprise. Contemporary advances in technology facilitating the rapid spread of information have led to worldwide societal changes and improved productivity. After analyzing civil servants’ professional activities, values, and attitudes, and assessing their capacity for change, public sector organizations must adapt functions and strategies. This is a systemic, behavioral analysis of the innovation potential of Russian public administrators. Empirical data were collected using a survey of Russian civil servants of the Sverdlovsk region, an analysis of their job descriptions, expert interviews, and focus-group interviews. The objective of this analysis is to assess innovation potential of these civil servants and identify factors that facilitate or hinder innovation potential within the Russian government. From these factors, practical strategies for increasing the level of civil servants’ innovation potential are deduced and presented. Results of the analysis expand management theories included in public administration literature and curricula thus leading to improved management training or retraining processes.

Political Conflict in City Councils: Implications for Power and Leadership of Professional Managers

Conflict over policy issues among elected officials is often observed in local governments However, the impact of this conflict on city managers’ power and leadership has been a relatively unexplored area of research. This empirical study presents a testable triangle of relationships between political conflict in policymaking boards of municipal governments, manager's power, and manager's leadership. We also offer manager's power as a mediating variable to better understand the relationship between political conflict and manager's leadership. Using a comprehensive dataset of survey responses from city managers in the United States local governments, we test our model and discuss the findings in light of the contemporary public administration literature. Our statistical results confirmed that power and leadership were correlated with each other. Managers with greater power are more likely to emerge as leaders. The findings have important implications for local government management.

Communicating to the Public in the Era of Conspiracy Theory

During the last decade, social scientists have taken a strong interest in both the veracity of citizens beliefs and the quality of information on which those beliefs are based. In particular, social scientists have focused much of this work on conspiracy theories given how such theories can undermine government initiatives. The extant literature shows: (1) that the current information environment allows conspiracy theories to spread among citizens farther and faster than ever before; (2) that most Americans believe conspiracy theories; and (3) that conspiracy theories can generate undesirable political and social outcomes. While social scientists have been working to both understand and correct conspiracy beliefs, this literature has yet to inform or to be informed by the relevant scholarship in public administration. This short article attempts to synthesize the conspiracy theory and public administration literatures to make informed recommendations to public administration scholars and public administrators who engage in public outreach during this era of “post-truth.”

Governing the Governors: The Global Metagovernance of Fair Trade and Sustainable Forestry Production

To promote environmentally sustainable corporate behavior, a complex system of global private governance operates where civil society groups play dominant roles. We argue that the concept of “metagovernance” developed in the public administration literature helps scholars and practitioners make sense of the constellation of actors, structures, and processes that have emerged in the field of global private governance. This article advances the metagovernance research agenda by providing a comparative application of the concept to two global private governance schemes: the fair trade and sustainable forest product certification systems. We examine the key organizations, arrangements, and relationships that constitute these systems to demonstrate that metagovernance in this sphere is produced heterarchically: multiple organizations within global private governance schemes are mutually responsible for their own coordination. We argue that employing metagovernance as an analytical tool enables the identification and appraisal of the strengths and weaknesses of complex systems for “the governance of governance” from a holistic perspective. Related Articles Alejo, Antonio. 2019. “Contemporary Diplomacy, Global Politics, and Nongovernmental Actors: Dilemmas of the Multistakeholder Mechanism of Participation in Mexico.” Politics & Policy 47 (1): 105‐126. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12284Bance, Philippe, and Angelique Chassy. 2017. “The Rollout of the Multilevel Governance System: A Source of Reworking the Contingent Valuation Method?” Politics & Policy 45 (6): 1080‐1107. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12236Burau, Viola, and Carole Clavier. 2018. “Understanding Gaps in the Coexistence between Different Modes of Governance: A Case Study of Public Health in Schools in a Multilevel System.” Politics & Policy 46: 604‐629. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12269 Related Media FLOCERT. N.d. “How it Works.” https://www.flocert.net/solutions/fairtrade-resources/how-it-works/Forest Stewardship Council. N.d. “Who We Are.” https://ca.fsc.org/en-ca/about-usfsc‐watch.com. 2016. “Jari Certificate Suspension: Why Was it Ever Certified in the First Place?” https://fsc-watch.com/2015/12/22/jari-certificate-suspension-why-was-it-ever-certified-in-the-first-place/

A systematic review of the public administration literature to identify how to increase public engagement and participation with local governance

A systematic review of the public administration literature on public engagement and participation is conducted with the expressed intent to develop an actionable evidence base for public managers. Over 900 articles, in nine peer‐reviewed public administration journals are screened on the topic. The evidence from 40 articles is classified, summarized, and applied to inform the managerial practice of activating and recruiting the participation of the public in the affairs of local governance. The review also provides brief explanation on how systematic reviews can fill a need in governance from the evidence‐based management perspective.