Public Management Research Research Articles

Exploring Communication Management and Public Relations in Two Emerging Markets, China and Thailand

This study aimed to address the lack of empirical research in public relations management by investigating the perspectives of professional leaders in public relations in two emerging markets, namely China and Thailand. To gather information, a pragmatic mixed-method approach, which included a survey and interviews, was employed. The data was then processed using SPSS using a sample size of 234. The study developed a framework based on the Meng and Berger Model on PR leaders. It explores how leadership in public relations is shaped by the sociopolitical context of the nation by examining and comparing the cases of China and Thailand. The study draws on the interpretation of professional leadership in public communication by PR leaders. The participants from both countries indicated that there were some similarities and differences between the Chinese and Thai markets concerning public relation leadership. With the most important issue raised in both countries, speed and volume of information appeared to be the most important. In addressing the issues, in-service training to gain new skills and taking advantage of the internet to acquire information appeared as the most important tools. Inspiring and motivating, and ability to manage teams appeared as important leadership abilities considered of value in both countries. The study identified three key dimensions that were present in both countries, namely team collaboration, communication knowledge management, and organizational culture and structure.

Does Work Quality Differ between the Public and Private Sectors? Evidence from Two Online Field Experiments

Abstract Understanding the differences between working in the public and private sectors is core to public management research. We assess the implications of a theory of public ownership, testing an expectation that work is of higher quality when performed under public ownership status compared to a private company. We conducted two, pre-registered, field experiments with a routine data processing task and workers recruited through an online labor market. Workers were randomly allocated information about the ownership status of a nursing home as either a public organization or a private company. Work quality was measured as errors workers made in data entry and correcting pre-existing errors in work materials provided to them. The first experiment showed that fewer workers in the public, compared to the private, nursing home tended to make any data entry errors but that they did not correct more existing errors. Exploratory analyses showed a greater effect for those aware of the organization’s ownership status. To test this apparent sector attention effect, we conducted a second experiment with a 2-by-2 factorial design randomly allocating workers to a treatment making salient the public or private sector status of the organization, in addition to the initial public or private sector treatment. The results confirmed the effect of public sector status and sector attention in combination; workers who were assigned to a public sector organization rather than a private company and who were made aware of the respective sector status were more likely to perform their work tasks without any errors. We discuss the limits of the findings and their implications including that public organizations could boost the quality of work done by making their sector status more explicit to workers.

Portfolio management: A new direction in public sector strategic management research and practice

AbstractPortfolio management is widely used by large government agencies and nonprofits, but it is rarely discussed in public administration scholarship. Portfolio management tools can illuminate groups of projects that should be considered as priority investments by highlighting the relationship of risk to outcomes. This article explores historical and theoretical reasons for the neglect of portfolio management, and then proposes using portfolio management to update a classic strategic management framework to guide organizational choices in public administration. Though portfolio management ideas originated in the private sector, public sector portfolio management differs from its private sector counterpart by trading off risk with public value or mission outcomes rather than financial outcomes. Portfolio management is a tool to incorporate risk to mission in investment decisions. It holds promise for adding an intermediate‐level implementation tool to develop theories of public value. The paper concludes with hypotheses for future investigation.

Dimensionality Reduction and Visualization in Public Management Research from the Perspective of Algorithm Recommendation

With the development of computer technology, algorithm recommendation systems have been widely used in intelligent transportation, urban planning, and other fields. Aiming at the current problems in public management in China, this paper proposes a dimensionality reduction calculation method, and uses the improved particle swarm optimization algorithm to analyze and evaluate the dimensionality reduction process. With the expectation of providing some reference value and ideas for solving practical application problems, a corresponding relationship equation is established with the minimum expected value as the objective function to solve the corresponding optimal solution, the evaluation results of system performance indicators and comprehensive scoring criteria under relevant parameters and constraints are given. The test results show that the visualization effect of the dimensionality reduction visualization model for public management research based on the algorithm recommendation perspective is over 90%.

Finding Common Ground: Innovation and Diffusion across Political Science and Public Management Research

It is quite an honor to be selected for this John Gaus Award Lecture by a committee of my peers. I want to thank my husband, Bill Berry—my partner for 48 years and sometimes coauthor—and certainly my children, Katie Berry and David Berry, who have diverted my attention from policy studies for 35 years now and made life much more enjoyable by their personalities. I especially want to thank my many coauthors who have kept research and writing an engaging endeavor while we have developed friendships that will last a lifetime.

Cross-level Effects of Diversity Climate on Employee Organizational Identification: Evidence from Law Enforcement Units

While benefits of psychological diversity climate have been enumerated in public administration literature, less is known about the effects of diversity climate at the aggregate level. To fill this gap, this study implements a multi-level analytical approach to examine the relationship between workgroup diversity climate and employee organizational identification in the law enforcement sector. To estimate this relationship, I employ a multi-wave population survey data collected from 1,519 employees in 136 units of a law enforcement agency in the United States. Results suggest that workgroup diversity climate was positively associated with organizational identification. However, this relationship was found more salient for White employees than employees of color. This study discusses the implications for public management research and diversity management practices in the public sector.

Special issue introduction: integrating Asia Pacific influences and public management research

Special issue introduction: integrating Asia Pacific influences and public management research

Conceptualizing and Measuring (Public) Reputation Management

AbstractThis article develops and empirically validates a conceptualization of reputation management in a public sector context. We define reputation management as management behaviors intended to identify and affect how external audiences perceive an organization, including their perceptions of what the organization is, what it strives to be, and the organization’s positive impact on society more broadly. Such behaviors include strategically communicating the organization’s vision to its most important external audiences. The empirical analysis is based on survey responses from 499 employees and 59 managers from three Danish agencies. The analysis yields support for our measure of reputation management. We conclude with a future research agenda on how our conceptualization and scale can be used to further develop Bureaucratic Reputation Theory, as well as public management research aimed at investigating the simultaneous use as well as simultaneous external and internal effects of different types of public management and leadership behaviors.

Rethinking the inclusive shift in public management

The aim of this article is to put into perspective the transformation of medico-social provision that has been underway in France since 2017, using work in public management. We start from the proposition that this inclusive shift presupposes a new form of production of public action where users co-construct public value (Osborne et al., 2022). This conceptualisation of public action raises many questions, among which is how actors will manage conflicts, i.e. share their representations to co-create value. To illustrate our point, we present the first results of a field study in which we observed and interviewed five members of the board of a French association offering inclusive housing. The conflicts that were uncovered allow us to reveal that the transformation of the offer, beyond the objects that were created, raises issues around the sources of power and their evolution during the co-production process, for which we call for better description in public management research.

How dialogic vaccine communication in the workplace facilitates employee advocacy for COVID-19 vaccine uptake

ABSTRACT Encouraging employees’ vaccine uptake and motivating their vaccine advocacy are crucial steps to secure workplace health and safety during the current pandemic. Yet, how to achieve those steps remains challenging. To address this challenge, this study examines whether and how companies’ vaccine communication efforts with employees, particularly dialogic communication, can motivate employees’ advocacy behaviors for COVID-19 vaccine uptake. Specifically, by drawing insights from public relations, management, psychology, and health communication research, we predict that organizations’ dialogic communication will enhance employees’ perceptions of organizational support for vaccination, which will further increase employees’ positive emotions while decreasing their negative emotions toward the vaccines. These emotional states will ultimately contribute to employees’ vaccine advocacy. An online survey among 505 full-time U.S. employees supported our predictions. Our study advances public relations, organizational communication, and workplace health scholarships and practice by revealing the under-explored role of workplace communication in promoting public health.

Towards a holistic customer value approach in managing public health care services: a developers' view

PurposeRecent literature within public service logic has called for more explicit conceptualisation of customer value in public services. This study aims to fill this gap by examining how the customer value approach can be applied in the management of public health care services.Design/methodology/approachThis study is a qualitative case study of management of public health care services in Finland. The authors interviewed 17 regional health care service developers and analyzed the interview data using thematic analysis.FindingsThe study suggests five propositions for applying customer value approach from the marketing literature in public health care service management. The study enables a deeper understanding of customer value creation in this context and improvement of public health care services.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the public management research in general and public service logic research in particular by suggesting what constitutes customer value in public health care services.

New development: Public governance in the discursivity of the Brazilian government—a reflection on conceptual reduction

IMPACT This article presents a topic of relevance to public management research communities in non English-speaking countries. The principal argument is the concept of ‘sociological reduction’. The article addresses aspects related to the translation and critical assimilation of foreign concepts in social sciences. The authors illustrate the argument by showing how Brazilian authorities got lost when translating the term ‘public governance’ into the Brazilian legislation, treating it as synonymous with ‘corporate governance’ and ‘good governance’. This article will help researchers and policy-makers in maintaining terminological cohesion and facilitating the legal application of foreign concepts.

Problems and Optimization Suggestions of Rural Public Management under Rural Revitalization

To realize the rural revitalization strategy is an indispensable part of China's new journey to comprehensively build a modern socialist country. Rural revitalization has always been the key task of the Party and the broad masses of the people's concern. In the process of realizing rural vitalization, it is also urgent to solve the problems of "agriculture, rural areas and farmers". Therefore, our Party has always put solving the problems of "agriculture, rural areas and farmers" as the top priority in its work. Revitalization strategy in the country to push the era background, the rural grass-roots public management become one of the most important factors affecting the efficiency, in order to better achieve rural revitalization, it is necessary for us to rural grassroots public management research, some problems universally existing in the management of rural grassroots public and puts forward some Suggestions for optimization of innovative, In order to improve the operation efficiency of grassroots public management and better serve the people.

Public administration and political science: From monogamous marriage to professional partnership

Public administration and political science: From monogamous marriage to professional partnership

Logics and Agency in Public Management Research

The article analyses the negative effects of the use of logics in public organisation research on active human agency. We build up a new conceptual model with which to approach logics in current research on organising public services; suggesting ways in which current models using logics in public organisation research can be strengthened. Our contribution is two-fold: we argue that Elder-Vass’ approach benefits from close synthesis with social learning theory (including recent thinking on trust, emotions, and distributed learning) and secondly, that grounding all usage of logics in logic-of-practice helps avoid a reification of logics and thirdly that situated learning better suits public organisation problem solving that the application of ‘new’ universal solutions.

A review of open strategy: bridging strategy and public management research

ABSTRACT Strategy research has recently highlighted the need for ‘opening up’ strategy processes to enhance transparency and inclusiveness. Ideas of openness have long been embedded in public management, especially since the governance revolution. However, public management research on strategy processes has mostly neglected how strategy processes are ‘opened up’, rather examining the impact of strategy content and process characteristics on outcomes. By reviewing open strategy studies, this article discusses how organizations can open up their strategy processes. An activity-based theoretical framework centred on purpose, subject, community, object and practices of open strategy is applied and further developed to guide future research.

Professional Development Leadership in Public Organizations: A Refined Conceptualization

Professional development leadership (PDL) can potentially align organizational goals and professional norms, thereby increasing the performance of professional employees in public organizations. Public management research has largely overlooked this type of leadership behavior, however, which may be due to the fact that it remains conceptually under-developed. This article presents a refined conceptualization of PDL based on theorizing and the abductive analysis of 31 interviews with managers and professionals in public organizations. The ambition of PDL is to facilitate a shared understanding of professional quality within the scope of organizational goals and to influence others to realize this understanding in practice. Core behaviors are attempts to create alignment between organizational goals and professional norms, to develop professional knowledge, and to activate professional knowledge and norms in practice. The conceptualization comprises a steppingstone for systematic research on PDL, and public managers may find inspiration as to how they can address professional norms and knowledge in their leadership practice.

De-stereotyping public performance evaluation

Experimental evidence suggests that citizens’ judgments of service quality often rely on prior beliefs about providers’ characteristics, such as racial stereotypes. Such a biased judgment process prevents the public from understanding performance information accurately and choosing high-quality service providers. To address this, we studied the relation between performance information and the evaluation mode and proposed that presenting information jointly (joint evaluation) rather than separately (separate evaluation) may help people avoid stereotyping and consider actual performance. We compared people’s perceived performance and preferences through the separate and joint evaluation modes (SE and JE) in three online experiments (N > 2,000), and obtained similar results in all studies: Subjects used racial stereotype to evaluate school performance in the SE condition, but such stereotyping decreased in the JE condition. Our findings provide an effective tool to de-stereotype performance evaluations, which also has implications for other public management research areas in reducing stereotyping behaviors.

Strategic planning and performance perceptions of managers and citizens: analysing multiple mediations

ABSTRACT Although strategic planning is ubiquitous within public organizations and despite meta-analytical research showing that it impacts performance, important questions about why it does so remain unanswered. This article addresses this gap by identifying the mediators underlying the strategic planning – public service performance relationship. Multi-informant survey data from managers and citizens in 101 Flemish municipalities are analysed using PLS-SEM. The results show that strategic planning has an indirect, positive association with managers’ and citizens’ perceptions of performance via its impact on external relations. An agenda on other mediators and the potential of PLS-SEM for public management research are presented in conclusion.

Contested Social Impact Bonds: welfare conventions, conflicts and compromises in five European Active-Labor Market Programs

Over the past decade Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) have attracted much public policy and management research interest and debate. This article draws on the Welfare Conventions Approach to explore the diversity of five SIB-financed Active Labor Market Programs in four European countries using comparative case study methods. We identify a tension between the requirement to align civic and financial interests in SIB-financed programs alongside a drive to reform public sector procurement in a more entrepreneurial direction. We suggest that the diversity of SIBs emanates from the political struggles in implementation processes stemming from a plurality of welfare conventions that actors need to align and compromise. SIBs are built within historically grown “institutional contexts” that are themselves on the move over decades of welfare state reform, and processes of marketization – and thus far from homogenous.