What intellectual influence, if any, have British public administration scholars had on their American counterparts since World War II? In this article, the author briefly reviews the major areas of theory and research in the British study of publication administration, further identifying important contributions by British scholars in the areas of modernist-empiricism, the new public managemen…
A crucial test of whether “management matters” is whether changes in the team at the top of an organization make a difference. Focusing on turnover in the collective senior team rather than successions of individual chief executives, this article argues that the impact of leadership succession is contingent upon prior organizational performance. The evidence on English local government shows th…
Early studies of organizational red tape emphasized that worker perceptions of organizational rules and procedures are dependent on workers’ frames of reference. However, most prior studies do not account sufficiently for how and why these reference points vary across employees, even if they work within the same or similar organizational contexts. While the effects of contemporaneous employee a…
Research on and practical attention for the coproduction of public services is increasing. Coproduction is seen as a way to strengthen the quality and legitimacy of public service and reduce costs. Scholarship on coproduction of public services repeatedly ignores the role of the new media. This is surprising since many proponents highlight its potential for changing traditional, government-cent…
Employing a resource dependence theoretical framework, the authors analyze a set of recently awarded contracts between the Environmental Protection Agency and its suppliers to determine how joint dependence, supplier dependence, and government dependence affect contract design—specifically, the decision to use a cost-plus (flexible) contract. Findings provide evidence that organizations choose …
Urban regeneration companies (URCs) are public-private entities appearing across Europe. They are created specifically to manage and implement more effectively urban regeneration projects. Core ideas behind the establishment of these newly emerging partnerships aim to tackle the challenging process of restructuring these organizations so as to function at arm’s length from political oversight. …
City managers play an influential role in brokering intergovernmental service arrangements on behalf of their jurisdiction, yet their motivations for doing so are not well understood. One argument, drawn from theories of bureaucratic entrepreneurship and ambition theory, suggests that cities with managers who are motivated to advance their careers will parlay more interlocal service delivery as…
What accounts for coordination problems? Many mechanisms of coordination exist in both organizations and networks, yet despite their widespread use, coordination challenges persist. Some believe the challenges are growing even more serious. One answer lies in understanding that coordination is not a free good; it is expensive in terms of time, effort, and attention, or what economists call tran…
Two years after the Homeland Security Act of 2002, Congress passed the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act. This act aspired to replace a sprawling agency-oriented intelligence apparatus with an integrated, networked intelligence community. The act envisioned a director of national intelligence who would accomplish sweeping structural reforms, while at the same time maintaining and…
The backbone of theory of the market-based approach New Public Management is that market orientation improves public service performance. In this article, market orientation is operationalized through the dominant theoretical framework in the business literature: competitor orientation, customer orientation, and interfunctional coordination. Market orientation is examined from the vantage point…
To what extent do attitudes toward money—specifically, the love of money—moderate the relationship between public service motivation and job satisfaction among public sector professionals in China? The authors collected data from full-time public sector professionals who also were part-time students in a master of public administration program in eastern China. After confirmatory factor analyse…
The balance between work and family plays a pivotal but evolving role in human resource policy. Ensuring that human resource policy responds to rapidly changing American family demographics, particularly the recent sharp increase in single unmarried Americans, is a major challenge. Compensation policy long has focused on family-oriented values by promising increased capacity to provide for a fa…
Research repeatedly highlights the gap between male and female earnings across the public and private sectors. The authors address an overlooked manifestation of pay discrimination against women in the labor market. Using a survey of 384 public sector chief procurement officers, they analyze the indirect effects of gender on women’s pay through the intervening variable of authority. Gender affe…
Why do U.S. federal government employees choose to leave the federal service? By focusing on turnover intentions, this article develops propositions about why employees anticipate leaving their jobs along three dimensions: (1) demographic factors, (2) workplace satisfaction factors, and (3) organizational/relational factors. Two distinct measures of turnover intention are advanced that reflect …
Is occupational locus or focus important for public service motivation? Does national context influence public service motivation? To answer both questions, the author examines attitudes toward work motives from national samples in 11 North American and Western European nations using multilevel binary logistic regression analysis. The findings demonstrate that the locus of an occupation in gove…
Intensified globalization, especially the necessity to learn more about how administrative reforms work effectively in different cultural contexts, requires public administration research to embrace comparative perspectives. How well is the field advancing in that direction? This article presents the results of a content analysis of 151 comparative public administration articles from 2000 to 20…
Government efforts to manage the financial crisis and to promote economic recovery have been extensive over the past three years. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been distributed—and much of it now repaid—from the Troubled Asset Relief Program. The Federal Reserve holds more than $2 trillion in mortgage-backed securities, collateralized loans to financial institutions, and other assets and…
What is the role of stipends as an institutional facilitator in volunteer civic service? By examining the relationship of stipend receipt to volunteer diversity, time commitment, and perceived benefits from a longitudinal study of older adults serving in Experience Corps, this article assesses stipend status relative to volunteer sociodemographic characteristics, motivations, intensity and dura…
Does current accumulated wealth by nonprofit organizations influence contributions from individuals? Existing research demonstrates that financial reserves aid program continuity during economic downturns. Yet donors, charity watchdogs, and policy makers voice concern about accumulated wealth in nonprofits. This empirical analysis examines whether the expected negative relationship occurs when …
This study investigates the relative effects of four types of family-friendly policies—child care subsidies, paid leave for family care, telework, and alternative work schedules—on turnover rates and effectiveness in federal agencies. Contemporary social exchange theory predicts that an agency’s average level of satisfaction with a specific family-friendly policy is negatively associated with t…