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…
While various descriptive and prescriptive citizen participation models suggest ways to improve citizen participation, none has been subjected to large-scale empirical tests. This article develops and tests an organizational theory model that explores the conditions under which citizen involvement as a general strategy can improve administrative decision making. The new model focuses on organiz…
Japan is the only country to suffer twice from the terrible consequences of atomic bombs. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are renowned internationally for experiencing the first twin devastating nuclear attacks in history. Unfortunately, Japan has witnessed several other serious nuclear-related disasters in recent years. The much-publicized Fukushima disaster in 2011 is one of them. How could such a ser…
This case study reviews the enactment and implementation of the National Security Personnel System (NSPS) in the U.S. Department of Defense. Proponents of reform seized the opportunity to enact reform in the aftermath of 9/11, basing their arguments on national security concerns. However, the policy-making process did not produce a consensus for reform among key stakeholders in the personnel ma…
What should be done to advance the study of public administration? A strong argument is advanced by outgoing PAR managing editor Jos C. N. Raadschelders that the field benefits significantly from greater attention to ontology and epistemology. To be sure, empirical, evidence-based research has its place, but its basis and the meaning of findings seldom are questioned. Why? Many public administr…
Federalist No. 1 sets the basic framework for interpreting the U.S. Constitution. It contains an implied definition of “good government” that occupied the founders as they built a stronger national government. This essay explains the conflict embedded in the debate between the two theories of good government offered by Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson and asks how the competing definitio…
Federalist Nos. 6 and 7 address the problems of disunion that led the founders to imagine a stronger national government, arguing that the states were and would continue to be a source of unyielding conflict without national supremacy. This essay asks how the states have adjusted to the Constitution under the Tenth Amendment and posits that the states are a hidden source of energy toward good g…