Recently added articles from Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory:
Institutional design and information revelation: evidence from environmental right-to-know.
Apr 01, 2009; ... A broad variety of scholars, including Weber (1946, 233-4), have considered the effects of rules that require agencies to disclose information to the public (Rourke 1961). One active area of inquiry is environmental protection policy, where studies consider the impact of information ...
Agency theory and beyond: contracted providers' motivations to properly use service monitoring tools.
Apr 01, 2009; ... In an environment of increased contracting out for public services, ensuring contracted provider accountability is a key challenge facing public administrators (Bardach and Lesser 1996; Blasi 2002; Breaux et al. 2002; Coats 2002; Johnston and Romzek 1999). Agency theory is one of the major ...
The use of multiple informants in public administration research: data aggregation using organizational echelons.
Apr 01, 2009; ... Methodological choices have the potential to fundamentally affect what we know about public organizations. Simple changes to the way organizational data are collected, processed, and analysed can alter the statistical representation of organizational characteristics. If methodological ...
Results-model reform leadership: questions of credible commitment.
Apr 01, 2009; ... INTRODUCTION The broad diffusion of results-model reform initiatives, centering on the use of performance measures to improve governance, has in recent years given rise to an empirical research literature examining their adoption and implementation. It will surprise few ...
Municipal performance: does mayoral quality matter?
Apr 01, 2009; ... Scholars and political practitioners constantly search for tools that improve governmental performance. In developing countries, the adoption of decentralization seeks to achieve this goal. Decentralization is expected to improve governmental efficiency, effectiveness, and responsiveness ...
At the discretion of rogue agents: how automation improves women's outcomes in unemployment insurance.
Apr 01, 2009; ... "People think they can take care of their grandchildren or paint the house," Mr. Brophy says. "They can't, because they're not available for work if they're babysitting." Thomas Brophy, a claims examiner in the Trenton office of New Jersey's Division of Employment and Training ...
How do perceived political environment and administrative reform affect employee commitment?
Apr 01, 2009; ... Recent public management research has emphasized the need to study public organizations in their unique context: embedded in fragmented political systems and highly charged political environments (O'Toole and Meier 1999; Pandey and Wright 2006; Rainey and Steinbauer 1999). (1) It is ...
Green tape: a theory of effective organizational rules.
Apr 01, 2009; ... Public management scholars over the past decade have shed significant light on the nature and consequences of ineffective rules or "red tape." Red tape has been conceptually defined (Bozeman 1993), operationalized (Rainey, Pandey, and Bozeman 1995) and distinguished from formalization ...
Power-influence in decision making, competence utilization, and organizational culture in public organizations: the Arab world in comparative perspective.
Apr 01, 2009; ... INTRODUCTION Much of the research on bureaucracy and organizational performance in developing countries in general, and in the Arab states in particular, identifies problems of over centralization of power and control (Al-Awaji 1971; Palmer, El Sayeed, and Leila 1985), ...
Race, bureaucracy, and symbolic representation: interactions between citizens and police.(Report)
Apr 01, 2009; ... INTRODUCTION How government officials represent is a central concern in any democracy. Voters and voting blocs typically try to ensure the representation of their political preferences through the selection of candidates. Such representation of interests is arguably of special ...
Public management mentoring: what affects outcomes?
Apr 01, 2009; ... INTRODUCTION Mentoring programs abound in both public and private organizations and the value of these programs to the individual and to the organization often is taken as an article of faith. The fact that mentoring occurs just as often "organically," without either the ...
Institutional determinants of collaboration: an empirical study of county open-space protection.(Survey)
Jan 01, 2009; ... Public administration and management scholars have long recognized the necessity for public managers to interact with entities outside the hierarchical boundaries of their organizations (see Rainey 2003). The growing number of studies on networks (O'Toole 1997; Provan and Milward 1995), ...
Conceptualizing and measuring collaboration.
Jan 01, 2009; ... A growing body of multidisciplinary research suggests that we live in an increasingly "networked" world that demands forms of organizing quite different from bureaucracies or firms (O'Toole 1997; Powell 1990). Devolution, increasingly rapid changes in technology, scarce resources, and ...
Centralization, organizational strategy, and public service performance.
Jan 01, 2009; ... INTRODUCTION Service improvement is at the heart of contemporary debates in public management. Governments across the globe have introduced a swathe of reforms to enhance the effectiveness and responsiveness of public services (Batley and Larbi 2004; Pollitt and Bouckaert 2004) ....
Examining perceived honest performance reporting by public organizations: bureaucratic politics and organizational practice.
Jan 01, 2009; ... Although performance measurement and performance-based accountability has become a trendy prescription for government reforms, its value has been questioned on both theoretical and empirical grounds. Scholars have challenged the assumption that performance information, once produced, will ...
Evaluating the expectations disconfirmation and expectations anchoring approaches to citizen satisfaction with local public services.
Jan 01, 2009; ... This article analyzes the relationship between individual citizens and users' expectations of local public service quality, the performance of services, and satisfaction and dissatisfaction with services. Research on satisfaction, its measurement, and implications is long-standing but has ...
The role of procedural justice in public personnel management: empirical results from the Department of Defense.(Survey)
Jan 01, 2009; ... Perceptions that procedures in the federal government are overly burdensome and outdated are a main driving force for civil service reform efforts. The US Government Accountability Office summarized the perceptions of federal personnel procedures as "burdensome to managers, unappealing to ...
Making implementation more democratic through action implementation research.
Jan 01, 2009; ... INTRODUCTION Public administration scholars often associate increased public participation in policy implememation with the advancement of democratic values (deLeon and deLeon 2002; Irvin and Stansbury 2004). Likewise, scholars engaged in the various forms of action research ...
Escape from the iron cage? Organizational change and isomorphic pressures in the public sector.(Survey)
Jan 01, 2009; ... The explanation of organizational change has become an important research issue in recent years. Rational or "technical" perspectives suggest that the characteristics of organizations shift over time in order to pursue better substantive performance (e.g., higher efficiency or ...
Organizing attention: responses of the bureaucracy to agenda disruption.(Report)
Oct 01, 2008; ... One of the hallmarks of public bureaucracies is their ability to digest routine requests from policymakers to "do more" or to "do better." Yet, on occasion the demands are novel because the problem has changed or there is a greater sense of urgency about an existing problem. By definition, ...