American Review of Public Administration, The

Publisher:: Sage Publications, Inc.
Publication date:: 2021-10-06

ISBN:: 0275-0740

Issue Number

No. 55-1, January 2025

Latest documents

The Conditional Effects of the Transformational Leadership Behaviors on Leaders’ Emotional Exhaustion: Roles of Deep Acting and Emotional Intelligence
This study used the model of emotional labor as emotion regulation to examine the indirect effect of transformational leadership behaviors on leaders’ emotional exhaustion through leaders’ deep acting. Further, it is hypothesized that this indirect effect varies depending on the level of leaders’ emotional intelligence. The sample included 230 leader-follower dyads working in public sector organizations in Pakistan. The results of the regression analysis showed that deep acting behaviors mediated the relationship between transformational leadership and emotional exhaustion, but only for leaders with low levels of emotional intelligence. These findings highlight the importance and relevance of emotional intelligence in managing emotions and maintaining emotional well-being among transformational leaders in the public sector. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our study in the manuscript.
Social Equity Amid COVID-19: Examining Health Disparities from the Perspective of Governmental and Social Responsiveness
While racial health disparities have long been studied, the literature has paid insufficient attention to situations such as health emergencies or pandemics and has generated conflicting results regarding some important explanatory variables. This article considers the impact of governmental and social responsiveness on health disparities in a pandemic. The hypotheses are tested with data from Florida's 67 counties in COVID-19. The results indicate that minority representation on local commissions influences local governments’ responsiveness to the disparities, and local government forms moderate the impact of local commission ideology and citizen ideology. The results also show that in counties with greater racial socioeconomic equality, community social capital increases, rather than decreases, the racial disparities. The political participation gap between white and black populations increases the disparities.
Race, Lived Experience, Representation, and Discrimination: Analyzing the Representative Capacities of the Racial Majority
The representative bureaucracy theory literature has often focused on the viewpoints, attitudes, and actions of minoritized groups rather than the racial majority, with studies predominately analyzing representative capacities tied to race, ethnicity, and gender. The current research employs both racial and lived experience representation lenses to analyze the viewpoints of non-Hispanic white public servants regarding the deservingness of white, Black, and unidentified clients. Using the opioid crisis as the context, results from an exploratory analysis of a nationwide survey experiment of first responders show that white law enforcement workers view white clients with opioid use disorder as more deserving than Black and unidentified clients. Both indirect and direct lived experiences with substance use disorder predict positive attitudes toward clients. Direct lived experience nullifies the negative beliefs white law enforcement workers express about Black clients, highlighting the significance of the intersection of racial and lived experience representation. Practical implications include promoting organizational practices that leverage the strength of shared lived experience to mitigate racial biases and encourage compassion for clients.
Lack of Gender Representation in Academia: The Experiences of Female STEM Students
Studies of representative bureaucracy emphasize that minorities’ representation in public organizations helps promote their interests. Some areas, however, suffer from a distinct lack of minority representation. Although studies in the field focus on the actions of minority public servants in representing citizens like them, we examine the behavior of majority group street-level bureaucrats toward minorities. Using interviews with female STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) students from five Israeli academic institutions, we investigate whether male faculty members’ interactions with female students reflect their perceptions of the latter's lack of representation. We find that one direct outcome is that male faculty members’ unequal and discriminatory behavior offends female students. Through this behavior, these faculty members also signal to the majority group students that this behavior toward women is legitimate, which is an indirect outcome. Finally, female students behave insecurely in this environment. Public managers should be aware that not only is passive representation required in public organizations, but also that in areas with distinct male representation, majority group street-level bureaucrats play an important role in creating an environment that is fair and equitable for minorities.
The Dynamics of Trust and Trustworthiness Perceptions in a Government Agency: A Longitudinal Perspective
Although trust is widely recognized as key to effective public administration, little is known about trust dynamics, especially in typical governance relationships. We conducted an intensive longitudinal experience sampling study via a weekly survey of Florida residents’ (N = 97) trust in and perceptions of the trustworthiness of the (US) National Hurricane Center over a 25-week hurricane season. We estimated two-level time series models to examine reciprocal relationships among four constructs: trust, ability, benevolence, and integrity. All four exhibited significant intraindividual variability such that participants demonstrated change in their ratings of the agency over time. Ability perceptions showed the greatest variability over the study duration. In line with classic models of trust, previous-week trustworthiness perceptions were significant predictors of subsequent trust. Our results also provide some support for self-reinforcing accounts of trust by demonstrating that previous-week trust predicted subsequent trustworthiness. Several of the one-week lagged relationships weakened substantially when tested with two-week lags, suggesting that trustworthiness is the stronger driver of trust. Overall, our results demonstrate that trust is not static, even in business-as-usual governance relationships. Results position perceptions of ability, benevolence, and integrity as partially responsible for changes in trust over time. Further, an exploratory analysis suggested that people who reported higher average integrity perceptions tended to have more stable trust. Thus, all the dimensions of trustworthiness serve as short-term levers for administrators seeking to positively manage relationships with the public, and integrity may be most critical for supporting steady levels of trust.
Measuring Reputational Signals Regarding Public Sector Professions: Validation of a Scale and a Research Agenda
Public administration scholars are devoting increasing attention to the concept of reputation. The emphasis reflects a long-standing concern in the field with the sources of power and influence on administrative processes. This study extends the investigation of reputation from organizational reputation to reputational signals regarding public sector professions. We begin with a definition of reputational signals. We then develop a survey instrument that measures reputational signals from two signalers: elected officials and people close to respondents. Results are presented for internal consistency, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, convergent and discriminant validity, and average variance extracted. Next, we conduct a path analysis to test the effects of reputational signals regarding public school teachers on two outcomes using two staggered survey instruments with 588 US adults. We find that reputational signals from both types of signalers are positively and significantly associated with the perceived prestige of the teaching profession. Furthermore, reputational signals from people close to respondents are directly and positively associated with support for teacher autonomy. In contrast, reputational signals from elected officials do not have a statistically significant association with support for teacher autonomy. We conclude by discussing avenues for future research.
Texas Public Pensions: A Common Pool Resource Perspective
Public employee pension management is the nexus of public and private financial management systems that are significant long-term components of public finance. The idea that these pension systems can look quite similar yet perform in quite different and conflicting ways is significant when designing policy; system design templates are not successful in complex systems. Even pension systems within the same city can have radically different states of actuarial health based upon small differences in the rules (or adherence to the rules) establishing them. To better understand such systems, viewing them from a common pool resource perspective is useful. Elinor Ostrom (1990), in her seminal book Governing the Commons, provides eight principles that facilitate governing common pool resources. The general theme running through Ostrom's principles is the need to facilitate the building and channeling of social capital. By facilitating constructive collective choice, the goal of effective, sustainable collective action is achievable. In this study, we examine the political, cultural, and institutional structures that are in place in the pension systems of Dallas and Houston, Texas. We examine the pensions’ governance practices to determine which appear to violate Ostrom's ideal institutional arrangements and their impact on the pensions’ long-term sustainability. Pertinent survey information from pension beneficiaries conducted as part of this research are provided
What Determines Civil Servants’ Error Response? Evidence From a Conjoint Experiment
To err is human and learning from mistakes is essential for finding viable solutions to grand societal challenges through development and innovation. Yet, public organizations often exhibit a punitive zero-error culture, and public employees are stereotyped as error and risk-averse. Little is known about the underlying behavioral mechanisms that determine civil servants’ likelihood of handling errors positively, namely reporting and correcting them instead of ignoring and hiding them to avoid blame. Based on the transactional theory of stress coping, we argue that individuals’ error-handling strategies relate to both rational and emotional evaluations of error-specific and consequential contextual factors. Using a conjoint survey experiment conducted with N = 276 civil servants in Germany (Obs. = 1,104), this study disentangles the effects of error-related, individual, and organization-cultural factors as decisive drivers of individuals’ error response. We find that error characteristics (type and harmfulness) determine error-handling behavior, which is revealed to be independent from organizational error culture and individual error orientation, providing important and novel insights for theory and practice.
Public Accountability and Bureaucratic Discretion: Why do Internal Auditors Stretch the Boundaries of Their Role?
Our goal is to identify the factors that encourage internal auditors in the public sector to use their discretion when conducting audits. By investigating multiple relationships between principals and agents, we show how complex structural conditions and accountability pressures influence public auditors’ discretion in the choice of audits they decide to conduct. To test our theoretical model and hypotheses, we created a closed-ended questionnaire distributed to a sample group of Israeli auditors. Our findings reveal a conditional effect between the factors related to the internal and external work environments of internal auditors. Our analysis indicates that internal support for internal auditors’ professional authority is significantly related to their inclination to stretch the boundaries of their role when they strongly believe that their direct principals are concerned about the expectations of the public and the audit committee regarding accountability. Nonetheless, individual auditing experience in the public sector was not significantly related to their professional approach. Our bottom-up approach emphasizes the role of citizens’ democratic awareness and their demand to support the broad scope of gatekeepers, rather than just explanations about the role of elites. Moreover, our conclusions emphasize the role of internal support for the auditors’ professional authority and question the role of their perceived independence in the approach they adopt to auditing.
Career Paths and Professionalism: Examining ICMA Credentials among City Managers
The emphasis on professionalism in public administration has highlighted the importance of city managers and their role in managing cities effectively. While there are various avenues for city managers to improve their professionalism, such as a Master of Public Administration (MPA) degree, there has been limited research on other organizations that facilitate professionalism. This paper focuses on the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) credentialing program. ICMA is a nationally recognized organization that helps dictate professional norms among city managers. The purpose of this paper is to explore the motivations of city managers who pursue additional credentials and to identify the types of city managers who are more likely to attain professional certification. I argue that the ambition of city managers, as measured through their career path, is related to their pursuit of professionalism. Specifically, city managers with a diagonal career path are more likely to attain additional professional certification compared to those with a ladder career path because it signals their promising ability to future employers, namely city councils. To test this hypothesis, this paper uses two datasets. The first dataset examines the career paths of city managers in California, Florida, and North Carolina from 2012 to 2023. The second dataset focuses on newly hired chief administrators from 2021 to 2023 across the United States, drawing data from the ICMA job advertising information. From these two datasets, I find that city managers with diagonal career paths are more likely to possess ICMA credentials than those with ladder career paths.