Review of Public Personnel Administration

Publisher:: Sage Publications, Inc.
Publication date:: 2021-09-06

ISBN:: 0734-371X

Issue Number

No. 44-2, June 2024

Latest documents

Book Review: Civil service systems in East and Southeast Asia
Does Employee Pay Variation Increase Government Performance? Evidence From a Cross-National Analysis
Pay variation across positions, functions, and ranks can affect government performance by influencing the ability of the government to recruit and incentivize civil servants, but this proposition has not been systematically examined. Taking advantage of a new panel dataset, we develop and test the theoretical linkage between pay variation of civil servants and government performance. Our findings show a contingency-based relationship between pay variation and government performance. On average, neither total pay variation nor vertical pay variation is significantly related to government performance measured by the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators. However, total pay variation is consistently and negatively correlated with government performance in low-income countries. The findings suggest the importance of accounting for national contexts in implementing administrative reforms and are a cautionary lesson about applying theories based on research on private firms to the public sector.
Pause But Not Panic: Exploring COVID-19 as a Critical Incident for Nonprofit Workers
Critical incidents often have significant impacts on workers, sometimes causing disruptions to career pathways and a re-evaluation of past career decisions. This article seeks to explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on nonprofit workers and their commitment to the sector using a critical incidents lens. In-depth interviews with nonprofit workers provided insights on the pandemic’s impact on workers’ personal and professional lives and how they made sense of these. Changes to work including flexibility and work-from-home options were often viewed positively, yet workers expressed a loss of connection with their colleagues, mental health and well-being challenges, as well as challenges to adapt to new ways of working. In making sense of these changes, commitment to the sector was mostly sustained; however, respondents also noted a shift in priorities and expressed a desire for better balance between their personal and professional lives.
Yovino v. Rizo: The Equal Pay Act and Salary History Defense
Emotionally Intelligent Street-Level Bureaucracies: Agenda Setting for Promoting Equity in Public Service Delivery
The goal of this conceptual study is to highlight the potential contribution of emotional intelligence as a tool in advancing the study of equity in public service delivery. By reviewing the literature on emotional intelligence in public administration and rationalizing its relationship with equity among street-level bureaucrats and bureaucracies, this article proposes a strategy to promote social equity in the provision of public service. The proposed strategy focuses on the role of EI-supportive organizational culture, and particularly human resource management practices, as a means to enhance bureaucrats’ emotionally intelligent behavior in their interactions with citizens-clients. Finally, the article proposes a theoretical and methodological agenda for future research in this important field of study.
Developing Perceived and Experienced Identity: How Leadership Training Affects Leadership Identity
Research shows that leadership identity is important for public managers’ behavior, but has until now relied primarily on self-reports. Arguing that leadership identity is a relational concept, this article compares the managers’ experienced leadership identity with the corresponding follower perceived leadership identity and followers’ role perceptions of their leaders. Further, we test whether leadership training affects these concepts. Panel data from 911 municipal employees and their 84 managers confirms that managers experience that they have a more dominant leadership identity relative to their employees’ perception, but that employees see their managers as having a more dominant leadership identity after the managers’ participation in leadership training. Data from 171 managers and their 1,572 employees in another municipality further show that many employees emphasize the professional role of their manager. Our study implies that public managers should consider prioritizing leadership training to strengthen their followers’ perceptions of them as leaders.
The Structural Relationship of Family-Friendly Policies, Work-Life Balance, and Employee’ Subjective Wellbeing: Focusing on the Categorization of Family-Friendly Policies Based on the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) Model
Although family-friendly policies (FFPs) accommodate the interests of both an organization and its employees, the extant literature has paid limited attention to how employee wellbeing can be a positive outcome of FFPs. Drawing on the job demands-resources (JD-R) model and spillover theory, this study examines the relationship between FFPs and employees’ subjective wellbeing (SWB) through their sense of work-life balance (WLB) and organizational commitment. Using a survey of 946 South Korean public employees and partial least squares path modeling (PLS-PM), this study finds that FFPs are positively and indirectly associated with SWB via its influence on WLB and organizational commitment. The findings imply that through positive spillover effects, FFPs as job resources can generate greater organizational outcomes and better employee wellbeing.
Training and ‘Doing’ Procedural Justice in the Frontline of Public Service: Evidence from Police
Can We Talk? An Exploratory Study of Gender and Network Ties in a Local Government Setting
We explore the influence of gender and formal organizational status on the formation of discussion ties. Network data, gathered through surveying employees from a municipal organization in the United States, garnered a 92% response rate (n = 143). Results of exponential random graph modeling indicate women supervisors are more likely to send discussion ties, while women in general are more likely to receive discussion ties. These exploratory results suggest women may be perceived as more approachable for work discussions, but not as supervisors. Finally, the results identified a consistent homophily effect of gender in the discussion network.
Choosing Jobs in the Public, Non-Profit, and For-Profit Sectors: Personal Career Anchors Moderating the Impact of Sector Image and Reputation
We expand on Cable and Turban’s employer knowledge model to investigate how sector attractiveness, that is, image and reputation, predicts management graduates’ sector-specific pursuit intentions, moderated by career anchors. The non-profit sector has the warmest image, followed by the public sector, while the latter is perceived as the least competent and shows the weakest reputation. Each sector’s competence image (but not its warmth image) and reputation significantly predict sector-specific pursuit intentions. The security, service, and challenge anchors confirmed their unique positive moderating impact, respectively for the public, non-profit, and for-profit sectors, although the challenge anchor reduced the public sector’s attractiveness. This study accentuates the importance of matching sector features with personal characteristics for understanding sector attractiveness to job seekers. Consequently, we offer new insights concerning sector-related recruitment practices and sector branding.