The Effects of Organizational Scandals on the Desirability of Public Organizations as Places to Work: Evidence From the VA Waitlist Scandal

• Published date: 01 January 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/02750740231191524
• Author: Shinwoo Lee,Gordon Abner,Taha Hameduddin
• Date: 01 January 2024

The Effects of Organizational Scandals on

the Desirability of Public Organizations as

Places to Work: Evidence From the VA

Waitlist Scandal

Shinwoo Lee

1

, Gordon Abner

2

, and Taha Hameduddin

3

Abstract

Public administration scholars have extensively explored organizational scandals through two lenses: (1) inside stories oforga-

nizational scandals examining the main causes of scandals and (2) the effects of scandals on trust in government, trust in gov-

ernmental off‌icials, and public f‌inancing. Yet, we know little about how organizational scandals affect government employees’

work attitudes. Understanding how public employees react to organizational scandals deserves scholarlyattention because

public employees not only execute their agencies’key functions and programs but are involved in actively addressing the orga-

nization’s failures. To address this gap, we apply a quasi-experimental approach using the 2014 Department of Veterans Affairs

waitlist scandal, with a specif‌ic focus on the effects of the scandal on employee job satisfaction and perceived organizational

attractiveness. Empirical results using the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey from 2011 to 2017 show that the organizational

scandal had a negative effect on both outcomes.

Keywords

organizational scandals, Department of Veterans Affairs scandal, employee job satisfaction, perceived organizational

attractiveness, quasi-experiment

Introduction

In April 2014, news of a scandal within the Veterans Health

Administration (VHA) made national headlines. The scandal

centered on allegations that employees were falsifying data

regarding the wait time to see doctors at Veterans Affairs

(VA) hospitals, starting with allegations at a Phoenix VA hospi-

tal and then spreading to multiple VA facilities across the

United States (American Legion, 2014). An internal audit

report of the VA later discovered that more than 120,000 veter-

ans were left waiting for care or had never been served, leading

to the deaths of 40 veterans (VA Off‌ice of Inspector General,

2014). Actual wait times were on average 115 days long;

much longer than the VA’s 14-day waiting goal as well as

the24-daywaitingperioditfalselyreported(VAOff‌ice of

Inspector General, 2014). The scandal dominated news head-

lines for months: both the VA and its Inspector General were

heavily criticized for downplaying the seriousness of the whis-

tleblower allegations, and VA administrators were found to

have maintained secret lists of actual wait times (Lopez,

2014a). The central question motivating this article is what

effects, if any, do such organizational scandals have on the

work attitudes of public employees.

Scandals—such as the VA waitlist example—are gener-

ally def‌ined as “violations of accepted values and social

norms, which are exposed through the media, [and] arouse

public criticism and anger”(Huberts et al., 2022, p. 333).

Public administration scholars have extensively explored

two aspects of organizational scandals. The f‌irst line of

research focuses on inside stories to investigate the main

causes of organizational scandals (e.g., Eikenberry et al.,

2007; Molina, 2018; Mujkic & Klingner, 2019; Nelson &

Afonso, 2019; Patrick et al., 2018; Schneider, 2005). The

second line of literature explores the effects of scandals on

trust in government and government off‌icials (Bowler &

Karp, 2004; Solé-Ollé & Sorribas-Navarro, 2018; Wang,

1

The Department of Public Administration, Incheon National University,

Incheon, South Korea

2

The LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texasat Austin, Austin, TX,

USA

3

The Martin School of Public Policy and Administration, University of

Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA

Corresponding Author:

Gordon Abner, The LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at

Austin, 2315 Red River St, Austin, TX 78712, USA.

Email: gordon.abner@austin.utexas.edu

Article

American Review of Public Administration

2024, Vol. 54(1) 19–32

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/02750740231191524

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