Pub Date : 2026-02-05DOI: 10.1177/0734371x251395023
Jana Oetken
The first months in a new organization are a sensitive phase for newcomers as their attitudes are not yet settled. However, public management research has paid limited attention to onboarding tactics that support newcomer integration. This study explores “microinterventions”—brief reflective tasks on the social impact of one’s work—as a novel onboarding tactic. In an eight-week diary study, 31 public management students (Level 2) in placements (194 weekly observations, Level 1) were randomly assigned to a reflection-task or control group. Multilevel analyses showed no significant main effect of reflection tasks on socialization, positive affect, negative affect, or career commitment and no significant interaction effect of reflection task and time. Descriptive means suggested a higher treatment-group level at the first wave, but this early difference did not persist. Findings indicate limited efficacy of reflection-based microinterventions for newcomer integration in this real-world public sector context, though the tactic appears low-risk. We discuss implications for public sector onboarding.
{"title":"Boosting Newcomer Integration in Public Service: A Diary Study on Microinterventions","authors":"Jana Oetken","doi":"10.1177/0734371x251395023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0734371x251395023","url":null,"abstract":"The first months in a new organization are a sensitive phase for newcomers as their attitudes are not yet settled. However, public management research has paid limited attention to onboarding tactics that support newcomer integration. This study explores “microinterventions”—brief reflective tasks on the social impact of one’s work—as a novel onboarding tactic. In an eight-week diary study, 31 public management students (Level 2) in placements (194 weekly observations, Level 1) were randomly assigned to a reflection-task or control group. Multilevel analyses showed no significant main effect of reflection tasks on socialization, positive affect, negative affect, or career commitment and no significant interaction effect of reflection task and time. Descriptive means suggested a higher treatment-group level at the first wave, but this early difference did not persist. Findings indicate limited efficacy of reflection-based microinterventions for newcomer integration in this real-world public sector context, though the tactic appears low-risk. We discuss implications for public sector onboarding.","PeriodicalId":47609,"journal":{"name":"Review of Public Personnel Administration","volume":"235 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2026-02-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146122061","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-01-31DOI: 10.1177/0734371x251399925
Monica Lea, Nuri Heckler, Mary E. Guy
There is a significant emotive dimension to the work of public interest lawyers (PILs), whose jobs involve working with traumatized clients in a high-stakes legal environment. This vital public service profession represents marginalized clients, many of whom face extraordinary challenges. These attorneys must maintain their own composure as they simultaneously manage their clients’ emotional distress and legal predicaments. Drawing on interviews of PILs, we identify themes related to emotion regulation, vicarious trauma, burnout, and resilience. Findings reveal that PILs leverage emotion to build the trust that is essential for effective legal advocacy and they do this while navigating client trauma and systemic injustice. Compounding the emotive burden are risks of secondary trauma and feelings of institutional betrayal. Findings also reveal strategies that PILs employ to thrive, including on-ramps and off-ramps they use to set boundaries around the emotive demands of their work. HR implications are discussed.
{"title":"How Public Interest Lawyers Manage the Emotive Dimension of Their Work","authors":"Monica Lea, Nuri Heckler, Mary E. Guy","doi":"10.1177/0734371x251399925","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0734371x251399925","url":null,"abstract":"There is a significant emotive dimension to the work of public interest lawyers (PILs), whose jobs involve working with traumatized clients in a high-stakes legal environment. This vital public service profession represents marginalized clients, many of whom face extraordinary challenges. These attorneys must maintain their own composure as they simultaneously manage their clients’ emotional distress and legal predicaments. Drawing on interviews of PILs, we identify themes related to emotion regulation, vicarious trauma, burnout, and resilience. Findings reveal that PILs leverage emotion to build the trust that is essential for effective legal advocacy and they do this while navigating client trauma and systemic injustice. Compounding the emotive burden are risks of secondary trauma and feelings of institutional betrayal. Findings also reveal strategies that PILs employ to thrive, including on-ramps and off-ramps they use to set boundaries around the emotive demands of their work. HR implications are discussed.","PeriodicalId":47609,"journal":{"name":"Review of Public Personnel Administration","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2026-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146098408","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-01-23DOI: 10.1177/0734371x251399922
Yongjin Ahn, Hemin Choi
Backsourcing, the process of reclaiming previously outsourced services and reintegrating them into public organizations, has garnered increasing attention in the field of government contracting. While prior studies have emphasized fiscal and efficiency outcomes, limited research has explored its human resource implications, particularly its impact on employees. This study examines the experiences of backsourced employees (contracted managers transitioning to public service roles) and traditional public servants in South Korea. Through 27 in-depth interviews conducted at Veterans Service Centers and a nationally representative survey of public servants, findings reveal in-group/out-group conflict between two different groups of employees. The conflict stems from perceived differences in entry routes (meritocracy vs. political agendas) and dissatisfaction with task-reward alignment, leading to issues of social identity and organizational justice. This study highlights the critical need for fair procedures and equitable rewards to foster employee integration and mitigate conflict during personnel reforms involving backsourcing.
{"title":"Two Families Under One Roof: The Role of Social Identity and Organizational Justice During Backsourcing","authors":"Yongjin Ahn, Hemin Choi","doi":"10.1177/0734371x251399922","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0734371x251399922","url":null,"abstract":"Backsourcing, the process of reclaiming previously outsourced services and reintegrating them into public organizations, has garnered increasing attention in the field of government contracting. While prior studies have emphasized fiscal and efficiency outcomes, limited research has explored its human resource implications, particularly its impact on employees. This study examines the experiences of backsourced employees (contracted managers transitioning to public service roles) and traditional public servants in South Korea. Through 27 in-depth interviews conducted at Veterans Service Centers and a nationally representative survey of public servants, findings reveal in-group/out-group conflict between two different groups of employees. The conflict stems from perceived differences in entry routes (meritocracy vs. political agendas) and dissatisfaction with task-reward alignment, leading to issues of social identity and organizational justice. This study highlights the critical need for fair procedures and equitable rewards to foster employee integration and mitigate conflict during personnel reforms involving backsourcing.","PeriodicalId":47609,"journal":{"name":"Review of Public Personnel Administration","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2026-01-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146042677","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-01-21DOI: 10.1177/0734371x251411200
James E. Wright, Collin Cox, Victoria Pham
Scholarship on institutional and structural racism in frontline work is essential for improved service delivery outcomes. This study expands this realm of scholarship and practice by examining the job experiences of Black firefighters in predominantly White fire departments. Semi-structured interviews with 21 Black firefighters on citizen interactions, representation in their organization and leadership, racist experiences, and unique challenges they faced. The findings demonstrated that (1) Black firefighters experienced double standards compared to White firefighters, (2) Black firefighters’ qualifications were consistently questioned, and (3) they dealt with significant stereotyping and prejudice in the workplace. Taken together, these results suggest that institutional and structural racism in frontline work is produced through Black firefighters’ interactions with colleagues and supervisors, through the unequal application of punitive policies or through experiencing expressions of racial stereotypes. These results have practical implications for how to recruit and retain racially minoritized employees in frontline work.
{"title":"Code Red: Fighting Fires, Racism, and Policies in Emergency Safety Services","authors":"James E. Wright, Collin Cox, Victoria Pham","doi":"10.1177/0734371x251411200","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0734371x251411200","url":null,"abstract":"Scholarship on institutional and structural racism in frontline work is essential for improved service delivery outcomes. This study expands this realm of scholarship and practice by examining the job experiences of Black firefighters in predominantly White fire departments. Semi-structured interviews with 21 Black firefighters on citizen interactions, representation in their organization and leadership, racist experiences, and unique challenges they faced. The findings demonstrated that (1) Black firefighters experienced double standards compared to White firefighters, (2) Black firefighters’ qualifications were consistently questioned, and (3) they dealt with significant stereotyping and prejudice in the workplace. Taken together, these results suggest that institutional and structural racism in frontline work is produced through Black firefighters’ interactions with colleagues and supervisors, through the unequal application of punitive policies or through experiencing expressions of racial stereotypes. These results have practical implications for how to recruit and retain racially minoritized employees in frontline work.","PeriodicalId":47609,"journal":{"name":"Review of Public Personnel Administration","volume":"31 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2026-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146014344","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-01-06DOI: 10.1177/0734371x251400695
Ivan P. Lee, Jincheng Wang, Kuang-Ting Tai
Does working in the public sector make people more risk averse? Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP, 2008–2018), this study examines whether public sector work experience influences individual risk aversion over time. Fixed-effects and supplementary within-person analyses were conducted to test the socialization hypotheses. The results show that while public sector work experience per se does not affect individuals’ risk aversion once overall work experience is controlled for, an interaction between public and total work experience suggests that risk aversion may gradually increase among long-term public employees. However, the effect size is small, and additional within-person analyses indicate that individual risk aversion remains stable over time. These findings suggest that, rather than being substantially reshaped by public sector workplace context, individual risk aversion functions as a relatively stable personal disposition that interacts modestly with institutional experience. Implications for public employee socialization are discussed.
{"title":"Individual Risk Aversion and Public Sector Socialization: Evidence From a Longitudinal Study","authors":"Ivan P. Lee, Jincheng Wang, Kuang-Ting Tai","doi":"10.1177/0734371x251400695","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0734371x251400695","url":null,"abstract":"Does working in the public sector make people more risk averse? Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP, 2008–2018), this study examines whether public sector work experience influences individual risk aversion over time. Fixed-effects and supplementary within-person analyses were conducted to test the socialization hypotheses. The results show that while public sector work experience per se does not affect individuals’ risk aversion once overall work experience is controlled for, an interaction between public and total work experience suggests that risk aversion may gradually increase among long-term public employees. However, the effect size is small, and additional within-person analyses indicate that individual risk aversion remains stable over time. These findings suggest that, rather than being substantially reshaped by public sector workplace context, individual risk aversion functions as a relatively stable personal disposition that interacts modestly with institutional experience. Implications for public employee socialization are discussed.","PeriodicalId":47609,"journal":{"name":"Review of Public Personnel Administration","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2026-01-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145903654","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-01-02DOI: 10.1177/0734371x251399926
Marthe Rys, Edwin A. J. van Hooft, Eveline Schollaert, Greet Van Hoye
In today’s competitive labor market, attracting and retaining talent is challenging, especially for public organizations facing aging workforces and declining interest in public service careers. To address this, organizations implement public employer branding strategies to attract and retain talent. Employees play a crucial role in promoting the organization’s employer brand, making it essential for public employers to encourage employees to display ambassadorship. Leadership practices can create an environment that fosters employee contributions to organizational success. This study, employing self-determination theory, explores how supervisors satisfying employees’ basic needs could foster ambassadorship. Surveys administered in a Belgian local government ( Nemployees = 228; Nsupervisors = 41) revealed that social support indirectly related to ambassadorship via relatedness need satisfaction. Exploratory analyses showed some support for the moderating role of supervisor ambassadorship modeling in this relationship. Overall, social support emerges as a crucial leadership practice for fostering ambassadorship, explaining leadership’s role in employer branding within the public sector.
{"title":"Leadership Practices and Employee Ambassadorship: The Mediating Role of Basic Needs","authors":"Marthe Rys, Edwin A. J. van Hooft, Eveline Schollaert, Greet Van Hoye","doi":"10.1177/0734371x251399926","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0734371x251399926","url":null,"abstract":"In today’s competitive labor market, attracting and retaining talent is challenging, especially for public organizations facing aging workforces and declining interest in public service careers. To address this, organizations implement public employer branding strategies to attract and retain talent. Employees play a crucial role in promoting the organization’s employer brand, making it essential for public employers to encourage employees to display ambassadorship. Leadership practices can create an environment that fosters employee contributions to organizational success. This study, employing self-determination theory, explores how supervisors satisfying employees’ basic needs could foster ambassadorship. Surveys administered in a Belgian local government ( <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">N</jats:italic> <jats:sub>employees</jats:sub> = 228; <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">N</jats:italic> <jats:sub>supervisors</jats:sub> = 41) revealed that social support indirectly related to ambassadorship via relatedness need satisfaction. Exploratory analyses showed some support for the moderating role of supervisor ambassadorship modeling in this relationship. Overall, social support emerges as a crucial leadership practice for fostering ambassadorship, explaining leadership’s role in employer branding within the public sector.","PeriodicalId":47609,"journal":{"name":"Review of Public Personnel Administration","volume":"56 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2026-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145893944","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-31DOI: 10.1177/0734371x251396155
Anne Mette Kjeldsen, Thomas Faurholt Jønsson, Lotte Bøgh Andersen
Distributed leadership, characterized by leadership tasks divided among managers and employees, has shown promise in promoting positive workplace outcomes. However, its training applicability within public organizations remains underexplored. Based on a pre-registered field experiment that provides randomized organizational development interventions in distributed leadership compared to goal-oriented leadership and motivation interventions in four different public service sectors, this study examines training effects on distributed leadership behavior and perceived alignment of leadership processes. Our findings provide limited support to the expectation that the distributed leadership training program directly increases employee-perceived distributed leadership behavior and alignment compared to the two other training programs. However, organizational units with low pre-training levels of aligned leadership substantially increase their distributed leadership behaviors and alignment through organizational development interventions—regardless of the training content. This study thereby highlights important conditions for the trainability of distributed leadership within public organizations when managers and employees are trained together.
{"title":"Can Distributed Leadership be Trained? A Field Experiment on Aligned Division of Leadership Tasks in Public Organizations","authors":"Anne Mette Kjeldsen, Thomas Faurholt Jønsson, Lotte Bøgh Andersen","doi":"10.1177/0734371x251396155","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0734371x251396155","url":null,"abstract":"Distributed leadership, characterized by leadership tasks divided among managers and employees, has shown promise in promoting positive workplace outcomes. However, its training applicability within public organizations remains underexplored. Based on a pre-registered field experiment that provides randomized organizational development interventions in distributed leadership compared to goal-oriented leadership and motivation interventions in four different public service sectors, this study examines training effects on distributed leadership behavior and perceived alignment of leadership processes. Our findings provide limited support to the expectation that the distributed leadership training program directly increases employee-perceived distributed leadership behavior and alignment compared to the two other training programs. However, organizational units with low pre-training levels of aligned leadership substantially increase their distributed leadership behaviors and alignment through organizational development interventions—regardless of the training content. This study thereby highlights important conditions for the trainability of distributed leadership within public organizations when managers and employees are trained together.","PeriodicalId":47609,"journal":{"name":"Review of Public Personnel Administration","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2025-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145893945","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-27DOI: 10.1177/0734371x251390513
Lynn Colder, Eduard Schmidt, Sandra Groeneveld, Jet Bussemaker
Accountability plays an important role in the daily work of frontline professionals, yet it is unclear whether it affects them either positively or negatively at work. This study therefore examines how employee accountability (EA), as a job demand, impacts employee engagement and emotional exhaustion. Furthermore, we assess to what extent psychological safety, as a job resource, moderates the impact of EA on emotional exhaustion and engagement. Based on a survey among 3,691 frontline professionals in Dutch healthcare, we show that different dimensions of employee accountability have contradictory, albeit small, effects on emotional exhaustion and engagement. In addition, our study reveals that the validity and reliability of the measurement of employee accountability are dependent on professional and national contexts. Recommendations for future research are discussed.
{"title":"Accountability at Work: Effects of Employee Accountability on Emotional Exhaustion and Engagement among Healthcare Professionals in the Netherlands","authors":"Lynn Colder, Eduard Schmidt, Sandra Groeneveld, Jet Bussemaker","doi":"10.1177/0734371x251390513","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0734371x251390513","url":null,"abstract":"Accountability plays an important role in the daily work of frontline professionals, yet it is unclear whether it affects them either positively or negatively at work. This study therefore examines how employee accountability (EA), as a job demand, impacts employee engagement and emotional exhaustion. Furthermore, we assess to what extent psychological safety, as a job resource, moderates the impact of EA on emotional exhaustion and engagement. Based on a survey among 3,691 frontline professionals in Dutch healthcare, we show that different dimensions of employee accountability have contradictory, albeit small, effects on emotional exhaustion and engagement. In addition, our study reveals that the validity and reliability of the measurement of employee accountability are dependent on professional and national contexts. Recommendations for future research are discussed.","PeriodicalId":47609,"journal":{"name":"Review of Public Personnel Administration","volume":"183 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2025-12-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145836063","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-20DOI: 10.1177/0734371x251395027
Haeil Jung, Sun Young Kim, Seungmin Jeon
While pension reforms for public employees are implemented frequently around the world, there is still limited understanding of how these employees respond to and adapt to such changes. Utilizing the 2015 Public Officials Pension Reform in South Korea as the research context, this study investigates the impact of pension reform on employee satisfaction with the public service profession during the reform period and how this impact evolved in the post-reform years. Drawing on yearly repeated cross-sectional data from 15,270 public employees collected between 2013 and 2019, our empirical analysis reveals a significant decline in employee satisfaction with the public service profession following the initiation of pension reform in 2014, with a subsequent rebound to pre-reform levels in the later years. These findings offer valuable insights for navigating the challenges of pension reform and enhancing employee satisfaction during the reform process.
{"title":"Pension Reform and Employee Satisfaction With the Public Service Profession: Evidence From the 2015 Public Officials Pension Reform in South Korea","authors":"Haeil Jung, Sun Young Kim, Seungmin Jeon","doi":"10.1177/0734371x251395027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0734371x251395027","url":null,"abstract":"While pension reforms for public employees are implemented frequently around the world, there is still limited understanding of how these employees respond to and adapt to such changes. Utilizing the 2015 Public Officials Pension Reform in South Korea as the research context, this study investigates the impact of pension reform on employee satisfaction with the public service profession during the reform period and how this impact evolved in the post-reform years. Drawing on yearly repeated cross-sectional data from 15,270 public employees collected between 2013 and 2019, our empirical analysis reveals a significant decline in employee satisfaction with the public service profession following the initiation of pension reform in 2014, with a subsequent rebound to pre-reform levels in the later years. These findings offer valuable insights for navigating the challenges of pension reform and enhancing employee satisfaction during the reform process.","PeriodicalId":47609,"journal":{"name":"Review of Public Personnel Administration","volume":"31 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2025-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145801020","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-18DOI: 10.1177/0734371x251395040
Heonuk Ha
Professionalism plays a critical role in public management, yet prior research has faced challenges in defining the professionalism of key officials and in identifying appropriate measures to assess its relationship with performance. Specifically, although agency chief financial officers (CFOs) are central to managing federal finances, their influence on financial performance has been largely unexamined. This study analyzes the effects of CFO professionalism—defined by specialized education, work experience, and career aspirations—on the financial management performance of 26 U.S. federal agencies from 2003 to 2021. It also examines how agency-level professionalism, particularly the presence of experienced professionals in supervisory positions, influences financial performance. Using an ordinary least squares (OLS) model with agency and year fixed effects, the findings indicate that CFOs’ prior work experience, especially their tenure, is positively associated with financial performance, whereas educational background shows no significant effect. At the agency level, a higher proportion of professional specialists in supervisory positions is associated with a higher level of financial performance. These results underscore the importance of both individual executive attributes and broader organizational professionalism in enhancing public management outcomes.
{"title":"Professionalism and Financial Management: A Study of CFOs and Supervisory Roles in U.S. Federal Agencies","authors":"Heonuk Ha","doi":"10.1177/0734371x251395040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0734371x251395040","url":null,"abstract":"Professionalism plays a critical role in public management, yet prior research has faced challenges in defining the professionalism of key officials and in identifying appropriate measures to assess its relationship with performance. Specifically, although agency chief financial officers (CFOs) are central to managing federal finances, their influence on financial performance has been largely unexamined. This study analyzes the effects of CFO professionalism—defined by specialized education, work experience, and career aspirations—on the financial management performance of 26 U.S. federal agencies from 2003 to 2021. It also examines how agency-level professionalism, particularly the presence of experienced professionals in supervisory positions, influences financial performance. Using an ordinary least squares (OLS) model with agency and year fixed effects, the findings indicate that CFOs’ prior work experience, especially their tenure, is positively associated with financial performance, whereas educational background shows no significant effect. At the agency level, a higher proportion of professional specialists in supervisory positions is associated with a higher level of financial performance. These results underscore the importance of both individual executive attributes and broader organizational professionalism in enhancing public management outcomes.","PeriodicalId":47609,"journal":{"name":"Review of Public Personnel Administration","volume":"155 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2025-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145770682","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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