Lena E Bygballe, Ragnhild Kvålshaugen, Anne Helena Kokkonen
Purpose-oriented networks (PONs) face multiple tensions, but although their existence is well-documented, there is limited research on how network tensions emerge and how they are managed over time to enable network sustainability. We conducted a longitudinal process study of a public PON in the natural hazards field in Norway to explore how network participants experience and manage network tensions. The study identifies four tension-managing practices that help sustain networks. The analysis reveals how network tensions are interrelated and (re)emerge as the network unfolds, and how the participants’ use of these practices yields different outcomes but enables them to sustain the network over time. The study answers recent calls in the public administration literature for process studies to better understand network phenomena and contributes with a “networks-as-practice” perspective on managing network tensions. This perspective helps to reconcile and extend the dominant network governance and management perspectives because, by focusing on practice, it captures how structures and actions mutually shape one another—an interaction that is fundamental to network processes and dynamics.
{"title":"A Process Study of Managing Tensions for Sustaining Public Purpose-Oriented Networks: Toward A “Networks as Practice” Perspective","authors":"Lena E Bygballe, Ragnhild Kvålshaugen, Anne Helena Kokkonen","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muaf030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muaf030","url":null,"abstract":"Purpose-oriented networks (PONs) face multiple tensions, but although their existence is well-documented, there is limited research on how network tensions emerge and how they are managed over time to enable network sustainability. We conducted a longitudinal process study of a public PON in the natural hazards field in Norway to explore how network participants experience and manage network tensions. The study identifies four tension-managing practices that help sustain networks. The analysis reveals how network tensions are interrelated and (re)emerge as the network unfolds, and how the participants’ use of these practices yields different outcomes but enables them to sustain the network over time. The study answers recent calls in the public administration literature for process studies to better understand network phenomena and contributes with a “networks-as-practice” perspective on managing network tensions. This perspective helps to reconcile and extend the dominant network governance and management perspectives because, by focusing on practice, it captures how structures and actions mutually shape one another—an interaction that is fundamental to network processes and dynamics.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"172 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2025-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145254944","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This study investigates leadership representation and the perceptions of public employees, specifically focusing on a fire department led by a Black fire chief. Drawing from literature on representative bureaucracy and relational demography, we explore how leadership representation influences street-level bureaucrats’ views on diversity and representation within the organization. Through in-depth interviews with both Black and White firefighters, we find distinctions in their perceptions regarding racial diversity and representation. Firstly, Black firefighters viewed the presence of a Black leader as empowering, leading to opportunities for professional advancement and a commitment to community representation. In contrast, White firefighters perceived race-based diversity efforts as undermining meritocracy. Secondly, White firefighters preferred to avoid having discussions about race and diversity within the workplace, often referring to their familial bond and collective firefighter identity that minimized racial differences among their colleagues. Moreover, White firefighters are colorblind until race poses a material threat to them. Black firefighters reported selectively engaging in discussions depending on the context or cultural environment, or avoiding conversations, especially when they perceived potential consequences. Our findings suggest that leadership representation serves as a context to further interrogate these divergences. This research expands our understanding of leadership representation within public agencies and practically highlights the importance of managing diversity issues to foster inclusivity and mitigate tensions.
{"title":"Internal Representation? How Black and White firefighters view racial diversity within the Fire service","authors":"James E Wright, Andrea M Headley, Youghyun Cho","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muaf029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muaf029","url":null,"abstract":"This study investigates leadership representation and the perceptions of public employees, specifically focusing on a fire department led by a Black fire chief. Drawing from literature on representative bureaucracy and relational demography, we explore how leadership representation influences street-level bureaucrats’ views on diversity and representation within the organization. Through in-depth interviews with both Black and White firefighters, we find distinctions in their perceptions regarding racial diversity and representation. Firstly, Black firefighters viewed the presence of a Black leader as empowering, leading to opportunities for professional advancement and a commitment to community representation. In contrast, White firefighters perceived race-based diversity efforts as undermining meritocracy. Secondly, White firefighters preferred to avoid having discussions about race and diversity within the workplace, often referring to their familial bond and collective firefighter identity that minimized racial differences among their colleagues. Moreover, White firefighters are colorblind until race poses a material threat to them. Black firefighters reported selectively engaging in discussions depending on the context or cultural environment, or avoiding conversations, especially when they perceived potential consequences. Our findings suggest that leadership representation serves as a context to further interrogate these divergences. This research expands our understanding of leadership representation within public agencies and practically highlights the importance of managing diversity issues to foster inclusivity and mitigate tensions.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"102 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2025-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145141506","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Saar Alon-Barkat, Madalina Busuioc, Kayla Schwoerer, Kristina S Weißmüller
As public bodies increasingly adopt AI technologies in their work, there is simultaneously growing attention to the risk that the reliance on the technology may introduce biases and produce discriminatory administrative outcomes, as demonstrated by multiple real-world cases. Our contribution addresses a core theoretical puzzle: With AI algorithms being increasingly embedded across public services, we lack crucial knowledge about how citizens assign responsibility to public organizations for algorithmic failures and discrimination in public services compared to human discrimination. This speaks to key questions as to whether organizational responsibility attribution mechanisms and public demand for consequences fundamentally change in the context of algorithmic governance. Addressing this gap, we examine whether individual citizens are less likely to attribute responsibility for algorithmic vs human discrimination in public service provision. Building on psychology literature, we further theorize potential mechanisms that underlie these effects and shape citizens’ responses. We investigate these research questions through a pre-registered survey experiment conducted in the Netherlands (N=2,483). Our findings indicate that public organizations are not held to a lower responsibility standard for algorithmic compared to human discrimination. Technological delegation to AI does not allow public bodies to bypass responsibility for discriminatory outcomes. However, we find that citizens assign more responsibility for algorithmic discrimination when the algorithm is developed inhouse rather than externally. This could lead to the emergence of accountability deficits pertaining to technological outsourcing.
{"title":"Algorithmic Discrimination in Public Service Provision: Understanding Citizens’ Attribution of Responsibility for Human vs Algorithmic Discriminatory Outcomes","authors":"Saar Alon-Barkat, Madalina Busuioc, Kayla Schwoerer, Kristina S Weißmüller","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muaf024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muaf024","url":null,"abstract":"As public bodies increasingly adopt AI technologies in their work, there is simultaneously growing attention to the risk that the reliance on the technology may introduce biases and produce discriminatory administrative outcomes, as demonstrated by multiple real-world cases. Our contribution addresses a core theoretical puzzle: With AI algorithms being increasingly embedded across public services, we lack crucial knowledge about how citizens assign responsibility to public organizations for algorithmic failures and discrimination in public services compared to human discrimination. This speaks to key questions as to whether organizational responsibility attribution mechanisms and public demand for consequences fundamentally change in the context of algorithmic governance. Addressing this gap, we examine whether individual citizens are less likely to attribute responsibility for algorithmic vs human discrimination in public service provision. Building on psychology literature, we further theorize potential mechanisms that underlie these effects and shape citizens’ responses. We investigate these research questions through a pre-registered survey experiment conducted in the Netherlands (N=2,483). Our findings indicate that public organizations are not held to a lower responsibility standard for algorithmic compared to human discrimination. Technological delegation to AI does not allow public bodies to bypass responsibility for discriminatory outcomes. However, we find that citizens assign more responsibility for algorithmic discrimination when the algorithm is developed inhouse rather than externally. This could lead to the emergence of accountability deficits pertaining to technological outsourcing.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"148 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2025-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145056737","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Performance management is used by governments worldwide to incentivize professionals in schools and other public organizations. Yet, much research shows that these incentives may generate perverse dysfunctional effects. Based on a Bayesian model of learning, we propose that simply providing professional teachers with performance information— without changing their extrinsic incentives—may be enough to make them update their beliefs about their students and act accordingly. However, measuring performance may itself affect professionals’ behavior, which makes it difficult to isolate the effect of providing performance information. We designed and preregistered a field experiment in which we can isolate the effect of making performance information available to teachers and study how it affects their posterior beliefs and behavior towards the students (N=2028). The results confirm the primary hypothesis and thereby provide indications that information provision itself may be effective in the governance of public organizations.
{"title":"A Learning Approach to the Governance of Professionals. Field Experimental Evidence","authors":"Simon Calmar Andersen, Thorbjørn Sejr Guul","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muaf028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muaf028","url":null,"abstract":"Performance management is used by governments worldwide to incentivize professionals in schools and other public organizations. Yet, much research shows that these incentives may generate perverse dysfunctional effects. Based on a Bayesian model of learning, we propose that simply providing professional teachers with performance information— without changing their extrinsic incentives—may be enough to make them update their beliefs about their students and act accordingly. However, measuring performance may itself affect professionals’ behavior, which makes it difficult to isolate the effect of providing performance information. We designed and preregistered a field experiment in which we can isolate the effect of making performance information available to teachers and study how it affects their posterior beliefs and behavior towards the students (N=2028). The results confirm the primary hypothesis and thereby provide indications that information provision itself may be effective in the governance of public organizations.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"27 10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2025-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145068477","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper examines how tax salience—or how aware individuals are of their property tax payments that finance local public services—correlates with citizens’ evaluation of their local government. Drawing on theories of expectation formation for public services and fiscal illusion, we hypothesize that reduced tax salience is associated with lower normative expectations, which will correlate with increased reported satisfaction with their local government and a higher willingness to support additional taxation. Using data from a nationwide survey of homeowners (n = 10,066), we provide evidence of robust correlations between lower tax salience and more positive citizen evaluation of government. This paper contributes to a growing literature in public administration that finds that the design of tax systems, tax complexity, and other factors outside of the control of street-level bureaucrats that provide public services can influence how individuals evaluate a government or public service.
{"title":"Tax Salience and Citizen Evaluation of Government","authors":"David J Schwegman, Yusun Kim","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muaf025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muaf025","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines how tax salience—or how aware individuals are of their property tax payments that finance local public services—correlates with citizens’ evaluation of their local government. Drawing on theories of expectation formation for public services and fiscal illusion, we hypothesize that reduced tax salience is associated with lower normative expectations, which will correlate with increased reported satisfaction with their local government and a higher willingness to support additional taxation. Using data from a nationwide survey of homeowners (n = 10,066), we provide evidence of robust correlations between lower tax salience and more positive citizen evaluation of government. This paper contributes to a growing literature in public administration that finds that the design of tax systems, tax complexity, and other factors outside of the control of street-level bureaucrats that provide public services can influence how individuals evaluate a government or public service.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"119 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2025-08-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144910687","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Street-level bureaucrats' coping mechanisms are an integral part of their interaction with clients, and as such have received much research attention. Since the last review of the behavioral coping mechanisms adopted by street-level bureaucrats, conducted more than 10 years ago, many researchers have focused on understanding these mechanisms and what influences them. Using the PRISMA model, we conducted a systematic review of 165 studies to update our understanding and explore the manifestations of both old and new coping mechanisms identified in the literature. Moreover, we seek to determine the antecedents of these coping mechanisms. From our findings emerged a new family of coping mechanisms that we call “moving with clients.” These behaviors include intentional efforts to involve clients in the process of service delivery, for example, by deliberating and cooperating with them to achieve the desired policy goals. We find that most street-level bureaucrats’ behaviors are associated with organizational and environmental factors. Personal factors, although highlighted frequently in the literature, are not associated with most coping behaviors.
{"title":"Revisiting Coping Mechanisms on the Street-Level: A Systematic Literature Review","authors":"Ofek Edri-Peer, Nissim Cohen","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muaf022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muaf022","url":null,"abstract":"Street-level bureaucrats' coping mechanisms are an integral part of their interaction with clients, and as such have received much research attention. Since the last review of the behavioral coping mechanisms adopted by street-level bureaucrats, conducted more than 10 years ago, many researchers have focused on understanding these mechanisms and what influences them. Using the PRISMA model, we conducted a systematic review of 165 studies to update our understanding and explore the manifestations of both old and new coping mechanisms identified in the literature. Moreover, we seek to determine the antecedents of these coping mechanisms. From our findings emerged a new family of coping mechanisms that we call “moving with clients.” These behaviors include intentional efforts to involve clients in the process of service delivery, for example, by deliberating and cooperating with them to achieve the desired policy goals. We find that most street-level bureaucrats’ behaviors are associated with organizational and environmental factors. Personal factors, although highlighted frequently in the literature, are not associated with most coping behaviors.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"39 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2025-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144629818","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Recent research suggests that bureaucratic responsiveness to political preferences may depend as much on organizational capacity as it does on incentive alignment, information recovery, and the strategic interaction of principal and agent. Better-resourced bureaucracies should be more able to comply with new political directions, irrespective of their willingness to do so. But because so much bureaucratic capacity is sunk into implementing the prior policy commitments of current and former principals, responding to new political signals will depend – much more specifically – on agents possessing adequate slack resources. This spare capacity should aid signal detection and program development; decrease hesitance at over-committing to new assignments in volatile environments; and provide resources for implementing changes whilst maintaining prior commitments. Using two-way fixed-effects regression and a novel dataset of 1,430 legislative requests of the UK executive, we confirm that possession of slack resources specifically (rather than organizational capacity generally) significantly increases the likelihood of bureaucracies consenting to make program changes requested by parliament. Agents with slack also commit to more precise timelines for implementation. And survival analysis further reveals that, once committed, bureaucracies with more budgetary slack complete their assignments more expeditiously.
{"title":"Ready, willing, and able? Bureaucratic capacity, slack resources and political control","authors":"Thomas Elston, Yuxi Zhang","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muaf021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muaf021","url":null,"abstract":"Recent research suggests that bureaucratic responsiveness to political preferences may depend as much on organizational capacity as it does on incentive alignment, information recovery, and the strategic interaction of principal and agent. Better-resourced bureaucracies should be more able to comply with new political directions, irrespective of their willingness to do so. But because so much bureaucratic capacity is sunk into implementing the prior policy commitments of current and former principals, responding to new political signals will depend – much more specifically – on agents possessing adequate slack resources. This spare capacity should aid signal detection and program development; decrease hesitance at over-committing to new assignments in volatile environments; and provide resources for implementing changes whilst maintaining prior commitments. Using two-way fixed-effects regression and a novel dataset of 1,430 legislative requests of the UK executive, we confirm that possession of slack resources specifically (rather than organizational capacity generally) significantly increases the likelihood of bureaucracies consenting to make program changes requested by parliament. Agents with slack also commit to more precise timelines for implementation. And survival analysis further reveals that, once committed, bureaucracies with more budgetary slack complete their assignments more expeditiously.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"109 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2025-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144611274","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Constantin Kaplaner, Christoph Knill, Yves Steinebach
Recent research suggests that additional public policies can sometimes decrease overall policy effectiveness rather than improve the problem-solving capacity of the state. This occurs when new policies are not supported by additional administrative capacities, leading to an overburdened administration. Public authorities handle the increased workload by employing “policy triage,” which involves reallocating resources among different policies. Despite this straightforward argument, a systematic understanding of these dynamics is lacking in the existing literature. This paper addresses this by examining the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) introduction of the Acid Rain Program. Utilizing a difference-in-differences analysis, it reveals a significant reduction in inspections for industrial sites not covered by the Acid Rain Program as administrators redirected enforcement efforts. These findings, robust against various alternative explanations, highlight the inherent trade-offs in the public sector when policy and administrative expansions are not considered together. To assess broader relevance, we complement our analysis with 28 interviews in Germany, Italy, and Portugal, showing that policy triage is a common response to administrative overload across diverse institutional contexts.
{"title":"Administrative Overload and Policy Triage: Causal evidence from the Introduction of the Acid Rain Program in the United States","authors":"Constantin Kaplaner, Christoph Knill, Yves Steinebach","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muaf020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muaf020","url":null,"abstract":"Recent research suggests that additional public policies can sometimes decrease overall policy effectiveness rather than improve the problem-solving capacity of the state. This occurs when new policies are not supported by additional administrative capacities, leading to an overburdened administration. Public authorities handle the increased workload by employing “policy triage,” which involves reallocating resources among different policies. Despite this straightforward argument, a systematic understanding of these dynamics is lacking in the existing literature. This paper addresses this by examining the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) introduction of the Acid Rain Program. Utilizing a difference-in-differences analysis, it reveals a significant reduction in inspections for industrial sites not covered by the Acid Rain Program as administrators redirected enforcement efforts. These findings, robust against various alternative explanations, highlight the inherent trade-offs in the public sector when policy and administrative expansions are not considered together. To assess broader relevance, we complement our analysis with 28 interviews in Germany, Italy, and Portugal, showing that policy triage is a common response to administrative overload across diverse institutional contexts.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"61 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2025-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144513244","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The timely disbursement of government program benefits is a core attribute of effective administration. In recent decades, American states charged with administering unemployment insurance programs have instituted IT modernization reforms to improve the timely delivery of unemployment benefits. Variation among those 28 states instituting IT modernization reforms between 2002 and 2022 reveals that these reforms improved the timely delivery of initial unemployment benefits by increasing the rate of meeting target performance benchmarks by 5.26%, while reducing the tardy disbursement of unemployment benefits by 2.90%, thus constituting a net performance swing of 8.16%. These performance benefits, however, are most pronounced for agency leaders holding prior appointed administrative leadership experience. More broadly, these findings indicate that appropriate matching of the type of prior government experience held by agency leaders in accordance with the nature of administrative reforms is critical for realizing these performance benefits.
{"title":"Agency Leaders and Organizational Adaptation to Administrative Reform: Evidence from IT Reforms and the Timely Disbursement of Unemployment Insurance Benefits in the American States","authors":"George A Krause, Ji Hyeun Hong","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muaf018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muaf018","url":null,"abstract":"The timely disbursement of government program benefits is a core attribute of effective administration. In recent decades, American states charged with administering unemployment insurance programs have instituted IT modernization reforms to improve the timely delivery of unemployment benefits. Variation among those 28 states instituting IT modernization reforms between 2002 and 2022 reveals that these reforms improved the timely delivery of initial unemployment benefits by increasing the rate of meeting target performance benchmarks by 5.26%, while reducing the tardy disbursement of unemployment benefits by 2.90%, thus constituting a net performance swing of 8.16%. These performance benefits, however, are most pronounced for agency leaders holding prior appointed administrative leadership experience. More broadly, these findings indicate that appropriate matching of the type of prior government experience held by agency leaders in accordance with the nature of administrative reforms is critical for realizing these performance benefits.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2025-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144513256","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper proposes a theory of organizational memory predicting that task knowledge retained in organizational structures (i.e., agency centralization and task standardization) buffers the disruptive effects of employee turnover. Using a dataset of information technology (IT) projects implemented by 94 U.S. federal agencies between FY2015-FY2021, estimates from fractional panel probit models reveal that both centralized authority under chief information officers and task standardization reduce project delays associated with IT workforce turnover; they are particularly effective in mitigating knowledge loss from voluntary and managerial position turnover. This evidence highlights the contingent nature of the turnover–performance relationship, suggesting that government agencies with high turnover may experience fewer delays when organizational structures retain task knowledge.
{"title":"When Does Employee Turnover Matter? Analyzing the Role of Organizational Memory in the Federal IT Workforce","authors":"Ji Hyeun Hong","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muaf019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muaf019","url":null,"abstract":"This paper proposes a theory of organizational memory predicting that task knowledge retained in organizational structures (i.e., agency centralization and task standardization) buffers the disruptive effects of employee turnover. Using a dataset of information technology (IT) projects implemented by 94 U.S. federal agencies between FY2015-FY2021, estimates from fractional panel probit models reveal that both centralized authority under chief information officers and task standardization reduce project delays associated with IT workforce turnover; they are particularly effective in mitigating knowledge loss from voluntary and managerial position turnover. This evidence highlights the contingent nature of the turnover–performance relationship, suggesting that government agencies with high turnover may experience fewer delays when organizational structures retain task knowledge.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2025-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144290149","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"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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