Demands for greater quality of public services and enhanced efficiency have intensified changes in public organizations. Not surprisingly, these organizations are increasingly searching for new and useful ideas, including disruptive ones, to meet current demands. Whereas previous studies on team radical creativity have focused on the influence that subordinates’ trust in the supervisor has on this type of creativity, this work innovates by testing the leader's trust in the team as an antecedent. Drawing on Self-Determination Theory, we further add to knowledge by considering the mediating role of team perceived organizational support for creativity and the moderating role of team collaborative climate. The research model was tested with a sample of 228 teams from public organizations with data collected from two sources at three moments in time. We found that the leader's trust in the team has a direct positive relationship with team radical creativity and an indirect positive relationship with creativity via team perceived organizational support. We also observed that team collaborative climate positively moderates the relationship between the leader's trust in the team and team radical creativity. These results deliver meaningful theoretical and practical insights into how organizations, especially public ones, can improve team creativity and thus enhance organizational performance.
{"title":"Will trust move mountains? Fostering radical ideas in public organizations","authors":"Raimundo Avilton Meneses Junior, Filipe Jorge Fernandes Coelho, Isabel Dórdio Dimas","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muae019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muae019","url":null,"abstract":"Demands for greater quality of public services and enhanced efficiency have intensified changes in public organizations. Not surprisingly, these organizations are increasingly searching for new and useful ideas, including disruptive ones, to meet current demands. Whereas previous studies on team radical creativity have focused on the influence that subordinates’ trust in the supervisor has on this type of creativity, this work innovates by testing the leader's trust in the team as an antecedent. Drawing on Self-Determination Theory, we further add to knowledge by considering the mediating role of team perceived organizational support for creativity and the moderating role of team collaborative climate. The research model was tested with a sample of 228 teams from public organizations with data collected from two sources at three moments in time. We found that the leader's trust in the team has a direct positive relationship with team radical creativity and an indirect positive relationship with creativity via team perceived organizational support. We also observed that team collaborative climate positively moderates the relationship between the leader's trust in the team and team radical creativity. These results deliver meaningful theoretical and practical insights into how organizations, especially public ones, can improve team creativity and thus enhance organizational performance.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"21 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2024-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142313604","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}
Stephan Grimmelikhuijsen, Marija Aleksovska, Judith van Erp, Sharon Gilad, Libby Maman, Tobias Bach, Moritz Kappler, Wouter Van Dooren, Rahel M Schomaker, Heidi Houlberg Salomonsen
Establishing and maintaining citizen trust is vital for the effectiveness and long-term viability of regulatory agencies. However, limited empirical research has been conducted on the relationship between regulatory action and citizen trust. This article addresses this gap by investigating the influence of various regulatory enforcement styles on citizen trust. We conducted a pre-registered and representative survey experiment in six countries (n=5765): Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, and Norway. Our study focuses on three key dimensions of enforcement style: formalism, coerciveness, and accommodation. We hypothesize that a strict and punitive enforcement style with minimal accommodation will enhance citizen trust. Surprisingly, we found no overall effect of enforcement on trust. However, specifically high levels of formalism (strictness) and coerciveness (punitiveness) exhibited a small positive effect on trust. Furthermore, we observed no discernible impact of an accommodative enforcement style. Additional analyses revealed that the effects of enforcement style were not consistent across country and regulatory domains. This suggests we need to reconsider assumptions underlying enforcement theory, as our findings imply that public trust seems less conditional on heavy-handed enforcement than initially anticipated.
{"title":"Does enforcement style influence citizen trust in regulatory agencies? An experiment in six countries","authors":"Stephan Grimmelikhuijsen, Marija Aleksovska, Judith van Erp, Sharon Gilad, Libby Maman, Tobias Bach, Moritz Kappler, Wouter Van Dooren, Rahel M Schomaker, Heidi Houlberg Salomonsen","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muae018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muae018","url":null,"abstract":"Establishing and maintaining citizen trust is vital for the effectiveness and long-term viability of regulatory agencies. However, limited empirical research has been conducted on the relationship between regulatory action and citizen trust. This article addresses this gap by investigating the influence of various regulatory enforcement styles on citizen trust. We conducted a pre-registered and representative survey experiment in six countries (n=5765): Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, and Norway. Our study focuses on three key dimensions of enforcement style: formalism, coerciveness, and accommodation. We hypothesize that a strict and punitive enforcement style with minimal accommodation will enhance citizen trust. Surprisingly, we found no overall effect of enforcement on trust. However, specifically high levels of formalism (strictness) and coerciveness (punitiveness) exhibited a small positive effect on trust. Furthermore, we observed no discernible impact of an accommodative enforcement style. Additional analyses revealed that the effects of enforcement style were not consistent across country and regulatory domains. This suggests we need to reconsider assumptions underlying enforcement theory, as our findings imply that public trust seems less conditional on heavy-handed enforcement than initially anticipated.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"30 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2024-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142236831","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}
Representative bureaucracy theory has mainly been used to understand how identities related to race, ethnicity, and gender influence how bureaucrats administer public services. Although representation through lived experience has expanded the scope of the theory, this theoretical thread has mostly focused on the perspectives of management. The purpose of this article is to employ lived experience representative bureaucracy theory to understand the influence of first responders’ experiences with substance use disorder (drug addiction) on their viewpoints regarding the humanness and deservingness of clients with opioid use disorder. We analyze data from a survey of emergency medical services (EMS)-providers and police officers in the United States (N = 3,500) with ordinary least squares regression and Hayes’ PROCESS macro to test for mediation. Results show that indirect and direct lived experiences—respectively, having a family member or friend who has experienced addiction and believing addiction has had a direct impact on respondents’ lives—predict increases in client deservingness, mediated by ascribed humanness and driven largely by EMS-providers. However, responding to opioid overdoses—an on-the-job lived experience—is associated with reduced deservingness and ascribed humanness. The study adds to the literature by expanding representative bureaucracy theory beyond race, ethnicity, and gender; broadening representation through lived experience beyond a focus on managers to include street-level bureaucrats; and incorporating concepts from social and political psychology that have yet to be integrated into representative bureaucracy studies.
代议制理论主要用于理解与种族、民族和性别有关的身份如何影响官僚如何管理公共服务。虽然通过生活经验的代表性扩大了该理论的范围,但这一理论线索主要集中在管理视角上。本文旨在运用生活经验代表官僚制理论,了解急救人员的药物使用障碍(吸毒成瘾)经历对其关于阿片类药物使用障碍患者的人性和应得性观点的影响。我们利用普通最小二乘法回归和 Hayes 的 PROCESS 宏,分析了对美国紧急医疗服务(EMS)提供者和警官(N = 3,500 )的调查数据,以检验中介作用。结果表明,间接和直接的生活经历--即有家人或朋友经历过吸毒成瘾,以及认为吸毒成瘾对受访者的生活产生了直接影响--可以预测受访者应得感的增加,而这主要是由 "人性 "中介的,并主要由急救服务提供者驱动。然而,应对阿片类药物过量--一种在职生活经历--与应得性和归因人性的降低有关。本研究将代表性官僚制理论扩展到了种族、民族和性别之外,通过生活经验扩大了代表性官僚制的范围,从关注管理者扩展到了街道一级的官僚,并纳入了社会和政治心理学中尚未纳入代表性官僚制研究的概念,从而为相关文献增添了新的内容。
{"title":"Deservingness, humanness, and representation through lived experience: analyzing first responders’ attitudes","authors":"Ryan J Lofaro, Alka Sapat","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muae015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muae015","url":null,"abstract":"Representative bureaucracy theory has mainly been used to understand how identities related to race, ethnicity, and gender influence how bureaucrats administer public services. Although representation through lived experience has expanded the scope of the theory, this theoretical thread has mostly focused on the perspectives of management. The purpose of this article is to employ lived experience representative bureaucracy theory to understand the influence of first responders’ experiences with substance use disorder (drug addiction) on their viewpoints regarding the humanness and deservingness of clients with opioid use disorder. We analyze data from a survey of emergency medical services (EMS)-providers and police officers in the United States (N = 3,500) with ordinary least squares regression and Hayes’ PROCESS macro to test for mediation. Results show that indirect and direct lived experiences—respectively, having a family member or friend who has experienced addiction and believing addiction has had a direct impact on respondents’ lives—predict increases in client deservingness, mediated by ascribed humanness and driven largely by EMS-providers. However, responding to opioid overdoses—an on-the-job lived experience—is associated with reduced deservingness and ascribed humanness. The study adds to the literature by expanding representative bureaucracy theory beyond race, ethnicity, and gender; broadening representation through lived experience beyond a focus on managers to include street-level bureaucrats; and incorporating concepts from social and political psychology that have yet to be integrated into representative bureaucracy studies.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2024-08-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142042353","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 literature on administrative burden has focused on cognitive, material, and social resources, leaving emotional strategies and processes largely unexplored. This study begins to address this research gap by elaborating Illouz’ (2007) concept of emotional capital in the context of citizen agency. The article uses the concept emotional capital to analyze claimant anger in response to administrative burdens examining the question: how do citizens understand and maneuver the potential benefits and risks of expressing their anger when experiencing administrative burdens? The article is based on ethnographic fieldwork in Danish job centers involving interviews with 71 claimants and observations of 10 conversations between caseworkers and claimants. The article contributes to theorize the role of emotions in citizen-state encounters by showing that emotional capital works as a resource moderating the experience of and coping with administrative burden
{"title":"Emotional capital in citizen agency: Contesting administrative burden through anger","authors":"Merete Monrad","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muae017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muae017","url":null,"abstract":"The literature on administrative burden has focused on cognitive, material, and social resources, leaving emotional strategies and processes largely unexplored. This study begins to address this research gap by elaborating Illouz’ (2007) concept of emotional capital in the context of citizen agency. The article uses the concept emotional capital to analyze claimant anger in response to administrative burdens examining the question: how do citizens understand and maneuver the potential benefits and risks of expressing their anger when experiencing administrative burdens? The article is based on ethnographic fieldwork in Danish job centers involving interviews with 71 claimants and observations of 10 conversations between caseworkers and claimants. The article contributes to theorize the role of emotions in citizen-state encounters by showing that emotional capital works as a resource moderating the experience of and coping with administrative burden","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2024-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141994506","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}
Francesca P Vantaggiato, Zuzana Murdoch, Hussein Kassim, Benny Geys, Sara Connolly
Programmes to encourage staff to move within public sector organizations have become increasingly widespread in recent decades. Yet, although there are some anecdotal accounts, the effects of such intra-organizational mobility remain largely unexplored. Building on insights from organization theory and social psychology, we argue that intra-organizational mobility entails an important trade-off: it undermines movers’ depth of work-related contacts within the (new) department, while it increases the breadth of their work-related contacts outside it. Our empirical analysis evaluates this trade-off using a two-way fixed effects model for a longitudinal dataset of movers (N=149) and stayers (N=473) across two survey waves among European Commission officials in 2014 and 2018. Our main findings confirm that intra-organizational mobility is connected in opposing ways to employees’ intra- and extra-departmental work-related contact patterns. In line with theoretical expectations, we find these relationships to be stronger for employees who have previously experienced intra-organizational moves (‘repeat-movers’).
{"title":"Intra-organizational Mobility and Employees’ Work-related Contact Patterns: Evidence from Panel Data in the European Commission","authors":"Francesca P Vantaggiato, Zuzana Murdoch, Hussein Kassim, Benny Geys, Sara Connolly","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muae014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muae014","url":null,"abstract":"Programmes to encourage staff to move within public sector organizations have become increasingly widespread in recent decades. Yet, although there are some anecdotal accounts, the effects of such intra-organizational mobility remain largely unexplored. Building on insights from organization theory and social psychology, we argue that intra-organizational mobility entails an important trade-off: it undermines movers’ depth of work-related contacts within the (new) department, while it increases the breadth of their work-related contacts outside it. Our empirical analysis evaluates this trade-off using a two-way fixed effects model for a longitudinal dataset of movers (N=149) and stayers (N=473) across two survey waves among European Commission officials in 2014 and 2018. Our main findings confirm that intra-organizational mobility is connected in opposing ways to employees’ intra- and extra-departmental work-related contact patterns. In line with theoretical expectations, we find these relationships to be stronger for employees who have previously experienced intra-organizational moves (‘repeat-movers’).","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2024-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141495728","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}
Although performance information is widely promoted to improve the accountability of public service provision, behavioral research has revealed that motivated reasoning leads recipients to update their beliefs inaccurately. However, the reasoning processes of service users has been largely neglected. We develop a theory of public service users’ motivated reasoning about performance information stemming from their identification with the organization providing their services. We address a significant challenge to studying motivated reasoning—that widely used existing research designs cannot rule out alternative cognitive explanations, especially Bayesian learning, such that existing findings could be driven by strong prior beliefs rather than biased processing of new information. We use a research design incorporating Bayesian learning as a benchmark to identify departures from accuracy motivated reasoning process. We assess the empirical implications of the theory using a preregistered information provision experiment among parents with children using public schools. To assess their identity based motivated reasoning we provide them with noisy, but true, performance information about their school. Overall, we find no evidence of directionally motivated reasoning. Instead, parents change their beliefs in response to performance feedback in a way that largely reflects conservative Bayesian learning. Performance reporting to service users is less vulnerable to motivational biases in this context than suggested by the general literature on motivated reasoning. Furthermore, exploratory findings show that performance information can correct erroneous beliefs among misinformed service users, suggesting that investment in reporting performance to service users is worthwhile to inform their beliefs and improve accountability.
{"title":"Public Service Users’ Responses to Performance Information: Bayesian Learning or Motivated Reasoning?","authors":"Peter Rasmussen Damgaard, Oliver James","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muae013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muae013","url":null,"abstract":"Although performance information is widely promoted to improve the accountability of public service provision, behavioral research has revealed that motivated reasoning leads recipients to update their beliefs inaccurately. However, the reasoning processes of service users has been largely neglected. We develop a theory of public service users’ motivated reasoning about performance information stemming from their identification with the organization providing their services. We address a significant challenge to studying motivated reasoning—that widely used existing research designs cannot rule out alternative cognitive explanations, especially Bayesian learning, such that existing findings could be driven by strong prior beliefs rather than biased processing of new information. We use a research design incorporating Bayesian learning as a benchmark to identify departures from accuracy motivated reasoning process. We assess the empirical implications of the theory using a preregistered information provision experiment among parents with children using public schools. To assess their identity based motivated reasoning we provide them with noisy, but true, performance information about their school. Overall, we find no evidence of directionally motivated reasoning. Instead, parents change their beliefs in response to performance feedback in a way that largely reflects conservative Bayesian learning. Performance reporting to service users is less vulnerable to motivational biases in this context than suggested by the general literature on motivated reasoning. Furthermore, exploratory findings show that performance information can correct erroneous beliefs among misinformed service users, suggesting that investment in reporting performance to service users is worthwhile to inform their beliefs and improve accountability.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141182521","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}
Robin H Lemaire, Lauren K McKeague, Donna Sedgwick
The flexibility/stability tension is a key challenge for purpose-oriented networks, especially salient with network participation. Because of the voluntary nature of networks, it is common for network participation to fluctuate, with participants entering, leaving, and returning over time for a variety of reasons. This fluctuation may challenge the stability that is key to network effectiveness. Yet, despite the salience of this tension, we know little about managing the ebb and flow of network participation. Driven by phenomenon-based theorizing, we draw on longitudinal participatory action research to examine participant attendance and contribution in monthly workgroup meetings over a four-year period of an early child education network. Combining interviews (n=5), meeting attendance tracking (n=37), and meeting observations (n=30), we identify six types of flux stemming from individual, organizational, and system forces. We find these forces of flux support both flexibility and stability. Highlighting the duality of flexibility and stability, we explain how flexibility at one level may result in stability at another and vice versa. Our findings contribute to a greater understanding of how stability and flexibility are both valuable for networks and thus, the need to embrace the ebb and flow of participation.
{"title":"Ebb and Flow of Network Participation: Flexibility, stability and forms of flux in a purpose-oriented network","authors":"Robin H Lemaire, Lauren K McKeague, Donna Sedgwick","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muae012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muae012","url":null,"abstract":"The flexibility/stability tension is a key challenge for purpose-oriented networks, especially salient with network participation. Because of the voluntary nature of networks, it is common for network participation to fluctuate, with participants entering, leaving, and returning over time for a variety of reasons. This fluctuation may challenge the stability that is key to network effectiveness. Yet, despite the salience of this tension, we know little about managing the ebb and flow of network participation. Driven by phenomenon-based theorizing, we draw on longitudinal participatory action research to examine participant attendance and contribution in monthly workgroup meetings over a four-year period of an early child education network. Combining interviews (n=5), meeting attendance tracking (n=37), and meeting observations (n=30), we identify six types of flux stemming from individual, organizational, and system forces. We find these forces of flux support both flexibility and stability. Highlighting the duality of flexibility and stability, we explain how flexibility at one level may result in stability at another and vice versa. Our findings contribute to a greater understanding of how stability and flexibility are both valuable for networks and thus, the need to embrace the ebb and flow of participation.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140910648","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}
Issue prioritization is the first stage of attention-based theories of decision-making, but remains theoretically and empirically uncharted territory in public administration research. We propose and test how issue prioritization is informed by the characteristics of the performance information on which decision-makers rely, in particular its source (internal or external information), nature (objective or subjective information), aspiration level (historical, social, or coercive aspirations), and required cognitive effort (attention costs). Furthermore, we theorize how these characteristics of performance information determine issue prioritization decisions of political and managerial decision-makers in different ways. We empirically examine issue prioritization decisions in road maintenance and primary school education using a discrete choice experiment among 2,313 local government officials. The experiment reveals that decision-makers are more likely to prioritize issues that are signaled through objective performance measures and that are articulated relative to coercive aspirations, but that the effects of the information’s source and attention costs differ between policy domains. Comparison of observational variation regarding decision-makers’ roles indicates that public managers more strongly prioritize road maintenance issues that are articulated in objective performance information, but not in primary school education. The study advances public administration research and theory with a ‘horizontal’ behavioral perspective on decision-makers’ information processing to prioritize between simultaneous performance issues.
{"title":"Performance information and issue prioritization by political and managerial decision-makers: A discrete choice experiment","authors":"Joris van der Voet, Amandine Lerusse","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muae011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muae011","url":null,"abstract":"Issue prioritization is the first stage of attention-based theories of decision-making, but remains theoretically and empirically uncharted territory in public administration research. We propose and test how issue prioritization is informed by the characteristics of the performance information on which decision-makers rely, in particular its source (internal or external information), nature (objective or subjective information), aspiration level (historical, social, or coercive aspirations), and required cognitive effort (attention costs). Furthermore, we theorize how these characteristics of performance information determine issue prioritization decisions of political and managerial decision-makers in different ways. We empirically examine issue prioritization decisions in road maintenance and primary school education using a discrete choice experiment among 2,313 local government officials. The experiment reveals that decision-makers are more likely to prioritize issues that are signaled through objective performance measures and that are articulated relative to coercive aspirations, but that the effects of the information’s source and attention costs differ between policy domains. Comparison of observational variation regarding decision-makers’ roles indicates that public managers more strongly prioritize road maintenance issues that are articulated in objective performance information, but not in primary school education. The study advances public administration research and theory with a ‘horizontal’ behavioral perspective on decision-makers’ information processing to prioritize between simultaneous performance issues.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"84 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2024-04-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140820048","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}
Fernando Nieto-Morales, Rik Peeters, Gabriela Lotta
Bribery and other forms of petty corruption typically arise in bureaucratic encounters and are a common element of the everyday experience of the state in many countries, particularly in places with weak institutions. This type of corruption is especially troublesome because it creates direct costs for citizens when accessing services and benefits to which they are formally entitled. However, only a few studies deal with how situational attributes of bureaucratic interactions create incentives for citizens to pay bribes and opportunities for street-level bureaucrats to demand them. We contribute to filling this gap by providing evidence that administrative burdens increase the chance of bribery. We do so by analyzing the prevalence of (attempted) bribery in more than 63,000 interactions across 20 different types of bureaucratic encounters, ranging from paying taxes to accessing essential services, using multilevel logistic regression analysis. Our study contributes to understanding the possible consequences of administrative burdens and the factors conducive to petty corruption in specific citizen-state interactions.
{"title":"Burdens, Bribes, and Bureaucrats: The Political Economy of Petty Corruption and Administrative Burdens","authors":"Fernando Nieto-Morales, Rik Peeters, Gabriela Lotta","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muae010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muae010","url":null,"abstract":"Bribery and other forms of petty corruption typically arise in bureaucratic encounters and are a common element of the everyday experience of the state in many countries, particularly in places with weak institutions. This type of corruption is especially troublesome because it creates direct costs for citizens when accessing services and benefits to which they are formally entitled. However, only a few studies deal with how situational attributes of bureaucratic interactions create incentives for citizens to pay bribes and opportunities for street-level bureaucrats to demand them. We contribute to filling this gap by providing evidence that administrative burdens increase the chance of bribery. We do so by analyzing the prevalence of (attempted) bribery in more than 63,000 interactions across 20 different types of bureaucratic encounters, ranging from paying taxes to accessing essential services, using multilevel logistic regression analysis. Our study contributes to understanding the possible consequences of administrative burdens and the factors conducive to petty corruption in specific citizen-state interactions.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"53 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2024-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140640262","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 U.S. bureaucracy routinely issues major public policy decisions that affect Americans’ lives. Government agency leaders make those decisions based on a subjective understanding of their agency’s available policy discretion. Over time, discretion has become a prominent theoretical construct in the bureaucratic politics and public administration literatures, but it is rarely measured directly. In this article, we create a new measure of agency policy discretion. We draw on research suggesting that discretion is derived from the bureaucracy’s key political principals: the elected executive, legislators, and interest groups. We use data from the American State Administrators Project and trigonometry to calculate the discretion area scores for 8,955 state agencies between 1978 and 2018. We then evaluate the measure through a series of construct validation assessments. The article offers an innovative and generalizable way to operationalize discretion that will advance future scholarship in organizational behavior, public administration, and bureaucratic decision-making.
{"title":"A New Measure of U.S. Public Agency Policy Discretion","authors":"Natalie L Smith, Susan Webb Yackee","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muae007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muae007","url":null,"abstract":"The U.S. bureaucracy routinely issues major public policy decisions that affect Americans’ lives. Government agency leaders make those decisions based on a subjective understanding of their agency’s available policy discretion. Over time, discretion has become a prominent theoretical construct in the bureaucratic politics and public administration literatures, but it is rarely measured directly. In this article, we create a new measure of agency policy discretion. We draw on research suggesting that discretion is derived from the bureaucracy’s key political principals: the elected executive, legislators, and interest groups. We use data from the American State Administrators Project and trigonometry to calculate the discretion area scores for 8,955 state agencies between 1978 and 2018. We then evaluate the measure through a series of construct validation assessments. The article offers an innovative and generalizable way to operationalize discretion that will advance future scholarship in organizational behavior, public administration, and bureaucratic decision-making.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"80 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2024-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140533266","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}