Public sector professionals are often negatively portrayed with ascriptions such as “ineffective” and “lazy.” Such negative connotations might disadvantage public sector organizations when trying to attract applicants, as it can reflect negatively on individuals' social identities. With this pre-registered experimental study, we examine stereotypes of public and private sector workers with and without a signal of specific professions present across both the public and private sector. We examine how this influences attraction in the initial phases of a job search before tangible job attributes become visible. Our study among 290 job seeking citizens in the United Kingdom provides evidence for a generic public sector worker bias, but the bias diminishes when the specific profession is known. Furthermore, we find that job seekers are less attracted to public employment and that this relationship is influenced by a negativity bias against public sector workers. We discuss implications of the study.
{"title":"First impressions: An analysis of professional stereotypes and their impact on sector attraction","authors":"Mette Jakobsen, Fabian Homberg","doi":"10.1111/puar.13900","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13900","url":null,"abstract":"Public sector professionals are often negatively portrayed with ascriptions such as “ineffective” and “lazy.” Such negative connotations might disadvantage public sector organizations when trying to attract applicants, as it can reflect negatively on individuals' social identities. With this pre-registered experimental study, we examine stereotypes of public and private sector workers with and without a signal of specific professions present across both the public and private sector. We examine how this influences attraction in the initial phases of a job search before tangible job attributes become visible. Our study among 290 job seeking citizens in the United Kingdom provides evidence for a generic public sector worker bias, but the bias diminishes when the specific profession is known. Furthermore, we find that job seekers are less attracted to public employment and that this relationship is influenced by a negativity bias against public sector workers. We discuss implications of the study.","PeriodicalId":48431,"journal":{"name":"Public Administration Review","volume":"115 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":8.3,"publicationDate":"2024-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142670379","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}
Chengxin Xu, Yuan (Daniel) Cheng, Shuping Wang, Weston Merrick, Patrick Carter
Evidence-based practice (EBP) has become a global public management movement to improve constituents' lives through government decision making. However, how civil servants' decisions are influenced by scientific evidence remains unanswered. In this study, we answer two related research questions: (1) How do different elements of evidence impact civil servants' program preferences? (2) How does the rating of evidence influence their program preferences? Collaborating with major governmental and nonprofit agencies that promote the use of EBPs, we invited civil servants from three U.S. state governments to a paired conjoint experiment. Our analysis shows that: Civil servants prefer programs with evidence that is: (1) from their own states; (2) more recent; (3) shows positive effect on people from different demographic groups; and is (4) created by independent government teams and university research teams. We also find the “evidence-based” rating drives civil servants' preferences toward evidence with higher internal validity.
{"title":"Evaluating use of evidence in U.S. state governments: A conjoint analysis","authors":"Chengxin Xu, Yuan (Daniel) Cheng, Shuping Wang, Weston Merrick, Patrick Carter","doi":"10.1111/puar.13903","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13903","url":null,"abstract":"Evidence-based practice (EBP) has become a global public management movement to improve constituents' lives through government decision making. However, how civil servants' decisions are influenced by scientific evidence remains unanswered. In this study, we answer two related research questions: (1) How do different elements of evidence impact civil servants' program preferences? (2) How does the rating of evidence influence their program preferences? Collaborating with major governmental and nonprofit agencies that promote the use of EBPs, we invited civil servants from three U.S. state governments to a paired conjoint experiment. Our analysis shows that: Civil servants prefer programs with evidence that is: (1) from their own states; (2) more recent; (3) shows positive effect on people from different demographic groups; and is (4) created by independent government teams and university research teams. We also find the “evidence-based” rating drives civil servants' preferences toward evidence with higher internal validity.","PeriodicalId":48431,"journal":{"name":"Public Administration Review","volume":"21 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":8.3,"publicationDate":"2024-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142665278","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}
With the digitization of administrative systems, governments have gained access to rich data about their administrative operations. How governments leverage such data to improve their administration—what we call government analytics—will shape government effectiveness. This article summarizes a conceptual framework which showcases that data can help diagnose and improve all components of a public administration production function—from inputs such as personnel and goods, to processes and management practices, to outputs and outcomes. We then assess to what extent public administration scholarship analyses these data sources and can thus inform government analytics. A review of 689 quantitative articles in two public administration journals in 2013–2023 finds that 50% draw on surveys of public employees and 25% on surveys of citizens or firms. By contrast, administrative micro data (14% of articles) are underexploited. Practitioners and scholars would thus do well to expand the data sources used to inform better government.
{"title":"How scholars can support government analytics: Combining employee surveys with more administrative data sources towards a better understanding of how government functions","authors":"Daniel Rogger, Christian Schuster","doi":"10.1111/puar.13894","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13894","url":null,"abstract":"With the digitization of administrative systems, governments have gained access to rich data about their administrative operations. How governments leverage such data to improve their administration—what we call government analytics—will shape government effectiveness. This article summarizes a conceptual framework which showcases that data can help diagnose and improve all components of a public administration production function—from inputs such as personnel and goods, to processes and management practices, to outputs and outcomes. We then assess to what extent public administration scholarship analyses these data sources and can thus inform government analytics. A review of 689 quantitative articles in two public administration journals in 2013–2023 finds that 50% draw on surveys of public employees and 25% on surveys of citizens or firms. By contrast, administrative micro data (14% of articles) are underexploited. Practitioners and scholars would thus do well to expand the data sources used to inform better government.","PeriodicalId":48431,"journal":{"name":"Public Administration Review","volume":"216 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":8.3,"publicationDate":"2024-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142637173","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}
Despite a voluminous literature on resource availability and the implications for organizational performance, little is known about how changes in government agencies' resources impact their policy implementation activities and goal prioritization. This article explores how changes in resources affect regulatory enforcement activities by types of resources and policy implementation activities, and whether resource cutbacks prompt a tradeoff of the effectiveness-equity goals. Using the block-group level data on the Clean Air Act (CAA) implementation from 2012 to 2019, we find that state environmental agencies prioritize regulatory effectiveness over environmental justice by concentrating their resources on communities where task demands correspond to organizations' core missions. They also promote social equity to some extent when facing spending cutbacks but not staffing cuts. Spending cutbacks had a less severe impact on compliance inspections for more socially vulnerable communities, while those exposed to more imminent environmental harms received more inspections.
{"title":"The effectiveness-equity tradeoff when resources decline: Evidence from environmental policy implementation in the U.S. states","authors":"Sanghee Park, Jiaqi Liang","doi":"10.1111/puar.13784","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13784","url":null,"abstract":"Despite a voluminous literature on resource availability and the implications for organizational performance, little is known about how changes in government agencies' resources impact their policy implementation activities and goal prioritization. This article explores how changes in resources affect regulatory enforcement activities by types of resources and policy implementation activities, and whether resource cutbacks prompt a tradeoff of the effectiveness-equity goals. Using the block-group level data on the Clean Air Act (CAA) implementation from 2012 to 2019, we find that state environmental agencies prioritize regulatory effectiveness over environmental justice by concentrating their resources on communities where task demands correspond to organizations' core missions. They also promote social equity to some extent when facing spending cutbacks but not staffing cuts. Spending cutbacks had a less severe impact on compliance inspections for more socially vulnerable communities, while those exposed to more imminent environmental harms received more inspections.","PeriodicalId":48431,"journal":{"name":"Public Administration Review","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":8.3,"publicationDate":"2024-01-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139468864","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}
Nonprofit and for-profit providers play an increasing role in public service delivery, but we know little about what shapes public service delivery preferences. Responding to calls to put the “public” back in public values theory, we examine the influence of public values on sector service delivery preferences for government, nonprofit, or for-profit delivery across six service areas ranging from simple services such as trash collection to complex services such as child welfare. We find equity predicts a preference for government service delivery across areas, while efficiency corresponds to a preference for for-profit service delivery. Nonprofit sector preferences varied across service areas; equity corresponds to simple services such as street maintenance, whereas effectiveness corresponds to complex human services such as elder care. Public administrators should be cognizant of the public value trade-offs that underlie sector preferences for public services to design and implement service arrangements in line with the preferences of the public they serve.
{"title":"Public values and sector service delivery preferences: Public preferences on contracting from simple to complex human services","authors":"Jaclyn Piatak, Colt Jensen","doi":"10.1111/puar.13794","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13794","url":null,"abstract":"Nonprofit and for-profit providers play an increasing role in public service delivery, but we know little about what shapes public service delivery preferences. Responding to calls to put the “public” back in public values theory, we examine the influence of public values on sector service delivery preferences for government, nonprofit, or for-profit delivery across six service areas ranging from simple services such as trash collection to complex services such as child welfare. We find equity predicts a preference for government service delivery across areas, while efficiency corresponds to a preference for for-profit service delivery. Nonprofit sector preferences varied across service areas; equity corresponds to simple services such as street maintenance, whereas effectiveness corresponds to complex human services such as elder care. Public administrators should be cognizant of the public value trade-offs that underlie sector preferences for public services to design and implement service arrangements in line with the preferences of the public they serve.","PeriodicalId":48431,"journal":{"name":"Public Administration Review","volume":"89 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":8.3,"publicationDate":"2024-01-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139379713","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}