Corruption research highlights the importance of organizational and individual correlates, such as corruption control strategies or public employee attitudes. In this study, we integrate these research streams by examining whether the effectiveness of two common organizational approaches to controlling corruption—value-oriented strategies, which emphasize ethical decision-making, and compliance-oriented strategies, which rely on monitoring, audits, and punishment—depends on perceptions of workplace autonomy. To explore this, we use novel administrative data on corruption, along with codes of ethics and survey data from 1235 career public servants across 33 South Korean ministries. Findings suggest greater perceived autonomy is associated with greater corruption tolerance in organizational contexts where compliance-oriented corruption control strategies are prevalent. Conversely, greater perceived autonomy is associated with lesser corruption tolerance when value-oriented corruption control strategies are prevalent. These findings contribute to administrative corruption research by illustrating how individual perceptions of their workplace shape the efficacy of organizational corruption control strategies.
{"title":"The Moderating Role of Workplace Autonomy on Corruption Control Strategies: Evidence From 33 South Korean Ministries","authors":"Danee Kim, Gregory A. Porumbescu","doi":"10.1111/puar.13942","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13942","url":null,"abstract":"Corruption research highlights the importance of organizational and individual correlates, such as corruption control strategies or public employee attitudes. In this study, we integrate these research streams by examining whether the effectiveness of two common organizational approaches to controlling corruption—value-oriented strategies, which emphasize ethical decision-making, and compliance-oriented strategies, which rely on monitoring, audits, and punishment—depends on perceptions of workplace autonomy. To explore this, we use novel administrative data on corruption, along with codes of ethics and survey data from 1235 career public servants across 33 South Korean ministries. Findings suggest greater perceived autonomy is associated with greater corruption tolerance in organizational contexts where compliance-oriented corruption control strategies are prevalent. Conversely, greater perceived autonomy is associated with lesser corruption tolerance when value-oriented corruption control strategies are prevalent. These findings contribute to administrative corruption research by illustrating how individual perceptions of their workplace shape the efficacy of organizational corruption control strategies.","PeriodicalId":48431,"journal":{"name":"Public Administration Review","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":8.3,"publicationDate":"2025-02-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143477836","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 conceptual study explores the complexity of public sector accountability, traditionally framed by principal‐agent theory (PAT), which simplifies relationships through rigid contracts. The findings reveal how PAT's assumptions often misalign with the intricate realities of public sector accountability, which are better explained by complexity theories (CT). Contradictions between PAT and CT assumptions are highlighted, underlining the need for more flexible and dynamic accountability frameworks. The study calls for further research to refine the concept of complexity‐based accountability and investigate tensions between practical accountability applications of PAT and CT. Such research could transform public administration practice and scholarship by better accommodating the complex realities of managing public services.
{"title":"Beyond Simplification in Public Sector Accountability: Contradictions Between Principal‐Agent and Complexity Theories","authors":"Tomi Rajala, Harri Jalonen","doi":"10.1111/puar.13941","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13941","url":null,"abstract":"This conceptual study explores the complexity of public sector accountability, traditionally framed by principal‐agent theory (PAT), which simplifies relationships through rigid contracts. The findings reveal how PAT's assumptions often misalign with the intricate realities of public sector accountability, which are better explained by complexity theories (CT). Contradictions between PAT and CT assumptions are highlighted, underlining the need for more flexible and dynamic accountability frameworks. The study calls for further research to refine the concept of complexity‐based accountability and investigate tensions between practical accountability applications of PAT and CT. Such research could transform public administration practice and scholarship by better accommodating the complex realities of managing public services.","PeriodicalId":48431,"journal":{"name":"Public Administration Review","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":8.3,"publicationDate":"2025-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143435247","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}
Mission statements are common instruments for the strategic positioning of universities. However, there are few large‐scale, cross‐national studies examining the factors that influence the content of universities' mission statements. We address this research gap, exploring the content of 413 mission statements from European universities by applying correlated topic modeling (CTM). Moreover, relying on institutional theories of organization, we study factors that explain differences in the content of mission statements. Our findings reveal six distinct topics addressed in mission statements. The prevalence of a specific topic is significantly shaped by the cultural rationalization of the universities' national context, the university's founding context, and institutional control. Our findings not only contribute to research on universities' strategic positioning but also shed light on the diffusion of global trends across organizations and the determinants of their adaptation. Moreover, our study offers an illustrative example of how big data analytics can enhance public administration research.
{"title":"The role of institutional factors in shaping university mission statements: A topic‐modeling approach","authors":"Nicole Philippczyck, Harry Hoffmann, Simon Oertel","doi":"10.1111/puar.13921","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13921","url":null,"abstract":"Mission statements are common instruments for the strategic positioning of universities. However, there are few large‐scale, cross‐national studies examining the factors that influence the content of universities' mission statements. We address this research gap, exploring the content of 413 mission statements from European universities by applying correlated topic modeling (CTM). Moreover, relying on institutional theories of organization, we study factors that explain differences in the content of mission statements. Our findings reveal six distinct topics addressed in mission statements. The prevalence of a specific topic is significantly shaped by the cultural rationalization of the universities' national context, the university's founding context, and institutional control. Our findings not only contribute to research on universities' strategic positioning but also shed light on the diffusion of global trends across organizations and the determinants of their adaptation. Moreover, our study offers an illustrative example of how big data analytics can enhance public administration research.","PeriodicalId":48431,"journal":{"name":"Public Administration Review","volume":"112 1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":8.3,"publicationDate":"2025-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143435250","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}
Lance Y. Hunter, Wesley L. Meares, Martha H. Ginn, William Hatcher
This study examines how the nature of public administration and local and regional governance affects domestic terrorism in 73 mixed and democratic countries from multiple regions and levels of development. In conducting a cross‐national statistical analysis from 1991 to 2019 with standard political, economic, and social controls, and controlling for endogeneity, we find that domestic terrorism increases when public administration is more partial, biased, corrupt, and unreliable, and as local and regional governments are controlled to a greater extent by unelected bodies. In addition, we find that the nature of public administration and local and regional governance influences the types of institutions that are most likely to be targeted in domestic terror attacks. These findings have important implications in considering how public administration and local and regional governance affect political violence in mixed and democratic regimes.
{"title":"Public Administration, Local and Regional Governance, and Domestic Terrorism","authors":"Lance Y. Hunter, Wesley L. Meares, Martha H. Ginn, William Hatcher","doi":"10.1111/puar.13938","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13938","url":null,"abstract":"This study examines how the nature of public administration and local and regional governance affects domestic terrorism in 73 mixed and democratic countries from multiple regions and levels of development. In conducting a cross‐national statistical analysis from 1991 to 2019 with standard political, economic, and social controls, and controlling for endogeneity, we find that domestic terrorism increases when public administration is more partial, biased, corrupt, and unreliable, and as local and regional governments are controlled to a greater extent by unelected bodies. In addition, we find that the nature of public administration and local and regional governance influences the types of institutions that are most likely to be targeted in domestic terror attacks. These findings have important implications in considering how public administration and local and regional governance affect political violence in mixed and democratic regimes.","PeriodicalId":48431,"journal":{"name":"Public Administration Review","volume":"5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":8.3,"publicationDate":"2025-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143393064","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}
Do government actions, or inactions, committed decades (or centuries) ago toward a specific community influence how members of that community trust and perceive government today? Past government actions that extracted resources (a negative resource effect) and communicated an individual's place within American Society (a negative interpretative effect) may diminish trust. This paper explores this question by examining the relationship between the county-level lynching rate of Black Americans from 1882 to 1936 and contemporary trust in local and state governments. We find that Black individuals living in U.S. counties exposed to higher rates of historical racial violence are less trusting of their local and state governments than Black individuals living in the same state but in counties exposed to lower levels of historical racial violence. We find no such relationship for White individuals. These relationships are robust to controlling for measures of contemporary use of force by governments and government performance.
{"title":"The Intergenerational Transmission of Policy Feedback in the United States: Evidence From Racial Violence","authors":"David J. Schwegman, Eric Brunner, Bill Simonsen","doi":"10.1111/puar.13937","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13937","url":null,"abstract":"Do government actions, or inactions, committed decades (or centuries) ago toward a specific community influence how members of that community trust and perceive government today? Past government actions that extracted resources (a negative resource effect) and communicated an individual's place within American Society (a negative interpretative effect) may diminish trust. This paper explores this question by examining the relationship between the county-level lynching rate of Black Americans from 1882 to 1936 and contemporary trust in local and state governments. We find that Black individuals living in U.S. counties exposed to higher rates of historical racial violence are less trusting of their local and state governments than Black individuals living in the same state but in counties exposed to lower levels of historical racial violence. We find no such relationship for White individuals. These relationships are robust to controlling for measures of contemporary use of force by governments and government performance.","PeriodicalId":48431,"journal":{"name":"Public Administration Review","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":8.3,"publicationDate":"2025-02-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143393330","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}