Prior research has linked the innovative behavior of public sector employees to desirable outcomes such as improved efficiency and higher public service quality. However, questions regarding the ...drivers of innovative behavior among employees have received limited attention. This article employs psychological empowerment theory to examine the underlying processes by which entrepreneurial leadership and public service motivation (PSM) shape innovative behavior among civil servants. Based on three-wave data from 281 Chinese civil servants and their 59 department heads, entrepreneurial leadership is found to positively influence subordinates' innovative behavior by enhancing two dimensions of psychological empowerment: meaning and impact. Additionally, PSM was found to influence subordinates' innovative behavior by enhancing the dimensions of meaning and competence. These findings suggest that to facilitate innovative behavior among employees, public organizations should consider introducing training that encourages leaders to serve as entrepreneurial role models and recruit employees with high levels of PSM.
This article contributes to our understanding of public service motivation and leadership by investigating ways in which organizational leaders can reinforce and even augment the potential effects of ...public service motivation on employees' attraction to the organizations mission (mission valence). The results contribute to two research questions. First, the findings provide new evidence on the sources of public service motivation. The authors find that transformational leadership is an organizational factor associated with higher public service motivation.Second, the article examines the relationship between transformational leadership and mission valence. The authors find that transformational leadership has an important indirect effect on mission valence through its influence on chrifying organizational goals and fostering public service motivation.
The Costs of Patronage Xu, Guo
The American economic review,
11/2018, Volume:
108, Issue:
11
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
I combine newly digitized personnel and public finance data from the British colonial administration for the period 1854–1966 to study how patronage affects the promotion and incentives of governors. ...Governors are more likely to be promoted to higher salaried colonies when connected to their superior during the period of patronage. Once allocated, they provide more tax exemptions, raise less revenue, and invest less. The promotion and performance gaps disappear after the abolition of patronage appointments. Patronage therefore distorts the allocation of public sector positions and reduces the incentives of favored bureaucrats to perform.
The literature on public accountability is extensive but overwhelmingly focuses on accountability of organizations. Yet, accountability mechanisms can function properly only when individuals believe ...that they will be held accountable in the future. This article bridges that gap by translating and extending the psychological concept of “felt accountability” to the public administration scholarship. The particular context of accountability in public organizations requires us to integrate knowledge about (1) the diverse professional roles of public sector employees, (2) the saliency and authority of various and multiple account holders, and (3) the substance of the accountability demands. The current article integrates this contextual knowledge with an individual perspective on accountability. This effort represents an important contribution to public accountability literature, as it allows scholars to properly understand the consequences of psychological insights about accountability for the public sector, and to adequately translate psychological insights and recommendations to a public accountability context.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide an evaluation of public sector research in the 1998–2018 period.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses the extant literature of this era to study ...the theorisation of, and the findings of, public sector research.
Findings
This is a vibrant field of a study in a wide range of study settings and with many interdisciplinary studies. The influence of new public management is pervasive over this period. There are numerous instances of innovations in study settings, in key findings and the approach taken by investigators.
Research limitations/implications
This is not a comprehensive review of all literature in this period.
Practical implications
This study also explored the relevance of academic research of this era to policymaking by governments.
Originality/value
This paper offers a distinctive critique of theorisation of public sector accounting research. It reveals the dominant theoretical reference points in use during this period and observes the increasing tendency for theoretical pluralism to investigate complex study settings.
The scope of this work was to assess the association between the duration of remote work and a positive diagnosis of COVID-19 among individuals employed in Brazil. Data from the PNAD COVID 19 (2020) ...survey were consulted. The variables in the work situation described included: absence from work due to physical distancing, work segment (work sector and formality: formal or informal private, military, statutory civil servant, CLT public sector, informal public sector, employer, self-employed/unpaid worker) and duration of remote work (no remote work for 1-2 months, 3-4 months, 5-7 months, respectively). The association between duration of remote work (exposure) and positive diagnosis for COVID-19 (outcome) was estimated by Cox regression, with adjustment for sociodemographic variables and work segment. The positive diagnosis of COVID-19 increased from 2.1% to 4.8% between July and November, and the frequency of remote work decreased from 11.6% to 9.5% between May and November. The risk of a positive diagnosis of COVID-19 was lower for people working remotely for 3-4 months, (HR=0.79; CI95%=0.67;0.92) and 5-7 months (HR=0.57; CI95%=0.48;0.67) compared to those who did not work remotely. There was a slight decrease in the percentage of remote work employees, and a longer duration reduced the risk of a positive diagnosis for COVID-19.
This article provides a systematic review of the empirical literature on barriers within public sector innovation processes, based on data from 63 articles. We investigate the nature of barriers ...using four dimensions: (i) classification; (ii) interrelations; (iii) innovation process and (iv) types of innovations. A new classification is developed to show that interaction-specific barriers emerge during collaborative innovation. Significantly, we identify that the nature of barriers are more complex than has previously been recognized, where there has been an emphasis on organizational barriers. We identify that the nature of barriers differ in process and innovation types. Moreover, they show interrelations across the process.
Despite increasing research on entrepreneurship in the private sector, little is known about entrepreneurship in public organizations in general and the effects of leadership behavior on ...entrepreneurship in the public sector in particular. Utilizing new data from the Australian Public Service Commission (
2017
), this study analyzes how three leadership behaviors—task-oriented, relations-oriented, and change-oriented leadership—affect public sector employees’ entrepreneurship behavior. The results of this study show that while all three types of leadership behavior are positively associated with public sector entrepreneurship, the effect is larger for relations-oriented leadership, followed by change-oriented leadership. A practical implication of this study is that relations-oriented leadership behavior is crucial to entrepreneurship in public organizations, suggesting the importance of developing relationships with subordinates.
•This paper provides empirical evidence finding that the likelihood of innovation varies systematically across public agencies.•Government organizations encouraging employee experimentations exhibit ...a greater likelihood of innovation.•Similarly, those government organizations responding to low-performing employees have a higher likelihood of innovating.•Having both feedback loops and the motivation to make improvements enhances the likelihood of innovation in government agencies.•Budget constraints are found not to influence the likelihood of innovation for government agencies in any significant way.
While a large literature has emerged on the likelihood of innovative activity for firms in the private sector, due to a scarcity of data little is known why innovative activity varies across organizations in the public sector. By utilizing a new source of data, the 2012 Australian Public Service Commission data (n=21,093), this paper is able to overcome these data constraints and provides one of the first studies focusing on the likelihood of innovative activity in the public sector. The empirical evidence suggests that important conditions specific to the public organization influence the likelihood of innovative activity. In particular, experimentation, responding to low-performers, the existence of feedback loops, and motivation to make improvements enhance the likelihood of innovative activity. In contrast, budget constraints do not have a statistically significant effect on single innovation. Thus, the results of this study suggest that intrinsic factors such as experimentation and motivation to improve performance are crucial for achieving innovation in the public sector context.
Summary The private sector has a large and growing role in health systems in low-income and middle-income countries. The goal of universal health coverage provides a renewed focus on taking a system ...perspective in designing policies to manage the private sector. This perspective requires choosing policies that will contribute to the performance of the system as a whole, rather than of any sector individually. Here we draw and extrapolate main messages from the papers in this Series and additional sources to inform policy and research agendas in the context of global and country level efforts to secure universal health coverage in low-income and middle-income countries. Recognising that private providers are highly heterogeneous in terms of their size, objectives, and quality, we explore the types of policy that might respond appropriately to the challenges and opportunities created by four stylised private provider types: the low-quality, underqualified sector that serves poor people in many countries; not-for-profit providers that operate on a range of scales; formally registered small-to-medium private practices; and the corporate commercial hospital sector, which is growing rapidly and about which little is known.
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