Scholars have unveiled how and why administrative burdens perpetuate inequity in access to government benefits. However, less is known about the tools public managers can use to reduce burdens and disparities in program access. We partner with a local government in the U.S. to investigate whether a reduction in documentation requirements increased equity by promoting access for “underserved” small

The current work explores three potential facilitators of judicial performance. Participants in a state-wide survey of judicial officers (response rate = 33.9 percent) completed self-report measures of self-efficacy, prosocial impact, and self-legitimacy as well as subjectively perceived performance. Objective performance data collected by the state court administrative office were then merged with

Change communication is a critical dimension for leading digital transformation. Existing literature predominantly theorizes change communication as part of the earliest stages of the transformation, but how it evolves over time to remain relevant in this context is understudied. We address this shortcoming through a four-year study of a digital transformation initiative in a local government's health

How do public employees respond to organizational identity threats? The present study investigates how public employees make sense of and react to threatening events that may call into question organization's core attributes and status. Using social identity theory and the appraisal theory of emotions, we develop a model in which organizational identity induced by negative media coverage threat provokes

As a design science, public administration is focused on addressing real-world problems. However, within public administration argument and evidence on the relevance of academic research to practice agendas is equivocal. We investigate the “academic–practitioner divide” using computational social science techniques to identify the topics of “academic,” “academic–practitioner,” and practitioner corpora

Public management scholars argue that collective action problems (e.g., incentives to free-ride on the efforts of others or shirk agreements) threaten the feasibility of intergovernmental cooperation. Drawing on collective action theory, this article examines factors associated with overcoming free-riding incentives and provides evidence challenging the idea that governments are prone to such strategic

Constant policy growth can overburden bureaucracies if implementation capacities are not expanded in lockstep with policy production. This development may undermine policy effectiveness and hence the long-term legitimacy of democracies. This article provides a systematic analysis of this phenomenon. We demonstrate that (i) overburdening is a general trend in advanced democracies; (ii) the extent of

State and local governments in the United States are the implementation agents for a vast swath of federal policies. As the country embarks on an unprecedented foray into fiscal federalism to combat climate change, we face a stark reality: many local governments are not ready. Drawing from recent data and evidence on local sustainability activities, we argue policy makers and managers at all levels

Does ideological extremism curb a public agency's desire to grow? This article theorizes that changes in the political environment affect a public agency leader's growth aspirations. Specifically, increased ideological extremism across an agency's elected principals leads an agency leader to be more cautious and less growth-minded. The assessments of over 10,000 American state agency leaders are studied

This article summarizes an 18-month study of the national response to the COVID-19 pandemic as viewed from the individual perspectives of a team of local emergency management professionals. The research project evaluated the COVID-19 response based on a concept articulated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as a “whole community approach”

Our research centers on the role of city managers in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. We begin by asking: What was the experience of city managers during the COVID-19 pandemic? Drawing on interview data from 87 US city managers we identify four emergent themes: crisis management, organizational and leadership contexts, unintended outcomes, and administrative impacts. We then

Administrative burdens create costly experiences for citizens, especially disadvantaged groups. Research to date focuses on how burdens affect outcomes in specific policy contexts, thus little is known about cumulative experiences of burdens in everyday life and their distribution in society. This is the first study to document everyday administrative experiences, accounting for time and well-being

Collaboration is a commonly prescribed method of public service improvement. If collaboration fails, blame is typically ascribed to transaction costs, organizational inertia, or premature evaluation. However, drawing on a notable case of collaborative failure in England, we show that misdiagnosing public service problems as being of a type likely to be cured by joint working can also generate poor

In this paper, we ask whether female top law enforcement officials can steer justice provision on the ground. While prior research has documented that female street-level bureaucrats advance the interests of their female clients, we know little about how female leaders influence the distribution of street-level outcomes. This study draws on juvenile justice and inquires whether youth arrests and prosecutions

Administrative burdens in government programs are common and may exacerbate inequity in government service provision and access. Work requirements represent an onerous administrative burden as they entail substantial effort in complying and documenting compliance. We investigate whether state politics and race influence local Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) work requirement restrictiveness

Governments spend hundreds of millions on evaluations to assess the performance of public organizations. In this article, we scrutinize whether variation in the institutional design of evaluation systems leads to biases in evaluation findings. Biases may emerge because influence over evaluation processes could enable the bureaucracy to present its work in a more positive way. We study evaluation reports

Set aside programs, which preference disadvantaged businesses, have long been among the largest government equity programs in the United States. Set asides ensure government revenues spur economic growth in firms and communities that have traditionally lacked representation in systems of power. However, there has been skepticism about whether set aside programs are compatible with the efficiency objectives

Public sector corruption is one of the most pressing unresolved issues of our time. Based on the Theory of Planned Behavior, this study examines the psychological and contextual mechanisms that allow individuals to rationalize their engagement in administrative corruption. By conducting a systematic literature review of 93 studies, 241 cases of empirical evidence on the relationships between micro

Civil servants’ work is being affected by an increasing variety of government reforms. As such, the role of civil servants is a major topic of research. Nevertheless, no validated measurement scales exist for how civil servants themselves perceive their own role in a complex and constantly changing environment. We develop and validate measurement scales for civil servants’ role perceptions. Using data

Public sector professions are highly gender-dominant (e.g., police officers, teachers) and determined not only by professionals but also by gender roles. According to the role congruity theory, these social roles result in perceived (in)congruities between the jobholders' gender and gender-dominant professions. This research investigates this intersection for several professions. Throughout three large-scale

Building community resilience has become a national imperative. Substantial uncertainties in dynamic environments of emergencies and crises require real-time information collection and dissemination based on big data analytics. These, in turn, require networked communities and cross-sector partnerships to build lasting resilience. This viewpoint article highlights an interdisciplinary approach to building

We contribute to the growing body of research on COVID-19 and pandemic response by connecting two bodies of existing but disparate research. Specifically, we examine how professionalization in emergency management is associated with collaborative outcomes. Using three unique surveys of local emergency managers (EMs) and convergent mixed methods, we find that more appropriate types of professionalization

About the Journal Public Administration Review (PAR) is dedicated to advancing theory and practice in public administration. PAR serves a wide range of audiences globally. As the preeminent professional journal in public administration, Public Administration Review (PAR) strives to publish research that not only advances the science and theory of public administration, but also incorporates and addresses

This paper studies how organizational leaders' early private-sector leadership experiences impact adopting a contested organizational practice, temporary employment, in public organizations. We employed unique organization/year-level register panel data on the executive careers of the directors of Dutch public organizations and the prevalence of temporary employment in organizations they lead. Fixed-effect

While scholarship is delving into the representation of women and people of color within the U.S. bureaucracy, less is known about these individuals' discretion within their roles. Using an intersectionality framework, this article explores the experiences of women of color in leadership roles within state government agencies, their communication with elected superiors, and perceptions of their own

After decades of private companies delivering public services, governments are increasingly using a mix of outsourcing and insourcing to provide services. With insourcing, governments replace market competition with public monopoly and concentrated private ownership with more dispersed public ownership. Despite these fundamental changes in competition and ownership, little is known theoretically and

In this essay, I take stock of the red tape research program (and research programs on administrative burden and sludge) to assess whether subjective individual experience has been given its rightful due in public policy and public administration. My primary purpose is to assess how concepts facilitate or hinder our understanding of the subjective individual experience. To serve this purpose, I present

Building on a growing literature assessing the societal impact of terrorism, this article analyzes whether and how a terror attack targeting public institutions affects civil servants in their day-to-day work. This is an important question to enhance our understanding of how terrorism can (or cannot) affect the operation of core government functions. Theoretically, the study contributes to a broader

While public service motivation theory suggests that public sector employees have higher levels of intrinsic motivation, average pay levels in the public sector are not lower, so public sector employees also value financial incentives. We investigate the relationship of financial incentives with effort (measured with unpaid overtime) for public versus private sector employees using a UK sample. Bonuses

Debates over public programs frequently focus on questions of effectiveness, equity, and efficiency and the tradeoff among these objectives. Missing from the literature is whether the general public cares about these tradeoffs, can perceive such differences, and will act on them. This article reports on two pre-registered vignette experiments where the effectiveness, equity, and efficiency are assessed

We apply the theory of representative bureaucracy to examine if gender congruence between family planning care providers and service recipients correlates with communication behaviors during consultation. We use nationally representative administrative data from Tanzania's Demographic and Health Survey (DHS). We apply a series of logistic and ordered logistic regression analyses and find that gender

Current approaches employed by U.S.-based clearinghouses to rate the efficacy of interventions to address social problems typically do not result in sufficient information to help practitioners. Current standards of evidence employed across the United States apply a positivist notion of validity with quantitative research criteria that discourage answering important how and why questions, explicitly

Many theories in Public Administration and Public Management explicitly relate to changes over time in the attitudes, values, perceptions, and/or motivations of public-sector employees. Examining such theories using (repeated) cross-sectional datasets may lead to biased inferences and an inability to expose credible causal relationships. As developing individual-level panel datasets is costly and time-consuming

Organizations are complex and have many goals while almost all analytical tools measure performance using only one goal. Thus, analysts often rely on multiple analytical tools to produce a bewildering array of performance measures that often lack internal consistency and a clear focus. In this article, we show how data envelopment analysis (DEA) builds a performance frontier (analogous to a production

Creativity is a crucial part of policy capacity in governments. Existing studies on creative behavior in the public sector assess employees' openness to new ideas and creative solutions, and they confirm the relevance of organizational and individual determinants for pro-creativity attitudes. Yet we lack systemic evidence on the explicit level of work-related creativity among policy officials in government

Return on investment (ROI) has long been accepted as a primary tool for decision-making for capital investments and even choices among competing operational budget lines. Applying ROI to investments intended to prevent or mitigate future risks and hazards can be very difficult, as benefits are typically arduous to define and calculate while risk probabilities can be very small. This paper uses examples

Drawing upon representative bureaucracy theory, this study investigates the relationship between passive and symbolic representation by examining the extent to which a more passively representative public organization would be attractive as an employer. The study involved a randomized survey experiment of members of the public in the US and UK. Overall, and contrary to the theory of representative

Research on street-level bureaucracy argues that factors such as stress and burnout affect the behaviors of street-level bureaucrats toward clients. At the same time, the literature on administrative burdens argues that citizens face a series of costs when they experience policy implementation as onerous. We draw on both literatures to theorize ways in which street-level bureaucrats' behavioral responses

This study examines the impact of an intervention focused on lean thinking and knowledge sharing. The intervention involves the transfer of information from efficient private organizations to public agencies to improve bureaucratic procedures. Specifically, we analyze the effectiveness of the Knowledge for Results (K4R) program in improving the efficiency of public agencies in Colombia. Our research

Subsidiarity assistance creates opportunities for the federal government to intervene in subnational affairs, supplement emergency response, and reduce jurisdictional vulnerabilities. Recognizing the differential effects that disaster events and revenue sharing could have on states, the research investigates the determinants of federal subsidiarity assistance grants to states in the context of American

Reputation is a valuable intangible resource whose role in public–nonprofit collaborations remains unexplored. Does nonprofit reputation influence government funding and nonprofit performance? Does nonprofit performance enhance nonprofit reputational gains? Our identification strategy adopts panel regression methods to assess whether nonprofit reputation influences government funding and nonprofit

What happens to general-purpose local government spending for service provision when a special district enters the public service market? Theoretically, special districts can act either as complements by supplementing existing service provision spending or as substitutes by supplanting current service provision spending. We find a substitution effect using fixed effects regression on urban counties

What factors influence street-level bureaucrats' (SLBs) use of violence? To answer this question, we focus on police officers, a typical example of SLBs, who can lawfully use violence whenever they deem it necessary. Based on ethnographic work among Brazilian police officers dealing with protests, we analyze how violence erupts in the interaction between police officers and protesters. We contribute

Using primary data collected from interviews with federal and state government officials and secondary data related to PPE distribution and state healthcare statistics, we discovered evidence that the use of the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) to distribute personal protective equipment to state and local agencies in need during the height of COVID-19 was indeed poorly designed to cope with the

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated cracks in the United States' healthcare systems—along with its deathcare systems. The pandemic as an ongoing mass fatality incident highlights the need to understand the public servants engaged in deathcare work, as they are a vital part of the emergency response equation. This exploratory, descriptive study focuses on the ways in which medical examiners

Using worldwide country-level panel data of COVID-19 emergency policies and aggregated survey responses of 46 million randomly sampled Facebook users, we study the impact of public health and economic measures on household financial worries among various demographic groups. The analysis reveals that public health interventions with stringent mobility restrictions—domestic lockdowns and international

Frontline implementers develop coping practices to deal with implementation burdens. Unfortunately, we have only limited knowledge of how widespread and systematic these practices are applied. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the enforcement activities carried out in the context of the European Union Industrial Emission Directive, relying on a quantitative data set that summarizes the

The political dimension of crisis communication remains understudied in public administration. We defined the politicization of government crisis communication as the employment of politics-oriented communication strategies in crisis messaging. We further examined the state-level politicization occurring during COVID-19 and its influence on public engagement and policy compliance. We applied machine

About the Journal Public Administration Review (PAR) is dedicated to advancing theory and practice in public administration. PAR serves a wide range of audiences globally. As the preeminent professional journal in public administration, Public Administration Review (PAR) strives to publish research that not only advances the science and theory of public administration, but also incorporates and addresses

Ambidextrous leadership reflects a style that combines opening and closing behaviors, which can stimulate employees to engage in both exploration and exploitation. Drawing from tenets of ambidextrous theorization of leadership for innovation, this study examines whether the exhibition of ambidextrous leadership by public sector managers fosters public servants' innovative behavior and whether psychological

Public managers and administrators confront the increasing scale and prevalence of crises. Despite some deployments, blockchain applications by governments for emergency management and response management have only begun to scratch the surface. To facilitate greater awareness of the promises and challenges of blockchain applications to the public sector, we consider the ways in which distributed ledger

Research has demonstrated that certain drivers increase the probability of performance data use in local government. One performance driver that has received minimal attention is where the performance function is organizationally located, even though prior research has shown that the organizational placement of the performance function can potentially influence the design and use of performance measurement

While artificial intelligence (AI) has begun to transform individual lives, business operations, and public services, there has been a lack of discussion concerning its role in contributing to social good. Both academic research and practical evidence have often compellingly predicted and suggested AI's potential impact on the labor market, industry, and services, as well as the risks and benefits

The political affiliation of governors has been highlighted as the most important predictor of a state's aggressiveness in responding to the pandemic, that is, Democratic governors advocated for more stringent policies than their Republican counterparts. However, of the 39 states that issued a statewide stay-at-home order (SAHO) mandate, nearly half were led by Republican governors. Using a qualitative

This study examines whether performance information affects the political agenda. I offer and test two hypotheses on performance information in politics—the attention-allocation hypothesis, suggesting that politicians leverage performance data to devote attention to problems in service delivery, and the politicization hypothesis, stating that political concerns alter elected officials focus on performance

This article addresses the negative implications of neutrality in bureaucratic systems and public service. Neutrality employs a sameness approach that reinforces impartiality, invisibility, and indifference, resulting in what we term discriminatory blindness. After a brief illustrative review of neutrality in public service, we critique neutrality as an organizational impediment based on its veiled

Portfolio management is widely used by large government agencies and nonprofits, but it is rarely discussed in public administration scholarship. Portfolio management tools can illuminate groups of projects that should be considered as priority investments by highlighting the relationship of risk to outcomes. This article explores historical and theoretical reasons for the neglect of portfolio management

Although reactions to reputational threats have been studied before, there is still an opportunity to understand the dynamics of reputation management facing a crisis. This study seeks to understand how the legal-procedural, moral, performative, and technical dimensions of reputation change during the management of an extended crisis in a public health organization. We explore the communication of

This study examines households' prospective evacuation behavior during a hurricane-pandemic compound threat. Data from a 2020 survey of coastal Virginia households help answer two questions: (1) What factors associated with the threat and impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and hurricanes influence the prospective evacuation behavior of households during a compound hurricane-pandemic event? (2) What are

Monetary rewards have historically played a prominent role in public employee turnover. Additionally, non-monetary rewards such as internal environmental factors contribute to the ability to recruit, retain, and satisfy public employees. Our research seeks to apply the push and pull theory of motivation to the total reward (intrinsic and extrinsic rewards) preferences of county chief administrative