Performance appraisal (PA) plays a strategic role in public sector human resource management (HRM), acting as a driver for better performance. Drawing from previous theoretical research on the social context of performance appraisal systems and their effectiveness, the study develops a generalizable theoretical framework for classifying performance appraisal systems according to their structural and

This article tests the effects of innovation climate on two major employee attitudes, employee job satisfaction and affective commitment, using 2017 Australian Public Service Commission (APSC) data (n = 83,943). The Australian Public Service (APS) is a suitable context because the APS prioritizes and is concerned with both innovative activities and employee attitudes (e.g., job satisfaction and affective

Leadership behavior only contributes to goal attainment in public organizations if the employees perceive the behavior. Given that studies on self-other agreement show large gaps in perceived leadership between leaders and employees, it is highly relevant to ask how HRM-programs such as leadership training can reduce these gaps. Based on a large randomized field experiment including 130 leaders and

Despite growing interest in greening initiatives, the environmental performance of public organizations largely depends on the voluntary participation of public employees in undertaking pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs). Can organizations encourage better participation? What is the role of leadership and organizational culture in influencing these behaviors? This study investigates the influence of

Public sector organizations frequently restructure due to shifting management trends, crises, and political developments. Earlier research indicates that the sometimes-drastic reforms implemented in government strongly affect employees, causing psychosocial effects such as frustration, stress, and negative work environments. This may in turn increase the likelihood of severe phenomena such as workplace

Networked governance requires public managers to think and act strategically across organizational boundaries. Taking the literature on the transition from government to governance and its implications for Human Resource Management (HRM) as a starting point, we argue that not only top management, but also lower-level employees are likely to be involved in this work. In order to invest effectively in

The public management literature has extensively explored human resources’ (HR) contribution to organizational performance. However, HR approaches are seldom explored when assessing multilevel service provision. This research studies the HR-performance relationship when organizations at different government levels contribute to service provision. Beyond directly engaged local organizations, HR in national

Employees who feel insecure about their job participate less in work-related learning. This is paradoxical given that work-related learning is advanced as a way to prepare for upcoming change. This may induce a cycle in which job insecurity leads to gradual more insecurity and less participation in work-related learning, yet this has not yet been probed in much detail. We study this cycle. In doing

We distinguish three organizational commitment (OC) processes (compliance, identification, and internalization) based on functional theory and examine whether the importance of these mechanisms varies with public servants’ OC levels. Our quantile regression results provide evidence for both the phased characteristics and common basis of OC. pay and promotion appropriateness have stronger positive associations

Merit principles have served as central tenets of the U.S. civil service system since the late 19th Century, but in recent decades reforms have been proposed and implemented that weaken central aspects of merit. This makes it important to seek evidence about how government employees perceive the status of merit principles and to examine relationships that exist between adherence to merit principles

While most democratic governments include some political appointees at the top of agencies for the sake of bureaucratic accountability, too much patronage decreases government performance. Puerto Rico has all of the components for a robust merit system on paper, but it is consistently undermined, with significant negative consequences for public employees. Based on an inductive analysis of 29 in-depth

In recent decades, public administration has taken a great interest in leadership. However, this interest has been met with concerns that the effects of leadership are overestimated compared to other relevant organizational factors. In this article, we explore the relative importance of formal, vertical leadership, specifically transformational leadership, and horizontal relations, that is, the internal

Since the passage of the No FEAR Act of 2002, scholars across various disciplines have examined women’s reporting behavior toward sex-based discrimination. Most of the scholarship has concentrated on why women do not report sex-based discrimination, with this study being no exception. Missing, however, from this research is the intersectionality of race and gender, as most studies capture women as

Gender inequities in public organizations manifest in various forms, including gaps in leadership roles and compensation. Increasing women’s representation in elected offices may reduce gender inequities in the public sector. This study examines whether women’s representation in local elected offices reduces gender wage disparities among men and women serving in Brazilian municipal executive bureaucracies

Using five waves of Korean Workplace Panel Survey (KWPS) data, we examine the mediating effects of internal communication channels on the relationship between strategic human resource management and organizational performance. Comparing public, nonprofit, and for-profit organizations, we demonstrate significant sector differences in communication. Our analyses show that only for-profit firms have been

This article combines theories on emotional labor in public service and dirty work to argue that organizations should adopt an ethic of care to support their workers. The economics of public services undermine the consumer-sovereignty narrative in government, particularly where public servants are agents of social control and enforcement. Public servants cannot and should not behave according to a

Researchers in public administration for the past few decades are interested in exploring how public service motivation (PSM) influences turnover intentions. This study puts the theory of PSM to test in a different cultural context and explores the relationship between PSM and leadership on turnover intentions via person-organization fit (P-O fit) in public sector employees from Trinidad and Tobago

Being strategic and intentional in the management of volunteers is increasingly important to tackle volunteer retention and improve other volunteer outcomes. Drawing on strategic human resource management (SHRM), this inductive study utilizes qualitative data from interviews to explore how volunteers in a large youth organization perceive HR practices of training and recognition. Volunteer accounts

This study contributes to the evidence on motivational effects from performance-related pay (PRP) in the public sector. The theoretical point of departure is that the practical organization and administration locally affect the motivational effects of PRP. The analysis is based on surveys administered to employees (including managers) in Swedish public sector organizations at municipal, regional, and

Previous studies have shown inconsistent results regarding the impact of diversity on organizational performance. To address this issue, it is imperative to not only discuss diversity with regard to numerical balance, but also hierarchical composition of groups. We categorized diversity into variety and disparity. Variety refers to the categorical composition of groups and disparity indicates the vertical

While performance-related pay (PRP) has been implemented in most OECD countries over the past four decades, its effectiveness is still up for debate. What is under-investigated in the previous literature is under what conditions the public sector can effectively implement an optimal design of a PRP system. This study investigates how the target of PRP, the design of performance pay, and organizational

This study examines whether incentives affect public employees’ intention to share knowledge. Tested incentives satisfy needs for either achievement or appreciation. Both treatments were tested on implicit as well as explicit knowledge sharing. A 2 × 3 factorial survey experiment was designed to observe within-person and between-person effects. Data were collected from public employees in the core

This study discusses the concept of employee resilience (ER), defined as the capability to use resources to continually adapt and flourish at work, even when faced with challenging circumstances. The concept is grounded in positive psychology and conservation of resources (COR) theory and complements other concepts such as coping which describe employees and managers adapting to challenge and change

Extant research on trust in public administration focuses on trust in a specific level of management, ignoring the connection of trust in different management levels and their effects on employees....

We theorize that people with high Public Service Motivation (PSM) are especially prone to engage in prosocial rule-breaking (PSRB) behavior, which ultimately leads to discriminatory practices, part...

Recognizing the importance of whistleblower protection, government has equipped itself with legal tools to protect whistleblowers. At the federal level, the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act...

Public administration literature has been building more evidence about whistleblowing and gender, and whistleblowing and public service motivation. Yet, despite the well-developed theoretical argum...

Public managers and employees should be on the same page for successful performance. Managers’ self-evaluations of their own management, however, often do not match employees’ evaluations. Despite ...

While public service motivation (PSM) provides an important theory for understanding the motivations that underpin public sector worker behavior, theoretical connections to the institutional forces...

What is the effect of disciplinary codes and codes of ethics on containing corruption in the civil service? We assess whether both tools are effective and whether they interact to reinforce each ot...

Although public management and human resource management research has extensively investigated the motivational effects of organizational rules, the original utility of organizational rules—uncerta...

People with disabilities have experienced a long history of prejudice and disenfranchisement. Negative attitudes and stigmas continue to act as barriers to employment and career success of individu...

This paper aims to find out what processes contribute to horizontal (between employees) and vertical (between employees and their supervisor) shared perceptions of supervisor support by public frontline supervisors. Informed by a multilevel qualitative study among supervisors and teachers in public secondary schools, we develop theoretical propositions regarding these processes. We propose that employees’

Job advertisements are a crucial first step in the recruitment process. Public sector organizations overwhelmingly rely on passive recruitment tactics such as written notices, listing formal rules ...

Representative bureaucracy is one of the mechanisms used to achieve representative democracy. This article assesses how bureaucratic representation affects public access to administrative remedies,...

The public sector is the key employer of educated women in Arab countries. This article seeks to explain this phenomenon, embedding the employment experience of these women within the knowledge bas...

There is growing agreement on the importance of well-being in general and among employees more specifically. One area that has attracted significantly less attention is the well-being of public sec...

This study examines gender differences in leadership behaviors and whether leadership training would have different effects on leadership behaviors by gender. Using data from several hundred manage...

Inclusiveness occurs when employees are considered a part of critical organizational processes, which means that they have access to information (including information that may be passed around thr...

This study investigates the effect of top management turnover in public organizations on employee absenteeism, examining school principal turnover in public primary schools. While previous research...

Workplace incivility can have deleterious effects on individuals and organizations such as decreased job satisfaction and commitment, employee turnover, and reductions in morale and performance. Mo...

Employee motivation is important for public organizations. However, it might not be the same kind of leadership that motivates Susan and Steve. This article examines whether the association between...

Red tape has been viewed as a key concept in public administration for decades and one that can significantly impact the human resource management (HRM) process. Theoretically, red tape is argued t...

Affective commitment is crucial for employees to guarantee that they adhere to organizational interests and goals, but not self-evident for street-level bureaucrats who have a great deal of discret...

Human resource practices requiring employee participation or involvement in work-related decision-making have been commonly believed to be beneficial to work outcomes; however, we suggest that the ...

In this article, we use data collected from Wisconsin superintendents to determine the extent to which the curtailing of collective bargaining facilitated local public management reform adoption. T...

A critical comparison of the agency identifier codes in the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) and FedScope data sets reveals three distinct types of issues will occur when researchers attempt to merge the data sets: (a) a single agency is assigned different codes across data sets; (b) a single code is assigned to different agencies across data sets; and (c) a single code is assigned to two or

Workplace aggression is a concern in many organizations. Despite this, research has not significantly examined whether or not organizations stop workplace aggression. Little is known about hierarch...

In organizations with a diverse workforce, inclusive leadership is assumed to be required to support the full appreciation and participation of diverse members. To date, studies identifying how lea...

Regardless of their disabilities, employees with disabilities can contribute to the performance of public organizations. Our research purpose is to investigate how and when disability-inclusive hum...

This article relates mission valence to two performance outcomes of municipal employees: task performance and neglect. We propose that mission valence is positively associated with task performance...

Discrimination against caregivers is a topic of interest for the public sector workplace. This study assesses the degree to which family responsibilities discrimination (FRD) can diminish work sati...

Union advocates and critics believe that unionization influences the performance of public organizations by altering organizational climates and street-level bureaucrats’ experiences and perception...

Governance literature in the developed world is rich with scholarship on the role conceptions of civil servants and how these guide their behavior in the attainment of political objectives set by e...

This article extends the job demands–resources model in the public sector by including (a) cross-level (moderation) effects of job demands and resources, (b) positive and nonlinear effects of job d...

Attracting highly skilled IT talent has become a priority and an immense burden for government organizations—especially when they have other—higher paying—employment opportunities. We set out to ex...

Women continue to be underrepresented in leadership positions, but how does the intersectionality of being both a woman and from a racially underrepresented group influence leadership representatio...

A number of studies have focused on mentorship as a variable often associated with career advancement; however, there is little to no research on the impact mentors have with women reporting workpl...

This study examines the individual and work-related factors that can affect the transfer of training processes. Specifically, our study focuses on organizational, individual, and training-related f...

Millennials are a substantial segment of the workforce; they are perceived to be driven by higher pay, quick to be dissatisfied and leave a job, and committed to volunteering. This article examines...