Open meeting laws emerged as a tool intended to enhance the public's ability to participate in the legislative process. In theory, these laws give the public more power to shape public policy and make the input process more representative than when meetings are not open to all residents. However, research on political participation, procedural equity, and the hearing process raises questions about the extent to which hearings deliver on this objective. One reason is that those who participate do not necessarily represent the public. As a result, hearings may replicate biases instead of offsetting them. We investigate this question using a novel dataset of public hearings on environmental policy during the 2021 state legislative session in the Maryland General Assembly. The data include 955 public testimonies from 513 unique witnesses. We analyze the testimony for a host of information, including the race and gender of the person testifying, if they testified on behalf of an organization such as a business, nonprofit, or government agency, and if they opposed or supported the bill. The findings suggest public hearings lack procedural equity and need more intentional approaches to facilitate input and process.
As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly embedded in public sector operations, understanding stakeholder perceptions is critical to guiding responsible and effective AI governance. Building on Moon and Welch (2005) comparative framework and adopting the Construal Level Theory, this study examines how citizens and public servants perceive AI impacts on government structure, functions, administrative value, and policy decision-making based on nationally representative survey data from 1,000 citizens and 600 public servants in South Korea, Findings reveal both convergence and divergence: while both groups acknowledge AI's potential to enhance efficiency and service effectiveness, citizens are more optimistic about AI impacts on efficiency, structural change, and broader institutional impacts, including its use in judicial and legislative domains. Public servants, conversely, holding a somewhat cautious position and express greater concern about accountability, operational risks and negative consequences, as well as the preservation of professional discretion in policy decision-making. These results highlight the importance of aligning both similar and different perspectives of citizens and public servants in adopting AI in governments.
Performance management systems generate feedback intended to guide public managers toward performance improvement. A central but underexplored question is where public managers search for information to generate solutions when performance falls below aspiration levels. This study employs a three-dimensional conceptualization of information search, distinguishing a disciplinary, spatial, and temporal dimension, to examine how performance below historical and social aspiration levels affects decision-makers' search distance. Drawing on learning theory, we propose that historical aspiration levels direct search locally through experiential learning, while social aspiration levels direct search distantly through vicarious learning. We test these hypotheses with a pre-registered between-subjects survey experiment among 691 managers in Belgian local governments, using a cycling safety scenario. Results reveal a consistent individual-level preference for local search across all experimental groups. This preference is most pronounced in the disciplinary dimension, indicating that public managers strongly favor discipline-congruent information sources. Performance below historical or social aspiration levels does not significantly alter search distance. These findings suggest that the link between performance feedback and search distance may be weaker in public sector contexts than behavioral theory anticipates. We discuss implications for performance management theory and practice, and outline avenues for future research on search behavior in public organizations.
Does procedural knowledge change citizens' perceptions of negative bureaucratic encounters? Previous research suggests that an individual's tolerance for discourteous interactions with state authorities is grounded in their knowledge of administrative processes and identity-based reference points for anticipated stigma. This study considers how negative cues from bureaucrats and nonprofit information provision affect citizens' perceptions of administrative burden, fairness, and bureaucrats' performance for groups with different levels of anticipated stigma. Hypotheses are tested with two survey experiments simulating legal name change hearings sought for maiden name reversions (experiment 1) or gender transition (experiment 2). I find that negatively phrased bureaucrat language predicts increased perceived administrative burden for all but predicts decreased perceived performance only for non-stigmatized groups. Additionally, providing information on administrative procedures only improved perceptions of fair treatment after a negative interaction for groups anticipating stigma. Implications for citizen-state interaction research and identity-based reference points for perceptions of state authority are discussed.
This study examines how internal communication and perceived fairness are associated with the emergency decision-making competency (EDMC) of grassroots civil servants, a core capability in public performance and crisis governance. Integrating crisis sensemaking, high-reliability organizing, social information processing, and fairness heuristic theory, the study develops an individual-level framework in which leader-member communication effectiveness (LMCE) is linked to EDMC directly and indirectly through organizational peer communication support (OPCS), while organizational justice (OJ) conditions the strength of this relationship. Drawing on survey data from 1,966 grassroots civil servants across 136 counties in 16 prefecture-level cities in Shandong, China, the study finds that LMCE is positively associated with EDMC. OPCS accounts for a substantial share of this association, indicating that effective leader communication is linked to stronger emergency decision-making partly through a more supportive peer communication environment. OJ further strengthens the positive LMCE-EDMC relationship, and the association is more pronounced among non-leaders. By integrating communication quality, peer support, and perceptions of fairness into a single empirical model, this study extends public administration research on frontline crisis capability. It identifies concrete organizational levers to strengthen grassroots emergency governance in practice.
The allocation of financial resources through a budgeting system can produce various outcomes based on what it prioritizes and who is involved in the process. Hence, many studies have examined diverse impacts of different budgeting systems and approaches. Yet our understanding is still limited regarding how involving or increasing the representation of underserved populations in the budget process contributes to better outcomes for those individuals. To fill this gap, this study examines how increased representation of women policy makers involved in the budget process influences budgeting decisions in support of women's issues. In other words, how does shared gender identity impact budgeting performance, or decisions that increase expenditures that support women. Using a generalized method of moments (GMM), we find that women governors and an increased percentage of women state senators are associated with increased percentages of library and public mass transit system spending, respectively, where women are primary workers or clients. However, there is no statistically significant relationship between increased representation of women state house members and women-supportive expenditures. Our findings also indicate that the percentage of women senators has an inverted U-shaped relationship with elementary and secondary education spending and library spending.
Collaboration is a leading driver of innovation in both public and private sector organizations. However, while the influence of inter-organizational collaboration has been well established, the impact of intra-organizational collaboration on employee innovation has remained underexplored in public management studies. Therefore, drawing on social exchange theory, this research examines how internal knowledge and collaboration influence the innovative work behavior of public sector workers. Using data from a large survey of employees in Australia's public service (nspace=space121,590), we found significant evidence of a positive relationship between the knowledge/skills of public employees and their innovative work behavior. Furthermore, collaboration within workgroups was also associated with an increase in innovative work behavior. Finally, our results show a close, complementary, and positive relationship between knowledge and collaboration, implying that collaborative teams are also more knowledgeable and that knowledge mediates the influence of collaboration on innovative work behavior.
Co-production, defined as collaboration between citizens and government in delivering public services, can be enhanced through well-designed incentives. Although material (e.g., financial rewards) and non-material (e.g., social recognition) incentives have been widely studied, less attention has been given to how administrative burdens embedded in co-production-manifested as internal experiential costs and external procedural barriers-influence their effectiveness. This study draws on a survey experiment conducted in the context of mutual-aid older adult care in China to examine how perceptions of different levels and types of administrative burden shape the impact of various incentives on participation. The findings indicate that both material and non-material incentives increase willingness to co-produce, but their effectiveness varies with the type and severity of burdens. Internal experiential costs, such as learning and psychological burdens, are associated with lower participation and a conditional weakening of material incentive effects, whereas external procedural barriers, such as compliance burdens, show little association with incentive effectiveness. This study advances administrative burden theory by highlighting that incentives do not operate in a vacuum; they operate within specific burden contexts. Variation in incentive effectiveness is systematically linked to differences in perceived burdens, offering a potential explanation for mixed findings in prior studies.
Citizen-generated data plays a pivotal role in improving environmental policy design, refining policy instrument selection, and enhancing governance precision. However, the specific mechanisms through which such data influences policy processes remain underexplored. This study utilizes the BERT language model to classify public sentiment, incorporating it as a labeled variable within the policy process. Using data from Fuzhou's 12345 public service platform, the research investigates the role of citizen-generated data in shaping environmental policy, specifically focusing on black-odor water management. The findings show that government responses to public demands are influenced by institutional trust, willingness to participate, and individual normative adherence. For individuals with high institutional trust, governments tend to use nudging strategies for psychological engagement, while those with strong willingness to participate see expedited administrative interventions. Long-term complainants, particularly those motivated by self-interest, are more likely to receive informational responses over direct administrative enforcement. Additionally, the influence of citizen-generated data on policy design is mediated through three key mechanisms: the focal effect, inertia effect, and cost effect. This study underscores the need for a robust link between citizen-generated data and policy design, emphasizing the importance of emotional governance and AI-driven strategies to improve the effectiveness of environmental policymaking.
While there is growing recognition of the importance of understanding public organization performance from the public perception perspective, inconsistent and even contradictory conclusions have been drawn regarding how the public perceives such performance. Thus, accurately and comprehensively measuring the public's attitudes toward public organization performance remains an unresolved issue. This study employs the dual attitudes model of social cognition, utilizing both explicit and implicit measurement approaches, and conducts two explicit experimental studies and one implicit experiment to examine how the public perceives public organization performance within the Chinese context. The results indicate that compared to private organizations, the public holds more positive views on public organization performance, showing a pro-public sector preference rather than an anti-public-sector prejudice. Moreover, this preference effect demonstrates stability across different measurement methods and contextual applications. This research pioneers the application of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to measuring perceptions of public organization performance, offering dual evidence on how the public evaluates public organization performance within a public-dominant economy where public organizations vastly outnumber nonpublic ones in service provision. The findings suggest that academia should recognize that the concept of "anti-public sector bias" may lack universal explanatory power. This contributes to a more comprehensive and objective understanding within academia of the dynamic nature of state-society relations across differing political and cultural contexts. For public management practitioners, this finding implies that they can embrace and assert their "public" identity with greater confidence - viewing it as a strategic asset rather than a burden.
Public reporting is the cornerstone of government performance disclosure. Yet reporting is inherently shaped by two competing pressures: a normative demand for transparency and accountability, and a strategic incentive to manage perception and avoid blame. This study examines how Chinese local governments navigate this tension when failing to meet announced GDP growth targets. Using 1,614 municipal reports from 269 cities (2013-2018), we identify the writing features that distinguish underperforming reports from goal-met ones. Underperforming governments emphasize accountability and external risks, while downplaying performance data and references to higher-level leadership. Although cities combine these features in various ways, the underperforming group as a whole exhibits a more systematic narrative structure than the goal-met group, suggesting that performance failure tightens, rather than loosens, bureaucratic writing conventions. These findings offer insights into bureaucratic writing in China and provide a framework for analyzing performance reporting in other institutional settings.
This study investigates factors that shape case prioritization in public service delivery, focusing on Title IX coordinators (n = 371) handling sexual misconduct cases in U.S. colleges. Using a conjoint experiment, we find that coordinators deprioritize complex, time-sensitive cases involving transgender victims and prioritize severe cases and those with less ambiguity. When we examine the intersection of severity, complexity, and ambiguity, we find that coordinators prioritize cases that are both less complex and ambiguous, which results in persistent biases against transwomen. These findings have significant implications for social equity in an understudied policy area and extend discussions on the factors that mitigate or worsen discrimination.
In its contemporary form, the study of public administration has focused on the skills and techniques of the new career civil servant, including personnel management, budgeting, and rule-making, as well as knowledge of organizational theory, policymaking, and leadership. This stands in sharp contrast to the exploration in the 17(th) and 18(th) centuries of what constituted good government. Here we discuss conceptions of good government throughout history and then briefly zoom in on developments in the study during the 20(th) century. This brief excursion serves as a springboard to argue for a revival of conceptual research while acknowledging the importance of links between micro-, meso-, and macro-levels of analysis. In the 21(st) century there is a great need for balancing empirical and conceptual approaches to the study of public administration for understanding government's contemporary position and role in society.
Administrative burden is a growing focus in public administration, yet research on business administrative burden remains limited, with most studies emphasizing citizens. Additionally, the role of ethical governance, particularly corruption control, in shaping administrative burden has been largely overlooked. This study addresses these gaps by examining the impact of corruption control on business administrative burden and the moderating effects of political attention and digital government. Using multisource data from China and various empirical methods, the findings confirm that corruption control reduces business time and money burdens, though its effects vary across burden dimensions. Moreover, political attention strengthens the role of corruption control, reinforcing its impact on burden reduction. However, contrary to expectations, digital government does not significantly enhance the effect of corruption control in most empirical models. These findings highlight the importance of corruption control and political attention in reducing administrative burdens and call for more nuanced approaches to leveraging digital government in regulatory reforms.
This study investigates the factors shaping administrative burden in the context of digital services, incorporating both government and citizen perspectives. To address this, it proposes an information-based analytical framework to examine how digital literacy, policy communication, and policy understanding shape citizens-perceived administrative burden. Based on a survey of 1,084 individuals of a nationwide digital service project, the findings provide empirical insights into the challenges of digital service delivery. This research advances theoretical understanding of administrative burden in digital contexts by highlighting the central role of policy information and offers practical recommendations for designing more citizen-centric digital government services.
