Digital transformation in public organizations depends not only on technological implementation, but also on how public employees interpret and respond to organizational change. This study examines how work motivation shapes public servants’ evaluative responses to technological systems by integrating Self-Determination Theory with the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT). Using survey data from 317 civil servants of the Brazilian Federal Revenue Service collected during the implementation of a new information system, we test a mediation model using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The results show that work motivation does not exert a significant direct effect on attitude toward technology use. Instead, its influence is fully transmitted through performance expectancy and facilitating conditions, while effort expectancy and social influence do not show significant effects. These findings indicate that motivation acts as a distal psychological condition whose impact depends on employees’ perceptions of performance gains and organizational support. By clarifying the cognitive pathways linking motivation to employees’ evaluations of technological change in mandatory-use public-sector contexts, this study advances research on digital transformation and employee-level dynamics in public organizations.
Amid growing backlash against diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA), this study centers on the continued importance of DEIA perceptions and psychologically safe environments in enhancing job satisfaction. This study examines how diversity perceptions influence job satisfaction among a diverse federal workforce in the United States, with a particular focus on the role of psychological safety. Despite growing emphasis on DEIA, psychological safety has received comparatively little attention as a means to enhance job satisfaction in the workplace. Using data from the 2023 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS), this study addresses this gap by exploring how perceptions of DEIA influence federal employees’ job satisfaction in the public sector. This study investigates the mediating role of psychological safety in the relationship between DEIA perceptions and job satisfaction. By fostering an environment where employees feel secure(safe) discussing DEIA topics, the research seeks to illuminate how psychological safety impacts job satisfaction in diverse workplaces. This is especially important given the current backlash against DEIA policies in the US. The findings of this study will contribute to public management research by introducing an understudied variable—psychological safety—and its potential effects in the public sector. Additionally, the results offer valuable insights into designing effective DEIA strategies that enhance employee well-being and job satisfaction in federal organizations, advancing the understanding of these complex dynamics.
Interdisciplinarity has transformative potential in teaching and learning within public affairs education. Given the current socio-political climate, this paper is a call to action for public service educators to bring interdisciplinarity to the fore to address complex issues in a chaotic environment. Grounded in theoretical perspectives such as ecosystem approaches, boundary-spanning, and complexity theory, this paper explores how dismantling disciplinary silos can equip future leaders to tackle complex societal challenges like social inequities, climate change, economic instability, shifting dynamics in higher education, and other technological and political changes particularly in a climate that seeks to upend the role of higher education in the public sphere. Through an analysis of classroom, program, and institutional strategies, the paper highlights theories and practices that promote interdisciplinary collaboration, including curriculum design, cross-sector partnerships, and diverse faculty and student recruitment. By integrating varied disciplinary perspectives into nonprofit management and public administration curricula, educators can foster innovative solutions to the multifaceted issues facing society today. The paper provides a roadmap for interdisciplinary integration with a call to action for programs, faculty, and institutions to prioritize interdisciplinary approaches that prepare students to become agents of meaningful social change and build resilient, equitable communities, especially in the current political climate.
This study explores the current status of intersectional diversity in the United States (U.S.) federal government over a decade (2009–2023). Significant efforts have been made to enhance representation in bureaucracy, ensuring it reflects society’s preferences in policymaking and embodies a wide range of values related to public services. Scholars have also examined various dimensions of representative bureaucracy through an intersectional lens, with a particular focus on the interplay of gender and ethnicity in shaping our understanding of diversity. However, substantial inequality persists among women based on their racial and ethnic backgrounds, especially at the leadership level. We expand this critical discussion by incorporating another essential, yet less frequently addressed, aspect of diversity: disability. Using FedScope data along with additional data from the OPM, we measured representation and intersectionality across gender, ethnicity, and disability at both employee and leadership levels. Our findings show that although passive representation has improved across some individual dimensions, minorities continue to face underrepresentation at the leadership level. Furthermore, minorities with intersectional identities encounter even greater disparities.
This study examines the influence of intersectional identities on job satisfaction among federal employees, addressing the increasing diversity within the public sector. Using data from the 2023 US Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, which includes responses from over 500,000 federal employees, the research examines how the intersection of race, gender, disability, and Hispanic ethnicity influences workplace experiences. This study applies an intersectional framework to reveal how overlapping identities shape satisfaction in inclusive versus non-inclusive settings, providing empirical insights for the implementation of DEI in federal HR systems. Findings reveal that intersectional identities have a significant influence on job satisfaction in nuanced and sometimes unexpected ways. For example, while being male or nondisabled is generally linked to higher satisfaction, the combination of being white and male does not always result in increased satisfaction, challenging conventional assumptions. The study also highlights the critical role of inclusive work environments in moderating these relationships. An inclusive workplace enhances job satisfaction and promotes equity by valuing the diverse backgrounds of its employees. These insights have implications for public sector leadership and workplace strategies that address the complexities of intersectional identities.
Despite the accelerated pace toward digitalization, contextualizing public service co-production in the digital domain is tricky. Drawing on a domain-based literature review including 58 scholarly contributions, this article proposes an integrative framework synthesizing the context, contents, and processes of digital public service co-production. The digital servicescape hosting public service co-production relies on a compelling socio-technical backbone. Delicate ethical challenges arise from framing public service co-production in the digital setting, increasing the risks of public value contamination. Amalgamating meaningfulness, authenticity, transparency, and accessibility is conducive to overcoming such challenges, thereby fostering public value co-creation in the digital environment.
Research on upward mobility often emphasizes individual or household characteristics such as education, occupation, or family background, with limited attention to how the broader living environment shapes mobility prospects. This paper addresses that gap by examining the role of government performance on upward mobility in Vietnam, a country marked by rapid growth but facing income and regional inequality. Using panel data from the Vietnam Household Living Standard Surveys (2012–2018) combined with the Provincial Governance and Public Administration Performance Index (PAPI), we apply a generalized ordered logit model to assess both perceived and income-based mobility. The findings show that improvements in governance raise the likelihood of households moving upward. Civic participation and control of corruption mainly enhance perceived mobility, while better public service delivery supports income mobility. These effects are heterogeneous: rural households, the majority ethnic group, low-income families, and northern residents benefit clearly, while urban households, minorities, and southern residents are less benefited. The results suggest that strengthening local governance is a critical policy lever for fostering the upward mobility of citizens.
Decentralization is considered a vital element to governance. However, the opinions and evidence on the effects of decentralization on government performance present a mixed picture. The long-running debate about the effects of decentralization has ignored types of government performance. In this study, it is argued that the attempts to improve the level of fiscal decentralization may or may not have the intended satisfaction with public services because of different types of public services. The purpose of this article is to investigate the impacts of fiscal decentralization on satisfaction with public hospital, public police, and public education. Employing multilevel models with the data from the International Monetary Fund and the Latinobarómetro, this paper shows that fiscal decentralization undermines satisfaction with public hospital and public education. However, it does not have a discernible effect on satisfaction with police. Drawing on the results that the impacts of decentralization are contingent on the nature or types of government performance, it is argued that a more nuanced view enhances the understanding of decentralization.
Climate change, one of the most significant challenges facing public administrators around the world, is not a traditional disaster; it is an integrated, tangled, slow-onset crisis with multiple implications to existing rules, programs, and regulations at every level of government. Public administrators are often at the helm of local adaptation and mitigation efforts, but is this reflected in the mainstream public administration literature? Using Conklin’s wicked problems framework, this study analyzed 20 years of climate change research published in high-ranking public administration journals to understand how the literature in these leading journals are addressing this wicked problem and related impacts.
Citizen participation is widely viewed as essential to democratic governance, yet the institutional conditions under which it reflects routine compliance versus meaningful democratic opportunity remain underexamined in federal entitlement communities. This paper explores the practices of a stratified sample of 40 federal entitlement communities to determine whether jurisdictions merely comply with minimal participation requirements or pursue more substantive engagement. Using a mixed-methods approach, the research analyzes entitlement community practices along a continuum ranging from minimal compliance to movement toward participatory governance. Results indicate that jurisdictions use a number of methods beyond the federal requirement to hold a single public meeting. Neither population size nor administrative capacity is significantly associated with the types of participation opportunities employed, suggesting that organizational priorities and local context may matter more than resources alone. Finally, case studies illustrate how some governments enhance inclusivity through multilingual outreach, targeted engagement of low-income residents, and the use of standing advisory bodies. Overall, the findings demonstrate that while federal rules establish low expectations, many entitlement communities seek broader citizen involvement, offering new insight into how local governments design and implement democratic participation processes.
When 287(g) immigration enforcement agreements surged from 135 to 1,035 across U.S. agencies in 9 months during 2025, adoption patterns revealed surprising dynamics of local policy diffusion under federal-state coercion. Using comprehensive county-level data and Cox proportional hazards models with time-varying covariates, I find that geographic proximity dominated adoption decisions despite unprecedented top-down pressure. Each neighboring adopter increased a focal county’s adoption likelihood by 25%, the single strongest predictor. State-level peer effects operated independently, creating compounding regional pressures. Fiscal findings challenge conventional wisdom: counties more dependent on intergovernmental transfers were 64% less likely to adopt, while debt burdens and deficits showed no effects, revealing that institutional capacity, not fiscal desperation, determines responsiveness to federal incentives. State mandates accelerated adoption but did not eliminate geographic variation in timing. These findings demonstrate that spatial networks structure local policy decisions even when higher governments actively direct outcomes, with important implications for understanding federalism, policy diffusion mechanisms, and the limits of coercive intergovernmental relations.
Despite extensive international research on economies of scale in municipal service delivery, the topic remains underexplored in South Africa and Africa. This study aims to address this gap by examining the relationship between municipality size—measured by population size and staff numbers—and economies of scale in the municipal service delivery. Drawing on data from district and metropolitan municipalities between 2016/17 and 2019/20 and employing regression analysis, the results show a significant U-shaped relationship between both population size and total expenditure and staff numbers and total expenditure. Importantly, these effects vary between metropolitan and district municipalities. For example, expenditure tends to decrease with increasing population size up to a threshold of approximately 158,000 residents, beyond which diseconomies of scale emerge. These insights offer practical implications for regional planning and service delivery strategies, particularly in guiding decisions on municipal consolidation and resource allocation.
Despite calls for reform, many transit agencies rely heavily on enforcement to increase fare revenue and perceptions of safety. Both fare evasion and behavior violations (like loitering and public intoxication) can carry heavy fines, and lead to debt collection and criminal justice system involvement. Yet there has been limited examination of the financial and social costs of transit fines, and whether enforcement programs can achieve promised revenue goals. Using administrative data obtained through freedom of information requests, I use an exploratory approach to document the nature and extent of transit enforcement and fines in sixteen Canadian cities. Enforcement varies considerably between cities, ranging from no enforcement to high rates of bans and tickets. I find that transit fines are excessively punitive when compared with parking violations, as transit fines are on average five times higher than comparable parking infractions. While there may be deterrence value from enforcement, few transit fines are paid, and the costs of enforcing transit violations are likely significantly greater than revenue from payments. Given this, transit agencies should evaluate the goals, impacts, and outcomes of enforcement programs, with a full accounting of both the financial and social costs, and consideration of alternative programs.
Extreme weather events related to climate change, and an aging electricity infrastructure are disrupting reliable electricity services to a greater degree. Further, previous research has found that more socially vulnerable populations are more likely to live in areas with a higher probability of power outages. This study examines the issues that people face during power outages and the resources that help individuals maintain resilience during power outages caused by extreme weather events in socially vulnerable communities. Using qualitative data from focus groups with 56 individuals in Central and North Florida, the research highlights lived experiences during outages and difficulties using and accessing resources during these conditions. Based on a qualitative review of the focus group discussions, this paper explores the solutions and support systems residents believe would improve their ability to cope. The findings offer insights to guide policy and strategic planning, with the goal of strengthening personal preparedness and response by focusing on the resources people consider most helpful for enduring frequent and severe outages.
The problem, policies and politics streams of the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) provides a clear theoretical structure to examine changes in the concept of election integrity since the 2020 election. Increased attention to perceived, but unproven, voter fraud claims (politics), coupled with an environment of mistrust in government institutions and the nationalization of state politics (problem), and push to create laws to restrict access to the ballot (policy) created a policy window that enabled actors to reframe the concept of election integrity. State election laws already define election malfeasance and guide election administrators and public prosecutors on how to adjudicate those that commit it. In this exploratory study, we examine the state of the field as it pertains to the spectrum of approaches undertaken by state legislatures to manage election integrity—from “election fraud” hotlines to expanded jurisdictions to formalized election integrity units. What do these new definitions of integrity look like in practice and how do they impact election administration? We explore the administrative functions, organizational arrangements, and the level of integration within the current governmental structure of these new approaches.
The improvement of apparatus (National Civil Apparatus/ASN) competency is an important part of realizing the standards of the nation through effective government institutions. The apparatus must be staffed by knowledgeable and professional individuals, commonly known as merit system. In this context, the deployment of several merit systems in ASN management has reported unsatisfactory results. Therefore, this research aims to examine merit system policy in Indonesian government and the influencing elements, with an emphasis on central ministries and institutions. A qualitative descriptive method was used with a constructivist paradigm, and data analysis adopted triangulation. Data collection was conducted through in-depth interviews with eight purposively selected key informants, focus group discussions (FGD), observations, literature reviews, and official government reports. The results showed that the implementation of merit system policy at Ministry/Institution level was categorized as good based on eight aspects of the assessment prepared by KemenPAN-RB (Ministry of State Apparatus Utilization and Bureaucratic Reform). However, there were several ministries and institutions with low scores, and the challenges were difficult since National Civil Apparatus Committee (KASN) was disbanded. The research concludes that while Indonesia’s government has generally implemented the merit system well, career development and promotion are hindered by inadequate talent management and ambiguous policies, with environmental factors, proficient human resources, infrastructure, and digital systems acting as critical determinants.
The purpose of this study is to comprehensively assess the factors influencing employee participation in the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) within the context of Lagos State, Nigeria. By investigating the drivers that contribute to employee engagement with the CPS, the study aims to provide valuable insights into the underlying factors that influence participation. A scoping literature review was conducted to identify drivers of employee participation in the CPS from existing literature. This information was then used to formulate a questionnaire survey, which was administered to construction professionals, including employees, pension operators, and retirees from public service ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs) who are beneficiaries of the CPS. The study analyzed the mean scores of the identified drivers and identified the top five ranked as financial advice, retirement projections, employer reputation, government policies, and communication frequency. Additionally, a factor analysis was conducted, which categorized the identified drivers into four principal clusters: external factors, pension scheme attributes, communication and education and workplace factors. The practical implications of this study can guide the development of targeted interventions and strategies to increase employee participation in the CPS not only in Lagos State but also in other states across Nigeria. By focusing on the identified drivers of employee participation, relevant stakeholders can develop tailored interventions and strategies to enhance employee engagement with the scheme, improve communication, and increase awareness of the scheme’s benefits. This study addresses a significant gap in the literature by conducting a comprehensive assessment of the factors influencing employee participation in the CPS within the specific context of Lagos State, Nigeria. While the CPS has garnered attention in research, limited studies have delved into the factors that drive employee engagement with the scheme, particularly within the Nigerian construction industry.
Following the Spring of 2020, there has been a notable surge in attention toward issues related to policing and instances of police misconduct. This review takes stock of the policing literature in Public Administration field between 2017 and 2023. A total of 202 empirical articles on policing were identified in Public Administration. Findings indicate that in Public Administration, policing studies are in majority focused on the management of police organizations, rather than on the police-citizen nexus or police behavior. There has not been an important shift in themes and subthemes covered by articles since 2020. Policing articles in Public Administration are mostly cross-sectional, theoretically scattered, methodologically balanced, and often include practical recommendations, albeit vague ones. We offer a research agenda for policing and public administration scholars.
An individual’s decision to pursue a career in the public sector is likely to be influenced by a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic factors. While the widely studied concept of Public Service Motivation (PSM) emphasizes altruistic and prosocial values, it does not fully capture the diverse motivations that may influence entry into, and performance within the public sector—particularly in developing country contexts where economic constraints, political dynamics, and cultural hierarchies are prominent. The present study addresses this limitation by conceptualizing and validating a novel instrument to measure Public Sector Motivation (PSecM) which encompasses both intrinsic and extrinsic dimensions of motivation specific to a public sector employment. Through three studies involving diverse samples from the Indian civil services, this research conceptualizes PSecM as a construct having three key dimensions: power to bring change, job security, and social respect, thereby highlighting that PSecM in India is driven by mixed motives, combining intrinsic aspirations for societal impact and extrinsic incentives tied to the unique characteristics of public sector jobs. Next, through a sequence of rigorous psychometric analysis, the study presents a valid measure of PSecM scale that has adequate psychometric properties as well as predictive validity. By providing a conceptual understanding of PSecM and developing a valid instrument to measure it, this study contributes to the broader discourse on public sector management and national development in resource-constrained environments.
