Post-pandemic return-to-office policies are often justified by the value of physical co-presence for collaboration, mentoring, coordination, and cohesion. Yet many employees and managers are back on-site while still attending virtual meetings with colleagues in the same workplace. This article conceptualizes this neglected configuration as same-site virtual meetings (SSVMs), defined as virtual meetings joined from the workplace when at least one other participant is physically present on the same worksite. Drawing on the job demands–resources model, this article theorizes SSVMs as a distinct job demand because they combine digital mediation with available physical proximity, generating media-place incongruence, cognitive load, attentional fragmentation, and underuse of co-presence. Using original survey data from public-sector managers in Quebec, this study applies inverse probability weighting within an extreme tercile design to estimate the effect of high SSVM exposure on two attributional forms of burnout: work-related and colleagues-related. High SSVM exposure is significantly associated with higher work-related burnout but not colleagues-related burnout. These findings suggest that SSVMs operate primarily as an organizational rather than a relational demand. The study contributes to the science of hybrid work research and public personnel management by identifying a distinct post-pandemic meeting practice that may undermine the benefits of returning to the office.
A harmonious work-life interface is critical for promoting both employee well-being and organizational effectiveness. The existing literature provides valuable insights into how various employee-friendly policies and practices influence employees’ work-life balance and their work outcomes. However, how workplace dynamics influence the family domain of public employees remains largely underexplored within the field of public administration. This study contributes to filling the gap by examining the association between work interruptions and employees’ family lives and by exploring the pathways connecting work interruptions to family outcomes. Serial mediation analysis results indicate that interruptions at work are associated with work interference with family, directly and indirectly through time pressure and longer working hours across independent and sequential pathways. The article concludes with a discussion of its theoretical contributions and practical implications, as well as study limitations and suggestions for future research.
While merit-based personnel systems are widely linked to improved performance and reduced corruption, less attention has been given to how an erosion of merit affects civil servants. Drawing on psychological contract and distributive justice theories, this study links perceptions of patronage in promotion processes, where personalistic, relational, or political criteria are perceived to displace formal advancement mechanisms, to diminished public service career satisfaction. It further argues that those with high levels of public service motivation (PSM) may interpret patronage-based promotion as both a threat to their own careers and a violation of the public values that make government service meaningful. As such, the negative association between perceived patronage and career satisfaction may be particularly severe for employees with higher levels of PSM. Using a large-scale survey of South Korean central and local government officials, the study develops a patronage perceptions index using forced-choice responses about perceived promotion factors and presents empirical evidence for the theoretical model. This research provides novel insight into how personalistic practices in the public sector may weaken civil servants’ satisfaction with public service as a career and discusses future research questions relevant to safeguarding the integrity of human resource management in the public sector.
As digitalization accelerates, digital overload is placing increasing pressure on civil servants. This study draws on the Job Demands-Resources model and analyzes 3 waves of survey data from 653 civil servants, along with a scenario-based experiment involving 138 participants. Findings reveal that digital overload affects job performance, turnover intention, and burnout through the mediating role of relative deprivation. Furthermore, high-performance human resource management practices moderate this relationship by mitigating the negative effects of digital overload, thus reducing their negative impact. A moderated mediation model is proposed, highlighting strategies to support public employees coping with digitalization.
This study examines how public-service motivation (PSM) is associated with proactive administrative behavior among Korean civil servants and identifies organizational and supervisory conditions that help translate public-service motives into work behavior. Building on a motivation-attitude-behavior framework, organizational commitment is modeled as an attitudinal conversion mechanism, while servant-like supervisory behavior is examined as a contextual condition that may enable committed employees to express their commitment through proactive administrative behavior. Using the 2021 Survey on Civil Servants' Work and Life (N = 4,133), the study estimates the proposed model using partial least squares structural equation modeling with bootstrapped tests of mediation and interaction effects. PSM is positively associated with proactive administrative behavior both directly and indirectly through organizational commitment. Servant-like supervisory behavior strengthens the organizational commitment-proactive administrative behavior relationship, whereas its interaction with PSM is not statistically significant. The findings suggest that supervisory context may matter most at the attitude-to-behavior translation stage rather than as a general amplifier of public-service motives. The analysis distinguishes the measured behavioral construct from broader claims about risk-taking and accountability pressure, and treats the single-source cross-sectional design as a substantive limitation rather than as a concern that statistical diagnostics can fully eliminate.
