Yours emotionally: How emotional intelligence infuses public service motivation and affects the job outcomes of public personnel

We investigate the role of emotions in the public sector and their relation with work outcomes typical of public arenas. We focus on the emotional intelligence of public healthcare staff and its potential impact on public service motivation, job satisfaction, affective commitment and the quality of service to citizens. Using data from 200 nurses in a large Israeli public hospital, we examine a mixed model of direct and indirect relationships. The findings support direct positive relationships between emotional intelligence, public service motivation and job outcomes, and several indirect relationships: (1) the mediating effect of public service motivation in the relationship between emotional intelligence and affective commitment, and (2) the moderating role of emotional intelligence in the relationship between public service motivation and service quality. The impact of public service motivation on self‐reported service quality is stronger for public employees with more emotional intelligence.     

The new public management

The New Management of British Local Governance. Edited by Gerry Stoker. Macmillan Press in association with the ESRC Local Governance Programme, 1999. Pp.295. £45 hb; £14.99 pb.

Beyond the New Public Management: Changing Ideas and Practices in Governance. Edited by Martin Minogue, Charles Polidano and David Hulme. Edward Elgar, 1998. Pp.325. £59.95.     

The temporal,social, and responsiveness dilemmas of public personnel administration

Public personnel administration is confronted by three intertwined dilemmas. Responsiveness to political leadership is essential to a democracy. Yet placing responsibility for personnel administration in the hands of political appointees introduces a transcience that is incompatible with a sustained commitment to organizational improvement through applications of the behavioral sciences. Vesting careerists with personnel administration authority is the best way to address the three dilemmas. Doing so will require a rapprochement with political leaders, one that establishes a normative orientation to personnel administration in which responsiveness to policy leadership is asserted along with other essential values associated with public service.     

Information technology and education for the public service

Nation-wide surveys of graduate programs in public administration/affairs support assertions by critics that most programs do not provide students with adequate preparation for coping with information technology. This paper identifies the computer-related knowledge and skills demanded by the contemporary administrative workplace and, after analyzing the sufficiency of current curricula offerings, proposes three goals for education in the use and management of information technology and suggests curriculum revisions necessary to reach these goals. Finally, implementation problems associated with curricula revisions are identified and discussed.     

Privatisation,contracting-out and inter-municipal cooperation: new developments in local public service delivery

ABSTRACT

We briefly review recent advances in the empirical analysis of the privatisation and inter-municipal cooperation of local public services and discuss the potential of these studies. The core issues examined include the identification of factors driving delivery choices and the effects of privatisation and cooperation on service provisions. In addition to reporting the specific empirical findings of each study, we highlight the innovative methodologies that they each adopt. Finally, we outline a number of potential avenues for further research.     

The Atlantis of personnel: The lost world of public employee discipline in the state government

Though there are many procedural job protections afforded public employees, there is a surprising amount of disciplinary actions meted out. A survey of 50 State governments showed that the magnitude of employee discipline is relatively high; there is a positive relationship between states which have low disciplinary records, and their lack of control of the disciplinary process; and there is a “progressive disciplinary profilet” prototypes state that exhibits a high degree of discipline when corrective and minor disciplinary actions are multiples of major disciplinary actions.     

Minorities and the public service: a future perspective

This paper analyzes the future prospects of blacks and other minorities in the public service. It examines studies on race/role expectations of minority administrators, tokenism and marginality to discern trends in interethnic relations. It also discusses future demographic projections and their implications for majority/minority relations. Finally, the essay explains why public service careers are particularly significant for blacks and other minorities.     

What is public service improvement?

Five conceptual models of public service improvement are derived from the large literature on organizational effectiveness. These are the goal, systems-resource, internal process, competing values and multiple constituency models. The strengths and weaknesses of each of these models is evaluated and a working definition of improvement is proposed. This emphasizes that concepts and measures of public service improvement are political rather than technical, and contingent rather than universal. Conclusions are drawn on the implications for academic research and policy development.     

Outsourcing,bureaucratic personnel quality and citizen satisfaction with public services

This article investigates the relationships between outsourcing, bureaucratic personnel quality (BPQ) and citizen satisfaction with public services. Our baseline expectation is of a negative association between outsourcing and service quality; however, we argue that this tendency can be counteracted when the government buyer has a more competent and motivated personnel, not only in managerial positions, but across the board. Better‐educated and paid public employees are likely to have an important moderating effect on service quality through their input into quality specifications, their ability to recognize the provider's consummate or perfunctory behaviour, and their willingness to act on the observed performance. Using data from a cross‐section of Sweden's municipalities, our analysis reveals a robust association between higher levels of outsourcing and lower levels of citizen satisfaction, but the data do not provide unambiguous support for the hypothesis that the strength of this association diminishes when BPQ is higher.     

Intermunicipal cooperation,public spending and service levels

ABSTRACT

Local governments can increase size in particular policy fields through cooperation with other local governments. This is often thought to improve efficiency, but there is little empirical evidence supporting this hypothesis. We study the case of the Netherlands, which has been a veritable laboratory of intermunicipal cooperation (IMC), using panel data for 2005–2013. We find no evidence that IMC reduces total spending of the average municipality. Indeed, IMC seems to increase spending in small and large municipalities, leaving spending in mid-sized municipalities unaffected. In one specific field, tax collection, spending may be reduced through IMC. Spending in this field is low, which may explain why total spending is unaffected. Instead of lowering spending, municipalities may have used possible cost savings as a result of IMC to improve public service levels. We do not find evidence substantiating this hypothesis, however.     

The third sector, user involvement and public service reform: a case study in the co-governance of health service provision

The ‘modernization’ of British public services seeks to broaden public sector governance networks, bringing the views of third sector organizations, the public and service users (among others) to the design, management and delivery of welfare. Building on previous analyses of the contradictions generated by these roles, this paper draws on longitudinal qualitative research to enunciate the challenges faced by one third-sector organization in facilitating service user influence in a UK National Health Service (NHS) pilot programme, alongside other roles in tension with this advocacy function. The analysis highlights limits in the extent to which lateral governance networks pluralize stakeholder involvement. The ‘framing’ of governance may mean that traditional concerns outweigh the views of new stakeholders such as the third sector and service users. Rather than prioritizing wider stakeholders' views in the design and delivery of public services, placing third sector organizations at the centre of governance networks may do more to co-opt these organizations in reproducing predominant priorities.     

Private administration of a public function: The news election service

The United States government has no elections office and does not attempt to administer congressional and presidential elections. The responsibility for the administration of elections and certification of winners in the United States national elections rests with the states. The states divide election administration responsibilities between state and local election officials, whose objective is an efficiently administered honest election, with the ballots correctly tabulated. The formal structure of election administration in the United States is not capable of providing tirely results of the presidential and congressional election. Similar structural difficulties in other policy areas often result in ad hoc operating agreements or informal cooperation among agencies at different levels of the federal system. In the case of election administration, however, the public officials have abdicated responsibility for election night aqgregation of the national Vote totals to a private organization, News Election Service, which is owned by five major news organizations. This private organization performs without a contract, without public compensation, and without supervision by public officials. It makes decisions concerning its duties according to its own criteria. The questions of responsibility and accountability have not arisen in part because of the private organization's performance record and in part because the responsibility was assumed gradually over a lengthy period without ever being evaluated as an item on the public agenda.     

Modernizing the public service in latin america: faradoxes of latin american public administration

This article presents impediments to the moderization of the public bureacracy in the Latin American region. These impediments are presented as paradoxes in order to emphasize both the contradications found in, and the America. The article presents examples from various cases it central and South America in order to show the lack of a public service tradition, the obstacles of patronage and corruption, the Opportunity costs of bureacratic development, the difficulty of reform, and the drawbacks of professionalization. It concludes with some suggestions, groped under the general strategies of insulation and fortification, about how to evercome these impeciments.     

The information-based organization: new dimensions for the public manager

Public management education should reflect the tremendous organizational changes brought about by information technologies and their applications. Increasing penetration of information technologies and the need for well-considered approaches to use those technologies will pose new opportunities and obstacles for public managers. This paper describes three key skill areas for curriculum consideration: information technology management, information management, and human resource management.     

Representative bureaucracy,international organizations and public service bargains

Academic interest in the administrative aspects of international organizations is on the rise. Yet, an issue that has received little attention is bureaucratic representation—the extent to which international bureaucracies are representative of the polity that they serve. The article theorizes the rationales for and forms of representative bureaucracy in international organizations by combining insights from the representative bureaucracy literature with the ‘public service bargains’ framework. It argues that bureaucratic representation is highly relevant in international organizations, given the diverse polity these organizations serve and their precarious legitimacy. It distinguishes three types of representational ‘bargains’ between international organizations and those they serve, centred on power, equal opportunities and diversity, and discusses under which conditions each type of bargain is likely to be struck. The argument contributes to discussions about representative bureaucracy in international organizations and to broader theoretical debates about international public administration.     

Preparing public service agencies for strategic planning

This paper examines the reasons why public sector organizations may not be ready for traditional private sector strategic planning techniques and suggests a typology for diagnosing the CBO's position in relation to planning efforts. It identifies the need for interventions appropriate to the organization climate and begins to explore mechanisms which can be used to facilitate the strategic planning process in public service agencies.     

Credentialism,meritocracy, and merit: educational requirements and the public service

The American myth of mobility suggests that educational attainment, as evidenced by some credential, is the road to achievement for everyone. This has never been entirely true, but recent trends suggest that the educational credential may increasingly limit as well as offer opportunity. Additional educational requirements have often been equated with increasing the “professionalism” of the public service, but they may also serve as a reason to keep out minorities or women now that non-meritorious discriminatory barriers have been eliminated by the courts. Examples from Mississippi and New York are cited. Although the courts have been vigilant in insisting that tests and other selection devices be validated, they have been much more tolerant of educational requirements, often failing to subject them to the stringent tests of job relatedness and validity. Even when a particular government unit is willing to lower credential barriers that cannot clearly be justified, it may be subject to pressures from other government units or associations, focusing on “improving” professional qualifications.