The Impact of Knowledge Sharing on Work Performance: An Empirical Analysis of the Public Employees' Perceptions in South Korea

This article examines the impact of knowledge sharing on individual work performance by analyzing perceptions of 323 public employees in South Korea. An analytical model is drawn from an extensive review of literature on knowledge management and sharing from which nine exogenous variables are identified as antecedents of knowledge sharing that affect individual work performance. The results indicate that four exogenous variables—employee training, reward systems, support from the top management, and openness in communication—are perceived to have a positive influence on employees' knowledge sharing, which, in turn, improved individual work performance. Perceived trustworthiness between individuals involved in knowledge sharing has also positively influenced both knowledge sharing and individual work performance. These results imply that individual work performance may be dependent on the effective use of knowledge sharing.     

The Influences of Perceived Managerial Discretion and Risk-Taking Behavior on Government Organizational Performance

Purpose: This study investigates pertinent factors in perceived managerial discretion (PMD) in association with risk-taking behavior (RTB) and organizational performance within government organizations. Design/methodology/approach: This study used a mix of qualitative methods—using focus group discussions (FGDs) to select key variables affecting PMD and to validate the research findings—and quantitative methods—using structural equation modeling (SEM) to test eight hypotheses developed from FGDs and from a literature review. Out of 340 questionnaires sent out to potential participants, 260 were returned and deemed valid for SEM analysis, reflecting a satisfactory response rate of 76%. Findings: A total of six factors affecting PMD were identified: quasi-legal constraint (QLC), powerful outside forces (POFs), inertial forces (IFs), powerful inside forces (PIFs), power base (PB), and political acumen (PA). The SEM analysis indicated that QLC, PIF, PB, and PA enhance PMD, while IF tends to inhibit PMD. Stronger PMD was associated with weaker RTB on the part of government-official decision makers, while greater RTB was associated with more positive organizational outcomes. These findings are partially consistent with prior findings, with some notable contradictions. Research implications/limitations: The primary limitation of this study was its limited external validity, as these findings can only be extended to organizations with similar characteristics of those of the government institution used as the case study. These findings must be used with care for different types of public organizations. Practical implications: These findings support taking the following steps: (1) review and remove equivocal regulations that could restrain PMD, (2) streamline bureaucracy, (3) establish regulations that allow more space for innovation and discretion, (4) delineate the tasks and responsibilities of decision makers, and (5) discourage abrupt policy changes, promoting proper scrutiny and notice.     

The Mediating Role of Ethical Climate in the Relationship Between Performance Appraisal and Organizational Performance

Although prior research has consistently established a positive relationship between performance appraisal and organizational performance across different research contexts, the mechanisms that underlie this link remain unclear. The present study attempts to fill this void by testing the mediating role of ethical climate in the relationship between performance appraisal and organizational performance across 181 Nigerian public sector agencies. Cross-sectional mediation analyses were performed using partial least squares path modeling approach. Results indicated that performance appraisal was positively and significantly related to organizational performance. Regarding the mediating effect, ethical climate significantly mediated the relationship between performance appraisal and organizational performance. The study made recommendations and drew suggestions for future research to enhance the performance of public sector agencies.     

Perception of Pay Equity in Public Universities in Ghana: Effect on Individual Performance and Work Behavior

Equity theory proposes that individuals perceiving inequity seek to restore equity through appropriate behavior. This research aimed to study the relationship between perceived pay equity and individual job performance among lecturers in public universities in Ghana. Using a survey of 313 lecturers, we found that employees’ perception of equity in the pay system is a significant factor in determining their job performance. Therefore, we recommend that managers attend to equity in the design and implementation of pay systems. Moreover, issues relating to the reward system should be carefully communicated to employees in order to prevent unnecessary perceptions of inequity.     

Revitalizing Local Government Performance Management: Further Dissecting the Role of Socioeconomic Status and Social Mobilization Policy

ABSTRACT

This article examines how socio-economic status and social mobilisation are linked to local government performance management in Nepal. As part of local government reform, Nepal adopted a social mobilisation policy in selected local governments to empower communities for their effective participation. Our results show that socio-economic status and social mobilisation have a significant relationship with performance management. Female literacy, for example, is strongly and significantly associated with performance management, while area has a significant positive relationship but population has only a weak positive relationship. In contrast, poverty has a significant negative correlation. More importantly, mobilisation has a significant, though modest, positive association with performance management particularly in participatory planning and budgeting, fiscal discipline, and administrative management. This indicates that improving the socio-economic status of citizens and their mobilisation for empowered collective action can be one important strategy to improve the performance capacity of local government.     

Distinguishing Motivational Traits between Person-Organization Fit and Person-Job Fit: Testing the Moderating Effects of Extrinsic Rewards in Enhancing Public Employee Job Satisfaction

This research suggests dissimilar motivational traits of person-organization fit and person-job fit and their different interactive relations with the external regulation of work motivation in affecting public employee satisfaction. Conducting a hierarchical regression analysis, the study jointly tested the direct and interaction effects of perceived person-organization fit, person-job fit, and extrinsic rewards on job satisfaction. Findings demonstrated a crowding-out effect of extrinsic reward perceptions on the positive relationship between person-organization fit and job satisfaction. However, the moderation of extrinsic rewards did not appear to alter the influence of person-job fit on job satisfaction. Implications are further discussed.     

Organizational Structure,Work Involvement,and Job Performance of Public Servants

The purpose of this study is to understand the predicting role of organizational structure on job performance. Work involvement is tested as a mediator in the hypothesized link. The study presents the results of a cross-sectional survey of 256 public servants in public service departments and agencies in Malaysia. The research results have provided marginal support for the key theoretical propositions. The significant and positive impact of job codification indicates the importance of this factor in predicting job performance of public servants. The empirical link is mediated by work involvement, which suggests that there is an indirect influence of job codification on job performance. This study aims to provide additional empirical evidence on the influence of organizational structure and job performance in the public sector.     

Towards Performance,Quality and Environmental Management in Local Government: the Case of Spain

The search for improvements in the management and quality of public services seems to be a constant in all public administrations, and there is an ever-increasing use of management techniques and models from the business sector. The aim of this paper is to show which management systems are being used by Spanish local governments to improve their management in terms of economy, quality and the environment. Our analysis is based on a questionnaire sent to Spanish local governments about the tools they use and the factors that influence their implementation. The results show that more efforts are necessary to implement performance measurement and total quality management, but they also show some positive aspects, such as the usefulness of performance measurement and its application to decisions in those local governments that have implemented it.     

Performance Management for Learning,Reform, and Change: A Review of Three Recent Books

A review essay of Performance Management in the Public Sector, by Wouter Van Dooren, Geert Bouckaert, and John Halligan; Government Performance and Results: An Evaluation of GPRA’s First Decade, by Jerry Ellig, Maurice McTigue, and Henry Wray; and The PerformanceStat Potential: A leadership strategy for producing results, by Robert D. Behn.     

International Organisations and the Production of Hegemonic Knowledge: how the World Bank and the oecd helped invent the Fragile State Concept

This article examines the role of the World Bank and the oecd in the emergence and circulation of the ‘fragile state’ concept. These organisations were critical to the early development of the concept and in the consolidation of a knowledge-based agenda set out by Western aid donors to justify international assistance to poor and conflict-ridden countries. Attention is focused on three normative processes affecting the production of transnational knowledge: normalisation, fragmentation and assimilation. ‘Normalisation’ is the process by which influential knowledge producers help to transform a rough concept into a widely accepted transnational norm based on expert knowledge, detailed definitions and statistical exercises. Once the concept has been appropriated by several international actors, it undergoes normative ‘fragmentation’ as it is subjected to various interpretations across time and space. ‘Assimilation’ is the process by which the overarching concept is renewed, enriched and gradually adapted through the incorporation of additional insights. The article argues that the World Bank and oecd have functioned as central knowledge hubs, facilitating the circulation of new and controversial ideas on fragile states and their integration into the prevailing policies of the most powerful aid donors. The two organisations have thus taken an active role in the consolidation and perpetuation of the aid donors’ policy doctrine, ultimately protecting it from major normative dissent.     

Calling Attention to the Nature of Professional Knowledge and Its Impact on Perceptions of Performance Measures

Nations around the globe are increasingly facing tough challenges when dealing with environmental problems. The limited success of government interventions to protect the environment is a testament to the growing concern about government's inability, or insufficient capacity, to address environmental issues. As a response, scholars note that promoting environmentally responsible behavior (ERB) on the part of the citizenry is critical for the growth and development of efficient environmental governance. However, despite the introduction of a variety of measures by governments to encourage greener practices, influencing citizens' behavior remains a major challenge. Using social capital theory, this article examines the effects of various social relation components on the promotion of pro-environmental behavior in five key public policy areas—recycling, food purchasing behavior, gasoline, energy conservation, and water use. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.     

Impact of Government Capacity and E-Government Performance on the Adoption of E-Government Services

ABSTRACT

This study explored the impact of government capacity and e-government performance on the adoption of e-government services by integrating it into the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). The results showed that both government capacity and government performance were significant determinants of the perceived usefulness of e-government services. Also, government capacity was revealed to positively predict e-government performance. In addition, perceived usefulness of e-government services was found to be a significant predictor of the intention to recommend the adoption of e-government services. The implications of these findings on the implementation of e-government are discussed.     

Determinants of Performance in Government: Focusing on the Effect of Organizational Politics and Conflicts in Organizations

Conflicts and politics in organizations are common in both the public and private sectors. However, there are few comprehensive studies regarding the relationship between politics, conflicts, and outcomes in the public sector. Therefore, this study sought to empirically explore the relationships between organizational performance, organizational conflicts, and organizational politics in the public sector. To analyze the effects of organizational politics and conflicts on performance in government organizations, hierarchical multiple regression analyses were performed. The results indicated that organizational politics and relationship conflicts negatively affect organizational performance.     

The Role of Brand Orientation in Developing a Learning Culture and Achieving Performance Goals in the Third Sector Organizations

ABSTRACT

This study is first in nature to find the empirical evidence of relationship between brand orientation (BRO), learning orientation (LO), and its impact on Performance (PERF) of third sector organizations (TSOs) in Pakistan. A structured questionnaire was filled through non-probability snowball sampling method from more than 300 senior managers working in different cities of Pakistan. The structural equation model was used for the mediation by running smart partial least squares software. The results prove that organizations with strong BRO philosophy not only help to develop strong LO culture but also help in achieving organizational performance goals. The study also discussed practical implications, limitations, and areas of future directions.     

Discerning Interrelationships among the Knowledge,Competencies, and Roles of Project Managers in the Planning and Implementation of Public Sector Projects

This study uses information gleaned from a sample of 102 public sector project managers to assess the interrelationships among project manager roles, responsibilities, and competencies in the planning and implementation stages of the project life cycle. The results of confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling revealed that project managers use different subsets of their skills to influence outcomes at these two stages of the project. For example, while the project manager's organizational and technical skills tend to have some influence during the project planning stage, managerial, leadership and people skills appear to have more influence during the project implementation stage. Implications of these and our other findings for the practice of project management in public sector organizations are discussed.     

Housing and Council Tax Benefits Administration in England: A Long-Term Perspective on the Performance of the Local Government Delivery System

The Coalition government announced, in 2010, that between 2013 and the end of 2017 all existing claims to income-based welfare allowances, including housing benefit, would gradually move to the Universal Credit (DWP 2010). This article evaluates the performance of the Council Tax and Housing Benefits Administration Services under the current system for the delivery of these benefits since they were transferred fully to local authorities in 1993 up until December 2011. During this period the performance of local government has been influenced by four successive national delivery regimes, namely: Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT); Best Value; Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) and Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA). An earlier article (Murphy, P., Greenhalgh, K. and Jones, M., 2011. Comprehensive performance assessment and public services improvement in England – a case study of the benefits administration service in local government. Local Government Studies, 37 (6), pp. 579–599) examined the CPA period in detail and found a significant improvement in performance across all types of authorities in all parts of the country during this period. The current article complements this earlier analysis and provides a longer-term perspective on the performance of the benefits service between 1993 and December 2011. The findings of this article show that under CCT the performance of the system was poor, there were wide variations in individual local authority performance, with many acknowledged inadequacies in the system and unacceptably high levels of fraud. However, towards the end of CCT and in the subsequent Best Value period the antecedents of some of the tools and techniques subsequently used to drive improvement in the CPA era were either put in place or were being developed. The Best Value period itself did not show significant improvements in performance and it was not until many of the initiatives were refined, developed and applied within the CPA framework that sustained and significant improvements became evident. This overall improvement generally continued under the CAA although the previous trend of consistent reductions in the variation between authorities’ performance had changed between 2009–2010 and 2011–2012. It is too early to judge whether these latest trends will be maintained under the Coalition government’s localism regime.     

Refugees,Islam, and the State: The Role of Religion in Providing Sanctuary in Malaysia

ABSTRACT

Malaysia has a mixed track record in providing Muslims with refuge, yet it increasingly lays claim to being an Islamic country. This article charts a history of the refugee engagement Malaysia has had based mainly on a shared regional and/or shared religious affiliation (Sunni Islam). I argue that the recent Malaysian history of refugee treatment presents a case for Muslim solidarity, but one tempered by a prevalent racism in Malaysia against people from the Indian subcontinent. Nonetheless, Islam provides an alternative history for providing protection to people in need. The UNHCR has pursued this approach in Muslim majority countries that are not signatories to the refugee convention in the hope of carving out a complementary protection space based on Islamic law and practice. This article traces these attempts and situates them within the Malaysian sociopolitical terrain, drawing out the possibilities and limits to such an approach.     

Psychological Distress,Formal Help-Seeking Behavior,and the Role of Victim Services Among Violent Crime Victims

Using data from the 2015 National Crime Victimization Survey, this research explores the characteristics related to psychological distress and formal help-seeking behavior among victims of violent crime. Logistic regression analyses indicate that psychological distress symptoms vary by victim and offense characteristics. As anticipated, for example, the odds of a victim of sexual assault reporting the highest level of psychological distress are 5.88 times higher than are the odds of simple assault victims. However, when looking at subsequent formal help-seeking behavior for psychological distress, sexual assault victims do not seek formal help for their distress more than victims of other violent crimes. The analyses reveal that only gender and disability consistently predict high psychological distress and formal help-seeking behavior. Contact with a victim service agency was shown to be a powerful predictor of formal help-seeking behavior, though the analyses illustrated that victims most in need of intervention are not always the ones who receive it. In fact, only 23% of victims sought formal help for their psychological distress. This study sheds additional light on the issue of psychological distress and the limited formal help-seeking behavior of violent crime victims, while illustrating characteristics predictive of formal help-seeking, such as intervention through victim services.     

Regional Inequalities,Decentralisation and the Performance of Local Governments in Post-Communist Romania

The economic growth that has occurred in post-communist Romania has polarised society and greatly increased existing inequalities. The aim of this paper is to investigate regional disparities, to underline the role of governmental mechanisms in smoothing out territorial inequalities, and to examine the possible effects of regional economic disparities on the performance of regional administrations in delivering public services, in the light of the new regionalisation debate. The conclusion is that Romanian counties' institutional performance does not completely correlate with regional wealth; but regional disparities and the mechanisms used to smooth out inequalities have to be taken into account in the public debate concerning further decentralisation.