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 personnel and the new public service

The New Public Administration sought a public service whose legitimacy would be based, in part, on its promotion of “social equity.” Since 1968, several personnel changes congruent with the New Public Administration have occurred: traditional managerial authority over public employees has been reduced through collective bargaining and changes in constitutional doctrines; the public service has become more socially representative; establishing a representative bureaucracy has become an important policy goal; more emphasis is now placed on employee participation in the work place; and legal changes regarding public administrators’ liability have promoted an “inner check” on their behavior. At the same time, however, broad systemic changes involving decentralization and the relationship between political officials and career civil servants have tended to undercut the impact of those changes in personnel. The theories of Minnowbrook I, therefore, have proven insufficient as a foundation for a new public service. Grounding the public service's legitimacy in the U.S. Constitution is a more promising alternative and is strongly recommended.

The New Public Administration, like other historical calls for drastic administrative change in the United States, sought to develop a new basis for public administrative legitimacy. Earlier successful movements grounded the legitimacy of the public service in high social standing and leadership, representativeness and close relationship to political parties, or in putative political neutrality and scientific managerial and technical expertise. To these bases, the New Public Administration sought to add “social equity.” As George Frederickson explained, “Administrators are not neutral. They should be committed to both good management and social equity as values, things to be achieved, or rationales. “⁽¹⁾ Social equity was defined as “includ[ing] activities designed to enhance the political power and economic well being of … [disadvantaged] minorities.” It was necessary because “the procedures of representative democracy presently operate in a way that either fails or only very gradually attempts to reverse systematic discrimination against” these groups.⁽²⁾

Like the Federalists, the Jacksonians, and the civil service reformers and progressives before it, the New Public Administration focused upon administrative reform as a means of redistributing political power.⁽³⁾ Also, like these earlier movements, the New Public Administration included a model of a new type of public servant. This article sets forth that new model and considers the extent to which the major changes that have actually taken place in public personnel administration since 1968 are congruent with it. We find that while contemporary public personnel reflects many of the values and concerns advanced by the New Public Administration, substantial changes in the political environment of public administration have frustrated the development of a new public service that would encompass the larger goals and ideals expressed at Minnowbrook I. Building on the trends of the past two decades, this article also speculates about the future. Our conclusion is that ultimately the public service's legitimacy must be grounded in the Constitution. Although its focus is on macro-level political and administrative developments, the broad changes it discusses provide the framework from which many contemporary personnel work-life issues, such as pay equity and flexitime, have emerged.     

Understanding relationships between public service motivation and involvement in socio‐political organizations: Perspectives of organizational field theory

The study provides insights about public service motivation values and participation in socio‐political organizations. It applies organizational field theory to a sample of similar public and nonprofit service providers in a border region of two independent states. The results reveal that socio‐political activities bear different meanings for individuals from different sectors and countries. Thus, from an institutional perspective, despite offering similar services, the organizations studied belong to different organizational fields. This validates a recent shift from defining an organizational field as a group of organizations that share products, services, or markets to those that share common meanings. A broader context being a sector of economy or an administrative realm defines the types of socio‐political activities that share institutional infrastructures with public service organizations. Specifically, mutually exclusive associations are found for churches, political parties, and professional and volunteering groups. The study also indicates no value overlap with labour unions.     

Neoliberal governing through social enterprise: Exploring the neglected roles of deviance and ignorance in public value creation

This article makes a case for paying greater attention to how informal relationships between government officials and civil society practitioners impact processes of public value creation. Drawing on data from a five‐year qualitative longitudinal study, we illuminate how civil society practitioners deviate from the formal objectives of social enterprise policies in order to create what they see as having public value. Through a process of theory elaboration, we demonstrate how government officials’ wilful ignorance of, or informal collaboration in, such deviance, precipitates forms of public value that are consistent with wider political objectives. Our analysis adds nuance and granularity to the debate on public value by drawing attention to the arcane ways it may be informally negotiated and created outside of the public sphere. This opens up new empirical and theoretical opportunities for understanding how deviance and ignorance might be symbiotically related in processes of public value creation.”     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Perspectives on rebuilding the public service: Critique of an inadequate managerial orientation

The National Commission on the Public Service recently reported its recommendations for revitalizing the federal service, and this significant effort deserves and requires searching analysis. This critique highlights several inadequacies of scope and approach, all falling under the rubric of the Commission's “managerial orientation,” viewed from both narrow and broad perspectives. In the present view, these inadequacies raise serious doubts about the actions which the Commission associates with the basic recommendations about increasing federal compensation. Some observers will insist that the Commission recommendations are political documents with a narrow focus on necessary increases in federal compensation, and that this worthwhile goal places critical commentary in the class of niggling or whining.     

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.     

Towards a public service blend of human resource management and TQM

The objective of this paper is to contemplate changes in personnel system infrastructure required to implement Total Quality Management (TQM) in public organizations (perhaps formal organization in general). By infrastructure we mean systems such as those for the design of work and positions, rewards, performance appraisal, selection, etc. We introduced the subject by summarizing many of the concepts from the quality literature which express philosophy, structural aspects and practices. Even the industrial context in which TQM has flowered has not adapted significantly to implications of TQM philosophy and structure. Instead, traditional personnel management systems prevail with some concern for needed specia1 training, and anguish about negative effects of performance appraisal, some reward systems, and work standards.

Because the government context is bound to present difficulties and pitfalls we summarized another body of literature, that of the reasons why the idea probably won't work in government.

Ultimately, we get to the point of the essay: a discussion of contemplated types of personnel system changes that ought to support organizations operating in a quality mode. Changes are considered under the subjects of: work design, recruitment and selection, performance appraisal, training, compensation and labor-management relations. We conclude with a. brief case study on the Pacer Share Project.     

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.     

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.     

Inequality,discrimination, and service delivery: A recapitulation for the public administrator

The equitable provision of urban public services has begun to receive increased attention from researchers, administrators, and the courts. Recent research has questioned the view that minority and low-income groups are systematically deprived in the distribution of public services, e.g. police and fire services, libraries, street quality and maintenance, and parks and recreational facilities. This paper reviews empirical studies in urban service distribution and judicial responses to municipal service claims. The research reveals that discimination in service delivery does exist. However, it is difficult to determine empirically in larger cities if a consistent pattern of discrimination exists and whether or not it bears a significant relationship to race or class. Discrimination and inequality on the basis of race has been subject to meticulous judicial prowess benefitting at one time or another the citizen and the municipality. The courts are requiring overwhelming statistical documentation to substantiate racial discrimination in the provision of urban public services.     

以自我革命推进社会革命:两场革命的互动关系研究

马克思主义政党是革命的政党,革命性是马克思主义政党的本质属性.与一般政党将执掌政权作为自己最主要的政治目标不同,马克思主义政党并不止步于夺取政权的政治革命胜利,还有更伟大的社会革命理想和贯穿其中的党的自我革命.作为百年大党,中国共产党正致力于建设世界上最强大的马克思主义革命党,勇于进行自我革命,以党的自我革命引领和推动...