Identity Salience, Identity Acceptance, and Racial Policy Attitudes: American National Identity as a Uniting Force

Political science has paid a great deal of attention to sources of intergroup conflict, but the discipline has focused less on forces that bring people together and lead them to transcend group boundaries. This study presents evidence that attachment to a shared superordinate identity can improve intergroup relations by reducing the social distance between people of different racial groups. Using a survey experiment, this research shows that making a superordinate identity salient increased support for a tax increase. The effects of the identity salience treatment are compared to a policy particularism treatment in terms of effect size and their interaction with each other. The size and direction of the identity salience effect is affected by the degree of respondents' acceptance of the proffered identity. Implications for social identity theory, racial policy attitudes, and American national identity are discussed.     

Immigration Reform and the Latino Small Service Sector

Immigration reform is a policy of particular concern within the low-wage service sector and among self-employed ethnic entrepreneurs. This study uses U. S. Census microdata to show that Latino entrepreneurs differ in earnings by nativity and industry. Although foreign-born entrepreneurs usually have lower earnings than native-born Latino entrepreneurs, the situation reverses itself among restaurateurs and small retailers. The study then uses data from the "Six-City Study" to examine nativity and industry as variables affecting attitudes toward IRCA. High levels of support toward IRCA are reported, but the expected variations by nativity and industry emerge.     

Public Service Motivation,Organizational Social Capital,and Knowledge Sharing in the Korean Public Sector

This article investigates whether public service motivation (PSM) and organizational social capital predict knowledge sharing in the public sector. The hypothesized relationships in the proposed model are verified with the online survey data of 506 public employees in Korea. The test results show that the two dimensions of PSM (attraction to public service and commitment to public values) and the trust component of organizational social capital are both positively related to knowledge sharing in the Korean public sector, and that the associability component of organizational social capital is indirectly associated with knowledge sharing through its influence on PSM. The article discusses the ways that PSM and organizational social capital may contribute to overcome the social dilemma of knowledge sharing in public organizations. It also suggests that there is need for further research on the individual dimensions of the PSM construct.     

Partisanship as a Social Identity: Implications for Polarization

Political Behavior - The claim that partisanship has developed into a social identity is one of the dominant explanations for the current rising levels of affective polarization among the U.S....     

A Comparison of the Values and Commitment of Private Sector, Public Sector, and Parapublic Sector Employees

This study investigated differences in general values, work values and organizational commitment among 549 private sector, public sector, and parapublic sector knowledge workers. No differences in general values were observed across sectors, although five significant work value differences were revealed: parapublic employees value work that contributes to society more than public servants, who value it more than private sector employees; parapublic employees value opportunities for advancement less than both public and private sector employees; public servants value intellectually stimulating and challenging work more than parapublic employees; and private sector employees value prestigious work more than public servants. Private sector employees displayed greater organizational commitment than the employees in the other two sectors. Overall, the findings suggest only limited value differences among employees of the various sectors. The finding of some work value differences between employees in the public and parapublic sectors suggests that these two groups merit separate consideration in comparative studies such as this one.     

Adjusting to New Ways of Working: Experiments with Service Delivery in the Public Sector

In response to the perceived failure of both the state and market models of service delivery, governments have embarked on a reform program that draws on the community sector to expand the suite of available policy and service delivery arrangements. This paper explores and identifies the nature of changed relationships between government and the community sector. It uses a case study that examines the operation of a new type of community organisation, and analyses the affectivity and outcomes from the experience of a community based networked arrangement. Although there is evidence of a shift to more relationship‐ oriented models of operation because of either mandate or preference both community and government sectors have found it difficult to make the necessary adjustments to these new ways of working. Community has begun the shift to this new relational approach but finds it difficult to sustain the momentum and tends to revert to more independent and competitive modes. Governments find it difficult to make the necessary adjustments to power‐sharing and resource allocation and continue to operate as ‘business as usual’ through the traditional bureaucratic authority of command and control. In this way, the rhetoric of collaboration and partnership between government and the community sector is not necessarily matched by policy and action supporting the practice of ‘new ways of working’ although these ‘experiments in service delivery’ have opened the way for adopting more innovative and effective approaches to service delivery.     

Ethics Goes Global: The OECD Council Recommendation on Improving Ethical Conduct in the Public Sector

On 23 April 1998 the Council of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development issued the Recommendation on Improving Ethical Conduct in the Public Sector. It is the result of more than three years research, analysis and cooperation between OECD member countries, and, as a statement from the highest level of the organisation, it represents a consensus of all of its 29 members on an issue of global public concern. This article is a speculative analysis of a new international development that may have implications for local public management practice. The purpose of this article is to unearth some of the theoretical assumptions on which the recommendation relies and to consider the implications they might have for its implementation and effectiveness.     

How Organizational Identity Affects Hospital Performance: Comparing Predictive Power of Mission Statements and Sector Affiliation

Abstract

Organizational identity is an important concept in organizational theory, as it can contextualize the behavior of organizations and members. The literature presents divergent perspectives on organizational identity: some studies have characterized organizational identity as constrained by institutional forces, whereas others have contended it is socially constructed by organizational members. Studies have largely focused on the former perspective, measuring organizational identity by sector affiliation; the latter approach has rarely been empirically tested. Therefore, in addition to sector affiliation, this article proposes a different approach to operationalizing organizational identity by examining hospitals’ mission statements. The study also examines which of these dual forces have more predictive power regarding organizational performance. Together with hospitals’ sector affiliation, we test how the presence and frequency of mission statement language regarding access, cost, quality, or unique organizational values affect hospitals’ various performance metrics. Regression analyses with 172 acute hospitals in Florida reveal significant relationships between types of mission statement content, sectors, and performance indicators.     

The Evolution of Public Service Provision by the Third Sector in France

Public services have been externalised, in part, to the non‐profit sector in France and in the United Kingdom. This article begins by reviewing relations between the public and non‐profit sector in France before 2008, and its evolution since. This has been characterised by the slow reduction of public funding, the adaptation of non‐profit associations and organisations, and their clearer positioning within a wider ‘social and solidarity economy’, which was consolidated by a framework Law in 2014. The article then examines the current sharing of responsibilities between the public and non‐profit sectors in education, health and social services, pointing to the diverse historical and political conditions which have led to this shared organisation.     

Measuring Partisanship as a Social Identity in Multi-Party Systems

There is no doubt that partisanship is a powerful influence on democratic political behavior. But there is also a lively debate on its nature and origins: Is it largely instrumental in nature and shaped by party performance and issues stances? Or is it basically a long-standing expressive identity reinforced by motivated reasoning and strong emotions? We assess the nature of partisanship in the European context, examining the measurement properties and predictive validity of a multi-item partisan identity scale included in national surveys conducted in the Netherlands, Sweden, and the U.K. Using a latent variable model, we show that an eight-item partisan identity scale provides greater information about partisan intensity than a standard single-item and has the same measurement properties across the three countries. In addition, the identity scale better predicts in-party voting and political participation than a measure of ideological intensity (based on both left–right self-placement and agreement with the party on key issues), providing support for an expressive approach to partisanship in several European democracies.     

Contract City Redux: Weston, Florida, as the Ultimate New Public Management Model City

Contracting out has become an accepted and, indeed, universal method of providing services in both the private and public sectors. Yet rarely has a municipality outsourced just about every service under its direct control—from public safety (police and fire), to solid waste collection and disposal, to parks maintenance, to municipal engineering and legal services. Weston, Florida, a city of some 62,000 residents, operates with just three employees—the city manager and two assistants. Hence the primary role of city manager has changed as well, from day-to-day administrator to contract manager and monitor. This essay describes the contracting operations in Weston and evaluates their efficiency and effectiveness.     

Innovation Agents in the Public Sector: Applying Champion and Promotor Theory to Explore Innovation in the Australian Public Service

Innovation is critical to organisational success and is a process steered, and potentially thwarted, by individuals. However, despite the importance of public sector innovation given the complexity of policy issues faced and the sector's specific contextual features, our understanding of innovation processes in government requires expansion. This study, using in‐depth case analyses of three Australian Public Service agencies, focuses on understanding the ‘human component’ of the innovation process by drawing on both innovation champion and promotor theories to explore, through the lens of organisational power, how multiple human agents progress public sector innovations. The results highlight the key, and often tandem, roles of individuals at multiple organisational levels who work to inspire and motivate others to progress an innovation (champions) and those with specific power bases who help overcome organisational barriers to innovation (promotors).     

Service Provision for the Global Economy: The Evolving Indian Experience

Since 1995, the offshoring of services to India has rapidly evolved from a curiosity only studied by a few scholars to a phenomenon portending a major shift in the geography of global economic activity. The article examines the evolution of Indian global services provision quantitatively and qualitatively through the use of four case studies. The first case study examines the challenge that the Indian information technology systems integrators (ITSIs) pose to the formerly larger—but now roughly comparable in terms of employment—incumbent developed-nation ITSIs. Because IT systems have become central to nearly every enterprise, the second case study illustrates the wide variety of enterprises that now have significant Indian offshore operations. The third case study describes the rapid growth of offshore integrated circuit design in India, a nation with now commercial-scale integrated circuit production. The final case study describes the emergence of high-opportunity entrepreneurial startups in India and the increasing number of Silicon Valley startups that very early in their lives or even as part of their business model have significant operations in India. The concluding discussion situates India within the global economy and speculates upon its future evolution.     

Intraparty Hostility: Social Identity,Subidentity, and the Hostile Media Effect in a Contested Primary

The hostile media effect (HME) has generally been tested in terms of in-groups and out-groups, with a “neutral” story in between. This ignores the nature of many social groups as comprising subgroups, often but not always sharing feelings of connectedness and purpose. In cases when bounded subgroups are at odds with one another, HME provides little guidance. A contested partisan primary provides such a case. This study takes identity centrality, candidate favorability, and perceived social network homogeneity as measures of partisanship and involvement, hypothesizing relationships between each and perceived bias against one’s candidate and party. Findings show that markers of candidate-focused social identity predict greater perceived bias against one’s candidate during the 2016 primary season, while party-focused identity fails to predict perceived bias against one’s party. This suggests that candidate support identity overrides plain partisanship during primaries, supporting concern that a heated primary might damage general election party unity. Subsequent postconvention findings suggest that the salience of candidate-focused identity fades, while homogeneity of one’s network regarding party support helps to make perceived hostility toward one’s party identity more salient. However, as campaigns become more candidate-centered, the contestation between nested candidate and party identities may grow fiercer.     

Digital Restructuring: Gender,Class and Citizenship in the Information Society in Canada

‘Digital restructuring’ denotes a phenomenon integral to but also distinct within economic and political restructuring broadly conceived. The concept of restructuring can be modified with ‘digital’ to forefront the important technological dimension of global restructuring, as well as to indicate developments associated with the new ‘information economy’. Digital technology and digitization have been integral to the scope and speed of the global economic and political restructuring of recent decades. They have constituted the technological conditions for some of the more characteristic aspects of this process; from the flexiblization or outright shedding of labour, to the mobility of production and capital and the globalization of trade and financial markets. This paper seeks to debunk much of the corporate and state mythology of digital restructuring currently in circulation by drawing upon the analyses of digital technology and restructuring advanced by critical scholars and progressive social movements, and to highlight the dangers to progressive political movements and discourses posed by the very nature of these representations.     

Moderate Secularism, Religion as Identity and Respect for Religion

Political secularism takes many forms but a fundamental distinction is between radical and moderate kinds. The latter is a genuine secularism and not just a failure to take secularism to its logical conclusion. The failure to appreciate this obscures the secularism that exists in western Europe. Namely, an accommodation of organised religion which sees it as a potential public good or national resource (not just a private benefit), which the state can in some circumstances assist to realise—even through an 'established' church. I adumbrate five types of reasons the state might be interested in religion: truth, danger, utility, identity and respect. The challenge facing such secularism today is whether it can be pluralised or multiculturalised, in particular whether it can accommodate Muslims. A ground for optimism is the respect that some people, especially some Muslims, have for religions other than their own.