Transformational Leadership and Public Service Motivation: Driving Individual and Organizational Performance

Despite growing evidence about prosocial motivations and their effects on employee behavior, how can new public service motivation research translate into more effective management practices—which, so far, regrettably remain underdeveloped? Increasingly, public service motivation studies have moved from understanding what motivates public servants to exploring how public service motives influence performance. Similarly, greater attention is now paid to the practices of transformational leadership. Drawing on concepts from transformational leadership, this essay explores how managers can harness the positive aspects of public service motivation to enhance employee and organizational performance and outlines strategies that can help managers incorporate public service motivation values across management systems.     

Gender-Specific Relationships Between Depressive Symptoms, Marijuana Use, Parental Communication and Risky Sexual Behavior in Adolescence

A large body of research has identified correlates of risky sexual behavior, with depressive symptoms and marijuana use among the most consistent psychosocial predictors of sexual risk. However, substantially less research has examined the relationship between these risk variables and adolescent risky sexual behavior over time as well as the interaction of these individual-level predictors with family-level variables such as parenting factors. Additionally, most studies have been restricted to one index of risky sexual behavior, have not taken into account the complex role of gender, and have not controlled for several of the factors that independently confer risk for risky sexual behavior. Therefore, the current study investigated the association between depressive symptoms and parameters of parenting on marijuana use, number of sexual partners and condom usage measured 9 months later for both boys and girls. Participants were 9th and 10th grade adolescents (N = 1,145; 57.7 % female). We found that depressive symptoms may be a gender-specific risk factor for certain indices of risky sexual behavior. For boys only, marijuana use at Time 2 accounted for the variance in the relationship between depressive symptoms at Time 1 and number of partners at Time 2. Additionally, strictness of family rules at Time 1 was associated with the number of partners with whom girls engaged in sex at Time 2, but only among those with lower levels of depressive symptoms at Time 1. Results from the current investigation speak to the utility of examining the complex, gender-specific pathways to sexual risk in adolescents. Findings suggest that treatment of mental health and substance use problems may have important implications in rates of risky sexual behavior and, conceivably, controlling the high rates of serious individual and public health repercussions.     

An Examination of Bullying Roles and Moral Disengagement Using Latent Analysis

ABSTRACT

Bullying persists as a concern in schools, including the question of why some children bully. One idea differentiating bullying roles (e.g., bully, victim, bully-victim) is that some individuals are morally disengaged, or able to disconnect their moral understanding and behavior. The present study examined types of bullying involvement and moral disengagement. To address the methodological debate within the bullying literature, the present study used latent analysis. The findings revealed that bullying and victimization behaviors vary by degree of involvement. The present study found that moral disengagement was related to students’ degree of participation in bullying; students in the bully-victim class had the highest levels of moral disengagement, followed by students in the victim class, social victim class, and outsider class. Further research should explore moral engagement as a strategy to enhance anti-bullying efforts.     

Uber in Queensland: From policy fortress to policy change

Emerging technologies are challenging the regulatory systems and industry policy settings that were settled during the microeconomic reforms of the 1980s and 1990s. In 1994, in the absence of credible competition in the taxi industry, Queensland legislation constructed a protective ‘policy fortress’ that benefited taxi licence holders in return for specific service standards. This entrenched a policy–industry nexus upheld by all political parties for two decades. But in 2014–2016, using disruptive digital platforms, Uber and similar organisations directly challenged the policy regime by rapidly expanding their unlicensed operations for personalised passenger bookings. Queensland policy-makers were eventually shocked into establishing a major review, leading to the termination of the protective regime. Drawing on interviews and policy documents, we identify the contextual and ideational factors that facilitated the unlocking of policy change. As consumers became more ‘tech-savvy’, the policy ideas championed by powerful new agents of change came to highlight consumer convenience, flexibility, and the ‘sharing economy’. Such narratives reframed the economic disruptions flowing from new technologies as opportunities to lower service costs.     

Ecological Context,Concentrated Disadvantage,and Youth Reoffending: Identifying the Social Mechanisms in a Sample of Serious Adolescent Offenders

Serious youthful offenders are presented with a number of significant challenges when trying to make a successful transition from adolescence to adulthood. One of the biggest obstacles for these youth to overcome concerns their ability to desist from further antisocial behavior, and although an emerging body of research has documented important risk and protective factors associated with desistance, the importance of the neighborhoods within which these youth reside has been understudied. Guided by the larger neighborhood effects on crime literature, the current study examines the direct and indirect effects of concentrated disadvantage on youth reoffending among a sample of highly mobile, serious youthful offenders. We use data from Pathways to Desistance, a longitudinal study of serious youthful offenders (N = 1,354; 13.6 % female; 41.4 % African American, 33.5 % Hispanic, 20.2 % White), matched up with 2000 Census data on neighborhood conditions for youth’s main residence location during waves 7 and 8 of the study. These waves represent the time period in which youth are navigating the transition to adulthood (aged 18–22; average age = 20). We estimate structural equation models to determine direct effects of concentrated disadvantage on youth reoffending and also to examine the possible indirect effects working through individual-level mechanisms as specified by theoretical perspectives including social control (e.g., unsupervised peer activities), strain (e.g., exposure to violence), and learning (e.g., exposure to antisocial peers). Additionally, we estimate models that take into account the impact that a change in neighborhood conditions may have on the behavior of youth who move to new residences during the study period. Our results show that concentrated disadvantage is indirectly associated with youth reoffending primarily through its association with exposure to deviant peers. Taking into account youth mobility during the study period produced an additional indirect pathway by which concentrated disadvantage is associated with goal blockage (i.e., the gap between belief in conventional goals and perceived potential to reach those goals), which was then associated with exposure to deviant peers and indirectly, reoffending behavior. We conclude that the neighborhood effects literature offers a promising framework for continued research on understanding the successful transition to adulthood by serious youthful offenders.     

Training the “Wizards”: A Model for Building Self Efficacy and Peer Networks Among Urban Youth Workers

This article presents a community's efforts to address the professional development needs of frontline youth workers. A coalition designed a 13-week Youth Worker Training Institute to increase youth workers' knowledge, skills, self-efficacy, and professional networks. After the Institute, participants reported feeling more skillful, connected to other youth workers, confident, professional, reflective, and being more powerful change agents. Based on results from this formative evaluation, we suggest that it was multiple teaching and learning strategies that promoted reflection, peer learning, and networking—that contributed to youth workers gaining knowledge and skills that in turn increased their confidence and sense of self-efficacy.