Does Ownership Matter for Employee Motivation When Occupation Is Controlled for?

The public service motivation literature argues that public employees are more motivated than private employees to deliver public service for the benefit of society. But the reason for this may be that the classical welfare services are predominant in the public sector. This article therefore investigates if ownership matters to employee motivation when occupation is controlled for. The findings show that the employees in both sectors have pro-social motivation, but that public sector employees are more motivated to work for the public interest, whereas private sector employees are more motivated to help individual users of services. The survey data are based on 3,304 Danish employees working in private as well as public organizations.     

Public Service Efficacy

This article develops a measure of user capacity called Public Service Efficacy (PSE), which is applied to four sectors: hospitals, elementary schools, day care, and higher education. Tests of validity and reliability indicate good properties and consistent patterns across three of four sectors. The measure differentiates between users of the same services, and it increases with level of education. This indicates that PSE can enable us to identify individual users with low capacity and sectors with low average user capacity and thus improve our ability to address equity concerns and harvest potential benefits from user involvement in public service provision.     

“We Have Reconquered the Islands”: Figurations in Public Memories of Slavery and Colonialism in Denmark 1948–2012

The fact that Denmark was deeply engaged in the practices of the slave trade and slavery from the seventeenth century to 1848 often goes unnoticed—even in Denmark. For this reason, a number of Danish scholars and artists have characterized Danish ignorance of the colonial past as repression. This article demonstrates that the colonial past has in fact never been repressed, but has instead been subject to figurations, as theorized by Olick (2007). The initial experiences of colonialism have been screened at different points in time rendering the past in versions very far from the actual historical events themselves. Recently, new claims for reparations for slavery and colonialism in the former Danish West Indies have challenged the existing notions of the colonial past in Denmark. These claims have not resulted in an official Danish politics of regret (Olick 2007) as witnessed in other former colonial states. Whereas, a radical break away from the earlier conceptions of the colonial past is demanded, instead new figurations and renarrations have been used to try to incorporate the new challenges to the historical imaginary into the older layers of memory without radically breaking away from it, creating somewhat surprising results that questions the notions of a uniform global memory and understanding of historical injustices.     

Performance Management in the Public Sector: Does It Decrease or Increase Innovation and Performance?

An important discussion in the performance management literature is how performance contingent incentives affect goal attainment. Incentivizing management tools are typically implemented to improve performance, but due to motivation crowding they may decrease innovation and performance. This article focuses on public research institutions and uses both existing performance studies of publications and two new innovation studies of patents to investigate effects of both financial incentives and sanctions within and between universities. Our findings indicate that public managers can create an environment supportive of innovation and performance through the use of performance management tools, but that this is no automatic link.     

Does Deployment to War Affect Public Service Motivation? A Panel Study of Soldiers Before and After Their Service in Afghanistan

Exposure to the extreme stress of warfare may affect soldiers’ perceptions of others and society. Using panel data from two companies on a tour of duty to Afghanistan in 2011, this article analyzes how different dimensions of soldiers’ public service motivation are influenced by deployment to war. As expected, soldiers’ compassion decreased and commitment to the public interest increased, while self‐sacrifice did not change systematically. Deployment to war was expected to affect inexperienced soldiers more than their experienced colleagues, but this hypothesis was only partially satisfied. The key contribution of the article is the use of panel data and the examination of motivational changes. Moreover, studying soldiers’ public service motivation enables us to connect public administration and military sociology and thereby to establish a better understanding of motivation in extreme settings.     

A Molecular Method to Correlate Bloodstains with Wound Site for Crime Scene Reconstruction

Bloodstain pattern analysis to determine the wound‐of‐origin of bloodstains is problematic with nonspecific patterns. In this proof‐of‐concept study, the authors examined a molecular approach to correlate bloodstains with injuries using the rat as a model. Specifically, investigations were conducted on the rat brain marker, rno‐miR‐124‐3p, with the QIAGEN miScript System and real‐time PCR analysis. Rno‐miR‐124‐3p was detected in brain homogenates diluted 100,000 times; in 3‐week‐old, room temperature stored, simulated brain–blood stains; and in bloodstains from head gunshot wounds collected with swabs and subsequently frozen for 9–18 months; however, rno‐miR‐124‐3p was not detected in whole blood. Proof‐of‐principle was demonstrated by the ability to distinguish bloodstains from a gunshot wound to the head versus bloodstains from a gunshot wound to the chest, by the testing of otherwise identical bloodstains from the two patterns for the presence of the marker. The results suggest a viable approach to a longstanding problem in casework.     

Building Community One Relationship at a Time: Consequences for the Seeking and Acceptance of Help

Three studies test the hypothesis that a perceived relationship is relevant to seeking and accepting help. The results first indicate a direct effect for a perceived relationship on the extent to which people are willing to seek and accept help. The findings further indicate that perceiving a relationship increases the importance of procedural justice judgments in shaping the decision to seek and accept help. This was true both in vertical relations (e.g., student–professor, resident–police officer) and in horizontal ones (e.g., student–student). The research extends prior findings showing that common group membership increases the influence of procedural justice judgments on whether people cooperate with fellow group members. The results show a parallel with the effects of a perceived relationship, suggesting a comparability between “relational” and “collective” levels of identity.     

Using a natural experiment to measure the impact of swifter punishment on criminal recidivism

Journal of Experimental Criminology - Measure the impact of swifter punishment on the timing of first imprisonment and on criminal recidivism among young violent offenders. A policy reform in 1994...