Alexander C. Henderson

Leadership in Street-Level Bureaucracy: An Exploratory Study of Supervisor-Worker Interactions in Emergency Medical Services

Street-level bureaucrats operate in a world relatively free of supervision, exercising discretionary abilities often without the presence of formal authority figures or managers. Although wide latitude in decision making is a norm of frontline work, leaders may occasionally be present to supervise service provision. This exploratory research employs narrative inquiry to examine the interactions of street-level personnel and formal authority figures during service provision in emergency medical services. Results indicate that occasions for compliance and disregard for managerial directives are manifest. Compliant behavior was evident when patient clinical needs were relatively clear and the effects of the directives were reasonably consistent with the paramedic’s preconceived notions of appropriate action. Deviation from managerial directives was apparent when patient’s positive outcomes were dependent on ignoring orders. Contributions to theory and practice, as well as avenues for future research are discussed.

Performance improvement, culture, and regimes

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to better understand the performance improvement outcomes that result from the interaction of a performance regime and its context over more than a decade. Design/methodology/approach – A series of partial free disposable hull analyses are performed to graph variations in performance for 13 services in 444 municipalities in one province for over a decade. Findings – There are few examples of mass service improvements over time. This holds even for relative bottom performers, as they do not catch up to average municipalities over time. However, there is also little proof of service deterioration during the same period. Research limitations/implications – A limitation results from the high churning rate of the indicators. The relevance of refining indicators based on feedback from practitioners should not be dismissed, even if it makes the task of proving performance improvement more difficult. It is possible that the overall quality of services on the ground improved,...

Process Tracing in Public Administration: The Implications of Practitioner Insights for Methods of Inquiry

ABSTRACT The field of public administration is often seen as a late adopter of cutting-edge research methods. Related disciplines like political science use more advanced research methods for single or small-n case studies including techniques like process tracing. Many elements of process tracing are analogous to investigations. To inform process tracing practices, political scientists looked at Sherlock Holmes novels. We draw on the experiences of a police inspector and a former soldier who worked with intelligence to offer insights on the implementation of process tracing, bridge the academic–practitioner gap, and increase the methodological rigor in public administration research.

Performance Information Use in Local Government: Monitoring Relationships with Emergency Medical Services Agencies

ABSTRACT Evaluating service effectiveness and ensuring accountability of third-party public service providers is important in collaborative relationships. Emergency medical services (EMS), a function in many cases provided by community-based organizations with long-standing relationships, constitutes one such case. This article examines the central concern of performance information use by municipal officials as they engage in monitoring and decision-making regarding relationships with third-party EMS agencies. Findings indicate that information availability, length of the relationship, ease of negotiations, and municipal size all influence performance information use, suggesting that the palpable nature of these relationships and the comprehensiveness of the agreements are key in shaping attitudes about performance information use.

At the front line: examining the effects of perceived job significance, employee commitment, and job involvement on public service motivation

Social welfare work has long been identified as a highly stressful occupation, and one in which considerations of motivating employees and encouraging increased responsibility and commitment are central to understanding individual and collective performance. In the face of organizational factors that negatively affect employees’ motivation, including a lack of promotion opportunities, red tape, and expected emotional exhaustion, it becomes much more important for management to motivate employees in such a way that they can provide meaningful and satisfactory services to their clients. Extant research suggests that employees with higher levels of public service motivation (PSM) are motivated to engage in prosocial behaviors that benefit others. Using survey data gathered from social welfare workers in South Korea, this research examines the impact of a number of job-related factors on employee levels of PSM. The results indicate that job significance, professional job involvement, and affective commitment all impact the levels of PSM, suggesting that attention to job characteristics and the dynamic nature of PSM are important in particularly stressful front-line professions. Points for practitioners Given the organizational constraints on reward programs that exist in public agencies, it becomes increasingly important to consider other job-related factors that may improve motivation – especially related to public goals – among social welfare workers. The findings of this study suggest that increasing opportunities for social welfare workers to directly meet and interact with their service beneficiaries or enabling employees to gain access to citizens’ feedback about their service quality or service impact (e.g. citizen satisfaction survey results), can play a major role in maintaining or improving employees’ level of public service motivation. The results also underline the importance of managers’ giving consideration to fostering employees’ public service motivation.

Collaboration in Frontline Health Care Delivery Examining the Contractual Relationship Between Local Governments and Emergency Medical Services Agencies

Contracting for complex human services has presented the field of public administration with a number of difficult and enduring questions. Emergency medical services (EMS) provide an ideal arena for further investigation into this topic. We utilize a relational contracting framework to examine key questions associated with trust in the collaborative provision of EMS. The findings indicate that contract specificity, provider performance, and administrative professionalization influence trust in these relationships.

Unpacking the Global Perspective: Examining NISPAcee Region-Focused Public Administration Research in American Scholarly Journals

Comparative and international public administration research in the United States (US) has enjoyed moments of both prestige and inattention over the last several decades, variation that is important in that it reflects the efforts of a scholarly field to contribute to improved individual and organizational performance. These contributions are, in and of themselves, worthy of attention and critical reflection. This article examines public administration research focused on the Network of Institutes and Schools of Public Administration in Central and Eastern Europe region published in US-based academic journals from 1997 to 2012, discussing trends that have characterized empirical and conceptual research during that period. The article concludes with comments on collaboration in public administration research.

Steering a Swarm: Compliance and Learning in a Municipal Performance Regime

This is a descriptive longitudinal case study of Ontario’s Municipal Performance Measurement Program that examines what happens in the interaction between performance regimes and public agencies. Specifically, from internal databases, archives, and public documents, this study tests propositions of compliance and benchmarking theories with all 444 municipalities in Ontario. Contrary to expectations, there is little evidence that compliance eventually declines for medium to large municipalities; compliance of small municipalities declined for a stretch of years, before being reversed. In addition, we find limited evidence of widespread organizational learning through benchmarking in this intelligence regime.

Perceptions of Discretion in Street-Level Public Service: Examining Administrative Governance in Romania

ABSTRACT Street-level bureaucrats have long been seen as key figures in program and policy implementation, often occupying unique positions that encompass executive, legislative, and judicial functions. Osborne’s concept of the New Public Governance addresses concepts of policy implementation and interpretive activities that characterize street-level bureaucracy. Current understanding of street-level bureaucracy is, however, dominated by research focused on the United States and the United Kingdom, both of which demonstrate differences from countries in Eastern Europe. This study uses survey data to examine street-level bureaucracy in Romania, with attention to the determinants of bureaucratic perceptions of discretion. Results indicate that proactive personality, prosocial motivation, autonomy, job satisfaction, and years of experience are related to individual perceptions of discretionary latitude among front-line workers.

New development: Reintroducing the zone of indifference: disengaging the cogs of public service performance and citizen satisfaction

Citizen satisfaction is critical to evaluating the quality of public services; however, the relationships between performance and individual satisfaction remain unproven. This article creates important linkages narrowing the gaps between objective measures of performance and subjective measures of satisfaction by reintroducing the concept of the zone of indifference. The zone of indifference acknowledges that not all variations in performance will register with citizens or have an immediate effect.