Hal G. Rainey

Leadership and Public Service Motivation in U.S. Federal Agencies

ABSTRACT This analysis of over 6,900 federal employees’ responses to the Merit Principles Survey 2000 examines the influences of leadership and motivational variables, and especially public service motivation, on the “outcome” variables job satisfaction, perceived performance, quality of work, and turnover intentions. CFA confirms a factor structure for transformation-oriented leadership (TOL), public service-oriented motivation (PSOM), transaction-oriented leadership (TSOL), and extrinsically oriented motivation (EOM). Multivariate regression analysis shows that TOL and PSOM, as well as interaction effects of TOL-TSOL and TOL-PSOM, have strong relations to the outcome variables. SEM analysis examines direct and indirect effects of the main variables. Overall, the results indicate that TOL and PSOM have more positive relations to the outcome variables than do TSOL and EOM. The combination of high TOL and high PSOM has the strongest positive, and hence desirable, relation with organizational outcomes. Among this very large sample of federal employees, those who perceived their leader as displaying TOL (i.e., leadership that is encouraging, supportive, informative, and that emphasizes high standards) also expressed higher levels of PSOM and higher levels of job satisfaction, perceived performance and work quality, and lower turnover intentions. The SEM analysis further indicates that TOL has these effects by way of empowerment, goal clarification, and PSOM, and is distinct from TSOL (transaction-oriented) leadership, which shows no such relationships.

Public Management: Recent Research on the Political Context and Managerial Roles, Structures, and Behaviors:

Public management has been rapidly developing as a subfield. Since other recent reviews have discussed many disciplinary and paradigmatic issues, this one concentrates on developments in research on the distinctive characteristics of public managers and the organizations in which they work. It takes aframework developed over a decade ago to describe propositions about public managers and organizations prevalent at that time, and describes how those observations have fared in conceptual and empirical work since then.

Public Managers' Perceptions of Organizational Goal Ambiguity: Analyzing Alternative Models

ABSTRACT Much organizational theory, research, and practice emphasizes the value of organizational members having clear perceptions of the organizations goals. For years, authors have asserted that public organizations have particularly vague goals, goals more vague than those of business firms. Yet, researchers have not devoted a lot of attention to ways of measuring perceptions about organizational goal clarity in public organizations and analyzing these perceptions. Many authors claim that the external political context increases goal ambiguity in public organizations. Some survey evidence, however, suggests that other factors, such as individual dispositions and attitudes, and internal organizational structures and processes, have greater effects. We analyze three alternative models of goal ambiguity—a political model, an organizational model, and an individual model—using data collected in Phase II of the National Administrative Studies Project (NASP-II), and then a composite model. Although political context acts as a significant determinant of goal ambiguity, both organizational and individual models have better explanatory power. Implications of these findings for theory and managerial practice are discussed.

Organizational Fairness and Diversity Management in Public Organizations: Does Fairness Matter in Managing Diversity?

Globalization, migration, initiatives for social justice, and other developments have made the representation of diverse groups and relations among them an important issue for organizations in many nations. In the United States, government agencies have increasingly invested in managing demographic diversity effectively. This study examines how perceived organizational fairness combined with diversity management relates to employees’ job satisfaction in public organizations. To test these relationships we analyze data drawn from the 2006 Federal Human Capital Survey (FHCS) using hierarchical regressions—hierarchical ordered logistic regressions and hierarchical linear regressions. The results indicate that in an agency where members perceive higher levels of organizational fairness, and where employees perceive that diversity is more effectively managed, employees report higher satisfaction with their jobs. Interestingly, while high organizational fairness in association with diversity management efforts enhances the overall job satisfaction of employees, its positive impact was smaller for racial/ethnic minorities than Whites. In contrast, women tend to report higher job satisfaction than men when they perceive that their agency manages diversity effectively, and has just and fair procedures, whereas the relationship was not significant in the hierarchical linear regression model.

Disadvantage, Disaffection, and Race as Divergent Bases for Citizen Fiscal Policy Preferences

Recent years have seen increased attention to citizen preferences for taxation and spending for public services. Yet, the sources of these attitudes, and of apparent inconsistencies among them, remain something of a mystery. This study integrates divergent disciplinary perspectives on citizen fiscal policy attitudes to develop a more comprehensive theoretical framework for explaining them. It tests the framework through a LISREL analysis of survey responses from about 1,300 citizens in three Florida cities. The results suggest important differences in the bases for attitudes toward services and attitudes about taxes. General satisfaction with local government and community is the primary determinant of service evaluations, although economic self-interest plays an important indirect role. For attitudes toward taxes, conversely, economic interest is the key predictor. Both community dissatisfaction and economic self-interest underlie tradeoffs between services and taxes. And behind all these evaluations lie racial differences in thinking. This evidence of divergent influences on tax and service attitudes helps to explain the apparently paradoxical views conveyed in opinion polls and referenda. More generally, this study shows the advantages of a multidisciplinary approach in understanding determinants of citizen attitudes about public services and taxes.

Organizational Goal Characteristics and Public Duty Motivation in U.S. Federal Agencies

Some authors have claimed that ambiguous goals frustrate public service motivation (PSM). This study uses data from the U.S. Office of Management and Budget’s Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART)1 to develop organizational goal ambiguity measures for U.S. federal agencies. These measures, from this very separate and independent source, are then significantly and negatively related to a variable measured by a questionnaire item on the U.S. Merit System Protection Board’s 2005 Merit Principles Survey. The item asks respondents about whether they are motivated to do a good job by their duty as a public employee. Responses on this item appear relevant to PSM, but because the question does not fully represent more elaborate measures of PSM, we call the variable as “public duty motivation.” Public duty motivation also relates significantly and positively to employees’ Merit Principles Survey responses about the specificity of their job goals and of their agency’s mission, and about job-goal importance and job-goal commitment.

Transformational leadership and middle management: towards a role for mere mortals

Transformational leadership has become one of the most prominent topics in current research and theory on leadership. Much of the work on the topic, however, has focused on higher-level executives, with less attention to middle managers. Writers on middle managers often depict them as working under sharp constraints and limitations. This raises many questions about whether and how transformational leadership applies to middle managers. This paper reviews the literature on the meaning and nature of transformational leadership and on the characteristics of middle management. Then it describes some of the ways in which middle managers can engage in the leadership behaviors described in Bass’ conception of transformational leadership. Then it advances a set of propositions about organizational conditions that influence the prospects for transformational leadership at middle management levels.

Goal Ambiguity, Work Complexity, and Work Routineness in Federal Agencies

Prominent scholars have observed that public organizations and policies tend to have ambiguous goals, but research on these assertions is scarce. This analysis adds to a recent set of studies that developed measures of organizational goal ambiguity and found that federal agencies vary on these measures due to differences in funding patterns and other variables. This study adds variables representing the nature of the agencies’ work—the routineness and complexity of their technologies and tasks. As hypothesized, complexity relates positively to one dimension of goal ambiguity, “directive goal ambiguity.” Routineness of tasks relates negatively to “evaluative goal ambiguity,” whereas complexity relates positively to it. These results further evince the value of the measures of goal ambiguity and their potential contribution to analysis of variations among government agencies, and to such issues as the applicability of various managerial reforms to different agencies. The results also contribute indicators of organizational task complexity and routineness that researchers can use to take into account the type of work that an agency does, in analyzing government agencies and differences among them.

Don't Blame the Bureaucracy!

Public agencies and public employees are increasingly berated as inept and inefficient. We argue that the public bureaucracy in the United States is more valuable and effective than generally recognized. Where public agencies do perform badly, the problem is often due to external factors. We discuss the oversimplified calls for more businesslike efficiency in government, the value complexity which complicates evaluation of the public bureaucracy, and the higher standards imposed on the public sector. We also discuss the challenges imposed on public agencies by special interest politics, an overload of highly complex assignments, and adverse public stereotypes. The danger of overlooking these issues is that we will continue to have a huge, active public sector, and decisions about its role and management must not be determined by oversimplification and stereotype.

Privatization and Public Opinion in Germany

Privatization has been a major issue around the world, but research on public opinion about it has been scarce. The German Social Survey provides an opportunity to compare citizen opinions from a formerly socialist-authoritarian regime with those from a democratic regime, in their opinions about privatizing banks, electrical power, and hospitals. As do citizens in surveys in other nations, Germans support privatization of the services in the order just given. Citizens from the east, where privatization led to sharp increases in unemployment, oppose privatization much more than do westerners. A LISREL analysis indicates that their opposition is not due to their concerns about its economic effects on themselves or the nation (“economic pessimism”), but more due to perception of the proper role of government (“opposition to government spending”), and sense of political efficacy. The analysis also reflects on the roles of other variables such as ideology, partisanship, gender, being unemployed, education, and preference for taxes versus public services. We discuss implications for theory and research on public opinion about government policies and services, such as the role of direct economic self-interest versus more symbolic and ideological orientations.