Soonhee Kim

Participation’s Influence on Job Satisfaction The Importance of Job Characteristics

A structural equationmodel was proposed to analyze the impact of employee participation and job characteristics on job satisfaction. The current study found that participative decision making has a significant positive effect on performance feedback, task significance, and career development support. Performance feedback was positively related to job specificity and career development support. Task significance and career development support were, in turn, positively related to job satisfaction. These findings suggest that participation has an important, albeit indirect, effect on employee job satisfaction through its influence on job characteristics. The implications of these findings for public management are discussed.

Factors Affecting State Government Information Technology Employee Turnover Intentions

Electronic government expansion is creating the complex challenges of managing an effective information technology (IT) workforce in the public sector. Survey questionnaires were sent to IT employees working in the central IT departments of two state governments to analyze how job characteristics, work environment, and human resource management practices influence their turnover intentions. Results show that work exhaustion, an emphasis on participatory management, and opportunities for advancement were statistically significant variables affecting state government IT employee turnover intentions, and that salary satisfaction was not a statistically significant factor. Suggestions are offered for improving IT employee retention rates in government agencies.

Performance Regimes Amidst Governance Complexity

Much of the appeal of performance measurement is explained by its image as a simple and value-neutral way to monitor and improve government. But contemporary governance is characterized by complexity. Few public officials have the luxury of directly providing relatively simple services, the context in which performance regimes work best. Instead, they must work in the context of a disarticulated state, with policy problems that cross national boundaries and demand a multi-actor response. At the same time, traditional democratic values must be honored. This article examines the tensions between performance regimes and the complexity of modern governance, identifying implications and questions for research and practice.

Exploring the Role of Social Networks in Affective Organizational Commitment: Network Centrality, Strength of Ties, and Structural Holes

Although studies in public management have identified personal attributes, job characteristics, and organizational rewards as key factors that influence affective organizational commitment, limited attention has been paid to the influence of social networks on affective commitment. Given that organizational attitudes and behaviors are often socially constructed, this article argues that employees’ affective commitment is influenced by their social networks in an organization. What are the social network configurations that lead to affective organizational commitment? This study attempts to answer this question by focusing on nonlinear relationships between several network dimensions (i.e., network centrality, tie strength, and structural holes) and affective commitment. These relationships are empirically tested by using both social network data and employee survey data collected from two local governments in South Korea. Results of the study show that employees’ network centrality has an inverted U-shaped relationship with affective commitment and structural holes have a U-shaped association with affective commitment, controlling for certain organizational rewards and individual attributes. However, the relationship between a tie strength and affective commitment is not statistically significant. The practical and theoretical implications of the study findings are discussed.

Organizational factors affecting knowledge sharing capabilities in e-government: an empirical study

E-government, a concept that emerged in the late 1990s, is facing challenging opportunities for improving public service delivery to individual citizens. The Internet, the World Wide Web, and other digital tools are transforming the ways in which business, the public, and government communicate, and altering citizen demand for government service delivery (Council for Excellence in Government [CEG], 2000; Stowers, 2002; Strover & Straubhaar, 2000). Public expectations for fast and convenient service delivery and institutional needs for efficiency are motivating agencies to experiment with e-government ventures (CEG, 2000; Center for Technology in Government [CTG], 1999; National Electronic Commerce Coordinating Council [NECCC], 2000a). Modesitt (2002) and Greeves (2000) are among a growing number of researchers taking note of government use of the Internet, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and Web technologies to establish external collaboration, civic engagement, networking, and customer service. E-government services are clearly expanding and will continue to do so; the speed at which the expansion occurs will be limited only by the speed at which technical and financial capacities evolve and organizational/managerial philosophies emerge.

IT Employee Work Exhaustion Toward an Integrated Model of Antecedents and Consequences

Focusing on information technology (IT) professionals in state governments, this study found that organizational context (resources, participation, and feedback), job-related stressors (workload and role ambiguity), and career advancement opportunities affect work exhaustion experienced by state government IT employees. Work exhaustion, in turn, had a direct effect on IT employee turnover intentions and an indirect effect through its influence on job satisfaction. As a result, the study extends our understanding of IT employee exhaustion (a) by developing and testing a conceptual framework of work exhaustion that investigates the causal order of, and interrelationships between, the organizational context variables and job-related stressors previously recognized as antecedents of work exhaustion and (b) because of the potential contribution of career advancement opportunities in such a model.

Employee Knowledge Sharing Capabilities in Public a Private Organizations: Does Organizational Context Matter?

Sharing knowledge and information is an important factor in discourses on e-governance, national security and human capital management in public administration. This article analyzes the influences of organizational culture, structure, and IT on employee knowledge sharing capabilities in five public and five private sector organizations in South Korea. According to the data, social networks, performance-based reward systems, and employee usage of IT applications are significant variables affecting employee knowledge sharing activities in the public and private organizations that were the focus of this study. Furthermore, the data show that while IT application usage is the most important factor determining employee knowledge sharing capabilities in the five government ministries, an end-user IT focus is the most important factor influencing knowledge sharing abilities in the five private-sector corporations. The results also indicate that the surveyed private sector employees have stronger perceptions of knowledge sharing abilities in their organizations compared to the surveyed public sector employees. Lessons and implications of this study for management leadership are presented.

Linking Local E-Government Development Stages to Collaboration Strategy

The purpose of this study is to explore the connection between the stages of e-government development and collaboration demands in local government. Specifically, this study analyzes the demand for intergovernmental, interagency, and intersectoral collaborations during the three stages of local e-government development, including e-government initiation, application development, and integration. Based on an in-depth case study, this paper identifies specific collaboration types demanded during local e-government development in the Gangnam district government in Seoul, Korea. In each stage of e-government development, the local government encountered varying degrees and types of resource dependence upon internal and external organizational units. A particular type of collaboration became dominant in each stage as the relative importance of each collaboration type changed.

Citizen Participation and Transparency in Local Government: Do Participation Channels and Policy Making Phases Matter?

The purpose of this study was to analyze the relationship between citizen engagement in various public participation programs and the participants’ assessment of transparency in local government. To examine this relationship, the study focused on three aspects of citizen participation: (1) citizen engagement in participation programs generally, (2) online versus offline participation, and (3) online or offline participation in policymaking phases specifically. A 2009 survey of residents of Seoul, South Korea, was used to test the study hypotheses, as it provided information from 1,014 respondents on their citizen participation and their perceptions of transparency in government. Surprisingly, citizens’ engagement in public participation programs was not significantly associated with perceptions of transparency in government. Moreover, citizen participation in online programs had a marginally negative association with assessments of government transparency. However, citizens who engaged in offline participation programs during the policy agenda setting phase indicated a more favorable assessment of transparency in local government.