Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory最新文献

{"title":"Striking multiple balances in cross-sector collaborations: How leaders navigate institutional complexity with interdependent leadership behaviors","authors":"Sandra Henninger, Rick Vogel","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muag022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muag022","url":null,"abstract":"In cross-sector collaborations (CSCs), leaders must navigate the complex and often conflicting demands of the public, business, and nonprofit sectors. This study explores how leaders manage this institutional complexity through a multi-level framework, drawing on a case study of a tri-sector partnership developing technology for disaster management. Based on evidence from 27 interviews, observations, and documentary material, we identify the leadership repertoire and, as our core contribution, uncover four distinct types of interdependencies between these behaviors: enabling, substituting, stabilizing, and inhibiting. Our findings reveal that leadership in CSCs goes beyond adopting a single style; rather, it requires a strategic orchestration of how different behaviors interact. We identify two overarching strategies (selective targeting and sequential switching) that leaders use to combine complementary behaviors while preventing them from undermining each other. By focusing on leaders’ micro-level agency in response to macro-level sector differences, this study provides a clearer understanding of how interdependent leadership behaviors converge into what we theorize as institutional leadership in CSCs.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2026-07-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148522567","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Voice of the Voiceless: Refugees’ Perceptions of Participation Under Constraint","authors":"Khaldoun AbouAssi, Corbin M Walls","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muag019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muag019","url":null,"abstract":"Refugee camps have evolved into durable governance sites characterized by centralized authority and monopolistic service environments where residents lack ‘exit’ options. While public administration scholarship extensively theorizes the benefits of participation, research often assumes a baseline of stable, democratic institutions, leaving ‘participation under constraint’ underdeveloped. This study examines whether ‘thin’ participation—awareness of feedback mechanisms and consultative outreach—is associated with refugees’ perceived outcomes at individual, community, and institutional levels. Using household-level survey data from 876 households across 33 refugee sites Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, we find that both latent awareness and consultation are significantly associated with improved subjective well-being. Our findings reveal a tiered impact: passive awareness correlates with community and institutional gains, while the relational intensity of consultation is required for individual-level improvements. These results suggest that even minimal engagement functions as a vital generative mechanism for institutional legitimacy in high-dependency, non-democratic environments.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"42 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2026-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148401018","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Representative Bureaucracy and Administrative Burdens: Exploring the Intersection of Lived Experience, Gender, and Professional Qualities","authors":"Ryan J Lofaro, Elizabeth Bell, Colt Jensen","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muag018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muag018","url":null,"abstract":"Lived experience representative bureaucracy theory has expanded the scope of representative bureaucracy by exploring traits beyond race, ethnicity, and gender. However, scholars have yet to focus on the intersection of symbolic representation, intersectionality, and professional qualities. In this article, we employ lived experience representative bureaucracy theory and intersectionality theory to understand which identities (veteran status, gender, and disability status) and professional qualities shape client preferences on which bureaucrat they want to help them navigate administrative burdens. We analyze data from a conjoint experiment of 964 military veterans, showing that lived experience, intersectionality, and professional qualities matter, with the strongest preferences for employees who are responsive and competent. Regarding identity-based characteristics, veteran status and disability status representation were more salient than gender representation in helping veterans navigate healthcare-related administrative burdens. In line with our expectations grounded in intersectionality theory, we find that veterans with a disability prefer to be served by VA employees with a disability, demonstrating the importance of this combination of lived experiences and intersecting identities. We find further evidence that intersectionality matters among male respondents; the positive effects of veteran status were nullified in cases where the VA employee was transgender, revealing the importance of anti-transgender bias in shaping male veterans’ preferences. Exploratory analyses suggest that weak professional qualities can nullify or reverse the positive effects of shared identity, whereas strong professional qualities can compensate for the absence of representation. This study contributes to the literature by exploring the symbolic representative effects of various forms of lived experience representation alongside gender representation and professional qualities, as well as by examining representative bureaucracy through an intersectional lens. Additionally, our research provides a novel examination of disability status as an important and understudied identity with symbolic representative effects.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"36 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2026-07-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148394061","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Organizational Strategies for System Robustness: How Managers Navigate the Institutional Architecture of Complex Systems","authors":"Adam Wiechman, Aaron Deslatte, Elizabeth A Koebele, Margaret Garcia, John M Anderies","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muag014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muag014","url":null,"abstract":"Many public managers oversee complex systems that require them to navigate multifaceted organizational decision-making processes. While there is general recognition that institutions constrain information processing, rigorous study of how particular institutional designs influence the strategies used by organizations to process information and act on the systems they oversee is limited by existing theory and methodological approaches. We propose a theoretical approach that integrates established understanding of institutions as choice architectures and disproportionate information processing in organizations with new understanding of collective inference from cognitive science. The approach addresses three limitations in existing theory: (i) the relationship between detailed institutional designs and organizational strategies, (ii) the role of flexibility in information processing, and (iii) the relationship between organizational strategies and system robustness. We demonstrate its application empirically using a mixed methods approach that combines institutional analysis and process tracing with a dynamic model to analyze how the City of Phoenix Water Services Department responded to environmental change through investment and ratemaking actions. Our findings highlight how institutional designs that require managers to account for multiple objectives benefit from added flexibility, allowing managers to explore new approaches that address competing objectives and increase system robustness. Conversely, designs exhibiting high costs without high flexibility may create rigidity traps that hinder action and reduce system robustness in the face of uncertainty.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"267 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2026-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148384639","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Mapping the Temporal Evolution of Causal Effects in Public Administration and Policy Research","authors":"L Jason Anastasopoulos, Inkyu Kang","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muag015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muag015","url":null,"abstract":"Recent growth in the use of randomized and quasi-experiments in public administration and policy research has advanced the ability to establish cause-and-effect relationships. However, many studies adopt static conceptions of causality, focusing on snapshots or time-averaged effects while overlooking how the effects change over time. This oversight is problematic, as interventions of scholarly interest, such as leadership training or the adoption of new technologies, are likely to produce impacts that unfold in various ways. In this paper, we propose a conceptual framework for understanding the temporal dynamics of causal effects and their implications for research hypotheses and design. We then introduce Bayesian Changepoint Models (BCMs) as a methodological tool for detecting shifts in the average, variance, or trend of causal effect series, providing a more rigorous yet accessible alternative to visually inspecting graphs. Next, we demonstrate the application of BCMs with an illustrative example derived from simulation data as well as a real-world case examining the effect of body-worn cameras on police officers’ use of force. Finally, we discuss how examining temporal changes in effects can advance theoretical understanding of why and how they occur, as well as inform the design and implementation of policies and strategies in practice.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"59 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2026-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148286640","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Who is This For? How Felt Accountability Shapes The Enactment of Accountability in Public Service Delivery","authors":"Margit Ernst","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muag011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muag011","url":null,"abstract":"What makes accountability work? To answer this question public administration research has long focused on formal mechanisms–rules, audits, and performance indicators–intended to ensure that public employees answer for their actions. Yet these mechanisms alone rarely determine how accountability plays out in practice. Rather, it depends on how they are recognised, internalised, and enacted by those expected to comply. This realization has spurred growing interest in how employees perceive and enact accountability in the context of public service delivery. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this study unpacks how street-level bureaucrats navigate tensions between formal accountability demands and their internalised perceptions of accountability. The findings reveal how employees weigh, reinterpret, or reframe accountability based on what they perceive to be at stake. To conceptualize this, the article introduces a concentric model of accountability.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"184 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2026-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148290218","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Dual Anchors in the Shadow of the Future: How Renewal Expectations and Relational History Govern Behavior in Public Contracts","authors":"Deanna Malatesta, Faisal Saeed Cheema","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muag010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muag010","url":null,"abstract":"This study extends relational contract theory by showing how behavioral reference points can be established through policy. We theorize that contracts are governed by dual anchors: backward-looking relational history and forward-looking renewal expectations. Analyzing 430 public legal service contracts using Heckman selection models, we find relational history increases prices in amendments, revealing its “dark side.” A non-binding renewal clause, however, significantly attenuates this effect, reducing price increase probability by up to 37 percentage points. These findings resolve the puzzle that renewal clauses, though present in fewer than half of contracts, disproportionately appear in amended agreements. The clause does not guarantee renewal but alters behavioral logic, transforming the supplier’s reference point from backward-looking entitlement to forward-looking relationship preservation. Our findings provide micro-foundations for how institutions structure relational dynamics and demonstrate how procurement design can shape expectations to improve outcomes.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"139 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2026-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147617457","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Reversing the Accountability Chain: How Relational Power Can Shape Accountability in Public Encounters","authors":"Sara C Closs-Davies, Koen P R Bartels, Doris Merkl-Davies","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muag009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muag009","url":null,"abstract":"Public administration plays a fundamental role in accountability relationships between citizens and the State, but how these take shape in public encounters is remarkably understudied. Analysing relational dynamics within and around public encounters expands the relational perspective on accountability in public administration–challenging core assumptions of the principal-agent model underpinning studies of citizen-State accountability relationships. We conducted a critical-interpretivist ethnography of public encounters in the UK Tax Credits (TC) system and share findings from our Constructivist Grounded Theory Analysis of multiple data sources, including 28 open interviews. We discuss four relational dynamics of account-giving–emerging from the interplay of neoliberal discourse, digital technologies, and communicative practices–that ‘reversed the accountability chain’. We demonstrate how claimants experiencing significant financial and emotional hardship, in their encounters with an unaccountable State, became accountable for their TC obligations and welfare. We explain these findings by mobilising interdisciplinary theory from critical accounting research on relational power to offer original conceptual and empirical insight into the interactive, dynamic, and emergent accountability relationships between citizens and agents of the State.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2026-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147462007","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Worth the Effort? Compliance Costs, Heuristics, and Perceived Program Accessibility","authors":"Madaline Allen, Cody A Drolc","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muag007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muag007","url":null,"abstract":"Administrative burdens can deter individuals from engaging with government programs before they ever encounter formal application requirements. Drawing on the administrative burden framework and theories of heuristic decision-making, this study examines how prospective applicants form early judgments about program accessibility when presented with varying levels of compliance costs. Using three survey experiments centered on a fictional grocery benefit (N = 2407, N = 965) and a one-time federal tax rebate (N = 1004), we assess how documentation requirements and effort cues shape perceptions of eligibility, willingness to apply, and perceived accessibility. We find that greater documentation requirements or mismatched time cues lowered perceived eligibility and willingness to apply. Yet asking respondents to pause and estimate the effort reversed those effects, but only for individuals who already possessed the documentation or could form a concrete time estimate about the effort. These findings highlight the role of expected burden and heuristic judgments in shaping pre-application decisions, extending administrative burden research beyond realized experiences to the earliest stages of program engagement.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"95 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2026-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146215762","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Are Public Officials More Risk-averse than Private Sector Employees in Decision-making? Interest and Accountability Matter","authors":"Jinfeng Zhang, Minjie Song, Zengqiang Qin, Ran Xu, Rong Ran","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muag006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muag006","url":null,"abstract":"Public officials are traditionally thought to be more risk-averse than private sector employees, yet consistent empirical evidence is lacking. Prospect theory posits that individuals’ risk decision preferences are influenced by the framing of gains or losses, but it does not distinguish whether gains and losses pertain to personal or public interests. This study incorporates the type of interest with gain–loss framing to construct decision scenarios and compare risk preferences between public officials and private sector employees. In Experiment 1 (Npublic officials = 897, Nprivate sector employees = 685), using a 3 (public interest vs. public-private mixed interest vs. private interest) × 2 (gain frame vs. loss frame) design, public officials were found to exhibit greater risk aversion than private sector employees when the loss frame involves the public interest, while no significant differences were observed for a gain frame involving either the public interest or private interest. Applying blame avoidance theory, accountability is positioned here as a core factor to further explore why public officials are more risk-averse than private sector employees when facing public interest losses. In Experiment 2 (Npublic officials = 625, Nprivate sector employees = 630), using a 2 (reward vs. punishment-oriented accountability) × 2 (process vs. outcome-oriented accountability) design in a public interest decision-making context, public officials were found to be more risk-averse than private sector employees in the case of outcome-oriented punishment accountability. In the other three types of accountability conditions, public officials exhibited a similar risk preference to private sector employees. These findings reveal the situational factors underlying public officials’ risk aversion, and offer practical insights for designing accountability systems that effectively guide decision-making in the public sector.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2026-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146215761","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}