Date Available

7-26-2017

Year of Publication

2016

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College

Graduate School

Department/School/Program

Public Policy and Administration

Advisor

Dr. Nicolai Petrovsky

Abstract

Public management is one of the most important subfields in public administration and plays a role in explaining the variations of government performance. Encouraging public administrators to get motivated through enhancing public service motivation (PSM) and collaborating with each other to accomplish their jobs and organizational objectives are key strategies to enhance the government’s accountability to the public under scarce resources. This dissertation attempts to address these concerns.

First, it conducts a meta-analytical structural equation analysis with regard to the relationships among PSM, value congruence, individual work attitudes, and individual performance and finds that person-organization fit, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment have partial mediation effects on the relationship between PSM and individual performance. It contributes to the extant PSM literature in two ways: (1) it investigates the overall average effect size of each factor and (2) examines the possibility of mediating effects of key variables on the PSM-performance relationship to specify those relationships that has not yet been fully investigated.

Drawing on the findings from the first essay, the second essay theoretically clarifies the relationship between PSM and performance by suggesting a framework in which social networks among members provide an explicit mechanism linking employees’ PSM with their performance and by proposing several empirically testable propositions. Conceptually, it shows that (1) the extent of the social relationships and interaction among group members and their positions within a network differ depending on the level of PSM; (2) individual employees with high PSM are more likely to complete their tasks via their central positions in a network of advice relations; and (3) group members with high PSM are more likely to complete group tasks via the density of a social network of advice relations.

In the third essay, using a data set that is a mixed panel at the school- and district-level in the state of Kentucky across the school years from SY 2002-3 to SY 2008-9, it examines the impacts of intra-organizational collaborative behavior on organizational performance. More specifically, it investigates the linear and moderating effects of the collaborative interaction between superintendents and school principals as well as the impacts of characteristics of districts on school performance. The results from this essay provide evidence supporting the propositions. This dissertation concludes by discussing academic and practical implications and suggesting future research directions.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

http://dx.doi.org/10.13023/ETD.2016.308

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