Public Personnel Management

Street-level bureaucrats struggle with multiple job demands and limited resources, making their retention a persistent challenge. However, existing research offers only limited insights into how to retain them, as job demands and resources are often conceptualized as static, independent antecedents rather than as part of a dynamic and interactive process shaping turnover intentions. Drawing on the job demands–resources framework and conservation of resources theory, this study investigates the dynamic impact of imbalances between job demands and resources on turnover intentions among street-level bureaucrats. Using survey data from Chinese social workers, the study finds that greater imbalances between job demands and resources are significantly associated with higher turnover intentions. Intrinsic motivation plays a significant mediating role in this relationship. The study underscores the importance of maintaining a balance between job demands and resources to improve resource allocation and mitigate human capital crises.

Despite substantial evidence on how supervisors’ racial composition influences employees’ work-related attitudes, little attention has been given to the reciprocal effects on supervisors themselves. This study examines how same-race subordinates in one’s agency affect supervisors’ job satisfaction, revealing a racially divergent pattern. Using federal employee data from 2020 to 2023, this article finds that White supervisors experience increased job satisfaction when working in agencies with higher proportions of same-race subordinates, consistent with relational demography theory. In contrast, supervisors of color experience decreased job satisfaction under similar conditions, aligning with theoretical expectations regarding the burden of representation and tokenism theory. Mediation analysis demonstrates that this negative association operates through reduced role clarity and deteriorated supervisor relationships, consistent with theory arguments that supervisors of color may face role conflicts between organizational norms and community expectations. However, this burden diminishes as minority representation in leadership increases, becoming positive when exceeding 44% of supervisors. These findings reveal hidden costs borne by minority supervisors and identify when these costs transform into benefits.

Research has shown that levels of public service motivation (PSM) among public employees tend to decrease in their early years of employment in Korea. This study examines specific managerial functions in maintaining and enhancing PSM among early-career public servants. It utilizes a sample of 5,627 public servants with less than 5 years of service, drawn from pooled cross-sectional data from three annual surveys (2022–2024) of the Public Employee Perception Survey in Korea. The results indicate that goal clarity, performance feedback, autonomy, and supervisory support are positively associated with PSM. However, these relationships vary across government levels. Goal clarity and performance feedback are positively associated with PSM at all levels of government, operating through both direct and indirect pathways. In contrast, autonomy and supervisory support are positively associated with PSM only in the central government context, and their effects operate entirely through indirect pathways mediated by value congruence, job satisfaction, and career satisfaction. These findings suggest that informational managerial functions have universal applicability, while the effectiveness of relational managerial functions is contingent on institutional context. The implications and limitations of this study are discussed.

Drawing on grounded‑theory interviews with 16 female staffers in the South Korean National Assembly, this study integrates the Kaleidoscope Career Model with a person–environment congruence lens to explain career‑goal dynamics. A two-stage process emerges. First, initial careers are shaped by the interaction of entry motivations (proactive or reactive) and perceived organizational climate (positive or negative). Second, women interpret promotion decisions through four congruence patterns: positive congruence (expected promotion received), negative congruence (promotion neither expected nor received), downward incongruence (promotion expected but denied), and upward incongruence (unexpected promotion). Upward incongruence generates cognitive dissonance, prompting career-goal shifts from balance or authenticity toward challenge. Conversely, downward incongruence typically prompts withdrawal from challenge goals. These findings extend the Kaleidoscope Career Model by showing that promotion shocks—not only gradual work–family adjustments—can trigger non‑linear shifts in women’s challenge, authenticity, and balance goals in public organizations.

Numerous studies have shown that organizational injustice is a critical factor in addressing the turnover intentions of government employees. This prominent reason to leave government appears to contrast with public service motivation (PSM), which is often regarded as a driver beyond extrinsic motivation for public services in public organizations in explaining turnover intention and is rooted in promoting social equity. Reconciling PSM and organizational justice theories, this study draws on moral approaches to organizational justice, which emphasize that justice is upheld out of a sense of moral duty that aligns with the public values embedded in PSM motives. Using pooled cross-sectional data from 2021 to 2023, this study examines how perceived organizational injustice moderates the influence of PSM on turnover intention. The results offer theoretical and methodological contributions to existing public management studies by resolving these two approaches that have been utilized to explain increasing and reducing turnover intention and by offering evidence for their interactive effects.

The article examines how leadership grounded in authentic exchanges fosters the commitment of public sector employees who are victims of workplace harassment. The study findings revealed that authenticity boosts commitment by enhancing team climate. However, authentic leaders are less effective when harassment is substantiated into illegitimate interference with job-related tasks. In this case, harassment undermines the meaningfulness of work and depletes public servants’ work experience. When harassment prevents public servants from contributing to public value generation, authenticity fails to ignite positive work attitudes. Actions should be taken to empower harassed public servants to maintain control over their jobs and preserve positive emotions at work. Perceived loss of control caused by harassment deteriorates the psycho-social attributes of work, spoiling public servants’ commitment.

Given the significant personal and organizational costs associated with voluntary employee turnover, numerous studies have sought to identify its determinants. While prior research has enhanced understanding of how individual and organizational factors shape turnover decisions and how dissatisfactory conditions can be mitigated, fewer studies have examined what occurs when such conditions escalate into organizational cynicism, particularly within the context of human resource management (HRM). This study empirically examines how employees’ perceptions of distributive, procedural, and interactional injustice in HRM—particularly in pay and promotion decisions—influence their voluntary turnover intentions through the mediating role of organizational cynicism. It also explores whether these relationships differ across recruitment paths, comparing rank-in-person and rank-in-job systems within the South Korean civil service. The results reveal that perceptions of procedural and interactional injustice significantly increase employee cynicism and turnover intention, with cynicism partially mediating these effects. In contrast, distributive injustice did not have a significant influence on either outcome. The proposed moderated mediation involving recruitment path was also unsupported, indicating that the indirect effects of injustice through cynicism are consistent across recruitment systems. Theoretical and practical implications, along with directions for future research, are discussed.

This study investigates how U.S. federal employees responded to the January 2025 return-to-office (RTO) mandate, which abruptly ended widespread telework arrangements across executive branch agencies. Using qualitative data from three federal workforce surveys conducted between 2024 and 2025, this research examines employee perspectives on the transition back to in-person work. The analysis reveals that the RTO order disrupted established routines, reduced employees’ sense of control over their work environment, and introduced new emotional and logistical strains. These findings offer new insights into how rigid workforce mandates shape employee experience, motivation, and perceptions of fairness in the post-pandemic public sector workplace.

Although extensive research has examined the relationship between public service motivation and job-related outcomes among civil servants, limited attention has been paid to its career-related consequences. Drawing on the model of proactive motivation, this study investigates how and when public service motivation fosters civil servants’ subjective career success. Through a two-wave questionnaire survey of 270 civil servants from China, the findings reveal that public service motivation has a positive effect on civil servants’ subjective career success via the mediating role of career crafting. Moreover, visionary leadership and future work self-salience can strengthen this mediated relationship. Theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.

Accountability is a core institutional mechanism in the public sector, shaping employee behavior and organizational performance. However, its impact on change-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) among civil servants has received limited attention. This study draws on perspectives from agency theory and stewardship theory to examine how sanction-based and trust-based accountability influence civil servants’ change-oriented OCB. Using a survey experiment with 457 civil servants in the Chinese local government context, this study finds that, compared with sanction-based accountability, trust-based accountability is associated with higher levels of change-oriented OCB. Harmonious passion may be a plausible pathway linking accountability type to change-oriented OCB, while mianzi-oriented relationships may weaken the comparative advantage of trust-based accountability. These findings contribute to accountability theory and provide practical implications for designing accountability systems and encouraging change-oriented OCB in the public sector.

Veteran employees are a valuable part of the public sector workforce. Their thriving is essential for organizational sustainability. However, little is known about how to enable them to thrive at work amid stigma. Given the importance of organizational inclusion in promoting positive workplace outcomes for stigmatized vulnerable groups, this study aimed to investigate whether, how, and when perceived inclusive climate affects public sector veteran employees’ thriving at work. With a survey of 696 Chinese public sector veteran employees, the results reveal that perceived inclusive climate positively impacts thriving at work through psychological capital and social capital. Furthermore, veteran identity centrality moderates the mediating effects of both psychological and social capital. These findings deepen the understanding of how to facilitate the thriving of veteran employees in public organizations.

While transformational and transactional leadership are key drivers of performance in public organizations, their effects on organizational effectiveness depend on structural conditions. This study examines organizational effectiveness—measured as agencies’ reported goal attainment—and analyzes how the span of control, an indicator of the structural distance between leaders and subordinates, moderates the relationship between these leadership styles and effectiveness. Drawing on panel data from U.S. federal agencies, the analysis shows that transformational leadership is positively associated with effectiveness, whereas transactional leadership is negatively associated with it. Moreover, transformational leadership relates more strongly to effectiveness under narrow spans of control, where supervisors provide more personalized attention, whereas transactional leadership is more effective under broader spans that rely on standardized oversight. These findings clarify how leadership approaches can align with organizational structures to enhance public sector effectiveness.

The turnover of senior-level local government employees has been linked to negative organizational outcomes, including increased costs, decreased productivity, and diminished customer experiences. Researchers sought to determine the extent to which Public Service Motivation (PSM) and Psychological Capital (PsyCap) can mitigate this turnover. Results show that PSM accounts for only 2.24% of variance in turnover intentions, while PsyCap accounts for 22.11%. Stepwise regression evaluating individual PSM and PsyCap components yielded a model (resilience, optimism, hope, and attraction to policy making) that explained 32.8% of variance. This research demonstrates that PSM may be what leads people to want to enter the career field, but PsyCap is the resource needed to keep them from leaving the field. These findings suggest that while PSM may attract individuals to public service, PsyCap provides the psychological resources needed for retention. This research underscores the need for further investigation of PsyCap’s role in public sector workforce stability.

Employee performance management (PM) can benefit employees, organizations, and wider stakeholders, but it is often done poorly, and public administrations pose contextual constraints to doing it well. It has inherent tensions between the goal of accountability and development, is complex, and requires alignment across both a formal administrative level and an informal psychosocial level. In public administration, three contextual factors add complexity and difficulty—competing goals, red tape and public service motivation. This study examines how line managers—a neglected group in PM studies—“do” performance management in practice. Data were collected via interviews with public sector managers in the “new public management” influenced New Zealand public sector. Competing goals and red tape make PM difficult, offer little accountability, and inhibit employee development, which often must run parallel to formal practices. They also limit managerial skill development. Failings in one practice, such as setting employee goals, impact subsequent formal and informal practices. Public service motivation provides workarounds. To work well, modern performance management could be reconstrued less as a compliance activity and more as a psychosocial process reinforced by a formal, prescribed organization system. Practical insights into barriers and opportunities, to improve performance management, are identified.