Public service motivation and government officials' willingness to learn in public sector benchmarking process

Benchmarking between local governments has become an important topic in public administration. In benchmarking practice, local government officials play important roles in deciding what they learn, who they learn from, and how to adopt, and adapt to the lessons. However, less attention has been paid to why local government officials to willingly take lessons from their peer governments. Focusing on a particular type of motivational basis, public service motivation (PSM), this study found that PSM is positively associated with government official's willingness to learn. Out of PSM's subdimensions, in particular, only attraction to public policy-making shows a significant positive relationship

The Effectiveness of Monetary and Promotion Rewards in the Public Sector and the Moderating Effect of PSM (PSM-Reward Fit or PSM Crowding Out): A Survey Experiment

To what extent does public service motivation (PSM) affect how monetary rewards and promotion opportunities motivate government officials? This study offers an answer to this question through a survey experiment conducted with a sample of city government officials in Florida. The experimental results demonstrate that both monetary and promotion reward treatments positively motivate officials with low PSM. However, as the level of PSM increases, the positive treatment effect of the monetary reward decreases and converges on 0. Conversely, the positive effect of the promotion opportunity treatment not only decreases but becomes negative, indicating that PSM crowding out is taking place

Has the fiscal decentralization of social welfare programs helped effectively reduce poverty across U.S. states?

This paper looks at whether fiscal decentralization of welfare programs made state governments effective at alleviating poverty. We make use of the National Association of State Budget Officers' (NASBO) State Expenditure Report which publishes expenditure data in different areas by state and federal government. Using this data, we constructed expenditure ratios to demonstrate the moment when state governments took on more responsibility in funding compared to the federal government. Although we hypothesized fiscal decentralization to worsen poverty growth, we found the fiscal decentralization of Medicaid to reduce poverty rate growth. We believe this negative finding to be the result of the types of additional goods that are being offered to Medicaid beneficiaries beyond what is federally required

Strength of Strong Ties in Intercity Government Information Sharing and County Jurisdictional Boundaries

Studies have found that information sharing between city governments can be easily observed within the same county jurisdiction, but less attention has been paid to the reasons why the jurisdictional boundary matters. This article fills this lacuna, drawing on the insight of the "strength of strong ties" argument that "people help their friends first." The analysis reveals that city governments in the Orlando, Florida, metropolitan area are more likely to share economic development information (EDI) with governments in the same county as the collective demand for such information in that area increases. This study additionally finds that the greater the demand for EDI, the more likely it is that city governments will seek the information from their county members. As a result, as the demand for information increases among city governments in a metropolitan area, the likelihood that it will be shared by all members of the area beyond the county boundaries decreases

Selective vs. Collective Outcomes of Collaborative Governance: The Impacts of Federal Stimulus Programs on Local and Regional Governance Outcomes

A number of studies have demonstrated that local government's self-governing mechanisms can bring about positive collective outcomes for an entire region. However, less attention has been paid to different levels of collective outcomes (e.g., individual local governments vs. entire regions). Comparing such selective and collective outcomes in interlocal collaborations, this study attempts to explore which specific collaborative self-governing mechanisms can better work for which respective outcomes. Applying network approaches with time-series cross-sectional data, this study investigates how each local government's network position and the network structure as a whole influence the impact of Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants on job creation in terms of the regional green economy. Empirical results demonstrate the need for separating selective and collective outcomes in developing theories of regional governance. Additionally, the results provide practitioners with advice on how to manage interlocal relationships in order to maximize collective outcomes at different level

Testing structural and relational embeddedness in collaboration risk

The study investigates the effect of embeddedness, defined as a property of interdependent relations in which organizations are integrated in a network, on collaboration risk emerging from relational uncertainty. Despite efforts to understand the structural effects of network governance, embedded relationships and their influence on collaboration remain relatively unexplored. A case of intergovernmental collaboration for emergency management is used as a test bed to examine the role of embeddedness in disaster networks and to extend the knowledge of collaboration risk within the institutional collective action framework. We hypothesize and test the effect of relational and structural embeddedness on the level of collaboration risk that an organization perceives. Our analysis of 69 organizations engaged in emergency management operations in the Seoul Metropolitan Area, South Korea reveals that both structural and relational embeddedness facilitate organizations to mitigate perceived collaboration risk. The results suggest that reachability secures relief of relational risk, and that commitment relationships bind participants

Age-related differences in diabetes care outcomes in Korea: a retrospective cohort study

BACKGROUND: Age-related differences in diabetes outcomes are important both for clinical and policy considerations. To clarify the basis of such differences, we investigated patterns of associations for age in relation to hospitalization and glycemic control and examined the role of other factors. METHODS: 4471 patients with diabetes aged 40–79 years were drawn from a retrospectively retrieved National Health Insurance Cohort. Using logistic regression, risk factors measured over the two years (2007–2008) were examined for their associations with hospitalization and poor glycemic control during the last year (2009) of follow-up. RESULTS: Compared to the middle-aged patients, older patients were more likely to have been hospitalized (Adjusted odds ratio (OR(adjusted)) = 1.97(95% CI = 1.28, 3.04) for the oldest group (ages 70–79) vs youngest group (ages 40–49)) but less likely to have poor glycemic control (OR(adjusted) = 0.45 (95% CI = 0.37, 0.56) for the oldest group vs youngest group). Older patients were also less likely to be obese but had more complications, longer duration of diabetes, lower continuity of care, and higher blood pressure and total cholesterol level. The pattern of associations for hospitalization and glycemic control was not uniform across the risk factors, sharing only a few common factors such as the duration of diabetes and blood pressure. In general, poor glycemic control was affected predominantly by metabolic management, while hospitalization was strongly related to functional status (i.e., number of complications) and care quality measures (i.e., continuity of care). CONCLUSION: Hospitalization was higher among the older diabetic patients, despite better glycemic control. Factors were differently associated with the two diabetes-related outcomes, providing more comprehensive risk profiles for hospitalization. The co-existence of improved glycemic control and increased hospitalization among older diabetic patients suggests an extension of a geriatric evaluation to wider functional and comorbidity status