Nam-Hoon Ki

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 PS

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 rewar

Abstract 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 info

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 embeddedn

Public service motivation (PSM) literature suggests that PSM has a positive effect on employees’ job satisfaction. Using meta-analysis, this study examines the aggregate effect of PSM on job satisfaction. In addition, this study investigates whether sector affiliation moderates the relationship between PSM and employee job satisfaction. Based on reported correlations between PSM and job satisfaction from 46 studies, this study finds compelling evidence for a positive relationship between PSM and

Drawing on the socialization aspect of public service motivation (PSM) and the internalization process of organizational values, this study empirically tests the argument that goal clarity leads to higher PSM, with a specific focus on the moderating role of value congruence between them. Using data from 4,133 Korean public employees in the 2021 Public Employee Perception Survey, the current study finds that individuals’ perception of goal clarity generally has a positive relationship with their

Research spanning 33 years establishes a robust link between government employees’ Public Service Motivation (PSM) and job satisfaction (JS). Recent studies explore how national culture influences this connection across diverse cultural clusters. However, the complexity of national culture necessitates a closer examination of its dimensions within each country. Drawing from 53 studies spanning 16 regions (1990–2022), our findings demonstrate that the PSM-JS relationship tends to be more pronounc

Informal and formal collaborative mechanisms are distinctive self-governing strategies that local governments use to mitigate intergovernmental collaboration risks. Studies on local governance have long argued that both mechanisms tend to co-occur and appear mutually complementary. However, extant research drawing on the transaction cost perspective provides a more nuanced and different explanation that as intergovernmental competition increases, local governments lean toward the choice of a for

Abstract This study examines the impact of crisis‐induced telework during the COVID‐19 pandemic 2020 on public sector employees' job satisfaction (JS) and retention intention (RI). Analyses of the 2020 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey data reveal a negative association between the amount of COVID‐induced telework and the federal employees' JS and RI. However, this negative effect is mitigated by offering adequate organizational telework support for mandatory telework during the COVID peak and s

Abstract This study, which uses grounded theory procedures, explores the dynamic aspects of the Civil Society Organization (CSO)‐government collaboration process by considering the case of South Korea's Seoul Community Development Initiatives program. Through multisite case studies involving 31 in‐depth interviews, we identified six different patterns of how CSOs define their roles within cross‐sectoral collaboration processes which are shaped by various configurations of the respective levels o

Abstract Interorganizational collaboration is a means, through which governments to effectively respond to disasters. However, the extent to which collaboration risks embedded in interorganizational relationships shape such collaborative arrangements largely remains unanswered. This study examined the impact of collaboration risks as perceived by organizational representatives with regard to emergency management (EM). To this end, we conducted an EM survey in Seoul in 2015 and analyzed the data

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

거래비용적 접근에 따르면, 정부의 서비스와 재화 생산 방식의 결정은 그 서비스와 재화의 자산특수성 및 측정 곤란성에 따라 결정된다. 기존의 연구들은 서비스나 재화의 앞선 두 가지 특성이 각기 다른 거래의 위험을 야기하며, 정부의 생산방식 (내부생산과 외부생산) 선택에 독립적인 영향을 준다고 기술한다. 하지만 본 연구에서는 위의 두 가지 특성이 동시에 고려될 때, 거래 위험의 본질이 더욱 정확히 이해될 수 있다고 주장한다. 이를 위하여 본 연구에서는 위 거래비용 특징들과 정부 공공서비스 및 재화 생산방식선택의 연관관계를 재해석하여, 두가지 거래비용의 특징들을 의무불이행 취약성이라는 개념으로 통합하였다. 본 연구의 경험적 분석 결과는 서비스와 재화의 의무불이행 취약성이 정부의 서비스 및 재화의 생산방식 결정을 설명하는데 더 나은 척도임을 증명하며, 나아가 본 연구의 이론적 주장을 뒷받침하고 있다.

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 outco