This article evaluation practice focuses on public administration by reviewing articles published in the Journal of Public Administration and Research Theory. Citizens get an understanding of the implementation of government policies through public administration. The assigned reading is significant as they present the various modes in which public administration is characterized and categorized. The articles outline the modes of determining government programs and policies, and at the same time, the scheduling based on the priorities of either the policy or the program. The following section summarizes two articles found in the journal of public administration and research theory. The summary presents the key points presented by the article authors and the evident connections between the readings. The closing sections present the strengths, weaknesses, and potential applications of the information contained in the articles under review. The articles under review focus on delivering informal personal resources and the governing of network modes based on their management, structure, and effectiveness.
Article Summary
Unconscious Bias in Citizens’ Evaluations of Public Sector Performance
This article by Marvel (2016) starts with one main assumption: if the general public is continuously exposed to antipublic messages, their evaluation of public sector organizations will change. In other words, they will be primed against the public sector organizations and hold a confirmation bias that will magnify any negative evaluation and diminish any positive aspect, even if a significant amount of effort went into the work. Marvel (2016) classify these as implicit and explicit attitudes. As it stands, a significant number of Americans automatically believe that their public sector organizations are highly inflexibly and inefficient to say the least. The problem is that these implicit biases have a significant impact on the performance of the organizations. From a theoretical standpoint, these implicit biases can help researchers understand if the biased public is capable of responding to any positive evaluation of the public sector’s performance. Furthermore, the magnitude of the response is equally as important.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Contrary to the prevailing opinion, not all attitudes to public sector organizations are negative and not all agencies receive the same amount of negativity. A good example is the public evaluation of several agencies, from firefighters to local police departments and federal law enforcement agencies. The prevailing stereotype is that these agencies are doing good work. As a result, Marvel (2016) sets out to prove the following three hypotheses:
H1: Individuals’ implicit attitudes about the United States Postal Service will factor into their evaluations of Postal Service performance
H2: Favorable performance information will attenuate, though not completely eliminate, the
influence of implicit antipublic sector attitudes in the evaluative process
H3: The impact of favorable performance information on individuals’ explicit evaluations of public sector performance will be short-lived.
H4: Favorable performance information will not change individuals’ implicit attitudes.
After collecting data from three survey experiments to test the above hypotheses, the results indicate that if the individuals are predisposed against the government, their views will reflect in their evaluation of public sector organizations. Furthermore, these biases make it hard for public managers to maintain a positive view of their agencies, especially when the positive information is easily forgotten and negative information lasts longer than it should.
Are Citizens More Negative About Failing Service Delivery by Public Than Private
Organizations? Evidence from a Large-Scale Survey Experiment
Researchers and policy makers are highly interested in the factors that determine and control how the general public perceives the performance of different public service organizations. Marvel (2016) takes the psychological approach to answer this question, where they conclude that if the general public is continuously exposed to antipublic messages, their evaluation of public sector organizations will change. These biases make it hard for public managers to maintain a positive view of their agencies, especially when the positive information is easily forgotten and negative information lasts longer than it should. Bekerom et al. (2020) takes an alternative approach by comparing the influence of politically motivated biases and cognitive biases that influence the public’s appraisals of the performance of public sector organizations. To find answers using the approach Bekerom et al. (2020) ask questions like how do citizens respond to failures in the public sector compared to failures in the private sector. Specifically, the researchers posit the following hypotheses.
H1: Publicness affects citizens’ performance perceptions
H2: The effect of publicness on citizens’ performance perceptions is moderated by citizens’ preferences regarding public and private service delivery.
H3: Relative to neutral performance information, the negative effect of negative performance information on citizens’ perceptions of the performance of services is stronger than the positive effect of positive performance information
H4: The negative effect of negative performance information on performance perceptions is stronger for public organizations than for private organizations
Hypothesis 5: The negative effect of negative performance information is stronger for public organizations than for private organizations, if performance information is congruent with preferences for private service provision.
After conducting a large-scale survey with 2623 participants the researchers conclude that the general public is more likely to punish public sector organizations for their failures (negative performance) than private organizations. However, Bekerom et al. (2020) notes that this trend is more pronounced among the citizens who prefer private services over public services. Furthermore, the researchers make a similar conclusion to Marvel (2016) when they state that when the public does performance evaluations of public sector organizations, there are more biased and predisposed to taking negative positions. In other words, they are more likely to forget the positive aspects of the services provided and mainly focus on the negative performance evaluations. Furthermore, both articles note that the associated dynamics that results in such a behavior are yet to be fully understood by research and consolidated into a theoretical framework.
Limitations of the Selected Articles
Limitations of the Article by Bekerom et al. (2020)
The first limitation of this study is that its data collection, findings, and conclusions were limited to the Dutch context. The second limitation is that though the study population large enough to be representative, the data collected was mainly qualitative and influenced by the unconscious biases of the participants. Therefore, Bekerom et al. (2020) could not ascertain that the data they collected and analysed was free of bias and there were no strict constructs to differentiate the control and experimental groups.
Limitations of the Article by Marvel (2016)
The main limitation is that though the study population large enough to be representative, the data collected was mainly qualitative and influenced by the unconscious biases of the participants. Therefore, Marvel (2016) could not ascertain that the data they collected and analysed was free of bias and there were no strict constructs to differentiate the control and experimental groups. Furthemore, Marvel (2016) did not study the public’s implicit attitudes on all public service organizations. Unless a future research study fills this gap in knowledge, the findings cannot be generalized for all public service organizations.
Potential Applications to the Core Challenges Facing Evaluators
The main challenge facing evaluators is a missing standard theoretical framework that can guide future research while providing enough understanding about the dynamics that control how the general public perceive and evaluate the performance of public service organizations. The absence of the theoretical framework is evident by the approaches the two articles take to understand the same subject matter. Marvel (2016) takes the psychological approach to answer this question, where they conclude that if the general public is continuously exposed to antipublic messages, their evaluation of public sector organizations will change. Bekerom et al. (2020) takes an alternative approach by comparing the influence of politically motivated biases and cognitive biases that influence the public’s appraisals of the performance of public sector organizations.
References
Bekerom, P., van der Voet, J., & Christensen, J. (2020). Are Citizens More Negative About Failing Service Delivery by Public Than Private Organizations? Evidence From a Large-Scale Survey Experiment. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory .
Marvel, J. D. (2016). Unconscious bias in citizens’ evaluations of public sector performance. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory , 26 (1), 143-158.
