Feminist scholars of public administration have critiqued the dominance of masculine imagery in public administration theory and practice. However, public service motivation is one area of public administration discourse that contains both feminine and masculine imagery. Focusing on Perry’s multidimensional public service motivation scale, the authors borrow from a range of social science literatures to contend that compassion is a feminine dimension of public service motivation, whereas attraction to policy making and commitment to public service are masculine dimensions. Data from a survey of public managers in state health and human service agencies reveal that women score higher on Perry’s compassion subscale but also on attraction to policy making. No statistically significant gender differences were found on commitment to public service.

There is a rich literature on how state governments use slack fiscal resources—most often in the form of rainy day funds and budget stabilization funds—to minimize the effect of economic downturns. This paper presents the first known examination of whether slack resources have the same counter‐cyclical effects at the local level. It uses a panel data set to determine whether one particular form of local fiscal slack, general fund balance, stabilizes current annual expenditures among a sample of 103 Minnesota cities from 1990 to 2000. The findings suggest different fund balance portions have marginal but nonetheless important effects on expenditures.

Th e role of communication in public administration has been emphasized over time in public administration theory. Nonetheless, communication -with the exception of political communication -has been neglected in scholarship. Garnett's performance predicament posits the diffi culty of showing linkages between communication and performance. Th is paper explores the role that communication plays in achieving organizational performance through a review of research that bears on communication's direct and indirect infl uences on performance. Th e primary thrust is communication's indirect role in achieving performance by mediating or moderating the eff ects of organizational culture on performance, thereby adding another perspective on the cultureperformance relationship. Adapting the typology of Zammuto and Krakower, two types of organizational culture -rule-oriented culture and mission-oriented culture -are examined to explore how the relationship between organizational culture and organizational performance is infl uenced by communication. Th e analysis supports the claim that communication acts as a metamechanism for shaping and imparting culture in mission-oriented organizational cultures, thereby infl uencing performance. In particular, task orientation, feedback, and upward communication have positive eff ects on perceived organizational performance in mission-oriented organizations but potentially negative eff ects on performance in rule-oriented cultures. O ver the years, some public administration scholars and practitioners have paid attention to communication ( Downs Simon, Smithburg and Th ompson 1950 ). But for years, a mismatch has existed between the conventional wisdom that communication is the central management function most crucial to administrative success ( Barnard 1938 ; Garnett 2005 ; Lorch 1978 ) and the attention andrespect that communication has received within the public administration community in terms of scholarship and teaching. A major reason for this "respect gap" is inadequate research evidence linking communication with performance. Th is gap is partly attributable to what Garnett calls the performance predicament: "Th e costs of government communication are generally easier to measure than are its benefi ts, making it diffi cult to demonstrate a favorable performance ratio" ( 1997b , 10). Because of the diffi culty of measuring communication performance, researchers have been reluctant to tackle it head on, instead researching communication media, processes, and other aspects. At the heart of this predicament is the nature of the relationship between communication and performance. Communication's powerful, indirect infl uences on performance have remained, by and large, below the radar of public administration scholarship.Th is research more fully explores communication's indirect infl uence on performance through its eff ects on organizational culture -a variable that has been shown to infl uence performance and one that is profoundly shaped by communication. We explore whether com...

Local governments tend to keep large amounts of slack financial resources to hedge against risk and uncertainty. To date, there has been little empirical research on whether those slack holdings are inadequate, adequate, or perhaps excessive relative to those risks and uncertainties. I address this gap in current research by using credit quality as a criterion to consider "optimal" slack resource levels. I find that for a national sample of local governments, slack resources' effect on credit quality is statistically but not substantively significant. Having some rather than no slack increases, the likelihood of receiving a more desirable rating by 5-9 percent, but large slack holdings have little if any additional effect. These findings have implications for future work on slack resources, and for debt management broadly.

This paper presents estimates of the size and scope of other postemployment benefit (OPEB) liabilities among municipal governments. The findings indicate these liabilities vary substantially, ranging from less than a dollar per capita to more than $2,000 per capita. Those liabilities were then incorporated into separate models of credit ratings and borrowing costs. Results suggest OPEB liabilities do not directly affect credit quality, but the interaction between an issuer's fiscal capacity to address its liability does have a notable effect.