As a field, we often relate merit and neutrality to the technical skills needed to be the “best” candidate for a job, but that was not necessarily what civil service reformers had in mind. The civil service system was meant to replace widespread political patronage, but the myth around the origins of the civil service system masked inequalities built into early testing requirements and institutionalized racial inequities in hiring practices. In this article, we argue the founding myth of bureaucratic neutrality was so powerful that it continues to reverberate in our field. We trace the current reverberations of the myth of neutrality through modern hiring practices and the contemporary legal landscape. By doing this, we present a systematic review of this rationalized myth in public employment, using an institutionalism framework. As the myth of bureaucratic neutrality continues to permeate decision-making, policy creation, and implementation, it will continue to institutionalize inequity within the field.

Throughout much of representative bureaucracy literature, scholars have primarily focused on the representation of people seen as other in the professional workforce-people of color and women. However, whiteness and masculinity have been central to the development of public administration as a field of scholarship and practice. As a field, we have often avoided explicit discussions regarding the impact whiteness and masculinity. We argue that silences around race and gender have significant implications. Using representative bureaucracy as a frame, we seek to highlight how acknowledging whiteness and masculinity in our scholarship can help provide a more comprehensive understanding of race and gender in public administration. Evidence for Practice• Traditionally discussions of representation in public administration focus on women and people of color, overlooking the ways that whiteness and masculinity have shaped outcomes in our field. • By directly addressing whiteness and masculinity in public administration scholarship, the field can gain a deeper understanding of race, gender, and inequity.

Workplace incivility can have deleterious effects on individuals and organizations such as decreased job satisfaction and commitment, employee turnover, and reductions in morale and performance. Moreover, these effects can be exacerbated for women and employees of color. However, few studies have examined predictors of incivility in public sector organizations. This study explores how public employees’ incivility experiences vary across social categories, specifically by gender and race. Data were collected with a survey from all employees of four local governments in North Carolina. The results of hierarchical linear modeling show that women experience more incivility than men, and that men and women of color experience fewer incidences of incivility than White men and women. We also find that race moderates the relationship between gender and workplace incivility. Specifically, women of color experience more incivility than men of color, but less incivility than White women. Finally, women are more likely than men to experience incivility in departments where women constitute the majority of the workforce. Implications of these results for human resource management in public organizations are discussed.

Discussions of race have often been on the periphery emotional labor scholarship. This piece considers the link between race and emotional labor, arguing that racial bias in public organizations creates disparities in emotional labor among employees. To make this argument, this piece explores white normativity in public administration and the implications this has for people of color when managing their emotions at work. Following this discussion, the article identifies key themes from the literature, before providing a framework for future research on emotional labor and race.

Emotion management describes the ability of an employee to regulate the outward manifestation of emotions during personal interactions. Prior studies examining emotions in organizations have often emphasized the production of emotional labor during service delivery transactions with clients. Such a focus has overlooked the emotion management that takes place between employees. Using ordinary least- squares (OLS) regression, this study analyzes the 2016 Merit Principles Survey of federal employees to examine the relationship between emotion management and the development of social capital. Findings from the study show a positive relationship between emotion management and social capital. These findings provide evidence that employees capable of properly regulating their emotional states during interactions with their colleagues perceive themselves as having more social capital. The findings, however, also indicate that the positive relationship between emotion management and social capital does not hold for employees of color to the same extent that it does for white employees. This could mean that emotion management by employees of color is less likely to lead to increases in social capital as it is for their white counterparts. These findings have important implications for our understanding of emotion management and its impact on how employees navigate their organizations.

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While there is agreement among scholars that people-work requires emotional labor, there is still some uncertainty about the consequences of emotional labor for employees.This article conducts a random-effects meta-analysis including 545 correlations across 175 primary studies to explore the relationship between emotional labor, burnout, and job satisfaction. The meta-analysis suggests that emotional labor can be both harmful and beneficial to employees, depending on the emotional labor strategy used, that is, surface acting or deep acting. In addition, the meta-regression shows that effect sizes between emotional labor and employee outcomes (i.e., burnout and job satisfaction) differ in collectivist and individualist cultures. The article concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for research and practice.

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