This article reports on the development of a 12-item scale to measure an individual's level of trust in his or her supervisor and in his or her work organization as a whole. The scale was tested in seven different organizations, with a total sample size of 779 individuals. Reliability, validity, and factor analytic data are presented to demonstrate that the instrument is psychometrically adequate and stable. The scale is usable in both academic research and applied settings.
Affective organizational commitment has been equated to the public service motivation of pubhc employees It is a valuable component of organizational effectiveness However, few management intervention strategies exist that specifically address increasing affective commitment Often successful interventions are designed around correlates of the intended attitudinal construct One hypothesized correlate of affective commitment m organization behavior hterature is trust Trust can be differentiated as interpersonal trust (between the employee and the manager) and systems trust (between the employee and the organization as a whole) This differentiation is significant for the public manager because the relationship between affective commitment and trust can prescnbe two different strategies for an intervention aimed at positively impacting affective commitment For example, if affective commitment is linked to systems trust, an intervention based on a top-down strategy would be the better choice This study tests the relationship of affective commitment and trust m over 600 employees m three different public orgamzations The study finds that interpersonal trust is the significantly stronger correlate of affective commitment These findings suggest that intervention strategies that begin with trust building from the bottom-up are likely to have a higher likelihood of increasing affective organizational commitment than strategies reflecting a systems trust building objective
The politics–administration dichotomy has been one of the most disputed theories of public administration. Despite serious critiques, neither the theoretical utility nor the normative power of the dichotomy has totally disappeared over the past decades. The dichotomy has been advocated on the grounds that the dichotomous division of labor and authority between elected and administrative officials increases the democratic accountability and planning ability of public administrators. This article first builds a theoretical model of the politics–administration dichotomy and then evaluates the model using empirical data collected from a nationwide sample of city managers serving in council‐manager local governments. Results of structural equation modeling illustrate that the politics–administration dichotomy fails to obtain its predicted tendencies in actuality. The authors interpret the findings in light of the contemporary public administration literature. The article aims to make a theoretical‐empirical contribution to one of the most challenging questions in public administration.
This article explores the feasibility of a trust-based organizational paradigm as a new model for public sector management. A conceptual model is developed from a literature review of more than 100 journal articles and books. The author proposes that participation in decision making, feedback from and to employees, and empowerment of employees lead to increased interpersonal trust (between supervisor and employee) in a public organization. The article further hypothesizes that these trust-building practices between supervisors and workers can lead to increased productivity and strengthened organizational commitment. The conceptual model is empirically tested using as a case study both structural equation modeling and data from a municipal government. The analysis demonstrates that the trust-based model is a viable paradigm for increasing interpersonal trust, organizational commitment, and productivity in the public sector.
OVERNMENT at all levels-federal, state, and local-is becoming increasingly interested in performance measurement. At the national level, federal departments are busily engaged in gearing up for implementation of the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (Public Law 103-62). The Act requires federal departments to develop performance measures, with an emphasis on outcome performance measures, for their various programs beginning with FY 1998 (GAO 1995.
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