This study investigates the relationship between public employees' satisfaction with work-life balance policies (WLBPs) and organizational commitment in the relatively unexplored Philippine context. Our findings show that (i) employees' overall satisfaction with WLBPs is positively related to organizational commitment, (ii) when specific WLBPs are examined, only satisfaction with health and wellness programs are positively associated with organizational commitment, and (iii) when accounting for employees' preferences for WLBPs, compensatory time-off, childcare policy, health insurance benefits, and paid sick leave are positively related to organizational commitment. The findings indicate that understanding which WLBPs employees prefer is important before implementing WLBPs. The article discusses the theoretical and practical implications of this study in the developing country context.

A top manager's social capital is considered a critical resource for determining organizational outcomes. However, little is known about the impact of social capital on public organizations' performance. By dimensionalizing social capital into two subdimensions, this study investigates the impact of a superintendent's bonding and bridging social capital on the performance of school districts. This study's findings show that bridging social capital has positive impacts on organizational performance, but in a time of financial difficulty it worsens the negative shocks of the difficulty. Bonding social capital is found to be exactly the opposite. This study argues that choosing between bonding and bridging social capital is not an "either-or" question, and top managers are required to balance the two, depending on the situations that their organizations face.

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This study uses a natural experiment of school performance during Hurricane Rita in 2005 to investigate the impact of administrative intensity on student achievement in turbulent environments. Administrative intensity constitutes the bureaucratic capacity of the workforce, which we measure as a ratio of noncore to core personnel. Scholars have debated the contingent impact of administrative intensity on organizational performance and policy outcomes—focusing either on its contribution to organizational rigidity or enhancement of stores of human capital. We explore a curvilinear alternative to this debate by investigating the moderating role of administrative intensity in the otherwise negative relationship between environmental turbulence and organizational performance. Because school districts are the organizations of interest in this study, we measure organizational performance via student achievement. Along a curvilinear continuum, we find that administrative intensity contributes to poor performance in less turbulent environments but heightened performance in more turbulent environments. Making a contingent case for “bureaucracy,” our findings draw attention to environments where administrative intensity can provide a positive performance buffer. Our study extends insights offered by Meier, O’Toole, and Hicklin.

Scholars have emphasized the roles of strategic public management and the financial condition but little is known about the link between the two. Finding the missing link is the purpose of this study. By analyzing data from K-12 Texas school districts, this study investigates how top managers' strategic efforts toward their superiors, subordinates, and external stakeholders affect the financial condition of school districts. The findings suggest that superintendents' managing upward toward school boards increases fund balances, whereas managing downward toward school principals decreases fund balances. Apparently, the relationships between school boards, superintendents, and school principals contain different priorities and incentives that influence their behaviors in managing school district budgets.