How do we do public service? The socio-psychological status of public servants

Applying Self-Determination Theory to Understand Public Employee’s Motivation for a Public Service Career: An East Asian Case (Taiwan)

“…Particularly in Taiwan, statistics show that although the salary at the entry level is slightly higher for government jobs, senior managers earn much more in the private sector. vii Politically, as a result of democratization and a global trend of bureaucratic bashing (Butler, Finniear, & Hill, 2011), the decline of trust in government and public officials has started to appear across the borders (Soonhee Kim, 2010;Li, 2011), which further reduces the attractiveness of government jobs. A modern Chinese saying "enterprises are for top people, whereas governments are for the inferiors" shows that joining enterprises has become a top priority for some young people, and public service jobs are less appealing today.…”

Reformation of public service to meet citizens’ needs as customers: Evaluating SMS as an alternative service delivery channel

“…This mobile and dynamic channel of service delivery can meet at least two important service output demands recognized by Bucklin (1966): spatial convenience and waiting time. Studies of citizen attitudes toward public services (Butler et al, 2011;Mares et al, 2010) have shown that citizens do not find public services competent, in comparison to private services, due to some inabilities in public administration and the obscure nature of public service. Among many issues, the prominent negative areas are: unavailability of service due to a centralized venue, often inaccessible service in terms of cost and time to receive services, extremely subjective and unfocused service, and a lack of transparency (Kim, 2010;Pierre, 2009).…”

Am I a Public Servant or Am I a Pathogen? Public Managers' Sector Comparison of Worker Abilities

“…Introducing SCT to public administration has at least two important contributions. First, although distrust of government has long been an academic research topic (Butler et al ; Jahan and Shahan ) and a public discourse (Zeleny and Thee‐Brenan ) in the United States and in many other countries, scholars seldom empirically examine public managers' sector perceptions under the influence of the public's cynicism. Although descriptive statistics in the current study prohibit us from drawing a clear causation between bureaucratic criticism and public managers' sector perceptions, our preliminary analysis shows that the way public managers perceive their own sector and their work peers is generally in line with the public's opinions.…”

“…Lan (, p. 31) argues that ‘bureaucrat bashing has become the norm’, and others tell us that ‘bureaucrat bashing has become an international sport’ (Butler et al , p. 395). Recently, a report showed that distrust of government in many industrialized and democratic countries is even higher than in the USA (http://www.slideshare.net/EdelmanInsights/2012-edelman-trust-barometer-global-deck#btnNext).…”