When undertaking qualitative research, public administration scholars must walk a thin line between being theoretically sensitive and imposing preconceived ideas on their work. This article identifies opportunities and pitfalls in using literature in qualitative public administration research....

Aim: The aim of this study was to analyze the effects of work alienation on organizational commitment, work effort and work-to-family enrichment. Background: There is substantial research on the effects of work alienation on passive job performance, such as organizational commitment. However,...

In this chapter, we explore the pressures faced by professionals when implementing public policy programs. This is relevant, as many of the pressures exerted on professionals are related to the policies that are implemented (Duyvendak et al. 2006; Freidson 2001). This chapter will specifically focus...

Many professionals show resistant to implement changes, such as new governmental policies. This can have severe consequences for organizational and policy performance. However, there is no theoretical framework for analyzing this topic. We build a theoretical framework of ‘policy...

Currently, there is an intense debate on the pressures facing public professionals in service delivery. Several studies show increasing discontent among professionals toward policies they have to implement. In this article, we aim to contribute to this topic by analyzing this discontent of...

The willingness of public professionals to implement policy programmes is important for achieving policy performance. However, few scholars have developed and tested systematic frameworks to analyze this issue. In this study, we address this by building and testing an appropriate framework. The...

A large portion of the everyday discourse about leadership and leaders takes it for granted that leaders make a big difference in terms of performance. The football managers discussion is one clear example, the wider fascination with business leaders likewise marks this association – and so...

Public service delivery in the contemporary American state is becoming increasingly challenging. As the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) shows, new social policies combine high technological and cognitive demands on citizens and government with budget austerity, decentralization...

This study examines the attributes of organizational rules that influence rule following. Rule following fosters organizational effectiveness by aligning individual behaviors with organizational preference. While a range of theoretical explanations has been offered for rule following, the...

Street-level bureaucrats implementing public policies have a certain degree of autonomy – or discretion – in their work. Following Lipsky, discretion has received wide attention in the policy implementation literature. However, scholars have not developed theoretical frameworks regarding the...