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Since its inception, Public Service Motivation (PSM) has been recognized as a key driver of behavior in public institutions. Despite its prominence, skepticism has emerged. In response, research has primarily focused on empirical analysis and measurement refinement rather than on conceptual development. This conceptual path dependency has become problematic as mixed empirical results increasingly challenge core theoretical propositions of PSM theory. We argue that one potential cause lies in a dominant assumption shaping the field: its positioning within motivation theory. To address this, we conducted a problematizing review across concepts and disciplines, comparing how PSM is understood in Public Administration with related concepts–such as motivation, altruism, and identity–in Management, Psychology, Sociology, and Economics. Based on this analysis, we propose a novel theoretical framework that reconceptualizes PSM as a social identity. In doing so, we outline a research agenda that (i) revises PSM’s core conceptual features and develops a new measurement approach informed by identity theory; (ii) introduces new ways of understanding PSM's functioning through identity work theory; and (iii) situates PSM theory within the broader debate on the “identity turn” in motivation research, highlighting its potential contribution to this multidisciplinary discourse.

The street-level bureaucracy literature shows that frontline workers’ decisions about clients are shaped by perceptions of deservingness based on clients’ demographic characteristics and behavioral conduct. Yet, we know little about whether frontline workers also act on clients’ financial resources and mental health, despite the administrative burden literature identifying these two factors as central to how citizens experience compliance demands. We contribute to both literatures by developing and testing preregistered hypotheses that examine how information about clients’ financial resources and mental health shapes frontline workers’ burden reduction and client prioritization. To do this, we run a large-scale vignette experiment with 775 caseworkers across 39 Danish unemployment agencies, manipulating client age, financial situation, mental health, and motivation but holding gender constant (all clients were male). We find strong evidence that caseworkers reduce burdens and prioritize clients with mental health issues and–consistent with prior work–clients displaying high motivation, alongside some evidence for clients struggling with financial hardship. Importantly, mental health appears more consequential than motivation and financial resources. Contrary to our preregistered expectation, clients with mental health issues received the most support when they also displayed low as opposed to high motivation. Rather than indicating that frontline workers reward low motivation, this pattern most likely reflects that caseworkers interpret low motivation as a symptom of the underlying condition, and thus as a signal of greater need. Our findings show how frontline discretion can operate as a redistributive mechanism that channels support toward clients signaling the greatest need.

While existing research has examined procedural and informational sources of administrative burden, this paper examines how organizational design choices about the geographic location of administrative authority institutionalize spatial burdens on firms. We leverage China's decentralization reform in trademark registration services as a natural experiment to test this theory. This reform reduced geographic distance by establishing local acceptance windows across the country from 2016 to 2019. Prior to this reform, trademark applications had to be submitted exclusively at the centralized Beijing office, imposing substantial geographic barriers on firms nationwide. Using a unique dataset covering over 37 million trademark applications from 294 Chinese cities, we employ a staggered difference-in-differences approach to estimate the causal effects of reduced geographic distance on trademark filings. We find that establishing local acceptance windows increased trademark applications by approximately 4.4 percent, or roughly 209,000 additional filings in 2019 alone. Moreover, the reform generated compound distributional outcomes: small and medium-sized enterprises responded more strongly than larger firms, and the new applicants drawn into the trademark system were concentrated in cities with thinner infrastructure. Mechanism analysis confirms that this increase is primarily driven by distance reduction rather than improvements in administrative efficiency or reductions in corruption. The findings provide large-scale causal evidence on the behavioral consequences of redistributing administrative service delivery across space, demonstrating that physical accessibility remains crucial for equitable service uptake even amid the digital transformation of administrative services.

The expansion of mixed-provider welfare systems has intensified debates about the consequences of public, nonprofit, and for-profit provision. Existing research focuses primarily on efficiency, service quality, and citizens' outcomes, while less is known about ownership conversions’ consequences for employees. We depart from research suggesting that ownership conversions can disrupt employee-organization value congruence as well as change the incentive structures. Leveraging population-wide administrative data from Norwegian childcare services (2015-2019), we examine whether ownership conversions are associated with changes in employee sickness absence. Using a staggered difference-in-differences design, we find that sickness absence increases following nonprofit-to-for-profit conversions. At the same time, public-to-for-profit transitions show little consistent relationship with sickness absence. These findings suggest that employee responses to ownership change are shaped less by the public-private divide than by differences in organizational missions and values. More broadly, the study highlights organizational value congruence as a potential mechanism linking ownership arrangements to employee well-being, and suggests that the nonprofit-for-profit boundary may be more consequential for employees than the conventional public-private divide.

Effective administration of public organizations requires timely responses to emerging risks, yet communicating those risks up the hierarchy can expose operational managers to blame in politicized accountability environments. This study examines how public managers navigated that tension in an analysis of 130 risk reports filed over a seven-year period associated with two major procurement and maintenance projects in the Danish Defence. Using an abductive qualitative approach, we develop a dynamic model of risk management with four phases: (1) risk as an operational concern, (2) turning risk into an organizational problem, (3) assigning blame and accountability, and (4) initiating mitigation and response. We find that risk and accountability communication are interdependent processes rather than independent sequential processes. Operational managers attempt to raise awareness of emerging risks while simultaneously deflecting potential blame and catering to higher-level concerns about public scrutiny. This tension generates pressure to only report when it is absolutely necessary, while higher-level managers often postpone action to avoid political exposure. These practices contribute to delays, projects not meeting specifications, and significant budget overruns. The study advances a dynamic theory of public sector risk management and explains how hierarchical communication practices influence whether, when, and how emerging risks are addressed.

Public participation is widely recognized as an important component of democratic governance, yet empirical studies often evaluate participation by the methods employed rather than the institutional structures through which participation is organized within administrative processes. Drawing on an analysis of 289 local jurisdictions receiving federal block grants, this study examines participation as structured administrative practice rather than simply a collection of engagement methods. Using inductive analysis of Consolidated Plans, the study develops a typology of four participation structures: Minimal Compliance, Structured Consultation, Institutionalized Consultation, and Embedded Participation. The analysis identifies recurring patterns in how participation is institutionally organized and incorporated into planning and administrative decision-making processes. While jurisdictions frequently employ multiple participation methods beyond required public hearings, participation is most commonly structured through consultative arrangements rather than embedded forms of engagement. Participation structures are only modestly associated with population category, region, or administrative capacity, suggesting that variation reflects administrative choices in the design and implementation of participation processes. By shifting attention from participation methods to participation structures, the study provides a framework for understanding how local governments organize public participation in practice. More broadly, the findings suggest that participation is shaped not only by the engagement methods governments employ but also by the institutional arrangements through which participation is organized, highlighting participation as an administrative practice shaped by organizational design and discretion.

Local police officers are among the most prominent frontline public servants, interacting daily with people, communities, and other agencies and stakeholders. They are, in the most literal sense, street-level bureaucrats. These interactions were greatly tested in the summer of 2020. Police managed – or in some cases refused to manage – enforcement orders for a global pandemic while at the same time policing in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd. This article explores how officers in three local jurisdictions navigated these dual, compounding crises – which we can certainly expect many more of in the future – and the implications for police interactions, discretion (including de-policing) and job satisfaction. The article concludes with a discussion of how police leaders, local officials and community advocates can better support law enforcement professionals during times of crises.

Government workers often take shortcuts when making decisions about delivering public services. When these shortcuts are influenced by stereotypes or bias, citizens may receive unequal treatment. This research examines whether bureaucrats in U.S. housing authorities and parks departments discriminate based on citizen political ideology. Using a pre-registered 2 × 3 email audit experiment ( n = 974), we test whether responsiveness varies when citizens signal conservative views, liberal views, or no political views. The results show that street-level bureaucrats are more likely to respond to citizens signaling conservative views than to citizens with no stated political views. Responsiveness does not differ between citizens signaling liberal views and citizens with no stated political views. However, when a reply is provided, citizens signaling liberal views receive more helpful responses. Interaction models suggest that responsiveness to citizens signaling liberal views differs across public housing authorities and parks departments. These findings suggest that political ideology may shape bureaucratic responsiveness in ways that have implications for fairness in public service delivery.

As public service delivery increasingly involves non-governmental actors, public administration theory needs to examine how its core frameworks operate beyond traditional bureaucracies. This study extends representative bureaucracy theory to private philanthropy, an increasingly crucial actor in local public service delivery, by testing whether racial representation in leadership corresponds with equitable grantmaking outcomes. Analyzing longitudinal data from 912 U.S. community foundations between 2012 and 2016, this study finds that racial representation in foundation leadership corresponds with increased grantmaking to organizations serving communities of color when leadership retains sufficient discretion, but that this relationship weakens as donor control rises, particularly through donor advised funds. These patterns are consistent with representative bureaucracy theory's emphasis on discretion as a key mechanism linking passive and active representation. These findings advance theoretical understanding by illuminating the interplay between representation and discretion within private philanthropy, while carrying implications for equitable resource distribution as public services increasingly involve non-governmental actors.

Democratic accountability assumes that the citizens who bear the costs of government decisions can sanction the officials who make them. We identify a structural break in this assumption. When a city funds itself through taxes that fall partly on nonresidents (highway travelers, commuters, and regional shoppers who cannot vote in local elections) the electoral link between bearing costs and imposing sanctions weakens. Analyzing two decades of Texas municipal data (2000–2019) with two-way fixed effects and generalized synthetic control methods, we find that cities better positioned to shift costs onto nonvoters raise resident fiscal exposure more, after they adopt dedicated local sales taxes. This pattern is strongest for cities on or near major metropolitan areas and highways, whereas geographically isolated cities, where residents bear nearly all costs, show little change. It reverses the relief that classical tax-exportation theory predicts and reveals an accountability gap that funds discretionary fiscal expansion. The gap proves temporary: fiscal outcomes across contexts converge within six to thirteen years. Geography, we conclude, shapes democratic accountability as powerfully as electoral rules.

Mental health care professionals have faced increased work pressure and moral stress since the implementation of bureaucratic and NPM policies. We interviewed Dutch psychologists to investigate how they cope, using Hirschman’s Exit , Voice , and Loyalty framework. Reflecting the solitary nature of their work, many psychologists developed individual approaches, creatively alternating between strategies to relieve pressure. Inadvertently, this contributes to a situation where issues are insufficiently problematized to induce change, while professionals themselves grow more cynical. We recommend system changes to protect professionals’ moral engagement and support collective strategies to address problems effectively and achieve necessary improvements.

Poverty remains a persistent global challenge driven by social inequality, limited access to essential services, and environmental risks. Despite progress in reducing extreme poverty, inclusive and sustainable alleviation requires effective governance, infrastructure development, and multidimensional policy interventions. This study employs a mixed-methods review design that combines bibliometric analysis with a systematic literature review (SLR) using the PRISMA framework. The bibliometric analysis was conducted on 1,017 records retrieved from Scopus to examine publication trends, geographical patterns, key contributors, and thematic evolution, while the SLR synthesized 51 eligible peer-reviewed articles published between 2015 and 2024 for in-depth examination of governance, infrastructure, policy interventions, and multidimensional poverty. Findings reveal growing scholarly attention, with China leading empirical research and Western countries advancing conceptual and methodological innovations. Bibliometric mapping identifies emerging signals related to big data-driven analysis, climate and environmental risks, social inclusion, gender, and targeted poverty alleviation, and the SLR indicates that gender-related research remains substantively underrepresented. The study highlights a shift from rural development toward interdisciplinary, evidence-based, and context-sensitive approaches, offering insights for policymakers and researchers in advancing strategies aligned with Sustainable Development Goal 1 (No Poverty).

This empirical study investigates the implementation patterns of freedom of information (FOI) publicity within small municipalities. These municipalities, characterized by limited financial and human resources, are likely to face substantial challenges in executing national policies. Our analysis leverages data collected from an examination of the official websites of a specific sample of Italian municipalities. Utilizing hierarchical cluster and regression analysis techniques, our findings underscore the critical challenges in the FOI publicity implementation among small municipalities

Variation in safety net participation in the United States exists across states and demographic groups, but it is stark among programs. Although the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) reaches around 80% of those eligible, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) reaches only around 20% of families in poverty. This study analyzes semi-structured interviews with nine SNAP recipients who appear to be eligible for TANF to explore the reasons some households choose to apply SNAP but not TANF. Findings highlight the differences in administrative burden present in each program, and the compliance costs of TANF that outweigh the benefits for some families.

This study aims to address a core theoretical and practical question: Under the dual constraints of institutional limitations and resource scarcity, how does the Communist Youth League, as a mass organization, actively produce service spaces to fulfill its service functions? To explore this question, our analysis integrates Lefebvre’s theory of space production with the institutional logics perspective to construct an analytical framework of “institutional logics–empowerment structure–organizational space production.” Through a case analysis of the “Youth Homeland” project in City G, this study finds that the Communist Youth League is not passively constrained by institutional environments and resource limitations. Instead, it proactively leverages its “structural hole” advantage at the intersection of multiple institutional logics—political, social, and professional—by employing a combined strategy of administrative empowerment, social empowerment, and technological empowerment to secure critical resources for the production of service spaces. Among these, administrative empowerment defines the core boundaries and legitimacy of service spaces, social empowerment expands their peripheral boundaries and resource networks, and technological empowerment reshapes the processes and effectiveness of service delivery. The investigation further reveals that institutional logics determine the empowerment structure, the integration of institutional factors opens windows of opportunity for space production, and institutional changes drive the transformation and restructuring of service spaces. The article’s theoretical contribution lies in expanding the study of organizational space production from an internal material analysis to an external social field perspective. It introduces “institution,” “agency,” and “co-production” into organizational space research, uncovering the micro-mechanisms through which mass organizations strategically employ empowerment to expand their action spaces by leveraging institutional logics in an authoritarian context. This offers a new analytical perspective for understanding the service functions and transformation of mass organizations and similar institutions in contemporary China.