This article presents the findings from a survey of public and private sector managers' perceptions of the formal and informal red tape encountered in their organizations. Formal red tape is perceived to be the result of personnel procedures, whereas the informal red tape is perceived as the constraint caused by the informal influence of the media, public opinion, political parties, and public officials. The article thereby also provides a partial test of the voluminous traditional literature containing assertions that public organizations experience more red tape than private organizations and the contemporary literature containing assertions that private organizations experience equivalent or greater red tape than public organizations. Going beyond typical public-private comparisons that do not consider the consequences of sector differences, the impact of personnel and informal red tape on a significant dependent variable-worker motivation-also is explored in this article.

This article reports the findings from a study that investigates the relationship between ethical climates and police whistle-blowing on five forms of misconduct in the State of Georgia. The results indicate that a friendship or team climate generally explains willingness to blow the whistle, but not the actual frequency of blowing the whistle. Instead, supervisory status, a control variable investigated in previous studies, is the most consistent predictor of both willingness to blow the whistle and frequency of blowing the whistle. Contrary to popular belief, the results also generally indicate that police are more inclined than civilian employees to blow the whistle in Georgia – in other words, they are less inclined to maintain a code of silence. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2007Ethical Climate Theory, whistle-blowing, code of silence, Georgia, United States,

There are several differences between the public and private sectors which are referred to frequently in the public administration literature. However, there are few studies which verify these differences. This article reports the findings from a study of three “classic” differences between the public and private sectors that are relevant to public personnel management. It also examines the impact of these differences on employee motivation. The findings indicate that the classic differences do exist, but are not as substantial as the literature would lead one to believe. They also indicate the public-private differences do not have a substantial impact on employee motivation.

This article presents the results of a study that investigates ethical climate theory and eight contextual predictors of willingness to blow the whistle and frequency of whistle-blowing on seven forms of misconduct. Although three of the ethical climates investigated demonstrate relationships with whistle-blowing intentions and actions, the ethical climates generally fail to predict whistle-blowing consistently. Instead, supervisory status emerges as the most consistent predictor of intentions and behaviors. Contrary to popular belief, civilian status also demonstrates significant negative relationships with whistle-blowing. Police are less inclined than civilian employees to maintain a code of silence.

This article reports the findings from a study that investigates predictors of police willingness to blow the whistle and police frequency of blowing the whistle on seven forms of misconduct. It specifically investigates the capacity of nine policy and structural variables to predict whistle-blowing. The results indicate that two variables, a policy mandating the reporting of misconduct and supervisory status, surface as the most consistent predictors of whistle-blowing. Contrary to popular belief, the results also show that police are slightly less inclined than civilian public employees to subscribe to a code of silence.