Can Public Leadership Increase Public Service Motivation and Job Performance?

Abstract

To advance understanding of leadership in the public sector, this article examines the link between accountability, rule‐following, political loyalty, and network governance approaches to leadership and employees' public service motivation (PSM) and individual job performance. Using a sample of 300 civil servants and their 64 managers in China, the study finds that accountability, rule‐following, political loyalty, and network governance leadership are all significantly positively related to employees' PSM levels and job performance. The results of multilevel modeling show that network governance leadership has the strongest positive relationship with both PSM and job performance, suggesting that managers should encourage public employees to initiate and maintain contacts outside their organizations to access relevant information, technical expertise, and resources that may be not be available internally.

Responding to COVID-19: Community volunteerism and coproduction in China

“…Following swiftly on the pandemic’s heels was a wave of volunteers, often recruited via mobile apps, to support and extend official efforts, engage in urgent on-the-ground tasks ranging from emergency transport and the delivery of food, masks, and medicine to vulnerable populations, and provide logistical support for frontline medical staff. In recent years, China’s government has come to realize the value of leveraging civil society organizations to deliver social services, meet public needs, and strengthen its own legitimacy ( Moore, 2019 , Schwarz, Eva, & Newman, 2020 ). As a result, volunteerism in China has gradually gained momentum since the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake, the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and the 2010 Shanghai World Expo ( Cheung, Lo, & Liu, 2012 ).…”

Linkage between Leaders’ Behaviour in Performance Management, Organisational Justice and Work Engagement in Public Sector

“…This paper belongs to the last stream of research addressing some of these benefits such as the outcomes of performance management. By focusing on goal setting and feedback as the components of leaders' behaviour in performance management, the paper emphasises the role played by line managers as leaders (Schwarz et al 2020), and argues that performance management is a much broader concept in comparison to performance appraisal (Aguinis 2014).…”

A Framework for Government Response to Social Media Participation in Public Policy Making: Evidence from China

“…Given the rising trend in online political participation, there remains relatively little understanding in the literature of how government responsiveness varies across regions, among countries, and over time. As official attitudes continue to adapt in China and participation increasingly is viewed as a means that can provide legitimacy to the one-party system (Schwarz et al, 2020), it would be useful to observe how response modes continue to evolve from the findings in this study, especially in the wake of public crises, such as the coronavirus. Beyond China, governments both east and west face similar challenges.…”