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The Relationship Between Public Service Values and Administrative Involvement in Policymaking

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Abstract

This study empirically examines the relationship between public service values and city managers’ involvement in policymaking in an effort to uncover which values are more instrumental in encouraging city managers to engage in particular areas of policymaking. The data for this study were collected from a national sample of city managers across the United States in 2011. This study employs factor and regression analyses. The results show that public service values such as knowledge, collaboration, fiscal realism, and stewardship encourage city managers to get involved in a greater number of areas of the policymaking process. The findings are discussed in light of the contemporary public administration literature with implications for public affairs education.

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Notes

  1. Principal Component Analysis with Varimax rotation method was used. The extracted factors account for the 63 % of the variance.

  2. Principal Component Analysis with Varimax rotation method was used. The extracted factors account for 61 % of the variance. Note that policy formulation and goal setting / resource allocation, treated as distinct constructs in our literature review, did not form two discrete factors in the statistical analysis, so we decided to keep them as one factor. In the end, all these policy activities are instrumental in setting policy direction for communities.

  3. Regression analysis assumes normal distribution of data, linearity, and heteroskedasticity. In order to check these assumptions we examined the normality P-P plots, scatter plots, skewness and kurtosis values. No violation of any assumption was detected. We also reviewed the Variance Inflation Factors (VIF) and Tolerance values to make sure that there is no multicollinearity problem. All tolerance values were greater than 0.2 and all VIF values were smaller than 4.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Public Policy, Department of Public Administration, The University of Texas at San Antonio, 501 W. Cesar E. Chavez Blvd., San Antonio, TX, 78207, USA

    Tansu Demir, Christopher G. Reddick & Renée Nank

  2. Adler School of Professional Psychology, 17 North Dearborn Street, Chicago, IL 60602, USA

    Renée Nank

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  1. Tansu Demir
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  2. Christopher G. Reddick
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  3. Renée Nank
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Correspondence to Christopher G. Reddick.

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Demir, T., Reddick, C.G. & Nank, R. The Relationship Between Public Service Values and Administrative Involvement in Policymaking. Public Organiz Rev 15, 79–98 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11115-013-0251-x

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