Kristina S. Weißmüller

• Doctor of Business Administration
• Professor (Assistant) at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

To err is human and learning from mistakes is essential for finding viable solutions to grand societal challenges through development and innovation. Yet, public organizations often exhibit a punitive zero-error culture, and public employees are stereotyped as error and risk-averse. Little is known about the underlying behavioral mechanisms that de...

Theory and evidence from the behavioral science literature suggest that the widespread and rising use of lingua francas in the workplace may impact the ethical decision-making of individuals who must use foreign languages at work. We test the impact of foreign language usage on individuals’ susceptibility to bribery in workplace settings using a vi...

In an increasingly complex and interconnected world, managing risks is crucial for organizational survival and success. A well-defined risk governance framework integrates risk management into various aspects of the organizational structure, aligning risk-taking and risk aversion with an organization’s mission, values, and strategic goals to enhanc...

While it is known that life events are predictive for psychological and physiological illnesses, empirical research on the relationship between private life events and their effect on work-related outcomes in a public sector context is scarce. Based on the extended job demands-resources model, this study argues that experiencing private life events...

Digital-era governance is one of the central challenges of the twenty-first century and marks a fundamental paradigm shift in public administration. Based on the concepts of collaborative capacity and organizational maturity for co-creation, this study explores the factors that determine municipal administrations’ capacity to engage in digitalizati...

Theory suggests that selfless prosocial behaviors originate from motives grounded in tangible, motivational, and psychological resources, which can be activated to stimulate volunteering and charitable giving. This study investigates how individuals’ social capital may serve as such a resource; it explores the peculiar role of the strategic pursuit...

Public sector corruption is one of the most pressing unresolved issues of our time. Based on the Theory of Planned Behavior, this study examines the psychological and contextual mechanisms that allow individuals to psychologically rationalize their engagement in administrative corruption. By conducting a systematic literature review of 93 studies,...

Moral licensing refers to the paradoxical effect that individuals derive moral justification for deviant behavior from prior moral actions. As a form of moral disengagement, moral licensing is one of the psychological micro-foundations of deviant behavior in the public sector that manifests in various forms, such as rule violation, corruption, and...

Bribery is a complex and critical issue in higher education (HE), causing severe economic and societal harm. Traditionally, most scholarship on HE corruption has focused on institutional factors in developing countries and insights into the psychological and motivational factors that drive HE bribery on the micro-level mechanisms are virtually non-...

Workforce diversity is a key objective of public personnel policies worldwide. We augment this discourse by exploring the complementary and multifaceted concept of workforce homogeneity. This systematic literature review clarifies an elusive concept and reveals dominant causes and consequences of public sector workforce homogeneity, synthesizing ho...

A commonly held assumption is that public service motivation (PSM) positively affects individuals' attraction to government, but there are also private and nonprofit organizations that are beneficial to the common good. Therefore, the goal of this study is to shed light on an understudied topic in Public Administration, namely, how the public value...

Algorithms have become increasingly relevant in supporting human resource (HR) management, but their application may entail psychological biases and unintended side effects on employee behavior. This study examines the effect of the type of HR decision (i.e., promoting or dismissing staff) on the likelihood of delegating these HR decisions to an al...

Theory suggests that selfless prosocial behaviors originate from motives grounded in tangible, motivational, and psychological resources, which can be activated to stimulate volunteering and charitable giving. This study investigates how individuals’ social capital may serve as such a resource; it explores the peculiar role of the strategic pursuit...

Cross-sectoral strategic negotiation is a key challenge in PPPs. Based on framing and game theory, we investigate the effect of sectoral agency, affect, and bargaining domain on sectoral agents' bargaining behaviour in a PPP renegotiation scenario. Results confirm that public agents are more likely to bargain for satisfactory, ‘good enough’ contrac...

Effective leadership is as essential for institutions of higher education as it is for all organizations. Updating Bryman’s (2007) systematic review, the current study conducts a systematic analysis of the discourse on leadership on the department level. Results show that Bryman’s (2007) original aspects still resonate loudly in the discourse ten y...

Bribery is a complex and critical issue in higher education (HE), causing severe economic and societal harm. Traditionally, most scholarship on HE corruption has focused on institutional factors in developing countries and insights into the psychological and motivational factors that drive HE bribery on the micro-level mechanisms are virtually non-...

Im letzten Teil der Falltexte des Buches widmen sich vier Praxisfälle Führungs- und Personalfragen im Kontext von öffentlichen Organisationen und ein Fall analysiert eine ethische Entscheidungssituation. Dieser vierte Praxisfall thematisiert die Identifikation von befristet Beschäftigten mit ihrer Arbeitgeberorganisation und geht der Frage nach, ob...

In diesem Teil zum Thema Organisation der Verwaltung geht es um die Erarbeitung von Organisationsalternativen im bürokratischen Umfeld, in Zusammenarbeit mit Netzwerkpartnern und zur Steigerung der Effizienz und Effektivität. In der sechsten Fallstudie werden anhand von zwei ausgewählten Bundesämtern die spezifischen Herausforderungen von Vernetzun...

Die Theorieblöcke zu den Fallstudien im Teil „Organisation der Verwaltung“ befassen sich mit folgenden Themen: Public Private Partnership, Public Corporate Governance, zielgerichtete interorganisationale Netzwerke, Bürokratie in der öffentlichen Verwaltung, Grundlagen der Personalorganisation sowie Netzwerke als hybride Organisationsform. Der nachf...

Die Theorieblöcke zu den Fallstudien im Teil „Führung und Personal“ befassen sich mit folgenden Themen: Krisenkommunikation, Personalfreistellung im Rahmen des Change Managements, Führung von Mitarbeitenden, organisationale Identifikation sowie ethische Entscheidungsfindung. Der nachfolgende Theorieblock befasst sich mit dem Thema der organisationa...

Bribery is a complex phenomenon rooted in both individual motives and the greater institutional context. Experimental research into causal mechanisms that drive bribing behavior is still scarce. To date, there is no empirical evidence on how the society-regarding motivational survey measure of Public Service Motivation (PSM) and the other-oriented...

Anti-public stereotypes suggest that public agents are more likely to shun risk and tolerate delay vis-à-vis private agents. Based on context dependency of administrative behaviour, this study reports experimental evidence from 22,800 choice tasks exploring the effects of publicness as a mental frame for individual risk judgement. Decision makers a...

We theorize that people with high Public Service Motivation (PSM) are especially prone to engage in prosocial rule-breaking (PSRB) behavior, which ultimately leads to discriminatory practices, particularly for clients associated with positive affect. We conduct an original vignette study in three countries (Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands) wi...

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) have become widespread in the delivery of public services. This study explores behavioral mechanisms of building and eroding trust in partnering across sectors at the micro-level of interaction between public and private partners. It suggests that partners’ sector affiliation can have adverse signaling effects on...

While most gamblers spend moderate amounts of money, a few spend much more. This leads to spending being concentrated among a small number of players. Building on a body of literature that shows disproportionate spending by problem gamblers, we hypothesize that problem gambling causes such concentration. We investigate this hypothesis empirically b...

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) have become widespread in the delivery of public services. This paper explores cognitive and behavioral mechanisms of partnering across sectors at the micro-level of interaction between public and private partners. We argue that role framings of partners as public or private can have adverse signaling effects on i...