Morgen Johansen

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa | UH Manoa · Public Administration Program

Researchers have focused on the role of managerial gender on attitudes toward diversity issues mainly in either the public or private sector, but there is little research that compares managerial attitudes on diversity across the public, private, and nonprofit sector. This paper identifies important distinctions among the sectors that may influence...

A rich literature focuses on how the external environment constrains managerial practice in large service organizations, much of which overlooks the differences between public, nonprofit, and private organizations. The present study identifies important distinctions between sectors and theorizes how managerial practices differ across sectors under...

Performance information (PI) is only valuable when decision makers use it to improve their organization. Despite its importance, evidence on PI use is still limited, particularly about PI use in different contexts and for specific purposes. This article examines managers’ use of PI for specific purposes (purposeful PI [PPI]) and compares cross-sect...

Public management scholars are interested in the ways that public managers can improve the performance of their organizations and, by extension, public service outcomes. However, public sector outcomes are increasingly being produced by nonprofit organizations. Nonprofits have encountered increased pressures to improve effectiveness in recent years...

International nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) provide essential aid and public services to less-developed countries. Although most literature focuses on Western INGOs, Asian INGOs have also become globally active. Little is known about what motivates INGOs to provide services in other regions, such as Latin America. In this study, we seek to...

Social equity is about asking who ought to get what and for whom is this programme good. With a focus on East Asia, this article examines how social equity is both conceptualised and put into practice outside of the Western context. An assessment of education and health care policy in China, Korea, and Singapore reveals four common themes about soc...

Inclusiveness occurs when employees are considered a part of critical organizational processes, which means that they have access to information (including information that may be passed around through informal networks), a connectedness to coworkers, and the ability to participate in and influence the decision-making process. With an organizationa...

A growing literature identifies the external environment as a key driver of diversity management in frontline public services. With many public services spanning the public, nonprofit, and private sectors, the degree to which ownership moderates the link between the environment and diversity management practice is an important area that has receive...

This essay provides a reflective commentary outlining Hawai’i’s unconventional response for employing a volunteer workforce of public servants when faced with the task of processing an unprecedented backlog of unemployment insurance claims triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Although efforts are still ongoing, this essay applies volunteerism and pu...

There is a growing body of research on the impact of purposeful performance information (PPI) use on organizational performance (Kroll, 2015a), but questions remain about how a top manager’s operating context may affect the relationship between PPI use and performance. In this study, we examine the relationship between top managers’ PPI use and per...

Johansen identifies and presents the various dimensions of social equity found in the literature, and reviews the current ways of measuring and defining social equity. The difference between equity and equality is delineated. The chapter then explores how individual values and discretion affect each person’s realization of social equity. Johansen c...

In this concluding chapter, Johansen discusses the most commonly mentioned disadvantaged groups in the preceding chapters. Common policy mechanisms used to address inequities, such as land use and housing, education, and health care are explored. After analyzing the information presented in each of the contributed chapters, Johansen puts forward a...

Johansen explores salient commonalities and distinctions of regions and countries in the Asia-Pacific region, notably legal and political systems, cultural values, historical events, and populations. After briefly discussing current global measures of inequality, such as the Human Development Index, the GINI coefficient, and the Gender Gap Index, a...

Johansen makes a persuasive case for a broader definition of social equity. Focusing on Western and Confucian values in particular, Johansen draws attention to salient differences in the relationship between society and government that influence understandings of equity. After briefly describing the four pillars of public administration, Johansen a...

Human resource management (HRM) has been shown to impact organizational performance, but more research is needed on particular human resource (HR) practices in nonprofits and their effect on performance. In this article, we explore one HRM practice argued to influence performance, employee engagement in decision‐making, examining whether involving...

Indigenous governments are growing in size and strength. As a result, indigenous issues are becoming more frequently and prominently in the public administration landscape. Whether it is natural resource management, culturally appropriate foster home placements, or eradicating known drug trafficking routes that cross tribal jurisdictions, there are...

An organization's external environment, such as an environmental shock, is of great concern to public management scholars because it influences the behavior and ability of public managers to improve organizational performance. In this study, we examine how collaborative networking with the purpose of preparing for a natural disaster moderates the n...

An increase in the availability of emergency contraception (EC) may lead to a decrease in the abortion rate. The 2006 Food and Drug Administration ruling, which relaxed the prescription requirement for EC for women aged 18 and older, allows us to apply the difference-in-difference methodology on the age-by-year-by-state abortion data to test this h...

This article examines the effect of the three publicness dimensions on inequality in health insurance coverage across 50 American state-level health care systems. The analysis validates a Gini-coefficient measure of Americans' unequal distribution of health insurance coverage across nine income groups and compares public ownership, financing, and c...

This paper empirically examines, at the organizational level, the impact of quality public managers on turnover. Quality managers can influence turnover through human capital management, budgeting, setting tasks and providing goals. However, their ability to affect turnover depends on managerial level, which in this study are the upper and middle l...

The external circumstances that organizations confront are an important influence upon their prospects of success. The resources available within the environment, the multiplicity of stakeholder demands to be addressed and the rates of change in these, each have serious implications for organizational functioning. Nevertheless, it remains conceivab...

This article presents an empirical study of the effect of middle manager quality on organizational performance. Using 6 years of data from more than 1,000 Texas school districts, the author finds that quality middle managers positively impact performance. In exploring the relationship between quality middle and upper managers, she finds that their...

In this manuscript, we explore the link between the publicness of organizations and social equity. Focusing on state health care systems in the U.S., we examine two theoretical dimensions of publicness: ownership of the system and source of financial resources. We then empirically assess if the publicness of a state's system leads to more equal acc...

Education is a powerful cognitive resource that undermines the persuasiveness of political propaganda. However, little is known about the conditions that weaken this resource. This study examines whether lopsided media coverage preceding and during the initial phases of the Iraq War provided an information environment sufficient to overcome the pos...

Little empirical work explores the impact of female managers on organizational performance. This paper uses Miles and Snow’s management strategies to empirically determine if female and male managers use different strategies and what influence these strategies have on organizational performance. Using data and superintendent survey responses from T...

Given the central importance of news media in providing the public with information about court decisions,this study examines variations in local and national media coverage of the Supreme Court decision on a Texas antisodomy law known as Lawrence v. Texas.The authors use content analysis of newspaper articles to test hypotheses concerning how medi...

Decision making is a central concept in the study of both politics and organizations. Although much research has examined how individuals make decisions, there has been substantially less work on the consequences of these decisions. My dissertation focuses on two groups of decision makers, candidates running for office and public managers, and the...