Seung-Ho An

The University of Arizona | UA · School of Government and Public Policy

This article explores how various dimensions of market structure, often used to measure organizational crowding, affect the fiscal health of nonprofit organizations. Using 2011 National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS) nonprofit sector data, our findings generally support population ecology’s model of a curvilinear relationship between densi...

Government agencies carry reputations in the public imagination. Agency names, images, and icons help form a brand that conveys information about that agency's competency in a given area of public policy. This article brings the concept of consumer-based brand equity from business marketing to public administration research on agency reputation. Li...

This study reports on the effectiveness of a year-long field experiment involving training in transformational and transactional leadership in the public and private sectors. Using before and after training assessments by employees of several hundred Danish leaders, the analysis shows that transformational leadership training is associated with inc...

This study examines whether the public holds biased perceptions of public organizations (hospitals) in the United States and whether organizations get credit for positive results from program evaluations. Using an experimental design that replicates Hvidman and Andersen’s (2016) Danish study, we find no negative public sector biases in the US, but...

This article examines the effects of voluntary, involuntary, and absolute turnover rates on organizational performance. Adopting human capital and cost-benefit theories, this article posits that voluntary and involuntary turnover would have a linear negative and an inverted U-shaped relationship with organizational performance, respectively, and th...

How public participation shapes effective and equitable service outcomes has been extensively discussed but rarely tested in the public administration literature. This article examines how parent participation in schools affects overall student performance and whether socially marginalized students benefit more or less when schools involve greater...

This paper advances the theory of turnover and performance in public organizations, incorporating labor market conditions and quality of labor. In doing so, we first present theories on optimal turnover rates, based on a cost-benefit theoretical framework. We then discuss how optimal turnover rates in public organizations change according to labor...

Leadership training is key to promoting more active leadership, but the effects of leadership training can depend on the gender context. Gender congruence between manager and employee can affect how the manager employs leadership behaviors adapted from training and how employees perceive leadership behavior. Quantitative data on 474 managers’ 4,833...

The representative bureaucracy literature focuses on how passive representation translates into substantive benefits for the represented individuals. Although scholars have found substantial empirical support for representation based on gender, most studies have examined the United States, a country with high levels of democracy and gender equality...

This article examines the effects of board turnover on nonprofit financial performance: resource acquisition and utilization. Governing board members play key roles in connecting organizations with external environments and ensuring that executives properly manage the organizations to achieve organizational missions. They also help in effectively a...

Manipulation checks in behavioral public administration are commonly used and reported to determine if the experimental and control group have received different treatments. This paper uses three experiments to argue that manipulation checks for experimental treatments can have secondary benefits that can be used to improve the quality of experimen...

There is a huge gap between how employees see leaders’ behavior and how leaders see themselves regardless of sector and functional area. Because this gap can be a serious problem in managing organizations, scholars have investigated how the gap can be reduced. This article focuses on leadership training and tests whether and under what conditions i...

This study examines gender differences in leadership behaviors and whether leadership training would have different effects on leadership behaviors by gender. Using data from several hundred managers of welfare and financial agencies in Denmark, we first investigate whether leadership behaviors differ between female and male leaders. After that, we...

There is a huge gap between how employees see leaders' behavior and how leaders see themselves regardless of sector and functional area. Because this gap can be a serious problem in managing organizations, scholars have investigated how the gap can be reduced. This article focuses on leadership training and tests whether and under what conditions i...

This study investigates whether the public perceives nonprofit organizations as different from private for-profit and public organizations and whether introducing new performance management systems would provide positive credits to the organization. Using two randomized survey experiments on US hospitals (one with an adult sample and the other with...

This article investigates whether citizens’ evaluations of service performance are related to archival measures of performance, and how institutional context shapes this relationship contingent on administrative autonomy – standards, human resources, and financial autonomy. Using cross-national education data, this study finds that student performa...

This study investigates whether the public perceives nonprofit organizations as different from private for-profit and public organizations and whether introducing new performance management systems would provide positive credits to the organization. Using two randomized survey experiments on US hospitals (one with an adult sample and the other with...

This study investigates linear and nonlinear effects of job tenure on organizational performance and explores how administrators' job tenure can moderate the relationship between three key managerial strategies-innovative management, participatory management, and external management-and performance. Using archival performance indicators available f...

The interaction between leaders and employees plays a key role in determining organizational outcomes and performance. Although human resources management literature posits positive effects of leadership behaviors on employee job satisfaction, the causal path between the two is unclear due to potential endogeneity issues inherent in this relationsh...

Interdependence in the decision-making or behaviors of various organizations and administrators is often neglected in the study of public administration. Failing to account for such interdependence risks an incomplete understanding of the choices made by these actors and agencies. As such, we show how researchers analyzing cross-sectional or time-s...

Mixed findings on the impact of strategy on performance suggest that it is necessary to investigate the causal relationship between strategy and performance. We theorize that past negative performance may motivate public managers to be defenders, which will enable them to focus on core tasks. Using Texas school district data, we explore the reverse...

Members are the most important stakeholders in membership organizations; their involvement can enhance organizational effectiveness, accountability, and legitimacy. Previous literature, however, has primarily explored these concepts by focus-ing on staff involvement or client participation. This paper examines the determinants of members' involveme...