Hyun Hee Park

This study investigates the relationship between performance appraisal (PA) and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) among Korean government employees, integrating social exchange theory, prosocial values, and impression management perspectives. It analyzes how employees respond to PA’s perceived effectiveness, focusing on both direct and indirect effects of PA components alongside traditional OCB antecedents. Surveying 3,336 employees, the findings indicate positive correlations between performance feedback adequacy, PA fairness, and OCB, but a negative link with PA leniency. Organizational commitment emerged as a key mediator, especially between PA leniency, performance feedback frequency, and OCB. The study emphasizes the importance of a well-structured PA system to foster employee engagement in OCB.

Despite much research on how to foster innovation in public organizations, little research has been conducted at a workgroup level. Against this backdrop, this study examines how servant leadership, ethical climate, and performance-oriented climate jointly influence workgroup innovative behaviours in public organizations. The results of this study suggest that servant leadership and ethical climate have positive relationships with workgroup innovative behaviour in general. In addition, a performance-oriented climate was found to moderate the relationship between servant leadership and workgroup innovative behaviour.

This study explores the impacts of interpersonal networks of new managers on learning new roles from the social network perspective. This study draws on six waves of longitudinal data from a social network survey and semi-structured interviews collected from 22 new managers in a north-eastern state agency between October 2006 and May 2010. The analysis reveals that the interpersonal networks of new managers are particularly beneficial during the early period of role transition after the promotion. Second, managers organize interpersonal networks around role models who can provide valuable resources and feedback in a timely manner. Third, networks are gradually diversified into instrumental and expressive networks. Where the instrumental network tends to consist of multiplex ties with role models, the expressive network tends to shrink over time. The analysis highlights the instrumental values of one’s networks and the critical impact of role models during the managerial role transition process.

This article empirically explores the understanding and changes in the concept of administrative capacity in the Korean context. Despite a universal consensus on its importance, administrative capacity is defined differently by regimes and stakeholders (i.e. in this study: the public, members of the National Assembly, and academia). To improve our understanding of administrative capacity, we collected three types of texts (337 academic papers, 1470 National Assembly minutes, and 3316 newspaper articles from 2000 to 2019) and analyzed the data using topic modeling and text-network analysis methods. The results suggest that although academic articles emphasized leadership, manpower, education, and other policymaking capacities, the National Assembly stressed innovation capacity in solving different policy problems. Finally, the media, assumed to reflect public opinion, emphasized capacities related to national security. Points for practitioners: This study suggests that different types of administrative capacities could be needed according to the developmental stage of states. While managerial and administrative capacity should be developed in countries pursuing state-led economic development, governance capacity could be more requested in countries facing demands for democratization and meeting citizens’ various needs and participation.

The present study examines the antecedents of street-level bureaucrats’ work engagement. In particular, this study investigates whether a work-unit manager’s servant-leader orientation may, directly or indirectly, contribute to increasing subordinates’ work engagement by shaping employees’ resources (i.e., job autonomy, goal specificity, public service motivation [PSM], and organizational trust). Data collected from 416 street-level bureaucrats in Korean local government agencies and the analyzed results show that work-unit managers’ servant-leader orientation indirectly influence employees’ work engagement by developing employees’ positive perceptions and attitudes.

The current study attempts to examine Perry’s assertion that the public service motivation (PSM) of government employees may be influenced by the logic of appropriateness. Based on a survey of 596 Korean local government employees in 110 work groups, this study investigated the associations between ethical climate, servant leadership, and PSM. Multilevel structural equation models (SEM) were employed. At the individual level, ethical climate (i.e., efficiency, rule/law, independence) was significantly associated with PSM. However, at the work group level, ethical climate did not demonstrate a significant association with PSM. In addition, this study found that servant leadership is effective in helping government employees develop PSM at both the individual and work group levels.

This article explores how newly promoted managers develop emotional and social competencies to understand their and others’ emotions and then use this understanding for personal growth and in their interactions with others. This study draws on five waves of semistructured interview data collected from 16 newly promoted managers in a large northeastern state agency. The findings suggest that new managers undergo a developmental process—role exit, movement, and role entry—as they make the transition from individual contributors to managers. At each stage of the process, their emotional and social competence (ESC) facilitates learning and moving to the next stage. In addition, throughout the process, new managers develop their ESC and utilize the benefits in their daily decision-making and management behaviors. The findings also suggest that organizational context is an important factor that defines the contents of ESC in the organization. Based on these findings, this study argues that organizations should help new managers understand the emotional aspects of managerial transitions in developing their selection and training practices.