Public perceptions of the administrative values tradeoff: Bureaucratic and democratic ethos

Meier, Kenneth ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6378-0855 and Jo, Suyeon 2024. Public perceptions of the administrative values tradeoff: Bureaucratic and democratic ethos. Public Administration 10.1111/padm.13041

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Abstract

Scholarly debate over bureaucratic and democratic values has been one of the fundamental questions in the field of public administration. Despite a volume of theoretical discussions, we know little about how the general public cares about these two sets of administrative values in practice. This research fills the gap in the literature by investigating the public's views on four administrative values: effectiveness and efficiency, as well as equity and participation. We also test whether there is a tradeoff between bureaucratic and democratic values. We conducted a vignette experiment using the context of US nursing homes where different administrative values (effectiveness, efficiency, equity, and participation) serve as treatment manipulations. Our findings suggest that the public considers different values in assessing public organizations, and that they recognize the trade-off between efficiency and participation. The study has broad implications for our understanding of ethical frameworks of public administration, namely bureaucratic and democratic ethos.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	In Press
Schools:	Business (Including Economics)
Publisher:	Wiley
ISSN:	1467-9299
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	19 September 2024
Date of Acceptance:	17 September 2024
Last Modified:	28 Oct 2024 09:23
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/172278

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