The Interaction of Politics and Management in Public Leadership: Measuring Public Political Skill and Assessing Its Effects Kai-Jo Fu

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2012 The Interaction of Politics and Management in Public Leadership: Measuring Public Political Skill and Assessing Its Effects Kai-Jo Fu

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COLLEGE OF SOCIAL SCIENCE & PUBLIC POLICY

THE INTERACTION OF POLITICS AND MANAGEMENT IN PUBLIC LEADERSHIP:

MEASURING PUBLIC POLITICAL SKILL AND ASSESSING ITS EFFECTS

KAI-JO FU

A Dissertation submitted to the ASKEW SCHOOL OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND POLICY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctoral of Philosophy

Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2012 Kai-Jo Fu defended this dissertation on June 12th, 2012.

The members of the supervisory committee were:

Kaifeng Yang Professor Directing Dissertation

Gerald R. Ferris University Representative

Frances S. Berry Committee Member

Ralph S. Brower Committee Member

The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements.

I dedicated this to my beloved parents for their unconditional support and love.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am really grateful to the people who help me achieve my goals and complete this dissertation during my academic journey. They are the charming gardeners who make my souls blossom. First, I would like to acknowledge the members of my dissertation committee: Dr. Frances Berry for all her keen advice and support throughout this project and my PhD. program, Dr. Ralph Brower for all his astute, kind, patient, and thoughtful guidance and Dr. Gerald Ferris for his amazing breadth and depth of knowledge and insightful comments. Special thanks to my chairman, Dr. Kaifeng Yang who has been an excellent guide for me throughout the years that I have spent in the PhD. program at Florida State University. You have believed in me and my abilities from the very beginning and guided me through several research projects that we are co-authoring. I would have never achieved what I have, without your guidance and assistance. I would also like to thank the director of the Florida Center for Public Management, Pro. Ben Green and his staff who help me complete data collection. I also appreciate the funding provided by Sweetie Cox for the whole project and the Public Administration and Policy Department faculty and staff for their help throughout my doctoral program. I also wish to express my gratitude to my many friends and colleagues, Kaiju Chang, Hongtao Yi, Susan Spice, Christy Smith, Taekyu Wang, Jessica Terman, Aisha Azhar, Zia Obzid, Will Hsieh, Veronica Hsu, Pingyin Cheng, Jiwon Nam, and Meggie Yu who are always standing by me and support me. They have filled my years in doctoral program with happiness, fun times and cherished memories. Finally, my entire family deserves a large portion of the credit for my achievements. I am most indebted to my parents, Yujiau Liang and Futsai Fu. Without their constant love and support, I would not be where I am.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Tables ...... vii List of Figures ...... viii Abstract ...... ix 1. CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION ...... 1 1.1 Background of the Study ...... 1 1.2 Purpose of the Study ...... 3 1.3 Significance of this Dissertation ...... 6 1.4 Organization of this Dissertation ...... 6 2. CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW ...... 8 2.1 Current Public Leadership Study ...... 9 2.1.1 The mission of public leadership ...... 9 2.1.2 The focus of public leadership ...... 11 2.2 Political Framework of Public Leadership ...... 13 2.3 The Political Context of Public Leadership ...... 19 2.3.1 Micro politics: organizational politics and political skill ...... 19 2.3.2 Macro politics: external political environments of public administration ...... 22 2.3.3 The challenges for public administrators ...... 27 2.4 Political Management in Public Organizations ...... 28 2.4.1 Agenda and policy making process ...... 28 2.4.2 Strategic management ...... 29 2.4.3 Collaborative management ...... 31 3. CHAPTER THREE POLITICAL DIMENSION OF PUBLIC LEADERSHIP: PUBLIC POLITICAL SKILL ...... 36 3.1 The Analysis of Political Management ...... 36 3.2 The Construct of Public Political Skill ...... 41 3.2.1 Political astuteness ...... 42 3.2.2 Inclusive skill ...... 44 3.2.3 Visionary skill ...... 45 3.3 Predictability of Public Political Skill ...... 47 3.3.1 The consequences of PPS ...... 47 3.3.2 The interactive effects of PPS...... 48 4. CHAPTER FOUR METHODOLOGY ...... 52 4.1 Survey Procedure ...... 52 4.1.1 Pilot study ...... 52 4.1.2 Survey participants ...... 53 4.2 Development of the Measurement Model ...... 54 4.2.1 Items for the dimension of political astuteness ...... 54 4.2.2 Items for the dimension of inclusive skill ...... 55 4.2.3 Items for the dimension of visionary skill ...... 56

4.3 Analytic Techniques and Phases ...... 57 4.3.1 Phase one...... 57 4.3.2 Phase two ...... 58 5. CHAPTER FIVE RESULTS ...... 61 5.1 Confirmatory Factor analysis ...... 61 5.1.1 Model specification ...... 61 5.1.2 Model evaluation for CFA analyses ...... 62 5.2 The Measurement of Political Skill Inventory (PSI) ...... 70 5.3 Distinctive Validity of PPS and PSI ...... 72 5.4 Predictive Validity of PPS ...... 78 5.4.1 Descriptive statistics and intercorrelations ...... 78 5.4.2 Analysis of hypotheses ...... 80 6. CHAPTER SIX DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION...... 90 6.1 Summary of Major Findings ...... 90 6.1.1 Finding concerning the construct validity of PPS ...... 90 6.1.2 Finding concerning the predictive validity of PPS ...... 91 6.2 Theoretical Contributions ...... 94 6.3 Implications for Practice ...... 95 6.4 Limitations and Future Research ...... 96 6.5 Conclusions ...... 97

APPEMDIX ...... 98 Appendix A Questionnaire ...... 98 Appendix B Cover letter for Questionnaire ...... 106 Appendix C Human Subjects Committee Approval ...... 107

REFERENCES ...... 109

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 122

LIST OF TABLES

2.1 Development of Administrative Political Skill in Three Managerial Settings ...... 32

3.1 Political Skill Inventory ...... 37

3.2 Managerial Political Behavior, Public Political Skill (PPS), and Political Skill Inventory (PSI) ...... 38

4.1 Political Astuteness Scale ...... 55

4.2 Inclusive Skill Scale ...... 56

4.3 Visionary Skill Scale ...... 57

5.1 Fit Indices in CFA for PPS: MLR (n=306)...... 64

5.2 Fit Indices in CFA for Each Latent Factor of PPS: MLR (n=306) ...... 65

5.3 Standardized Factor Loadings, Covariances, R-square Estimate for the Revised 15-item of PPS ...... 66

5.4 Fit Indices of Revised 15-item PPS in CFA: MLR (n=306) ...... 69

5.5 Fit indices in CFA for PSI: MLR (n=306) ...... 71

5.6 Items of Public Political Skill (n=14) with Intended Sub-scale ...... 73

5.7 Means, Standard Deviations, Coefficient Alpha Reliabilities, and Intercorrelations ...... 79

5.8 Results of Multiple Regression Analysis for the Impact of the PPS and PSI on Job Promotion ...... 81

5.9 Results of Multiple Regression Analysis for the Impact of the PPS and PSI on Job Satisfaction ...... 82

5.10 Results of Multiple Regression Analysis for the Impact of 3-dimension of the PPS on Job Satisfaction ...... 84

5.11 Results of Multiple Regression Analysis for the Impact of the PPS and PSI on Job Tension ...... 86

5.12 Results of Multiple Regression Analysis for the Impact of 3-dimension of the PPS on Job Tension ...... 88

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LIST OF FIGURES

2.1 Political Framework of Public Leadership ...... 15

5.1 The Original 18-item CFA Model ...... 63

5.2 Revised 15-item in CFA Model ...... 67

5.3 Revised 15-item of Second Order CFA Model ...... 69

5.4 The 14-item PPS in CFA Model ...... 74

5.5 Covariance of 7-latent factor ...... 76

5.6 The Covariance of Second-order CFA between PSI and PPS ...... 77

5.7 Interaction between Perception of Red Tape and PPS on Job Satisfaction...... 83

5.8 Interaction between Perception of Red Tape with PA on Job Satisfaction ...... 85

5.9 Interaction between Red tape and PPS on Job Tension...... 87

5.10 Interaction between Goal Ambiguity and PPS on Job Tension ...... 87

5.11 Interaction between PA and Red Tape on Job Tension ...... 89

5.12 Interaction between IS and GA on Job Tension ...... 89

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ABSTRACT

Public sector leadership calls on public administrators to possess skills to resolve complex policy problems/crises and balance political interests and values through negotiation and conflict resolution. However, current leadership theories in the public administration literature have not paid sufficient attention to this issue. Even more surprisingly, almost no empirical studies have been done to measure and explain this particular dimension of public sector leadership. While the business literature has studied individual political skills focusing on interpersonal situations, the political skill construct in the field of public administration should consider both internal and external political environments. Thus, this study develops a new multidimensional construct—public political skill (PPS) that contains three sub-dimensions: political astuteness, inclusive skill, and visionary skill. Using survey data from the Florida Center for Public Management, this new construct is defined using confirmatory factor analysis and is tested for internal reliability and construct validity. Results show that PPS is different from the political skill inventory (PSI) developed by business scholars. In addition, the results find that PPS not only contributes to job promotion and satisfaction but also attenuates the negative effects of red tape on job satisfaction and neutralizes job tension. Yet, the PPS on job tension model shows insignificant results and the interaction with goal ambiguity has dazzling findings which require further discussion. The implications from these results and direction for future research are provided.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

In America, as well as in other countries, increasingly complex policy issues and large-scale crises such as the global financial crisis and Hurricane Katrina have made strong public organizational leadership more and more important. Solutions to complex policy problems or crises often must be developed by balancing political interests and values through negotiation and conflict resolution. Reflecting on this need, the federal government has included such skills in its executive leadership competency, and public sector leadership theories have touched on this issue (Cook, 1998; Ingraham, Thompson, & Eisenberg, 1995; Svara, 2008a; Van Wart, 2005). However, almost no empirical studies have examined such skills and so far a systematic conceptualization and measurement of the skills is still lacking.

On the other hand, research on public management finds that "management matters" in this environment since governments are operated in fragmented political systems and are highly intertwined with political environments (O'Toole Jr & Meier, 1999; Pandey & Wright, 2006; Yang & Pandey, 2008). Public management researchers suggest that political environments can affect organizational performance (Meier & O'Toole Jr, 2008; O'Toole Jr & Meier, 1999), how to respond to multiple principles in the situation of goal conflict (Waterman, Rouse, & Wright, 2004), organizational commitment (Yang & Pandey, 2008), honest performance reporting (Yang, 2007), and role ambiguity (Pandey & Wright, 2006). These studies indeed provide empirical analysis about how politics affect organizational performance and individual outcomes but they have not used empirically verifiable constructs to illustrate the behaviors, competencies, and skills that public managers need in order to manage the political environment.

Apparently, political skills were not a critical concern for past public administration writings that relied on the assumption of the politics-administration dichotomy, or the separation of policy making and policy implementation (Goodnow, 1900; Gulick, 1937; White, 1926; Willoughby, 1927; Woodrow, 1987). The dichotomy assumption was judged as untenable by many public administration scholars from a theoretical perspective (Appleby, 1945; Dahl, 1947; Lindblom, 1959; Selznick, 1949; Waldo, 1948). Recent studies have offered empirical evidence that supports that public managers have responsibilities complementing the agenda setting of elected officials (Svara, 1999a, 1999b, 2008a, 2008b) and should have political or strategic leadership (Heymann, 1987; Moore, 1995), but they have not measured such leadership skills and put them to multivariate testing.

The popular routes to evaluate political leaders and leadership may not provide sufficient evidence of what is effective public leadership. Since we cannot equate successful leadership with successful political, policy, and organizational outcomes, we need a new behavioral approach to study public management and place more attention on an action-oriented prescription (Behn, 1998; Bertelli & Lynn, 2003). Several recent publications argue that public sector leadership is more specific than the general leadership model developed in the private sector. Van Wart and Dicke (2008) outline various types and behaviors of public sector leadership such as organizational, political, and movement behaviors. Public leadership has different types and functions including policy elite or political leadership (e.g., elected or high appointees, top governmental leaders); organizational leadership (e.g., formal leadership within public organizations, from line supervisors up); and public leadership/collaborative leadership/leadership for common good (e.g., beyond public organizations and beyond formal leaders in the process of creating public value inside and outside of government at all levels) (Morse, Buss, & Kinghorn, 2007). The current literature on public sector leadership creates the need to push the boundaries in order to discover the potential for effective leadership in the public realm.

Thus, this dissertation aims to fill the gap by developing a new multidimensional construct— public political skill— and, as an initial test of its predictive validity, assessing its effects on individual performance and outcomes.

1.2 Purpose of this Study

This study develops a new measurement instrument to evaluate the level of public political skill for public administrators to deal with internal and external politics in public organizations. Thus, this dissertation has four objectives: (1) to review the current literature on public leadership and analyze whether the current leadership theories and studies have sufficiently responded to the sophisticated political issues and environments; (2) to assess whether the political skill construct developed in the business literature can fit a government context; (3) to identify important political environments and activities that public managers must deal with or engage in order to succeed, developing a measurement scale; and (4) to verify the validity and reliability of the scale, and to explain the consequences of political leadership qualities.

Regarding the first objective, the literature on public leadership has not been systematically studied until recently. Despite disagreements about a definition of leadership, the development of public leadership theories in public administration is heavily influenced by business scholars. One stream of current leadership studies focuses on transformational leadership. Research on transformational leadership has developed an empirical construct and tested it extensively in the private sector (Dumdum, Lowe, & Avolio, 2002; Lowe, Kroeck, & Sivasubramaniam, 1996). Public management literature has recognized its importance (Kee & Newcomer, 2008; Morse, et al., 2007) and examined its antecedents (Wright & Pandey, 2010) and effects on variables such as employee performance and job satisfaction (Trottier, Van Wart, & Wang, 2008; Wofford, Whittington, & Goodwin, 2001). However, this stream of studies somewhat mechanically borrows leadership models developed by business scholars without sufficiently considering how public administrators should act in political situations and what skills they need to face the political and institutional challenges. In other words, the transformational leadership model is too generalized to sufficiently address specific public sector challenges.

Another stream of leadership studies in public administration is more "endogenous" and has developed with public sector characteristics in mind (Crosby & Bryson, 2005; Doig & Hargrove, 1987; Riccucci, 1995; Svara, 1994). Some of these authors emphasize that public leaders should become more businesslike, entrepreneurial, and performance based (Osborne & Gaebler, 1992). Others disagree and argue that the prominent leadership style in public organizations should not be a heroic revolution against traditional bureaucracy but instead should be administrative conservation striving to maintain institutional integrity (Behn, 1998; Selznick, 1984; Terry, 1998, 2003). The disagreements 3 reflect the tensions between managerial discretion and democratic accountability that have long "haunted" public administration scholarship. Still others have approached public sector leadership in various ways, such as comprehensive frameworks about dynamic leadership in public service (Fernandez, 2004; Van Wart, 2005), leadership for the common good in a shared power world in response to wicked policy issues (Crosby & Bryson, 2005), and the application of principles of artistic performance to public leadership (Robert B. & Denhardt & Denhardt, 2006). While their work provides a solid foundation to think about the nature of public sector leadership, it does not provide an answer to the question of how to exert leadership to cope with external political environments confronted by public administrators. Most empirical cases capture bureaucrats at the top level which cannot provide practical implications for middle level managers and front line employees. In spite of offering a description of the significance of substantial political systems and descriptive knowledge (Robert B. & Denhardt & Denhardt, 2006; Terry, 2003; Van Wart, 2005), theoretical arguments cannot provide assessment tools to predict individual performance and organizational outcomes. It is necessary to build a consistent understanding of how leadership can be associated with administrative processes and political systems. The second objective is to focus on one kind of effective leadership skill—political skill—a construct developed by business researchers (Ferris, Perrewé, Anthony, & Gilmore, 2000; Ferris, Treadway, et al., 2005). As an interpersonal effectiveness construct, it combines social understanding with the ability to adjust behavior to the demands of the situation in ways that appear sincere, inspire trust, and effectively influence others (Ferris, Davidson, & Perrewe, 2005). More specifically, the construct has four critical dimensions: social astuteness, interpersonal influence, networking ability, and apparent sincerity (Ferris, Davidson, et al., 2005). Research has shown that political skills enable leadership effectiveness (Ammeter, Douglas, Gardner, Hochwarter, & Ferris, 2002), as well as team and organizational performance (Ahearn, Ferris, Hochwarter, Douglas, & Ammeter, 2004; Ferris, Witt, & Hochwarter, 2001). However, it is questionable that the business model of political skills can or should be applied to the government setting. Developing a measurement scale of political leadership qualities is important because it provides a good micro foundation for understanding public managers’ behavior. But to understand how administrative political skill is developed to make it applicable to a public taskforce, external political environments and activities in which public administrators engage must be acknowledged. Government, serving as an agent of the entire society, needs to consider democratic

4 values and pursue socially desired outcomes. Therefore, leadership for public managers is not just a right for individual benefits, but an obligation to take care of the societal good (Behn, 1998). The third objective relates to a fundamental question in the field of public administration. Public administrators are key actors in the policy arena and they must deal with sophisticated political environments and fragmented political authorities. External political environments can highly impact public managers’ political behavior. The traditional politics-administration dichotomy is viewed as no longer appropriate in contemporary government settings. Proponents of the dichotomy argue that a clear line can and should be drawn between public administration and politics, and that public servants are only responsible for executing policies established by elected officials (Waldo, 1984). However, engaging in political activities, within proper boundaries, is generally accepted as a legitimate and important part of a public manager’s role (Heymann, 1987; Moore, 1995; Olshfski, 1990; Olshfski & Cunningham, 2008; Svara, 1999a, 2008a). Surprisingly, despite the growing interest in what might be described as the more positive side of politics in the workplace, the field of public administration has paid little attention to what exactly happens in such activities and what political skills they require. A critical component in conceptualizing the construct and developing the survey instrument is analyzing empirical research. Focusing on political management, this study assesses three critical empirical studies about agenda and policy making processes (Olshfski & Cunningham, 2008), strategic management (Moore, 1995), and collaborative management (Agranoff & McGuire, 2003). In the three different political arenas, several political strategies, behaviors, and competencies suggested by these authors can be employed in the workforce and succeed in political management. Indeed, their studies resonate in public sector leadership literature in recognizing that effective leadership skill is embedded in the substantial cognition and knowledge of a political system and environment. In contrast to political skill inventory (PSI), this study identifies three new elements, which are political astuteness, visionary skill, and inclusive skill, which compose administrative political competency. As a result, a new construct of public political skill (PPS) in three dimensions is defined. In order to validate the new construct of PPS, the fourth objective is to translate the theoretical dimensions into a scale. The scale's reliability and validity will be examined by survey data using confirmatory factor analysis. Additionally, a testing model is proposed to investigate the impact of PPS on public employees. The first part of this model tests the outcome of PPS including career success (e.g., job satisfaction and promotions) and job stress. The second part of this model examines the interactive effect of PPS. Two significant variables are used including red tape and goal ambiguity

5 that are commonly perceived as having a negative association with job satisfaction. PPS is designed to produce a certain level of leverage to moderate the relationship between them.

1.3 Significance of this Dissertation

This study has significant theoretical implications for research in public management and organizational behavior as well as practical implications for managers and workers in public organizations. Understanding the political dimension and external political contexts of public leadership contributes to scholarship by enriching public sector leadership theory. In comparison to other disciplines, studies of effective leadership skill in public administration are just now emerging. Public leadership study is an area worthy of more thought and especially more empirical research (Van Wart, 2003). Additionally, the main idea of this dissertation is to develop a new construct of public political skill built upon the political skill inventory (Ferris, Davidson, et al., 2005). PPS provides insights to differentiate public organizations from private organizations. While political skill is perceived as one of the most socially effective competencies to cope with organizational politics (Ferris, Perrewé, & Douglas, 2002; Semadar, Robins, & Ferris, 2006), political skill calls for more considerations when applied to the public arena. The goal of public administration is to implement policies decided on in political and institutional surroundings. Public administration is not just about managing programs and policies. Public administration’s main purpose is managing democracy. Thus, the role of public administrators is unique, special, and essential. This study will broaden the existing literature by dealing with a comprehensive view of politics in public management. Public administration practitioners need to have a thorough understanding of the competency and its effects because PPS is the key to performing an excellent job. Thus, government agencies can develop and enhance employees’ PPS through coaching, mentoring, learning, and experience. Empirical testing can provide evidence that PPS may contribute to job satisfaction and promotions. PPS can also buffer individuals against potentially negative impacts of organizational characteristics such as red tape and goal ambiguity.

1.4 Organization of this Dissertation This dissertation is laid out in the following manner. Chapter 1 is the general overview and introduction to this study. Chapter 2 reviews current leadership studies and discusses the political 6 dimension of pubic leadership and its limitations to interpret the current research on public leadership. Chapter 2 also provides the analyses of political contexts of public leadership including both micro- level and macro-level politics, and comprehend empirical studies of political management. The analyses of political management studies extract the principle political skills and present the comparison of PPS with PSI developed by business scholarship. The reviews suggest that political skills in the study of public administration should take into account the contextual and complicated political environments. Chapter 3 addresses the inductive analyses of research on political management from which emerges three new dimensions of the construct for public administrators. This chapter also identifies useful previous studies to comprehend these three facets of public political skill to develop further empirical measurement. In addition to the development of a measurement instrument, this study also proposes hypothesis testing that can support the relationship between this new construct of PPS and other variables suggested by existing theory. Chapter 4 explicitly describes the methods used in this study. This chapter focuses on both the establishment of construct validity for the PPS and hypothesis testing including the consequences and interactive effects of PPS. The results and findings are presented in Chapter 5. This chapter summarizes the research findings of this study, discusses their theoretical contribution and practical implications, and provides limitations of the current study and suggestions regarding future research.

CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

The leadership literature is voluminous, and sometimes different angles of analyses provide contradictory perspectives on leadership. But if one encompasses current leadership studies, then leadership can be broadly defined as the ability to influence individuals or a group toward the achievement of goals. When diving into the meaning of public leadership and its application, two issues need to be born in mind. First, many scholars distinguish leadership from management. For example, Kotter (1990) effectively explains the difference between management (producing order and efficiency) and leadership (producing change and movement). Leadership is about establishing direction for an organization and then bringing together, motivating, and inspiring people to move in that direction. Management is about order and consistency, and thus emphasizes planning, organizing, controlling, staffing, and budgeting. But it is not appropriate to purely define leadership from only the people aspect; current leadership studies define effective leadership style as combining managerial strategies (e.g., organizational capacity, Machiavellian skills, and contextual IQ) with soft power (e.g., emotional IQ, communications, and vision) (Nye, 2006). Secondly, many public administration scholars search for effective public leadership that is different from leadership in private sector (Behn, 1998; Getha-Taylor, Holmes, Jacobson, Morse, & Sowa, 2011; Ingraham & Getha-Taylor, 2004; Terry, 1998; Van Wart, 2005). Public leadership should enable public leaders to address market failure and public value failure, provide a vision to guide governmental actions, and meet societal expectations. As a result, public leadership affects millions of people. This chapter focuses more on how public administrators effectively utilize public leadership in public arenas instead of delineating a dichotomy between management vs. leadership and public vs. private. Thus, the focus of this chapter is to critically review current public leadership studies and examine whether and how they deal with the political dimension of pubic leadership. Next, I analyze the political contexts of public leadership including micro-level and macro-level politics and disclose the essential political skills needed for public administrators to develop effective leadership skills. In comparison with the PSI construct developed by business scholars, public political skills are emerging which take into account complicated political environments and contexts. 8

2.1 Current Public Leadership Studies Traditionally, the mainstream leadership studies in public administration have adopted the leadership models developed by business scholars and emphasized the dyadic and hierarchical structure within organizations (Ingraham, 2006). Some empirically-inclined researchers are interested in political leadership as reflected in the behaviors of political leaders and political appointees, given these elites’ influence in policy debates and government actions (e.g., Heymann, 1987; Doig & Hargrove, 1987; Ingraham, Thompson, & Eisenberg, 1995; Svara, 1994). However, public leadership is not just possessed by or required for those elites or the top management of the bureaucracy; public leadership is also for middle level managers, lower level supervisors, and even front line employees. Indeed, public leadership is a process and action that requires more specific skills than those that general leadership theories offer, since public sector context uniquely affects leadership and organizational effectiveness (Van Slyke & Alexander, 2006; Van Wart, 2003). Thus, current public leadership research argues that pubic leadership should be distinct from general leadership studies and indicates that “public leadership is for the common good, for the purpose of creating public value” (Getha-Taylor, et al., 2011). In order to increase the understanding of public leadership, this study presents a synthesis of significant perspectives about how the current research conceptualizes leadership roles in politics and with the public, and how it relates to leadership skills. Building on these empirical studies (Crosby & Bryson, 2005; Doig & Hargrove, 1987; Riccucci, 1995; Svara, 1994) and theoretical arguments (Robert B. & Denhardt & Denhardt, 2006; Terry, 2003; Van Wart, 2005) of public leadership, I introduce two dimensions that help us evaluate the mission and focus of public leadership. 2.1.1 The mission of public leadership Leadership is an action that provides continuity and momentum. The purpose of leadership is to make changes and movements in order to achieve goals. One of the major goals of public leadership aims at making governments better off. Therefore, it is closely related to governmental reforms. Two types of approaches can be used to interpret governmental reforms. One addresses changing the operation and application of governmental management; and the other addresses creating public values and preserving government legitimacy. Recently traditional public bureaucracy has been viewed as burdensome and ineffective, reforming government has become a trend all over the world. Reform advocates emphasize more businesslike, entrepreneurial, market driven, and performance based initiatives (Osborne & Gaebler, 1992). They encourage privatization and contracting out governmental 9 services. These advocates believe in an entrepreneurial government that is characterized by innovation, autonomy, risk-taking, and market-driven. Many empirical studies illustrate different portraits of administrators’ entrepreneurship at the top level of bureaucracy embodying exceptional leadership styles (Doig & Hargrove, 1987; Riccucci, 1995). Riccucci (1995) provides an in-depth look into a side of high-level executives in the federal government and explores some of the factors that contribute to their effective execucratic performance. The essential elements displayed by those executives are political skills, management and leadership skills, situational factors, experience, technical expertise, strategy, and a personality that can make leaders more effective. Policy entrepreneurs could adopt various strategies to engage in governmental reforms. Doig and Hargrove (1987) delineate two types of leadership dimensions—coalition-building skills and the use of rhetoric and symbols. Additionally, middle level managers could take innovative initiatives as well as policy entrepreneurs and top level of executives (Borins, 2000, 2002). These results demonstrate that external environmental elements, especially political support, wield a great influence on the role of public leadership style. However, critics of reforming government argue that the values of neutral competence fail to account for the critical difference between government and private sectors (R. C. Moe, 1994). In particular, managerial strategies ignore the constitutional premise that government is based on the rule of law instead of market-driven mechanisms. In addition, the heavy emphasis on service quality and treating citizens as customers confuses how public servants should behave. Terry (2003) coined the term conservatorship in his argument supporting leadership as stewardship. He argues that at the level of democratic governance, the heroic leadership style of policy entrepreneurs (Doig & Hargrove, 1987) can bring a serious threat to democracy because of the accountability problem. Instead, the leader as conservator who preserves the “institutional integrity” of the agency embodies the normative and values-laden approach to studying administrative leadership. There is no doubt that the American system of governance has been inherently imperfect with several basic failures including organizational, analytical, executive, legislative, political and judicial failures (Behn, 1998). Based upon Terry’s leadership model, Behn (1998) considers that responsible public managers not only preserve their agency’s institutional integrity but also use public leadership. Public managers should practice a kind of public leadership that is, active, intelligent, and enterprising, but they should exercise it within the framework provided by their legal mandate. Both Behn and Terry address the normative values in administrative leadership and stress that the behaviors and traits of public managers are embedded in the stewardship of public 10 administration. In effect, Selznick (1984) clarifies routine decision making as different from critical decision making in administrative management. He states that leadership provides guidance to minimize the blindness that can affect the basic character of enterprises. Leadership goes beyond efficiency under two conditions: (1) when it sets the basic mission of the organization and (2) when it creates a social organism capable of fulfilling that mission (Selznick, 1984, pp. 135-136). The concept of leadership described by Selznick is to “infuse the organization with value.” The idea of entrepreneurship, modeled after private sector practices, is not consistent with broader democratic values. The spirit of entrepreneurship may fall short of societal expectations and what citizens want from government. It needs to adjust for the public sector. The essential debate between entrepreneurial government and democratic accountability relies on how our leaders act on our behalf within government and exert specific leadership in their work and decisions. Thus, the alternative perspective conceives that democratic government is critical and necessary to maintain democratic citizenship, community, and civil society. Denhardt and Denhardt (2011; 2000) argue that the primary role of public servants is to help citizens articulate and meet their shared interests rather than to control society. The role of public administrator is to serve not to steer, valuing citizenship over entrepreneurship. 2.1.2 The focus of public leadership Effective leadership can lead to individual career advancement and improve organizational performance. The focus of general leadership is generally on individual and organizational interests. But for public leadership, its broad scope can bring into effect not only within public organizations but also across organizational and sectoral boundaries. As a result, public leadership is likely to be wielded in contextual circumstances with varying accountability mechanisms including individual, organizational, and community leadership. Therefore, public leadership, on the one hand, can facilitate organizational functions and harmonize different interests to achieve organizational goals. On the other hand, it can serve for external social needs in order to solve collective problems and create public values. Therefore, two types of public leadership should be taken into account, which are organizational focus vs. community focus pubic leadership. Built upon traditional systems and hierarchical structures, the organizational focus of public leadership is to manage organizations effectively and search for resources and benefits to meet organizational interests. The impact of organizational focus on public leadership is limited within individual and organizational boundaries. On the other hand, community focus on public leadership pays more attention to the significant variety and complexity in the contexts without boundary, which can account for more unpredictable and 11 wicked issues through institutional design and social interaction. Consequently, the community focus of public leadership can have wider and broader impact on society and solve common good problems. Organizational focus of public leadership One of the most popular methods to assess the effect of organizational focus on public leadership is to look at what type of leadership style can improve organizational performance. Transformational leadership is one kind of prominent leadership style in the studies of organizational behavior (Bass & Riggio, 2006). The empirical studies have demonstrated that transformational leaders can encourage and facilitate followers to work to complete their tasks and achieve organizational goals. As a matter of fact, transformational leadership can account for both organizational and community focus of public leadership. But so far public management researchers studying transformational leadership in public organizations have only investigated individual and organizational outcomes. The results reveal that the three factors employed by transformational leaders including intellection simulation, individual consideration, and idealized influence are consistently connected with the practice of the leaders’ behavior with individual satisfaction (Trottier, et al., 2008) and job performance (Fernandez, 2004). Since leadership can enhance effective management and high-performance government, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has established competency models to improve the capabilities and skills of senior bureaucrats since 1979. A competency-based method built upon the analysis of job design, performance evaluations, training program has five main areas including leading change, leading people, being results driven, employing business acumen, and building communication/coalition. This competency model provides the way for senior federal bureaucrats to act in their daily work, organizational performance, and yearly cycle of activities (Ingraham & Getha- Taylor, 2004). The competency leadership model is perceived as a comprehensive framework (Van Wart, 2003) or a kitchen-sink model (Getha-Taylor, et al., 2011) strongly influenced by business leadership models and takes an individual leadership focus with limited public-service delivery and instrumental result-driven emphasis (Hood & Lodge, 2004). In order to develop and assess comprehensive leadership models, Van Wart (2003, 2005), integrates transactional with transformational elements into various situational variables inherently in the public context. Van Wart’s (2005) book on public sector leadership has taken a critical step in moving to integrate leadership and public administration. He provides extensive contexts, across a wide variety of circumstances and specific leadership issues within which to consider theories and concepts. 12

Community focus of public leadership Organizational focus of public leadership is limited by boundaries and jurisdiction, which can no longer provide explanations of how the process and adaptation can lead to governmental success in the governance era (Getha-Taylor, et al., 2011). The enormous situational variety including different sectors, organizing structures, levels of analysis, and focus of analysis is challenging the application of public leadership. Public managers must cooperate with different sectors across organizational boundaries. Public leadership requires more social interactions and external focus. Therefore, a community focus of public leadership promotes inter- and intra-organizational cooperation or collaboration which can carry out contexts across boundaries. A variety of perspectives have arisen to capture the new governance phenomenon such as networks (Agranoff, 2007), collaborative management (Agranoff & McGuire, 2003), and collaborative leadership (Crosby & Bryson, 2005). Some scholars advocate that public leadership should catalyze the involvement of “ citizens of all walks of life” including elected and appointed, public and private, paid and volunteer, urban and rural to solve interconnected public problems (Luke, 1998). These sophisticated relationships should operate in a “shared power world,” a world in which they must share objectives, activities, resources, or authority to achieve collective gains or minimize losses (Crosby & Bryson, 2005). Scholars studying collaboration also use the term “integrative leadership” that indicates how collective action across sectors (business, government, nonprofits, media, academia) and geographic boundaries can solve some of the world’s most pressing and complex societal problems (Crosby & Bryson, 2010).

2.2 Political Framework of Public Leadership Public leadership should be a cohesive set of administrative missions and processes that integrates political accountabilities with management systems (Moynihan & Ingraham, 2004). That is, public leadership matters cannot be separated from politics and management. Take local governments for example, Svara (1985, 1998, 1999a, 1999b) investigated the interaction between elected officials and top administrators and developed a complementarity model to depict the division between their spheres. Researchers also suggest that public managers should employ strategic leadership to deal with politics (Heymann, 1987; Moore, 1995). These empirical studies provide essential understanding of political activities and behaviors in which public managers engage. Yet, they have not systematically examined the political dimension of public leadership and proposed the action-oriented skills and competencies that public administrators should possess. 13

To examine the political dimension of public leadership, a theoretical framework is proposed to delineate the specific scope. Political dimension, on the one hand, can be interpreted as interpersonal relationship and individual interests within the organizational boundary. On the other hand, political dimension offered by political scientists entails broader and substantive perspective to see politics as a set of interactions within and between public and private. Therefore, following the mission and focus of public leadership discussed above, Figure 2.1 highlights the political focus in the public leadership framework and presents these themes as intersecting continua to illustrate their different values and conflicts in nature. The horizontal continuum represents the range of venues to achieve administrative missions that lies between entrepreneurship and conservatorship. Entrepreneurship represents market- driven, rule-breaking, and risk-taking activities or behaviors (Hofer & Bygrave, 1992), 1992). Instead, conservatorship appreciates democratic values, law abiding, and preserves institutional integrity (Behn, 1998; Terry, 1998, 2003). Although scholars make an effort to reconcile entrepreneurship with democracy (Bellone & Goerl, 1992), the debate on the two streams of administrative discretion is still raising stewardship against entrepreneurship (Terry, 1993). The vertical continuum indicates the range of political focus of public leadership process that lies between organizational political focus and community political focus. Organizational political focus considers individual and organizational interests as the priority. In order to succeed in the complicated political environments, public organizations have to deal with internal organizational politics and search for resource to adapt to dynamic environments. The power and authority is dominated by traditional structure of governments. Community political focus indentifies the pressures put on the organization by stakeholders and community. Since the policy issues and social problems cannot be easily solved through hierarchical governments, governments need to be partner and collaborate with the community. Public organization can no more take in charge in the shared power world (Crosby & Bryson, 2005). Thus, two dimensions define four distinct public leadership functions that embrace much of the relevant leadership models (see Figure 2.1).

Figure 2.1: Political Framework of Public Leadership

The first cell, organizational political focus of entrepreneurship, is characterized by an internal control orientation and a capable public manager who can perceive opportunities to seek new resources of revenue. This quadrant contains several essential characteristics such as risk-taking, rule- breaking, innovation, and market-driven, which very often focuses on top management such as innovative entrepreneurs (Doig & Hargrove, 1987), heroic federal execucrats (Riccucci, 1995), and the federal leadership competency model. The second cell, organizational political focus of conservatorship, stresses commitment and moral consideration among the executive cadre to core agency values and carries out missions supported by external constituencies and interest groups. Terry’s (1998, 2003) concept of conservatorship is the best example in this quadrant representing public administrators who should not only have internalized stewardship responsibility for taxpayer dollars but preserve institutional integrity. The significant values of conservatorship are conserving mission, values, and support lying in public administration. Conservatorship requires administrators having professional expertise, political skill, and a thorough understanding of what it means to be an active public administrator in governance.

The third cell of community political focus of conservatorship suggests that conservatorship takes places in the community and collective action in particular in collaborative settings to solve common good problems, or in network governance to steer toward public value management (Stoker, 2006). In the new governance era, conservatorship requires quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial processes to engage individual citizens, organizational stakeholders, and community that can underpin the fundamental significance of democracy. Thus, this quadrant indicates that public administrators take on a conservator role serves as a professional and ethical touchstone and caring about public value and social needs, which role is similar to types of administrative roles, stewards of the public interest, with more commitment to their agency, its clients, and the public (McGovern, 2011; Selden, Brewer, & Brundney, 1999). Democratic leadership defined by Gastil (1994) represents this political perspective of public leadership. Since the democratic method of leadership is to sustain democratic process, Gastil encompass three leadership functions including distributing responsibility among the membership, empowering group members, and assisting the group’s decision-making process (Gastil, 1994). The forth cell, community political focus of entrepreneurship, refers to someone who account for complex social problems and create both economic and social value. This idea is similar to public entrepreneurship, which can carry out the work of identifying and creatively pursuing social goals (Klein, Mahoney, McGahan, & Pitelis, 2010). This quadrant takes place inter-organizational and intra- organizational process. Put it more precisely, community political focus entrepreneurship is comprised of both meanings “community politics” and “entrepreneurship” emphasizing on social contexts and interactions that can influence on the development of entrepreneurship (Bernier & Hafsi, 2007). Several requirements are necessary for public managers to practice community political focus of entrepreneurship including taking advantage of opportunities to envision public value, utilizing innovation to adapt turbulent environments, taking an above-average degree of risk in creating public value, and so forth. In effect, researchers studying public leadership sometimes reconcile conflicting values (e.g., entrepreneurship vs. conservatorship) and extract feasible characteristics (e.g., innovation, vision, ethics, and integrity) or occupy both political foci, applying to complicated political environments. Some empirical studies are addressed below to comprehend the application of public leadership. The concept of entrepreneurship has been studied in very different foci and with different research interests but mostly agree upon the multi-dimensional concepts and theoretical construct of entrepreneurship (Hofer & Bygrave, 1992). Many scholars employ this concept to comprehend different phenomena related to worlds of politics and administration such as the development of 16 managerial entrepreneurship (Moon, 1999), policy-oriented entrepreneurship (Kingdon, 1995; Roberts & King, 1996), and public entrepreneurship (Ostrom, 2005). Their concerns can not only be limited in the organization, focusing on policy change, but also care for a large number of people and the entire society. Thus, its scope can cover either in organizational political focus or community political focus. Because conflicts and distrust reside in governmental structure, the entrepreneur type of mayor leadership may not be applicable to describe the role of mayor in the local government. Svara develops a framework of facilitative role of mayor and examines the level of involvement of mayoral leadership. The results illuminate that facilitative leadership has identified several roles such as traditional roles, coordination and communications, policy and organizing goals, and external relations. Mayoral leadership here is characterized as both entrepreneurship and conservatorship. Thus, facilitative leadership is located on the organizational political focus side and between entrepreneurship and conservatorship. Additionally, Van Wart (2005) suggests a comprehensive model for public organizational leadership. Public organizational leadership focuses on internal organizations where can deliver authoritative assessments to identify problems. His description of public organizational leadership covers all aspects of leadership capacities and skills that are generally of managerial interests to organizational leaders. It has the same location with facilitative leadership. Common good leadership defined by Crosby & Bryson (2005) differs from what is conceived of as hierarchical organizational leadership. This shared-power world as such is a political arena. These authors argue that many public problems such as the threat of terrorism, global economy, and environmental degradation, have blurred boundaries in a shared power world. It is compelling to enhance the power of the participants beyond the sum of their separate capabilities. Built upon an expansive model of what constitutes power, they perceive power as “not just the ability to make and implement decisions, but also the ability to sanction conduct and, most important, to communicate shared meaning” (Crosby & Bryson, 2005, p. 29). In their leadership framework, these authors propose eight leadership capabilities including policy entrepreneurship and ethical leadership in terms of a model of power, a model of policy change, and an approach to the common good. Thus, leadership for common good is located on the community political focus and between entrepreneurship and conservatorship. Strategic leadership and strategic management provide a way to carry out radical or transformational change for the unique needs of public organizations (Nutt & Backoff, 1993, 1996). Since the nature of public organizations is different from the private sectors, scholars argue that 17 strategic management and strategic leadership must be tailored to meet the special needs for governments that attempt sweeping change in broad scope (Bryson, 2004; Nutt & Backoff, 1993, 1996). This approach makes strategic leaders transform organizations by installing strategies that make significant changes in organizational practices and competencies. Moore (1995) lays out a structure of practical reasoning to guide public managers of public enterprise. In particular, he advocates that public managers should be ethical responsible for the public and exploit their potential political and organizational settings for creating public value. This type of strategic leadership enables public managers more flexible to adapt dynamic political environments. And the most important thing is that public managers take on duties as public executives who are not only be faithful to their political leaders but also be accountable for the public. Thus, Moore’s strategic leadership emphasizes not only reengineer strategic change for public organizations but also embrace accountability to create public value. It can include four quadrant of political dimensions including political focus in both organizational and community. The detailed analysis of Moore’s articulation will be provided in next section. Overall, these four quadrants provide the fundamental elements for understanding public sector leadership. Almost all empirical case studies (Crosby & Bryson, 2005; Doig & Hargrove, 1987; Riccucci, 1995; Svara, 1994) illuminate how political environments affect bureaucrats’ behaviors and their strategies to succeed in their careers and solve public problems. In spite of a different interpretation of administrative discretion from Terry (1998, 2003), they appreciate substantial politics in the same way that they recognize the importance of a political system and institution. Understanding both the substantive political system and decision making process are the core objectives embedded in public administrators’ minds. Effective public leadership behavior fundamentally depends upon public administrators’ ability to solve the kinds of political challenges and wicked problems that arise in society. However, differences in conceptualization and measurement of leadership means that the cumulative effect of this literature has not provided empirically verifiable constructs to illustrate the behaviors, competencies, and skills that public managers need in order to manage the political environment. There is no consistent understanding of how leadership relates to administrative processes, and ultimately improves performance. Meanwhile, many organizational scientists have shared their perspectives in terms of the inherent political nature of work environments (Mintzberg, 1985). This variable has been referred to as “political skill” by numerous scholars (Ferris, et al., 2000; Mintzberg, 1985). Some authors have linked 18 political skill to leadership effectiveness, suggesting that political skill is a critical component in leadership effectiveness (Ahearn, et al., 2004; Mintzberg, 1983). Brass (2001) suggests that political skill facilitates working with other people, becoming more effective networkers and coalition builders and increases the ability to create social capital. Recently, the construct of political skill has been applied to public organizations as well (Vigoda-Gadot, 2003). Effective political skill for public administrators should play an inspirational and operational role in dealing with organizational politics and even solving wicked problems outside of organizations. The emergent issue for public administrators is how to develop administrative political skill in order to make it applicable to public arenas. Although the political dimension of public leadership offers the organization political focus, it has not measured such leadership skills and put them to multivariate testing. Therefore, the next section provides the basic understanding of political contexts including micro politics, which refers to organizational politics, and macro politics, which indicates external political environments. Then, I discuss(1) what the main internal political environments are and how political skills function; (2) how external political environments shape administrative behaviors; (3) in what kinds of political activities public administrators should and do engage; and (4) compares and contrasts political skill in political management.

2.3 The Political Context of Public Leadership 2.3.1 Micro politics: organizational politics and political skill Organizational politics is usually concerned with phenomena such as power struggles, conflicts over sources of power and influence, and planned and directed attempts to actualize opponents’ interests in the workplace. Thus, the concept of organizational politics is a complex, multidimensional construct that is not easy to define. Generally, there are two widely used dimensions of organizational politics. One view perceives politics as an influence process that is exercised within work settings. In this regard, politics includes a very general set of social behaviors so that it can contribute to the basic functioning of the organization (Pfeffer, 1981). Mayes and Allen (1977)suggest that organizational politics must conform to three criteria. First, it must reflect both the micro- organizational level and the macro-organizational level. Organizational politics refers to the control, force, and influence of relations between members of the organization themselves vis-à-vis the organization and as an organization vis-à-vis various extra-organizational systems. Second, each definition of organizational politics must relate to behaviors instead of being concerned with the distribution of assets in the organization. Third, each definition should make clear judgment between 19 political behaviors and non-political behaviors. Based upon this general definition, politics can be functional or dysfunctional in terms of circumstances. On the other hand, a more common perspective of politics is defined more narrowly. Many scholars maintain that politics is best conceptualized as a subjective state (Ferris, Russ, & Fandt, 1989; Gandz & Murray, 1980). For example, based upon a survey instrument investigating 428 managers, Gandz and Murray (1980) found that political activity was perceived to be more prevalent at high levels of organizations, more common in discretionary than non-discretionary organizational processes, and generally related to behavior that deviates from a techno-economic rationality. Scholars suggested that the subjective state of organizational politics should be limited to the self-serving and organizationally non-sanctioned nature of individual behavior in organizations. The term politics represents directed social influence processes where a behavior is strategically designed to maximize short-term or long-term self-interest (Ferris, et al., 1989; Parker, Dipboye, & Jackson, 1995). Politics as such is not necessarily viewed as a negative impression implied harmful and divisive effects. Theorists regard organizations as inherently political arenas (Mintzberg, 1985), where political behavior is standard operating behavior (Pfeffer, 1981). Many scholars hold that the phenomenon of organizational politics should serve organizational and management research as an analytical tool and a natural term which can contribute to the analysis and examination of organizational forces and influence relations and their influence on organizational outcomes. The analysis of organizational politics becomes an important and valuable conception to study the particular influence tactics and political behaviors that reflect the “what” of influence. And the most critical examination explains the “how” of influence, which can address the selection of the most appropriate influence tactics and their effective practice (Ferris, et al., 2002). The idea of political skill, first introduced by Pfeffer (1981) and Mintzberg (1983, 1985), refers to networking abilities and social skills that employees need in order to influence others to act in ways that enhance their personal or organizational objectives. Recent studies define political skill as an interpersonal style construct, which can explicitly address social influence skills in work settings. Researchers (Ferris, et al., 2000) developed a multidimensional construct of political skill and proposed that political skill “combines social astuteness with the ability to relate well and otherwise demonstrate situationally appropriate behavior in a disarmingly charming and engaging manner that inspires confidence, trust, sincerity and genuineness” (Ferris, Treadway, & Perrewe, 2007, p. 291). Researchers find that political skill is expected to overlap with other types of social effectiveness competencies such as emotional intelligence, cognitive ability, self-monitoring, self-efficacy, and political savvy but has 20 been shown to be conceptually distinct from these constructs (Ferris, et al., 2002; Ferris, Treadway, et al., 2005; Ferris, et al., 2007). Regardless of the construct of political skill sharing some degree of the domain space with other types of social effectiveness, some studies demonstrate that political skill can be the most important predictor of managerial job performance when examined in the context of other social effectiveness predictors (Semadar, et al., 2006). Recently, researchers suggest that the political skill construct provides the most appropriate predictor of leader influence in the politically charged workplace (Ammeter, et al., 2002). The results indicate that leader political skill accounts for a significant increment in team performance variance, which can facilitate team performance beyond mere empowerment of team members (Ahearn, et al., 2004). Additionally, politically skilled leaders can influence the organizational experience of their employees by developing greater trust in management and job satisfaction and reduced feelings of organizational cynicism (Treadway, et al., 2004). Moreover, current studies reveal that individuals who used a high level of impression management and who were politically skilled can gain more desirable supervisor evaluations than those who used the tactics but were not politically skilled. On the other hand, the results also found that when impression management usage was low, individuals with a low level of political skill created a more desirable image for their supervisors (Harris, Kacmar, Zivnuska, & Shaw, 2007). The results imply that politically skilled individuals may have a sense about potential consequences and thereby they are reluctant to engage in such kinds of political behaviors. In effect, the unethical consequences raise another challenge for political skill researchers regarding who or what political skill is being used (Silvester, 2008). In addition, another concern is whether political skill is used for personal gain or as a means to achieve gains for others including the organization, or both. Especially for those leaders with a charismatic style and political astuteness, they can frame an environment that encourages their subordinates to commit the “crime of obedience” (Beu & Buckley, 2004). Leaders can exploit their power, authority, status, and political skill to convince employees that an unethical behavior is morally justified. Silvester (2008) discusses the political skills and political performance of politicians, calling for more application of PSI to the public sector across countries. Admittedly, there are similarities between business leaders and elected officials or public executives, as they all need to use power to exert influence, build support, and establish a reputation among their direct contacts such as co-workers and clients. In other words, public sector leaders need PSI as well. However, PSI alone is not enough 21 for public leaders. Focusing on interpersonal situations, PSI does not include the full scope of public leadership skills required to address competing values and substantial political systems. A business manager with great PSI, after transferring to the public sector, may fail miserably because s/he does not understand the political systems/processes, the importance of democratic values, and the obligation to consider all competing interests and treat them equally. Government, acting as an agent of society overall, is less interested in satisfying individual desires than achieving socially desired outcomes. Thus, we need more knowledge about what kinds of skills public administrators could possess in the external focus politics of public leadership. 2.3.2 Macro politics: external political environments of public administration The idea of a politics-administration dichotomy emphasizes the professional public administrators and establishes the founding theory of public administration. Today’s public administrators cannot ignore political environments of their agencies including the external political environment and internal organizational politics (Cook, 1998; Ingraham, Thompson, & Eisenberg, 1995; Svara, 1985, 1998, 1999b, 2008a). From a public policy perspective, public administrators are involved in both the formulation and implementation of the policy making process. Since policy decisions have a great influence on who gets what, this policy making process inevitably involves administrators in politics. Additionally, political environments usually shape management of programs, so public administrators employ political strategies to underpin their management strategies in order to attain policy objectives. Moreover, public administrators must consult everyday not only with their immediate supervisors but also with all kinds of external groups and citizens. Public administrators must interact with different political systems (e.g., legislature, political appointees, and courts), stakeholders (e.g., interest groups, private firms, non-profit governments and citizens/voters), media, different levels of agencies, and other governments. The political nature of the environment is very much in evidence when public administrators describe the value they have placed on understanding the rules of the games and knowing the players. The impact of politics can be described as a positive and a negative influence on administrators’ performance. The focus in this section is on addressing how external political environments affect public administration and what kinds of challenges they must deal with. Discussing these challenges provides a backdrop to account for essential political competencies of public servants. Legislative politics A complex interplay between the legislative and administrative branches often exists between theory and practice. In the practice of the politics of constitutional order, the formal authority 22 of the legislative body is involved in administrative decisions to control agency budgets, to pass legislation that directs agency actions, and to oversee agency activities through public hearings, investigations, and other means. Some scholars have observed that legislation often transmits vague, idealized directives to agencies (Frederickson, 1989). Public administrators must develop and exercise discretion to conquer the vague and sometimes contradictory legislative language. When government agencies are unable to meet the expectations of the legislature in terms of budget limitations or exaggerated political promises, it is convenient for legislators to practice the politics of blame. In contrast, legislators can delve into the precise details of agency management such as personnel and administrative procedures. When bureaucratic drift is different from legislators’, the most effective means for securing compliance from bureaucracies is to constrain the flexibility of agencies (McCubbins, Noll, & Weingast, 1989). In addition, legislative bodies can exert pressure through public hearings, audits, and investigations into agency activities to control bureaucrats. Congressional oversight at the federal level has been strengthened by the General Accounting Office (GAO) in recent decades and has increasingly focused on administrative processes, apparently in response to the president’s efforts to control bureaucracy (West, 1995). In spite of having significant impact on the outputs and actions of federal agencies (Wood & Waterman, 1994), legislators often have little incentive to aggressively monitor government performance (Meier, 2000). By and large, it is easier to gain more political mileage by running errands for constituents and more satisfaction through passing new laws. Tough oversight of agencies, on the other hand, can jeopardize the relationship between congressional colleagues and powerful interest groups. Executive politics Friction tends to exist between the executives appointed by elected officials and the government employees they are supposed to lead for several reasons. First, the executive branch competes with the legislative branch for the status of having the strongest political influence on agencies based upon constitutional design. Normally, chief executives—presidents, governors, mayors—have the greatest command authority over public administration. Yet, this is not always the case. Civil service reform and the merit system protect public servants against political intervention. Once executives are elected, they realize that they have little power over agencies. Most agencies are not aligned with the chief executive for their political survival. The chief executives have developed their own administrative capabilities and have reacted sharply to growth in government spending. The most notable political style is the case of President Ronald Reagan (Lynn, 1984; Stehr, 1997). Key 23 administrative positions in the department and in agencies were staffed with loyal appointees who were committed to reducing the regulatory role, size, and influence of the federal government. Second, in attempting to attain policy goals, executives are often driven to economize and reorganize and that invariably upsets some agency interests. Because of strong ties to traditional policies and the professional orientation of career civil servants, agencies have a tendency to become resistant to change. The idea is that a political transaction can provide a theoretical argument to help understand the dynamics between elected politicians and public administrators in the policy making process. Frant (1996) indicates that pursuing reelection is a high-powered incentive of elected officials. In this regard, electoral support is exchanged for the private benefit that results from a policy change. However, opportunities for elected officials to gain electoral support through these political exchanges are constrained by several types of transaction costs (Horn, 1997). First, bargaining or opportunity costs resulting from time and effort require extension in order to achieve agreement on policy details. Second, commitment problems mainly indicate that the uncertainty of long-term benefit flows from policy decisions. Threats to the durability of policy benefits result from potential future leaders who amend or repeal policy legislation. This problem may adversely influence public administration and reduce resources for enforcement. Third, the effect of agency costs is from administrators who may not comply with the intentions of the enacting coalition in implementing the policy. Fourth, information costs reflect constituent uncertainty about the private benefits of policy change. To reduce political costs, the practices elected officials commonly use are to add layers between the top executives and the highest-level career civil servants, which can effectively demote career service managers. Bureaucratic politics Building upon the work of the Carnegie school decision making model, Allison (1991) proposes intra-national political outcomes in the sense that what happens is not chosen as a solution to a problem but rather results from compromise, coalition, competition, and confusion among government officials who see different facets of an issue. That is, governmental actions are the result of political bargaining among multiple players. With regard to the nature of bureaucratic politics, principle-agent models of political control over bureaucracy provide the basis for an extensive set of studies about bureaucracy and elected officials. The basic idea of principle-agent model posits that there is an inherent goal conflict between principles and their agents, and that agents possess and benefit from an information asymmetry over their principals.

Conducting two surveys including the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED), Waterman, Rouse, and Wright (2004) found that the more discretion bureaucrats have, the more capable they will be of using an information asymmetry to shirk principle attempts at overhead political control. In addition, the results also provide evidence that there is a goal conflict between principals and their agents. The analysis of multiple principal bureaucratic politics concludes that agents may perceive different principals as practicing similar types of influence. As a result, agents have an incentive to treat different types of principals in different ways, such as responding more substantively to some principals and more symbolically to others. Another angle to explicate bureaucratic politics is to assess the perceptions from below. As research of bureaucratic politics focuses on the top of organizations, lower levels of the organization also engage in political activities in various everyday forms (Brower & Abolafia, 1997). Bureaucratic politics from below differs from the bureaucratic politics of bargaining mainly due to the effects of hierarchy since public administrators from below have relatively less power and influence in their hierarchical positions. Brower and Abolafia (1997) found that public administrators from below can and do engage in bureaucratic politics through out-of-bound activities and they often display improvisation and non-determinism in pursuing a specific identity instead of organizational outcomes. These activities do not imply irrationality but are embedded in local rationalities that reflect the variety of professional and sub-professional norms, conflicting processes, and multiple goals in public organizations. Interest group politics Constitutions provide for the rights of citizens to organize and stand up for their individual and shared interests. Yet the role of organized interests in the American political system generates continuing controversy. Special-interest politics makes a political system become so fragmented into self-interested groups that it resists central coordination and hence becomes unmanageable (Lowi, 1979). Dominant interest groups are usually richer and well-organized and can control major domains of public policy. The iron triangle metaphor, as a way to describe legislative-executive-interest relationships, can describe the major areas of American policy. Agencies recognize that they need outside support and information for their programs. Sometimes, legislators require that agencies consult with interest groups and their representatives to serve their constituencies. For public agencies, it is very important to form alliances with legislative subcommittees and outside interest groups because public organizations can have their own 25 constituencies that help them do battle during budget time. This enables public agencies to pursue independent policy courses different from chief executive goals. Heclo (1978) points out that the system of iron triangles is overlaid by an amorphous system of issue networks. In many highly technical policy fields, there is more widespread participation in bureaucratic policymaking. Highly sophisticated knowledge and expertise is drawn to issues because of intellectual or emotional commitments rather than economic benefits. Thus, bureaucrats’ behaviors or their decision making cannot be interpreted in a single way; that is, administrators must assess the strength of their support. In addition to issue networks, the formation of public policies also arises from the interaction of interest groups, politicians, and bureaucrats within the context of democratic politics. Moe (1990, p. 122) proposes a two-tiered hierarchy of political action, in which “one tier is the internal hierarchy of the agency; the other is the political control structure linking it to politicians and groups.” Those who gain control of public authority—politicians and their interest-group allies with whom they trade the use of formal decision-making authority in exchange for political support—may do so only temporarily. This is because today’s winners know that they may be tomorrow’s losers, who are unable to exercise public authority. Additional concerns result from the principal-agent problem – the prospect that bureaucrats will fail to implement or enforce designed policies during and after the group is in control. These considerations enter into the political calculus of those in control of government when they make policy by designing or modifying institutional arrangements. Politicians establish administrative agencies in ways that reduce the chance that future changes in the political landscape will upset the terms of the original understanding among the relevant political actors (Macey, 1992). Political leaders may specify in detail how an agency will conduct its business, leaving as little discretion as possible to bureaucrats and future political officeholders. Politicians may insulate the agency from sunset or reauthorization provisions that would enhance future political oversight. These and other tools of institutional design can shield an agency and the policies it implements from political interference. Consequently, the resulting arrangements are not necessarily designed to be efficient or even effective. Media politics The better the relations that policymakers maintain with the press, the more successful policy makers will be in doing their jobs (Linsky, 1986). In his analysis of the press’s impact on federal policy making, Linsky (1986) investigated federal employees who served as assistant secretaries or above in the administrations of five consecutive U.S. presidents up to and including Reagan. The results supported that skills in handling the media can lead to success in governing. 26

Yet media politics is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it exaggerates the importance of the personalities and private lives of politicians, corporate executives, athletes, film and television stars, and others and punishes them for personal indiscretions or failings. On the other hand, media can also be perceived as the fourth estate. Public media is a societal or political force, or an institution whose influence is not formally recognized but close media scrutiny can play an important role in governance. Whistle-blowers can go to the public media to disclose agency misconduct or incompetence. The federal government has instituted special provisions to protect whistle-blowers from such harsh treatment (Rosen, 1982). Additionally, there is no doubt that media watches governments carefully since governments spend the taxpayers’ money. The press can wield great influence on an agency’s budget and programs (e.g., budget cuts or failure to pass programs) or officials (e.g., damage careers or reputations). Media makes government more accessible. But it is also true that media attention also varies depending on the type of agencies and issues. Public officials must realize that media attention can shift unpredictably. 2.3.3 The challenges for public administrators Democratic politics resides at the core of public administration. Although public administration is perceived as an instrument to achieve externally determined objectives, democratic politics is the fundamental foundation of public management. The goal of public administration is to implement policies decided by the political and institutional surroundings. Overall, as discussed above, the realities of politics in a democratic public administration bring several challenges to effective management. First, democratic governments operate under a fragmented authority structure. There are more political intrusions into management in public organizations and there is a greater infusion of political criteria. Second, goals and performance criteria are generally vague, multiple, and conflicting for public organizations since they face different political accountabilities. Third, public organizations have more legal restrictions on their actions and on their staffing—they cannot hire, fire, or promote as flexibly as the private sector. Fourth, there is a time issue associated with the tenure of public officials; that is, their length of stay with an agency. The time issue also involves time constraints that are legislatively imposed, court imposed, or created by the exigencies of elective political office. Lastly, there is a lack of resources and there is a limited budget to manage programs effectively. Rather than searching for ways to cope with or get around politics, public administration is called on to embrace and manages politics as its essential mission. Public administration involves not only managing programs, but managing democracy and politics, which is its main purpose. The role of 27 public administrators is unique, special, and essential. Thus, we must distill the current studies of political management and condense the critical political capacities applied to public organizations.

2.4 Political Management in Public Organizations Pulling together these perspectives from different disciplines, public administrators confront relatively severe constraints on their power and influence as a result of their particular context. They must develop specific strategies and managerial skills to deal with external political environments. But politics takes different guises in terms of managerial levels. High level executives such as elected officials and political appointees must share authority over their administrative units with legislators and other political authorities. They are more concerned that an issue for which they are responsible may escalate and explode in the media, involve partisan conflict, damage their ability to manage effectively, and impact the political leader. For middle managers, on the other hand, very often the politics facing them from outside their agency is a politics of interest groups. These interest groups seek benefits or advantages over other groups. In addition, within the traditional boundary of government it is not easy to define the complexity of governance. Collaborative management becomes an urgent task which can solve common good problems or wicked issues. The external political settings intertwined with complicated issues and multiple stakeholders challenge public management researchers who search for ways to interpret the circumstances and figure out feasible political skills to manage politics. In order to solicit managerial political skill, this section examines three empirical studies which provide solid analysis and comprehensive understanding of how to manage external political environments. These significant political arrangements include the agenda and the policy making processes (Olshfski, 1990; Olshfski & Cunningham, 2008), strategic management (Moore, 1995), and collaborative management (Agranoff & McGuire, 2001, 2003; McGuire, 2002, 2006). Table 2.1 represents themain process strategy model and specifies political environmental factors/activities. These essential elements in turn form managerial behavior and develop managerial political skill. 2.4.1 Agenda and policy making process There are few empirical studies focusing on how public managers perceive the nature of political activities. In her early work, Olshfski (1990) identified three concepts of politics emerging from state agency executives’ descriptions of their political activities in the management system: (1) political astuteness, the understanding of the political system and the processes of government and their own departments; (2) issue politics, the political activities, such as bargaining and coalition building, 28 necessary to advance an issue or achieve an objective; (3) electoral politics, the knowledge and activities related to gaining general political support for themselves, an elected official, or their departments. This analysis provides useful tools for assessing managerial political competency. First, political astuteness is fundamental knowledge necessary not only for top executives but also for general public employees. Issue politics and electoral politics may be important for top executives since they must be in line with political leaders. For middle managers or front line employees, behaviors are usually constrained by the organizational structure so they do not have enough power and authority to determine policy issues. To gain a better understanding of public administrators’ decision making processes, Olshfski and Cunningham (2008) further analyze executive and middle manager behaviors based on the agenda and decision making processes. The empirical findings distinguish the middle managers’ roles and behaviors from executives and assess the decision-making process based on a rational decision model including problem definition, alternative consequences (decision), implementation, and evaluation. The results illustrates that no manager articulates a decision process or follows a decision process model. The rational decision making model cannot offer an appropriate interpretation of the complexity of these managers’ thinking and acting. Faced with an external dynamic environment, managers must be quick thinkers. Public managers should be sensitive to reshaping their understanding of a situation when receiving new information or when new interest groups appear on the spot. More details are specified in Table 2.1. Managerial behaviors are greatly influenced by political environments. Following the decision making process, the results uncover how executives and managers behave differently and discuss how they react to these political influences. Taking a closer look, executives and managers do take different actions and have different types of behaviors but their basic political competencies required in the policy making process remain similar. Both of executive and managers must possess political astuteness, network capacity, negotiation and facilitating competency, adaptive skill, and a persuasive technique (influencing others) to overcome existing environmental influences (cultural and organizational factors), especially for issue and environmental density. 2.4.2 Strategic management The broader public makes choices that reflect collective, public views because it acts not in the marketplace but in a political forum. Moore (1995) argues that public managers who engage in the politics surrounding their organizations must create public value. In this regard, public managers are agents who help define what would be valuable for their programs and agencies to do instead of merely 29 developing a means of carrying out mandated services. Public managers have three functions that they must serve to be effective: (1) judging and articulating the public value of their mission and purpose; (2) managing outward, toward politics, to invest their purposes with legitimacy and support, and (3) managing downward, toward improving the organization’s capabilities for achieving desired purposes. Moore’s (1995) manifest concept is to help managers determine the value of public enterprises. He depicts a strategic triangle to conceptualize the basic argument for managers about envisioning public value if they integrate (1) substantive judgments of what would be valuable and effective; (2) a diagnosis of political expectation; and (3) hard-headed calculations of what is operationally feasible. In other words, public managers need to develop a value-seeking imagination that can help them find a way to integrate politics, substance, and administration. Focusing on the function and techniques of political management, Moore (1995) explains why political management is an important part of a public manager’s job and how it diagnoses political environments. Based on empirical cases, he describes the common contexts and players in which political management becomes necessary such as routine accountability, authorizing change and innovation, achieving interagency coordination, mobilizing decentralized coproduction. He provides five different approaches to the tasks of political management including entrepreneurial advocacy, the management of policy development, negotiation, public deliberation and leadership, and public sector marketing. Faced with complicated political surroundings and multiple players, Moor (1995) suggests that public managers must use diagnostic ability and tactics kills. For more specific analysis, entrepreneurial advocacy requires political astuteness to identify players and use network capacity to find political support and harmonize relationships with opponents. To manage policy development, public managers should have political savvy in designing a policy process that can make a high quality decision. In the negotiation approach, the commonly used tactic skills are bargaining and influencing others. Next, in the public deliberation and leadership part, public managers should manage the pace of learning. That is, public managers need to establish their abilities to design a process that can include citizens from different perspectives. The core idea in the last approach in the public sector marketing stresses marketing and strategic communication skills. Moore (1995) advocates that a final virtue that can help public managers succeed is to make ethical commitments and cultivate psychological stances. Ethical decision making is an art since an individual must know what is right and how to act upon it ethically. For public administrators engaged in public life such as legislators, stakeholders, and citizen groups, their behaviors are guided by a set of 30 laws and regulations that may not always be consistent with their own moral perspectives or their idea of what constitutes ethical behavior. Professional judgment is needed to distinguish between two distinct spheres of moral standards and ethical behavior followed in private and public enterprise. Involving ethical consideration and deliberative governance makes strategic leadership as advocated by Moore different from the traditional strategic vision. His argument seeks to contribute the development of such guidelines to assist public servants in acting ethically as well as creating public value. 2.4.3 Collaborative management In effect, translating big ideas into reality requires collaboration among many actors. In particular, Agranoff and McGuire (2003) consider that “interdependence and salience of information have resulted in an environment where organizational and sectoral boundaries are more conceptual than actual.” Accordingly, collaboration provides a means for crossing the governmental boundary drawn by confrontation by bringing all parties together and creating the safety and space for constructive engagement. The possibility of working together embodies the hope for a new kind of politics—collaborative management—with a new role for government operating in complex intergovernmental and interorganizational environments. This concept encompasses the idea of how governmental performance could be enhanced through improved coordination among organizations positioned to contribute to the solution of social problems. Agranoff and McGuire (2003) analyze the nature and extent of collaborative work in the economic development arrangement and demonstrate the significance of collaborative management activities. Vertical collaborative actions involve different information-related transactions or adjustments to the normal workings of grant, regulatory, and other programs. Horizontal collaborative actions involve jointly developing interlocal policies or strategies, designing projects, and seeking various types of resources. Many scholars have made the case that collaborative management skills are necessary for public managers to manage effectively in a collaborative context. Based on operational differences in collaborative arrangements, Agranoff and McGuire (2001; McGuire, 2002, 2006) indentify collaborative management behaviors in four different categories: activation, framing, mobilizing, and synthesizing. Although public managers need these skills to operate successfully in collaborative settings, McGuire (2006) also agrees that these collaborative skills overlap with the skill demands of managing single organizations.

Table 2.1: Development of Administrative Political Skill in Three Managerial Settings Main process/ Political environmental factors/ activities Political behavior Political skill strategy/ model Olshfski Agendas and 1. Cultural factors: perceived as informal 1. Agenda setting and problem 1. Agenda setting and problem & decision making norms and values presenting in the identification: behaviors are identification: political astuteness Cunning process: problem environment. The more central the determined by position, politics, or indicates the understanding of the ham definition, alternative threatened value, the more resistant the perspective. political system and the processes consequences culture to the change. The better way they A. Position: refers to job description. of government and their own (decision), found is to build a personal bond, which The manager or executive is handed departments based on position, implementation, can reduce resistance to the policy. an issue to deal with, simply because politics, and perspective. evaluation 2. Organizational factors: such as that is the manager’s or executive’s 2. Considering alternatives, deciding, centralization, can also affect decisions. position. and implementing  network The state government has centralized B. Politics: generates agenda item more capacity, negotiating and control at the top level of executives, for executives than for middle communication skills. which in turn share the authority with managers. Executives must deal with 3. Environment density and issue subordinates or tightly hold to power and different political accountabilities. density sensitive to the authority. Instead, the middle managers Instead, middle managers are largely environment (social astuteness) and have substantial responsibility but limited insulated from political officials and persuasive technique (influencing authority. Their findings discover that legislators but are contacted by others) to advance an issue or effective middle managers must develop organizations and groups in areas achieve an objective. To deal with competence in negotiating and where they had administrative environmental density and issue facilitating, in order to gain support and authority. density involves designing a resources. C. Perspective: refers to the manager’s strategy to get the various interests 3. Politics and issues: stressing the external idea of what needs to be done in the involved in the process and identify political environments such as partisan agency, was an unexpected, major how each group’s goals can be politics, legislative politics, highly related component of the executive’s agenda. accommodated within the broad to density issue. They choose and discover issues strategy of solving the problem. 4. Density: describe manager’s decision- based on their interests, skills, or making behavior. On a high-density issue previous experiences. or in a high-density environment, 2. Considering alternatives, deciding, managers must address competing and implementing: contingencies such interests and individuals, and their as environmental density or issue choices and behaviors are constrained by density make it difficult to separate internal and external influences. More decision-making phase. Executives often than not managers lack power and and particularly for middle managers must develop persuasive techniques to must build personal networks and also attain support from mid-level or frontline sharpen their communication and positions that make sure a policy should negotiation skills through decision- be instituted and implemented. making practice.

Table 2.1: Development of Administrative Political Skill in Three Managerial Settings Continued Main process/ Political environmental factors/ activities Political behavior Political skill strategy/ model Olshfski A. Environmental density: refers to the 3. Evaluation: Middle managers could & varieties and intensities of rules, roles, provide empirical evidence to show Cunning institutions, structure, and culture that their accomplishment and used the ham impinge on the manager. Density is word “we” to describe their success as measured by the degree to which they handle their situations. For authority and responsibility are shared, executives, numbers evaluate their and the number of parallel or superior policy outcomes from multiple reporting relationships (similar to perspectives, which involve such network). strategic complexity. Executives B. Issue density: refers to the unique generally describe their successes interests and people that are activated using the word “I” as personal around a particular issue. accomplishment. Moore Strategic triangle to Contexts in political management Ethics and techniques of political Fundamental managerial competencies envision/ create 1. Routine accountability: sustain a flow of management 1. Integrate strategic triangle to public value: (1) money and authority to their enterprises. 1. Entrepreneurial advocacy: must create public value substantive 2. Authorizing change and innovation: assemble a sufficiently powerful 2. Ethical commitments and cultivate judgments of what changes in an organization’s operations, coalition to ensure that the managers’ psychological stances would be valuable administrative arrangements, or missions preferred policies will be Diagnosis and tactic skill and effective; (2) a alter the mix of public values produced by authoritatively endorsed by the 1. Entrepreneurial advocacy diagnosis of political the organization. government. a. Diagnosis skill: indentifying who expectation; (3) 3. Achieving interagency coordination: 2. Managing policy development: the can, or must, or might play a role hard-headed managers are very dependent on agencies aim of public managers is to have a in making the decision. calculations of what and people outside their direct control to particular policy adopted. Public b. Tactic skill: finding ways to is operationally help them produce results for which they managers act as policy mangers who mobilize support (and neutralize feasible. are accountable. are committed to producing high opposition) for the specific 4. Mobilizing decentralized coproduction: quality decisions—not any particular choices managers want made. the productive capacity needed by decision; they aim to manage a 2. Managing policy development: managers to accomplish their purposes is process that invests any decision a. Diagnosis skill: identifying the widely decentralized among agencies and made with a high degree of ingredients that make for a high private individuals. legitimacy, power, and accuracy. quality decision. Understanding the design of a process for handling a single policy choice made outside the boundaries of a manager’s organization.

Table 2.1: Development of Administrative Political Skill in Three Managerial Settings Continued Main process/ Political environmental factors/ activities Political behavior Political skill strategy/ model Moore Players in political management 3. Negotiation: recognizing the variety b. Tactic skills: political savvy 1. Political superiors, legislative overseers, of interests and goals that people (developing process of wide and overhead agencies could have; framing the negotiation consultation; dealing with 2. The media (determining the context for the uncertainty; using commissions; 3. Interest groups negotiation, the issues to be making policy analysis relevant; 4. Courts negotiated, and the parties to dealing with uncertainty); political negotiate); expanding the sorts of astuteness (using budget process; interests. centralized planning, adhocracy, 4. Public deliberation, social learning, and multiple advocacy; and leadership: using public understanding the process and deliberation to improve public political system) policymaking; helping citizens 3. Negotiation contribute to the solution of public a. Diagnosis skill: identifying the problems by facilitating their issue and interests that could form adaptation to “problematic realities” the basis for a negotiation. through a particular kind of Assessing each party’s “best leadership. alternative to a negotiated 5. Public sector marketing and strategic agreement.” communication: designed to advance b. Tactic skills: “hard” and “soft” particular policies or organizational bargaining; adding issues and strategies by making them players; influencing alternatives to comprehensible and by enlisting the negotiation support and cooperation of those who 4. Public deliberation, social must work together to produce the learning, and leadership intended result. a. Tactic skills: managing the pace of learning (informing and Final value to make public managers empowering citizens) succeed: express moral right and wrong. 5. Public sector marketing and strategic communication a. Diagnosis skill: marketing as increased accountability to customers; marketing as social mobilization. Tactic skills: marketing and strategic communication.

Table 2.1: Development of Administrative Political Skill in Three Managerial Settings Continued Main process/ Political environmental factors/ activities Political behavior Political skill strategy/ model Agranoff Collaborative Vertical activities 1. Activation: a set of behaviors 1. Activation & arrangements: 1. Information seeking: general program employed for identifying and a. Political and social astuteness: McGuire jurisdiction-based information; new funding of program and incorporating the persons and correctly indentifying participants management model, projects; interpretation of standards and resources (such as funding, expertise, and other resources needed in the abstinence model rules, general program guidance; and legal authority) needed to collaboration settings. top-down model, technical assistance achieve program goals. Activation is 2. Framing donor-recipient 2. Adjustments seeking: regulatory relief, similar to selective activation that is a. Facilitating skill: facilitating the model, reactive flexibility, or waiver; statutory relief or tapping the skills, knowledge, and internal structure and position of model, contented flexibility; change in policy; funding resources of these persons. the participants. model innovation for program; model program 2. Framing: the behaviors used to b. Influencing skill: influencing the involvement; performance-based arrange and integrate a network operating rules and norms of the discretion structure by facilitating agreement on network Horizontal activities participants’ roles, operating rules c. Visionary skill: helping to 1. Policymaking and strategy-making: gain and network values establish an identity and culture policymaking assistance; engage in 3. Mobilizing: develop commitment for the network formal partnership; engage in joint and support for network processes 3. Mobilizing policymaking; consolidate policy effort from network participants and a. Network capacity: building 2. Resource exchange: seek financial external stakeholders. support by mobilizing resources; employ joint financial 4. Synthesizing: create an environment organizations and coalitions and incentives; contracted planning and and enhance the conditions for by forging an agreement on the implementation favorable, productive interaction role and scope of network 3. Project-based work: partnership for a among network participants operations. particular project; seek technical 4. Synthesizing resources a. Networking capacity: building relationships and interaction among network participants. b. Facilitating information skill: facilitating interaction among participants and reducing complexity and uncertainty by promoting information exchange.

CHAPTER THREE

POLITICAL DIMENSION OF PUBLIC LEADERSHIP:

PUBLIC POLITICAL SKILL

This chapter presents the development of a public political skill construct based upon the analyses of research on political management. The results come out three new dimensions for public political skills. These three new dimensions for the construct are identified on the basis of existing theoretical and empirical literature to underpin the development of the construct measures. The relevant research hypotheses are proposed followed by the literature review.

3.1 The Analysis of Political Management

Public administrators face many challenges. Increasing public demands, which often conflict, combined with new technologies and an ever-changing social and economic environment, usually produce a complicated and often daunting agenda for public servants. To meet these challenges, public administrators need to develop critical political skills and competencies. The analyses of three different public management arenas constitute the foundation for effective managerial leadership at all levels of government. While highlighting the effective leadership of political skill (Ammeter, et al., 2002; Treadway, et al., 2004), we must note that external political environments can result in various kinds of political activities and shape different types of behaviors. Skills need to be set in the context both of role demands and the environment (Boyatzis, 1982). That is, skills cannot be viewed as isolated in professional administration, but must be set in the context of the environment where they are exercised in political environments. Public administrators have their own way of exercising political skills in special contexts. Therefore, political skill for public administrators should capture the nuances which may share similarities or differences with the construct of political skill developed by Ferris and his colleagues (Ferris, Davidson, et al., 2005). Table 3.1 explicates the four dimensions of political skill inventory (PSI) and their specific skill interpretations, which is helpful to use to categorize political skill for public administrators.

Table 3.1: Political Skill Inventory Dimension Specific Item Political skill Social Astuteness  Astute observers of others  Understand social interactions well

Interpersonal Influence  Interpret people’s behavior and the behavior of others accurately.  Have a convincing style to influence others  Adapt and calibrate their behavior to different situations, elicit the desired response from others

Networking Ability  Adept at identifying and developing diverse contacts and networks  Develop friendships  Build strong, beneficial alliances and coalitions.

Apparent Sincerity  Having high levels of integrity  Being authentic, sincere, and genuine

Based on the current studies of political management discussed above, the major skill items are extracted to compare with PSI. The four dimensions and specific items of PSI are illustrated in Table 3.1. If no similar skill item confirms to the PSI, a potential new indicator will emerge. The new item is assessed using the literature of public sector leadership and social effectiveness measures reviewed above. The analyses and details are illustrated in Table 3.2.

Table 3.2: Managerial Political Behavior, Public Political Skill (PPS), and Political Skill Inventory (PSI) Author Managerial political General description of PSI indicators PPS indicators behavior managerial political competency O&C Agenda setting and Understanding of the political Political astuteness problem identification system and the processes of government and their own departments based on position, politics, and perspective. Considering Build personal network Network ability alternatives, decision Negotiating and facilitating Interpersonal making, and skill influence implementation Communication skill Interpersonal influence Environment density Sensitive to the environment Social astuteness and issue density Persuasive technique to Interpersonal advance an issue or achieve an influence objective

Designing a strategy to get the Network ability Inclusive skill various interests involved in the Social astuteness Visionary skill process and identifying how each group’s goals can be accommodated within the broad strategy of solving the problem Moore Strategic triangle Integrate politics, substance, Visionary skill envision/create public and administration value Use moral view to Ethical commitment and Apparent Sincerity express moral right or psychological stances wrong Entrepreneurial Identifying players in making Social astuteness advocacy the decision Mobilize support and Network ability sufficiently powerful coalition for specific choices Managing policy Understanding the design of a Network ability Political astuteness development process for handling a single policy choice made outside the boundaries of a manager’s organization Developing a process of wide Network ability Political astuteness consultation; dealing with Visionary skill uncertainty; using commissions; making policy analysis relevant; dealing with uncertainty Using budget process; Political astuteness centralized planning, advocacy, and multiple advocacy; understanding the process and political system

Table 3.2: Managerial Political Behavior, Public Political Skill (PPS), and Political Skill Inventory (PSI) Continued Author Managerial political General description of PSI indicators PPS indicators behavior managerial political competency Moore Negotiation Identifying the issue and Social astuteness Visionary skill interests Hard and soft bargaining Interpersonal influence Adding issues and players Visionary skill Influencing alternatives to Interpersonal negotiation influence Pubic deliberation, Managing pace of learning Inclusive skill social learning, and (informing and empowering leadership citizens) Public sector Marketing as increasing Interpersonal marketing and accountability to customers; influence strategic marketing as social mobilization communication Strategic communication Interpersonal influence A&M Activation Correctly indentifying Social astuteness Political astuteness participants and other resources needed in collaboration settings Framing Facilitating the internal Interpersonal Inclusive skill structure and position of the influence participants. Influencing the operating rules Interpersonal and norms of the network influence

Helping to establish an identity Visionary skill and culture for the network

Mobilizing Building support by mobilizing Network ability organizations and coalitions and Interpersonal by forging an agreement on the influence role and scope of network operations. Synthesizing Building relationships and Network ability interactions among network participants Facilitating interactions among Network ability Inclusive skill participants and reducing Visionary skill complexity and uncertainty by promoting information exchange

Obviously most skill items in the managerial political competencies overlap with PSI. The practice of political skill resides inherently in both the external political environments and organizational politics. Different grounds are built upon a set of similar strategies and practices. However, some specific political skills may only take place in public organizations. The first row abstracted from Olshfski & Cunningham’s work shows that managers and executives need to 39 understand the political system and the processes of government and their own departments based on position, politics, and perspective as in agenda setting and problem identificaion. Olshfski’s definition of “political astuteness” is employed here to indicate the political awareness of public managers. In Table 3.2, the analysis reveals the general description of political astuteness including “understanding the design of a process…,” “developing a process of wide consultation…,” “using a budget process…,” and “correctly indentifying participants…”. Noticeably, organizational scientists employ similar terms such as political savvy (DeLuca, 1999), political intelligence/ability (McIntyre, 2005), political astuteness/acumen (Reardon, 2005), to represent the composite of skills needed to successfully steer through the political arenas of an organization to achieve leadership goals. Ferris and his colleagues have tested the validity of political skills and have examined the convergent and discriminant validity with several social effectiveness measures (Ferris, Treadway, et al., 2005). Their findings demonstrate that the political skill construct is positively correlated with political savvy but not so highly as to indicate construct redundancy. Thus, we must keep in mind that political astuteness may share some commonalities with political skill. Moore (1995) suggests that public managers need to have the competency to integrate politics, substance, and administration in order to envision public value. How to envision public value and integrate a strategic triangle requires public managers to have the visionary skill to look beyond their own immediate needs and results. The idea is to enhance the capacity to identify the level of problems and find a way to appeal to the common good. Crosby & Bryson (2005) coin this skill visionary leadership. Visionary skill can also help participants and members envision their goals and establish identity. It can be applied in the framing behavior as well. Additionally, Moore addresses a critical strategy in political management, which is public deliberation and leadership. This approach considers that government policy has fostered reliance on the government to arbitrate disputes instead of encouraging conflicting groups to reach their own agreements. Then, public managers would use government authority to create environments in which citizens who face collective problems can work together and decide what they would like to do. Public deliberation can facilitate the decision making process and create public value. One key technique associated with managing social adaptation, as Moore suggests, is managing the pace of learning. In this regard, public managers should design a process to pace 40 citizen learning. Inclusive skill can be properly used in a public deliberation setting. The role of public managers is not as leaders who want to influence others, but as facilitators who try to educate and empower citizens. In the third row, Agranoff and McGuire specify four types of political competencies in collaborative management. First, activation is characterized as political and social astuteness to identify participants and resources correctly in collaborative settings. Second, framing indicates the behaviors used to arrange and integrate a network structure that requires influencing skill and visionary skill. Third, mobilizing is the development of commitment and support for network processes and therefore, it must build network capacity with external support and coalitions. Forth, synthesizing refers to improving the network environments for favorable, productive interactions among network participants. In addition to network capacity, facilitating information skill is necessary to reduce complexity and uncertainty by promoting information exchange.

3.2 The Construct of Public Political Skill After considering these challenges and an examination of the prevailing literature on policy making processes, strategic management, and collaborative management, three major public political skills (PPS) are identified including political astuteness, visionary skill, and inclusive skill. The new construct of PPS signifies “skill” in that public administrators should possess not only behaving skills but knowledge-based cognitive skill. Scholars suggest both thinking skills (e.g., the knowledge needed for analysis and understanding) and behaving skills (e.g., the knowledge needed to perform) are necessary for successful practitioners (Whicker, Strickland, & Olshfski, 1993). Thus, PPS for public administrators denotes both perspectives including behavioral-based skills at the micro level and knowledge-based cognition such as substantial knowledge of analytical skill in formal institutions or political environments at the macro level. In addition to the four facets of PSI, the new defining elements of PPS highlight the importance of cultivating these skills in public organizations. In essence, three new dimensions including political astuteness, inclusive skill, and visionary skill are suggested for public administrators exercising in these political surroundings. All three skills are imperative because they can identify different sub-domain research of public management such as policy implementation, collaboration management, inclusive management, public value management, 41 and strategic management. The section below discusses how the three new skills of PPS are recognized in terms of theoretical and empirical implications.

3.2.1 Political astuteness Politics is not limited to certain persons (e.g., elected politicians) or specialized occasions (e.g., Congress or executive offices). Instead, politics is commonly defined as processes involved in the policy making. Public administrators, by and large, need to understand the processes by which public policies are formulated and implemented, and the settings where these policy processes take place (Starling, 2010). The basic requirement for public administrators is to be equipped with knowledge-based cognition of formal institutions or contextual knowledge about policy making processes at the macro level. But political knowledge cannot stand alone in political settings. Public administrators, in particular, engage in political activities and processes which involve the exercise of power and distribution of resources to achieve organizational objectives. Faced with a fragmented political structure and different accountabilities, the policy making processes of public organizations usually involve more complex, dynamic, and interpretive actions than those in private counterparts (Abolafia, 2004). Following rational choice and bounded rationality, political scientists employ the Simon-March decision making model and new economics of organizations model to analyze policy making processes and public organizations (Moe, 1984). In the policy making process, political scientists argue that most decisions are not made through rational processes but depend upon small incremental decisions in response to short term political conditions (Lindblom, 1959). Because of bounded rationality, the decision- making is controlled more by events and circumstances than by economic models. Wildavsky (1964) portrayed budgeting processes as inherently political and showed how incrementalism describes budget making behavior. The decision making models also explain the bureaucratic actions in foreign policy during the Cuban missile crisis (Allison, 1971). Most political scientists treat organizations as a whole and analyze how organizational structure and agency’s interactions with external environments affect decision making in public organizations. For example, positive political scientists utilize economic tools and concepts developed from problems of social choice to explain voting and bureaucratic control (T. M. Moe, 1994). Indeed, bureaucratic relations can be better understood from the principle-agent model 42

(Niskanen, 1971, 1975; Waterman, et al., 2004). In Niskanen’s model, bureaucracy based on Weber’s articulation is defined as a large organization with full-time, functionally specialized employees that is organized hierarchically and promotion is based on performance. The main goal of bureaucrats is to maximize resources and budgets. Concerned about self-interested behavior among bureaucrats, Downs (1957) applies the assumption of rational behavior broadly to bureaucracy and describes different types of bureaucrats such as climbers, conservers, zealots, advocates, and statesmen. The grand pictures drawn by political scientists have informed public administration about organizational decision making within governments and built institutional theory to interpret bureaucratic behavioral operations. But decisions about information needs and depth of decision analysis do not always followed a single loop. Etzioni (1967) proposed a mixed scanning approach against a simple dichotomy of decision making but combines macro rationalistic decision and the incremental model. The applicable strategy should be determined by position and power relations among the decision makers. Both environmental factors and the capacity of the actors should be taken into account as well. Public administrators must adapt to the organizational context as well as the political and social structure. On the one hand, their behaviors are rule-bound, which cannot be separated from situational factors. This can result in expansion or reduction of the number of rules (Bozeman & Rainey, 1998). On the other hand, situations sometimes are too complicated to adhere to strict rules for power for lower level participants or street-level bureaucracy. For those who are not at top level of bureaucracy, they may have their own way to interpret policy and politics and thus possess a significant discretion in executing their work (Brower & Abolafia, 1997; Lipsky, 1980). Despite the fact that political science provides the practitioner a more solid training in scientific rigor than in public administration, the assumptions about individual behaviors are limited to treating management and skills as uniform applications and obscures individual differences (Weimer, 1992). Public administrators should first define the political environments they must deal with and recognize how these political environments influence goals and policies in public organizations (Whicker, et al., 1993). Olshfski and Cunningham’s (2008) empirical analysis finds that the rational decision making model cannot explain administrative behaviors and thinking. Public administrators face turbulent environments and relative severe constraints on their power and influence. They need 43 skills to be a quick thinkers who can foster both technical and political astuteness in the policy making process (Radin, 2000). Political astuteness refers to the understanding of the substantive knowledge of political systems and the processes of government and their own departments based on position, politics, and perspective. Thus, political astuteness ranges from low to high. The more extensive the executives’ and managers’ understanding of governing processes and the dynamics of those processes—the more politically astute they were—the more likely they were to make more reasoned calculations in recognizing and operating in decision making processes (Olshfski, 1990). As traditional governments evolve from hierarchical structure to collaboration or network governance, political astuteness is a necessary skill for public administrators to succeed in their work environments. Political astuteness refers to the substantive judgments about the role of players, the rules of the game, and financial resources. Individuals with political astuteness should be sensitive to reshaping their understanding of a situation in a timely manner when receiving new information or a new interest group (Agranoff & McGuire, 2003; McGuire, 2006). Then public administrators can be alert to the hidden agendas of political institutions and diagnose a feasible plan of action (Moore, 1995). 3.2.2 Inclusive skill The traditional model of bureaucracy can no longer dominate policy issue and distribute resources at will in the turbulent political environments. Different stakeholders, interest groups, and policy communities can all actively participate in the policy making process. Governance stresses paying more attention to the new managerial model of the public sector working with external constituencies. In responding to democratic accountability, in particular, the focus is on citizen-centered governance (Cooper, Bryer, & Meek, 2006) and provides not the traditional participation tools but authentic participation (King, Feley, & Susel, 1998). Citizen- centered model has been increasingly important to democratic governance (Bingham, Nabatchi, & O'Leary, 2005; Box, 1998; J. V. Denhardt & Denhardt, 2011; Roberts, 2004) and widely exercised in collaborative management (Van Buuren, 2009), strategic planning (Bryson, Crosby, & Bryson, 2009), inclusive management (Feldman & Khademian, 2007; Feldman, Khademian, Ingram, & Schneider, 2006; Feldman & Quick, 2009), deliberative governance (Roberts, 2004), and citizen participation (Cooper, et al., 2006). The pressures from different participants push the

44 role of public administrator from that of expert managers toward that of cooperative participants or partners. Thus, the concept of inclusion is to recover the unbalanced administrative state and implement democratic governance. “Inclusion” indicates inviting those who have been exclusively locked out to “come in”. To determine issues and include others in decision making processes, public administrators should first recognize that pressures to identify, monitor, and manage issues are intimately tied to political in nature. Since different power and interest relations intertwine the process of structuring policy issues, governments cannot depend on hierarchical decision making. Instead, public administrators should develop the skills of knowing when and how to engage with citizens or stakeholders. Meanwhile, public administrators can perceive which forms of citizens or stakeholder engagement are most effective (Bingham, et al., 2005). Additionally, research on inclusive management suggests a way to recognize and work with political, expert, and local knowledge, or people from different experiences (Feldman & Khademian, 2007; Feldman, et al., 2006). Inclusive skill has two specific interpretations. First, public managers who can bring people together from different perspectives in ways that allow them to appreciate one another’s perspectives enhance the design and implementation of policies. Second, public managers can facilitate the practice by creating opportunities for people with different ways of knowing public problems to work together in a collective space to solve problems (Feldman & Khademian, 2007). Focusing on informational and relational work, public managers can facilitate transforming knowledge and experiences. Inclusive skill emphasizes the relationship between public managers and the public. The role of public manager not only builds networks and alliances to expand the boundaries but has the ability to design strategies to work with others getting relevant groups or various interests involved in the processes (Moore, 1995; Olshfski & Cunningham, 2008). Inclusive skill specifies the ability to facilitate the internal structure and interaction among participants in order to reduce conflicts from different perspectives (Agranoff & McGuire, 2003). Inclusively skilled public administrators can bring the right people at the right time and in the right way to solve collective problems. 3.2.3 Visionary skill

Visionary skill refers to the ability to create a vision of a desired goal, effectively communicate with followers, and then empower those followers (Bass & Bass, 2008; Bennis & Nanus, 2003; Conger, 1987b). Rather than a unidirectional phenomenon, strategic vision is a dynamic, interactive phenomenon and takes strategic content into consideration (Westley & Mintzberg, 1989). The way to develop strategic vision is to inspire people in a far-reaching and meaningful way by means of framing and rhetorical crafting (Conger, 1987a, 1991). Meaningful frames are created by amplifying values and beliefs. Using symbols to describe a strategic change can have great impact to convey a profound message. When particularly vivid, expressive, or striking the analogy or metaphor can be a powerful communicator. In business sectors, strategic vision can be a viable and attractive way to promote their products and maximize their profit. Value is created to meet individual customer preferences that are reflected through price mechanism. In public organizations, a value-seeking imagination for public managers can help them find a way to integrate politics, substance, and administration (Moore, 1995). But public values are not easily measurable. Bozeman (2002, 2007) addressed the imbalance of theoretical bases between market-based and public values approaches and proposed the public value mapping model for policy deliberation and public management. In particular, New Public Management (NPM), rooted firmly in the assumptions of economic individualism, could not provide sufficient evidence to explain the public-value of policy and management. Managing publicness entails management of citizens, not customers, involving specifiable values and achievable consensus in public policy, constitution, and public law. Therefore, public value management places its faith in a system of dialogue and exchange associated with policy deliberation, network governance, and collaborative management (Benington & Moore, 2011; Bozeman, 2007; Kelly, 2002; Stoker, 2006). In collaborative settings, public administrators can frame or reframe problems or needs and then develop a shared vision that can guide collective action in pursuit of the common good (Crosby & Bryson, 2005; Luke, 1998). Therefore, visionary skill indicates the ability to look beyond public administrators’ own immediate needs and results. Crosby and Bryson (2005, p. 108) state visionary leadership “shapes the meaning of public problems and inspires commitment to proposed solutions.” They explicate several criteria such as “seize the opportunity to be an interpreter and direction giver in a situation of uncertainty and difficulty,” and “offer a compelling vision of the future.” 46

Public administrators with visionary skill have the integrative thinking ability to discern connections and patterns among events. Then, they have the competency to identify levels of problems and in turn to interpret uncertain situations and provide guidance for future goals. Visionary skilled individuals can take action to attract the common good and create public value by using metaphors and symbols. But visionary skill, if it is effectively operated and conveyed, can create dilemmas and ambiguities for individuals who mainly pursue their traditional functional responsibility.

3.3 Predictive Validity of Public Political Skill To establish construct validity for the PPS, it is necessary to develop theory-based hypotheses and then test the predictive validity with empirical data. It is reasonable to expect that public leaders with greater PPS are more likely to perform better, which can be assessed by career success, accumulated positive work, and psychological outcomes resulting from one’s work experiences (Ng, Eby, Sorensen, & Feldman, 2005; Seibert, Kraimer, & Liden, 2001). Generally, two operationalizations are used in empirical testing. The first is to focus on objective or extrinsic career success, which can be evaluated by others such as salary improvement and job promotions. The second is to measure subjective or intrinsic judgments about individuals’ career attainments such as job/career satisfaction (Judge, Cable, Boudreau, & Bretz Jr, 1995).

3.3.1. The consequences of PPS As theoretical discussions have suggested, political skill can have a great influence on career success (Ferris, et al., 2007). That is, politically skilled individuals can have requisite knowledge and the ability to read people, and more importantly, to use this information to achieve their goals. Empirical research supports that those employees who had a high level of political skill could be seen as better performers when engaging in influence tactics as compared with those who had low political skill (Harris, et al., 2007). As those employees who are high in political skill are expected to use influence tactics effectively, they can normally improve employment outcomes (Higgins, Judge, & Ferris, 2003). Following the same logic argument, PPS can have substantive knowledge and ability to understand political systems, identify a way to envision governmental future, and as a result, work well with stakeholders, and solve the wicked problems. All are significant indicators in 47 developing good reputations and high-quality relationships with outside governments which can lead to higher satisfaction with their careers and lives from PPS in general. Consequently, employees high in PPS will report higher levels of job satisfaction and promotions, since, if they have certain levels of unacceptable outcomes and challenges, they will discern a way to attain the desired balance by practicing public political skill.

Hypothesis 1: Public political skill will be positively related to job promotions. Hypothesis 2: Public political skill will be positively associated with job satisfaction.

Another important impact is to assess the inverse relationship between PPS and job stressors. In effect, scholars have suggested that political skill can generate an increased sense of self-confidence and personal security in that politically skilled individuals can experience greater levels of control over interpersonal interactions in the workplace (Ferris, Davidson, et al., 2005; Perrewé, Ferris, Funk, & Anthony, 2000; Perrewé, et al., 2005). The empirical results find that individuals who evaluate themselves with higher level of political skill have experienced less strain or anxiety than individuals who are less political skilled. In other words, political skill can neutralize the dysfunctional effects of role conflict on strain and in turn to serve as an antidote of the negative consequences of stress (Perrewé, et al., 2004). However, the offset effect of political skill on job stress may be complex. Recent studies have discovered that only moderate political skill (not high or low) was related to higher levels of job satisfaction and lower levels of job tension (Kolodinsky, Hochwarter, & Ferris, 2004). In public organizations, public administrators face more broadly political environments and different accountabilities. Therefore, PPS refers to having the understanding of political environments, abilities to envision public good, and skills to involve different stakeholders in the policy making processes. All three skills could help when weighing objective situations and determining a way to solve difficulties and wicked issues. I propose that PPS is able to reduce job stressors.

Hypothesis 3: Public political skill has negative associations with job tension.

3.3.2 Interactive effects of PPS

The second part of this model is to test the interactive effect of PPS. Two important factors, which have salient and negative impacts on governmental effectiveness and performance, are red tape and goal ambiguity. Most scholars agree that both red tape and goal ambiguity exist in all kinds of organizations but there might be differences in levels of red tape and goal ambiguity between public and private sector organizations (Baldwin, 1990; Bozeman, 1993; Lan & Rainey, 1992). While researchers raise a broader question for public management theory and practice about how both red tape and goal ambiguity influence governmental performance and individual outcome, little attention is paid to how to develop useful competency to neutralize negative effects. PPS, a construct of political skill grounded in the public arena, provides an alternative solution to this question. Traditionally, red tape has been viewed as formalization, structural complexity, burgeoning paperwork, excessive or dysfunctional rules, and task delays (Kaufman, 1977). Bozeman (2000, p. 12) argues that red tape is “rules, regulations, and procedures that remain in force and entail a compliance burden but do not advance the legitimate purposes the rules were intended to serve.” Because of its negative perception, red tape has become one of the reforming targets when the goal of governments is to focus on more efficiency and effectiveness (Osborne & Gaebler, 1992). Recent research attempts to identify multi-dimensional aspects of red tape including human resources red tape, information system red tape, budgetary red tape, procurement red tape, and communication red tape (Coursey & Pandey, 2007). Although empirical studies demonstrate that red tape can result in a negative impact on workplace alienation (Dehart-Davis & Pandey, 2005), organizational effectiveness (Pandey, Coursey, & Moynihan, 2007), and job satisfaction (Wright & Davis, 2003),public management researchers have paid little attention to explore how to develop useful skills to neutralize the negative effects. Since PPS outlines the critical elements to manage political environments effectively, PPS should provides an answer to moderate the adverse effect of red tape.. While red tape results in workplace alienation (Dehart-Davis & Pandey, 2005) and lack of job satisfaction (Wright & Davis, 2003), PPS can help public administrators to leverage the flaws of red tape in organizational structure and procedural constrains.

Hypothesis 4: Red tape correlates negatively with job satisfaction and positively with job tension. 49

Hypothesis 5: PPS moderates the relationship between red tape and job satisfaction. That is, the negative relationship between red tape and job satisfaction will be attenuated when PPS is high but exacerbated when PPS is low. Hypothesis 6: PPS moderates the relationship between red tape and job tension. That is, the positive relationship between red tape and job tension will be attenuated when PPS is high but exacerbated when PPS is low.

Goal ambiguity and red tape are two side of the same coin—both are derived from organizational structure/formalization. When organizations are experiencing greater goal conflict, they may respond by instituting red tape in order to protect their own interests from unpredictable circumstances. In the interim, red tape can help clarify organizational goals. On the other hand, in an organization experiencing greater levels of goal conflict employees can perceive more confusion about how to achieve an ambiguous goal. When facing different political accountabilities, government agencies have imposed on themselves a variety of goals derived from legislation that enacted legal requirements concerning economic growth, environmental protection, homeland security, administrative processes, and many other matters (Lowi, 1979; McCubbins, et al., 1989; Rosen, 1982; West, 1995; Wood & Waterman, 1994). Additionally, political economists argue that the lack of incentives provided by markets makes it harder for public agencies to clarify their goals (Frant, 1996; Horn, 1997). Recent empirical studies find that goal clarity, or lack of it, can significantly influence job satisfaction (Wright & Davis, 2003) and role ambiguity (Pandey & Wright, 2006). These studies also suggest that external political influences and other stakeholders have an impact on managers’ perceptions of organizational goal clarity, which in turn has a direct effect on increasing role ambiguity and also an indirect effect on increasing role ambiguity through organizational structure (Pandey & Wright, 2006). The major purpose of PPS is to tackle external political difficulties, which can ameliorate goal and role conflict. The focus of PPS is on skills such as political astuteness and strategic vision. Clearly, PPS can be seen as a key moderator of goal ambiguity.

Hypothesis 7: Goal ambiguity correlates negatively with job satisfaction and positively with job tension. 50

Hypothesis 8: PPS moderates the relationship between goal ambiguity and job satisfaction. That is, the negative relationship between goal ambiguity and job satisfaction will be attenuated when PPS is high but exacerbated when PPS is low. Hypothesis 9: PPS moderates the relationship between goal ambiguity and job tension. That is, the positive relationship between goal ambiguity and job tension will be attenuated when PPS is high but exacerbated when PPS is low.

CHAPTER FOUR

METHODOLOGY

This chapter explicitly describes the method used to develop the new measure of public political skill (PPS). First, the survey procedure is introduced including pilot study and survey participants. Next, the establishment of the new measurement for the three dimensions is presented. Then, the analytical techniques and phases are proposed and discussed. Finally, this chapter also describes the other measures suggested by existing theory to test the new construct of PPS.

4.1 Survey Procedure The aim of this study is to develop the new construct of PPS on the basis of the conceptual dimension identified in the previous section. Before designing the survey instrument, several issues were considered to be significant factors for developing the measurement scale. Three basic ideas comprise the establishment of construct validation including content validity, construct validity, and nomological validity (O'Leary-Kelly & Vokurka, 1998). Content validity, as the initial step, identifies a group of empirical indicators that can measure the construct logically and theoretically. Next, construct validity is concerned about how theoretical concepts are operationalized with an experimental or observational context (Babbie, 1992). Therefore, construct validity relates to the ability of research to draw wider inferences from the data and the generalizability of the research. Lastly, the nomological validity refers to hypothesis testing predicting which construct relates to other constructs. 4.1.1 Pilot study In order to obtain validity and reliability for PPS, this study will exercise pretest based upon the common practice of modifying the measures in accordance with survey results. As the questionnaire was drafted, a focus group was organized to discuss the content validity of each question item. Four experienced public servants from different levels of government were requested to fill out the questionnaire before the meeting. The purpose of the focus group was to ask their perceptions and opinions towards the construct of PPS. The first revision of the

52 questionnaire was distributed to several social science professors associated with public management studies in order to sustain the content validity. After identifying the survey instrument, a pretest was exercised by distributing the revised questionnaire to graduate school students in the Askew School of Public Administration and Policy who registered for summer classes and have work experience. Participants in the pilot study are members of the relevant populations who are current public employees or have a high probability to work in public organizations in the future. A pretest is a preliminary trial of research which is essential to the development of a survey instrument. It can test specifically for question variation, meaning, and respondent interest and attention. Responses were provided on a seven-point Likert scale (raging from strongly disagree to strongly agree). After completing the survey, participants were also asked for their opinions of these scales to improve the quality of the questionnaire. A pretest not only provided additional knowledge that led to an improved measurement but also reduced the number of treatment errors because of unclear question items. In spite of building on empirical studies, the new construct must be tested against empirical data to establish its validity. Before proceeding with this survey, the revised questionnaire, cover letter, and guidelines for instructors were reviewed and approved by Florida State University’s Human Subjects Committee. The revised survey instrument in Table 4.1 was administered to survey participants. 4.1.2 Survey participants The target group to survey in this study was public employees enrolled in the Certified Public Manager Program at Florida State University (FCPM). Having been recognized nation- wide, this program provides comprehensive training and development programs for public sector managers at all levels of state and local government. The Certified Public Manager Program consists of eight four-day training sections, from level one to eight. The Florida Governor and Cabinet designated the FCPM program as a "preferred management development program" and encourage all state agencies to participate. Thus, the purposive sampling is appropriate to test the new construct of PPS. Since FCPM students vary from different levels of courses, the surveys were distributed to all students who registered for FCPM program in fall 2011. The time frame of this survey process was from August to December of 2011. With the assistance of the FCPM 53 program director and staff, the surveys were facilitated by their instructors. A cover letter and instructions for the survey specified that participation should be completely voluntary. In addition, the records of this study would be kept confidential and the questionnaire is anonymous. 410 participants in the FCPM program were asked to fill out the self-report questionnaire and 312 responded. The respondent rate was 76.10%. Following the random-digit dial survey reported in the American Association for Public Opinion Research (2011), to be complete a survey had to have more than 80% of all applicable questions answered. Thus, the valid sample size is 306 because five respondents did not finish 80% of all questions and one was self-employed.

4.2 Development of the Measurement Model PPS must be understood in reference to both internal organizational politics and to external political environments. The examination of prevailing literature on policy making processes, strategic management, and collaborative management suggests that in pursuing such governmental goals, public administrators should have specific political skills different from the PSI created by Ferris and his colleagues. These insights were incorporated into a new construct of PPS which was developed on the basis of the conceptual dimension identified in the literature review. After an inductive comparison of the political institutional settings of PSI, three major factors of PPS evolved, each representing a specific domain related to the public arena. These three major categories included: 1) political astuteness; 2) visionary skill; and 3) inclusive skill. Each category undergirded by theoretical perspective was conceptualized as a future scale within the PPS. To test the new construct, this study translates theoretical arguments into a measurement scale to facilitate research. The operational definitions for each scale were developed to capture the essence of the theoretical and empirical findings for each category. The operational definitions for each scale were as follows: The original version of the PPS used in the current analysis contains 18 items. Participants complete the self-report questionnaire and indicate the degree to which each item is true on a seven-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = “strongly disagree” to 7 = “strongly agree”. 4.2.1 Items for the dimension of political astuteness

Engaging in political activities, within proper boundaries, is generally accepted as a legitimate and important part of a public manager’s role (Heymann, 1987; Moore, 1995; Olshfski, 1990; Olshfski & Cunningham, 2008; Svara, 1999a, 2008a). Public administrators confront severe constraints on their power and influence as a result of their particular context. Although politics takes different guises at different managerial levels, all public managers must understand political systems and processes—how the fragmented authorities are structured and connected, their particular interests and motivations, the legal processes, and the budget processes. Thus, the first element of PPS, political astuteness is embedded in the substantive cognition and knowledge of political systems and environments, which also resonates with the public sector leadership literature. Political astuteness refers to the understanding of the substantive knowledge of political systems and the processes of government and their own departments based on position, politics, and perspective. Political astuteness ranges from low to high. The more extensive the executives and managers’ understanding of the governing process and the dynamics of that process—the more politically astute they are—the more likely they are to make more reasoned calculations in recognizing and operating in the decision making process (Olshfski, 1990). Seven items measure political astuteness representing the understanding of the substantive political systems in Table 4.1. The alpha reliability coefficient for political astuteness was .88.

Table 4.1: Political Astuteness Scale PA01 I understand the external political system and government processes very well. PA02 I pay close attention to media coverage about the policy area that I am working in. PA03 I am good at sensing the hidden agenda of major political institutions (parties, courts, legislators). PA04 I know what it takes to get a proposal on the agenda of policy makers. PA05 I intuitively know whether a proposal is politically feasible. PA06 I identify key influential people inside and outside the organization who can help get things done. PA07 I know the politics behind my agency’s spending and budgeting.

4.2.2 Items for the dimension of inclusive skill Moreover, public administrators must consult not only with their immediate supervisors but also with all kinds of external groups and citizens. Public administrators interact 55 with different stakeholders: interest groups, private firms, non-profits, citizens/voters, media, different levels of agencies, and other governments. The political nature of the environment is very much in evidence when public administrators describe the value they have placed on understanding the rules of the system and knowing the main actors. Collaborative management becomes an imperative task in order to solve common good problems or wicked issues (Agranoff, 2007; Agranoff & McGuire, 2003). Inclusive skill emphasizes skills that can build a productive relationship between public managers and the stakeholders of their organizations. Inclusion has two specific interpretations. First, public managers can bring people together from different perspectives in ways that allow them to appreciate one another’s perspectives and thus enhances the design and implementation of policies. Second, public managers can facilitate the practice by creating opportunities for people with different understanding of public problems to work together in a collective space to solve problems (Feldman & Khademian, 2007). Five items measure inclusive skill which indicates the skill to involve citizens in the decision making process in Table 4.2. The Cronbach alpha coefficient for inclusive skill was .85.

Table 4.2: Inclusive Skill Scale IS01 I am good at designing strategies or processes to get relevant people to participate in the decision making and management process. IS02 I am good at choosing stakeholder involvement mechanisms for different purposes and issues. IS03 When people with conflicts meet, I feel comfortable about my ability to lead them to work together. IS04 I understand who should be involved in a particular issue. IS05 I can tell when stakeholders should be involved.

4.2.3 Items for the dimension of visionary skill How does one find a solution when faced with competing interests and values? While it is important to involve stakeholders (the inclusion dimension above), public leaders need to have their own visions so that they can create win-win situations. Visionary skill refers to the ability to look beyond public administrators’ own immediate needs and results. Crosby and Bryson (2005, p. 108) state that visionary leadership “shapes the meaning of public problems and inspires commitment to proposed solutions.” These authors explicate several criteria such as

“seize the opportunity to be an interpreter and direction giver in a situation of uncertainty and difficulty,” and “offer a compelling vision of the future.”(Crosby & Bryson, 2005, p. 110). More specifically, visionary skill has both knowledge-based cognition and specific skill. Visionary skill indicates that public administrators need to have the competency to identify the level of problems and set the goal, then find a way to appeal to the common good. To do that before making a decision or a request involves consideration of the situation of all parties involved. Six items measure visionary skill that refers to the ability to look beyond public administrators’ immediate needs and results in Table 4.3. The value of the Cronbach alpha coefficient for visionary skill was .87.

Table 4.3: Visionary Skill Scale VS01 I can interpret uncertain or difficult situations and provide guidance on future directions. VS02 I use intuitive and integrative thinking to discern connections and patterns among events. VS03 I am good at using metaphors and symbols to illustrate the future of a new program or policy. VS04 I seize the opportunity to be an interpreter and direction giver in a situation of uncertainty and difficulty. VS05 I spend time thinking about the future of our government and its policies. VS06 In dealing with emergent problems, I develop action plans and anticipate desired consequences.

4.3 Analytical Techniques and Phases Data analysis was employed using a combination of different statistical techniques. During the first phase, the construct of PPS will be validated using confirmatory factory analysis. The second phase focuses on testing the predictive validity of PPS. The proposed models included examination of the relationship between PPS and its consequences (job satisfaction, promotions, and job stress). Hypothesis testing models also investigated the moderating effect of PPS with red tape and goal ambiguity on job satisfaction. Multiple regression analysis was used to examine the models. 4.3.1 Phase one A series of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted in order to develop a latent variable measurement model for PPS. Although scale development of PPS has been thoroughly grounded in theory, a measurement model could be hypothesized and examined in 57 the CFA. However, the new instrument is newly developed which makes it necessary to emphasize the quality of the three latent factors in order to validate the new construct of PPS. The research method used to develop the new measure of PPS follows the procedures suggested by Muthén and Muthén (2008) and Brown (2006). Several fit indices were considered in the evaluation of model fit for the CFA in the subsequent analyses. Three indices of absolute fit were used in Mplus including chi-square test, root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), and standardized root mean square residual (SRMR). The chi-square value is the traditional measure for examining the overall model fit and assessing the magnitude of discrepancy between sample and fitted covariance matrices (Hu & Bentler, 1999: 2). Generally, a good model fit would provide an insignificant value at a .05 threshold (Barrett, 2007); however, several severe issues should be taken into account in its use. The chi square statistic is sensitive to the sample size because of its significance test. Chi square test almost always rejects the model when large samples are used (Bentler & Bonnet, 1980). On the other hand, the underlying assumption for using this test is multivariate normality so that it is easy to reject the model even though this model is specified appropriately. RMSEA is a parsimonious corrected fit index since it will choose the model with the lesser number of parameters. Current studies appear to have a general consensus of RMSEA with the values close to or below .06 indicating good fit and values of .08 or less indicating adequate fit ((Brown, 2006; Hu & Bentler, 1999). Standardized root mean square residual (SRMR) with values less than .10 suggest adequate fit and values less than .08 suggest good fit. Two fit indices, which compare the chi-square value to a baseline model, are also considered including Comparative Fit Index (CFI) and Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI). Values for CFI range between 0.0 to 1.0 with values close to 1.0 indicating good fit. For both CFI and TLI, a cut-off criteria greater than .90 indicates good fit (Hu & Bentler, 1998). 4.3.2 Phase two The second phase focuses on testing hypotheses in order to validate the predictability of PPS. Thus, I examined the relationship between PPS and its consequences (job satisfaction, promotions, and job stress) and testing the moderating effect of PPS with red tape and goal ambiguity on outcome variables. The hypotheses that addressed the significant role of PPS in public organizations are analyzed via correlation and multiple regression using Stata 12. Measures used here have been operationalized in terms of the existing research. In addition, the 58 interaction term will be highly correlated with the main effects and can cause multicullinearity. Thus, researchers suggest that centering the variables can reduce multicollinearity problem (Cohen, 2003) and increase interpretability of the interactions (Aiken, West, & Reno, 1991). Job satisfaction. The facet of job satisfaction includes three items (α=0.65), such as “I am very satisfied with the kind of work that I do,” “At least for now, my current position is well suited to my needs,” and “I would not recommend working here to others” (reversed). The factor loadings of the three items ranged from .42 to .76. Promotion. Respondents were asked “How many promotions have you received with your current position?” and “How many promotions have you received from your prior government employers (other than your current employer?)” The summation of the two items was taken as job promotion. Job tension. The three items referring to job tension are “My job tends to directly affect my health,” “I work under great pressure,” and “I have felt fidgety or nervous as a result of my job.” The internal reliability of the three items is .80 and the results of factors are ranged from .70 to .75. Public political skill. A fourteen-item scale as discussed above was used to measure public political skill (α=.79). PPS has three dimensions containing political astuteness (e.g., ‘I understand the external political system and government processes very well’), inclusive skill (e.g., I am good at designing strategies or processes to get relevant people to participate in the decision making and management process), and visionary skill (e.g., I am good at using metaphors and symbols to illustrate the future of a new program or policy). The scale utilized a seven-point format (1=strongly disagree to 7=strongly disagree). Satisfied with the construct validity, the means of the items within a construct were used to extract factor scores to represent PPS. Political skill inventory. Political skill inventory (α=.76) was measured using a modified version of a 14-item scale, based on the original 18-item developed by Ferris et al. (2005). This measure assessed respondents’ perceptions of their own political skill. The items in this measure were designed to reflect four dimensions of political skill. The dimensions are social astuteness (e.g., ‘I am particularly good at sensing the motivations and hidden agendas of others’), interpersonal influence (e.g., ‘I am able to make most people feel comfortable and at ease around me’), networking ability (e.g., ‘I have developed a large network of colleagues and 59 associates at work whom I can call on for support when I really need to get things done’), and apparent sincerity (e.g., ‘When communicating with others, I try to be genuine in what I say and do’). A 7-point Likert scale was used ranging from strongly disagree (1) and strongly agree (7). Taking means of the items to represent four parcels was used to compute factor score for PSI. Red tape. Respondents were asked to provide their perception regarding red tape in their organization where red tape is defined as burdensome administrative rules and procedures that have negative effects on the organization’s performance ranging from almost no red tape (1) to a great deal of red tape (10). Goal ambiguity. Goal ambiguity (α=.91) was measured using three items such as “This organization’s mission is clear to almost everyone who works here (reverse).” The factor loadings ranged from .85 to .89. Control variables. In order to ensure that the hypothesis test was appropriately conservative, this study used several control variables for job satisfaction, job tension, and promotion such as individual differences including gender, age, education level, tenure, and salary as well as organizational characteristics (e.g., centralization). Gender was coded as “0” for females and “1” for males. The age of the respondents was measured using the following open- ended survey question: In what year were you born? The year of birth was subsequently transformed into their current age by subtracting the year of birth from the year of this study 2012. The level of education of the respondents was collected from the following question: which of the following best describes your highest education level? I recoded seven categories into three scales. The level of education was coded “1” for “high school and some college, “2” for bachelor’s degree and associate degree, and “3” for master’s degree or higher. The number year of organizational tenure was measured using the following open-ended question: How many years have you worked for this organization? Salary was measured using eight categories from 1 (under $20,000) to 8 ($80,000 or above). The variable of centralization used a multi-item scale to measure organizational structure (e.g., ‘There can be little action here until a supervisor approves a decision’). The alpha coefficient is 0.82.

CHAPTER FIVE

RESULTS

This chapter presents the results of the confirmatory factor analysis of the original 18 items of PPS. Next, this chapter also discusses the results of reliability and validity when testing the construct of PSI with 14 items. The comparison between PSI and PPS demonstrates the final model of the 14 item PPS and its covariance with PSI. After validating the construct of PPS, the final section presents the results of testing models using multiple regression analyses.

5.1 Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

Granting that the theoretical studies suggest three new factors of PPS, the measurement model of PPS is examined with Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Rather than freely loading onto all factors, the priori structure underlying a set of measured variables is proposed in the CFA. Confirmatory factor analyses are commonly applied to a set of measured variables that have been carefully scrutinized either by researchers’ or others’ theory or previous studies. Since the distribution of the 18 items are slightly skewed, robust maximum likelihoods are employed to deal with of the non-normality issue in the estimation (Brown, 2006). 5.1.1 Original Model Specification First, a CFA with 18 PPS items is run using robust maximum likelihood estimation. This model has 18 observed variables: each observed variable is an indicator of a single latent variable (See Figure 5.1). This model includes 39 parameters to be estimated: 21 variances for latent variables (i.e., each variance for three factors including political astuteness, inclusive skill, and visionary skill; and 18 error terms of the indicators); 3 covariance (i.e., between political astuteness and inclusive skill; between political skill and visionary skill; and between inclusive skill and visionary skill); 15 factor loadings (i.e., for scaling a factor by imposing the unstandardized coefficient for the direct effect on one of its indicators to equal 1.0). Additionally, this model has 171 observations (unique cases of data used in the input matrix including variance and covariance of the indicators: 18*19/2=171). Therefore, the degrees of freedom in this model were 132 (i.e., total observations (171) - total parameters (39) = 132). 61

5.1.2 Model evaluation for CFA analyses To evaluate whether this original factor structure is supported by the data, the first requirement is to examine the tests of model fit. Overall, the original model with 18 items does not fit data well, except for showing acceptable SRMR (SRMR=.06). The chi-square test does not display an acceptable fit, but this test, as discussed earlier, is sensitive to sample size and may underestimate the degree of model fit. Neither CFI nor TLI demonstrates good model fit (CFI=.87; TLI=.85). RMSEM is over .08, which suggests the model fits the data poorly. Basically, the current model does not fit the data. The next step is to evaluate the parameter estimates for the model. Figure 5.1 presents the standardized solution in this model. Standardized parameters are computed using unit variance identification constraint (UVI), which fixes the factor variance to 1.0 and also standardizes the factor (Kline, 2005). As a factor is scaled through a UVI, all factor loadings for its indicators are free parameters. Regarding the standardized solutions, all the indicators specified to the latent factor “political astuteness” indicate significant loadings, with magnitudes raging from 0.57 to 0.86. Moreover, the standardized loadings for the latent factor “inclusive skill” are all statistically significant, with magnitudes ranging from 0.63 to 0.80. Finally, the six indicators specified to be caused by the latent factor “visionary skill” resulted in significant loadings, with magnitudes ranging from 0.67 to 0.74. The model indicates that all covariances are statistically significant as well. Noticeably, the covariance between inclusive skill and visionary skill is slightly high (.79), suggesting the need to further examine the discriminant validity.

Figure 5.1: The Original 18-item CFA Model

Finally, the modification indices are assessed to determine whether model fit could be statistically improved by freeing any parameters constrained to zero (i.e., Mplus displays the value of modification indices greater than 10; a somewhat arbitrary but conservative value compared to the criterion of 20 or greater). In the current model, the largest MI values (36.14) suggest that VS01 is strongly associated with VS02. Thus, the first item of VS01, “I am good at designing strategies or processes to get relevant people to participate in the decision making and management process,” is dropped. The revised 17-item model is re-run and model fit indices are shown in Table 5.1. Both RMSEA and SRMR illustrate acceptable results (RMSEA=0.08; SRMR=0.055); however, CFI and TLI are still below .9 (CFI=0.88; TLI=0.86). Investigation of MI finds that IS02 is strongly related to both IS04 (MI=33.88) and IS01 (MI=24.61). After dropping the item of IS02, an examination of model fit indices for the revised 16-item model is presented in Table 5.1. Both CFI and TLI demonstrate good model fit (CFI=0.92; TLI=0.90), so do the values of RMSEA and SRMR (RMSEA=0.067; SRMR=0.055). In addition, MI does not produce substantial values, suggesting that none of the 16 items needs to be dropped. The revised 16 items present an acceptable and good model fit for the data and thus provide a feasible measurement model for the construct of PPS.

Table 5.1: Fit Indices in CFA for PPS: MLR (n=306) Latent factor Chi-square CFI TLI RMSEA SRMR Original 18 items 408.424 (df=132) 0.872 0.851 0.083 0.058 P-value=0.000 Revised 17 items 342.561 (df=116) 0.884 0.864 0.080 0.055 p-value=0.000 Revised 16 items 239.996 (df=101) 0.917 0.901 0.067 0.055 p-value=0.000

In order to certify the quality of the items loaded onto each latent factor, the final step is to validate each of them in the CFA model. The examination of model fit indices for each latent factor is shown in Table 5.2. Except for TLI (.89<.90) and RMSEA (0.105>0.10) being slightly over the criteria, the other two model indices for the factor of political astuteness present a good fit (CFI=0.927 and SRMR=.048). Following the same procedure, the examination of MI suggests dropping item PA05 to reduce the issue of residual correlation. The revised 6-item model for political astuteness is then re-run and attains good model fit (CFI=0.961; TLI=0.935; RMSEA=0.075; and SRMR=0.040). Four items 64 loaded onto the factor of inclusive skill illustrate good model fit (CFI=0.978; TLI=0.934; RMSEA (0.137>0.1; SRMR=0.028), so do the five items loaded onto the factor of visionary skill (CFI=0.965; TLI=0.930; RMSEA=0.084; SRMR=0.030).

Table 5.2: Fit Indices in CFA for Each Latent Factor of PPS: MLR (n=306) Latent factor Chi-square CFI TLI RMSEA SRMR Political astuteness 60.818 (df=14) 0.927 0.890 0.105 0.048 (7 items) P-value=0.000 Political astuteness 24.499 (df=9) 0.961 0.935 0.075 0.040 (6 items drop PA05) p-value=0.0036 Inclusive skill 5.826 (df=2) 0.984 0.953 0.079 0.029 (4 items) p-value=0.0543 Visionary skill 15.838 (df=5) 0.965 0.930 0.084 0.030 (5 items) p-value= 0.0073

A CFA model with 15 items is re-run and the model fits the data well (CFI=0.924; TLI=0.908; RMSEA=0.064; and SRMR=0.054, see Figure 5.2). Table 5.3 displays the standardized statistics for the factor loadings, covariance, and R-square. The standardized factor loadings can be interpreted as the correlation between the indicator and the latent variable it loads onto if the model does not contain any cross-loadings. The R-square value demonstrates the proportion of the variance in the indicator explained by the latent variable (Brown, 2006). The magnitude of the standardized loadings for each latent variable shows that all are statistically significant. Six items loaded onto the latent factor of political astuteness, with loadings ranging from 0.613 to 0.778; four items loaded into the latent factor of inclusive skill, with loadings ranging from 0.658 to 0.866; four items loaded into the latent factor of visionary skill, with loadings ranging from 0.686 to 0.739. The R-square values range from 0.411 to 0.749 and indicate appropriate magnitudes (i.e., in the range between .300 - .600).

Table 5.3: Standardized Factor Loadings, Covariances, R-square Estimate for the Revised 15-item of PPS Standardized Factor loading Political Astuteness: Estimated S.E. Est./S.E. R-square Estimate PA01 0.761 0.036 21.080 0.579 PA02 0.641 0.046 13.825 0.411 PA03 0.778 0.031 24.959 0.606 PA04 0.751 0.034 22.060 0.564 PA06 0.642 0.042 15.106 0.412 PA07 0.613 0.054 11.363 0.376 Factor loadings Inclusive Skill: IS01 0.726 0.034 21.429 0.527 IS03 0.658 0.049 13.433 0.433 IS04 0.866 0.030 28.398 0.749 IS05 0.763 0.044 17.233 0.582 Factor loadings Visionary Skill: VS02 0.686 0.044 15.564 0.471 VS03 0.690 0.039 17.852 0.477 VS04 0.739 0.053 13.888 0.546 VS05 0.687 0.044 15.624 0.472 VS06 0.703 0.041 17.088 0.495 Covariance: PA with IS 0.584 0.051 11.467 PA with VS 0.602 0.052 11.570 IS with VS 0.784 0.046 16.992

Figure 5.2: Revised 15-item CFA Model

While the covariance of the latent factor illustrates statistical significance, one covariance of VS with IS appears to be 0.784, suggesting the need to examine the discriminant validity. One way to assess whether the two latent factors, inclusive skill and visionary skill, are different from each other is to conduct a Wald test. After constraining the correlation, the result of the Wald test illustrates statistical significance, indicating the two latent factors are indeed different from each other. Another alternative method is to create a two latent factors combination model and then conduct a chi-square difference test with Robust MLE. Table 5.4 shows fit indices for the two latent factors CFA model. The chi-square different test suggests that the three-factor model fit is more statistically significant than the two factor model.1 Both tests provide sufficient evidence that the two latent factors, inclusive skill and visionary skill, are distinguishable with acceptable discriminant validity. The new construct of PPS was hypothesized to control for first order factors including political astuteness, inclusive skill, and visionary skill. Thus, the second-order CFA for PPS was tested and the model fit indices are shown in Table 5.4. The two equivalent models yield identical chi-squares, degree of freedom, and fit indices. In the revised 15-item model, the covariance is due to group factors, while in the second-order model, the covariace is replaced by factor loadings on the PPS.

Thedf chi-square= 2 difference showed significance suggesting the simpler model fit is worse than the complex model. Therefore, the complex model should be chosen since it is more parsimonious.

Table 5.4: Fit Indices of Revised 15-item PPS in CFA: MLR (n=306) Chi-square CFI TLI RMSEA SRMR Revised 15-item 194.377 (df=87) 0.924 0.908 0.064 0.054 model (3-factor) p-value=0.000 c=1.402 2-factor model 249.31 (df=89) 0.886 0.866 0.077 0.058 p-value=0.000 c=1.417 Second-order 194.377 (df=87) 0.924 0.908 0.064 0.054 model p-value=0.000 (15 items) c=1.402

PPS

0.67 0.87 0.90

1 1 PA IS 1 VS

0.7 0.7 0.6 0.7 0.6 0.7 0.6 0.7 0.7 0.6 0.6 0.8 0.6 0.6 0.7

P P P P P P IS IS IS IS V V V V V A A A A A A 0 0 0 0 S S S S S

δ δ δ δ δ δ δ Δ Δ Δ Δ Δ Δ Δ Δ 10 11 12 14 15 16 17 18

0.4 0.5 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.4 0.5 0.2 0.42 0.5 0.5 0.4 0.5 0.5

Chi-square=194.377

CFI= 0.92; TLI= 0.91; RMSEA= 0.64; SRMR= 0.05 Figure 5.3: Revised 15-item of Second Order CFA Model

5.2 The Measurement of Political Skill Inventory (PSI) Political skill inventory (PSI), identified by Ferris and his colleagues (Ferris, Treadway, et al., 2005), suggests a multi-dimensional construct which can be modeled accurately with a hierarchical structure of factors. PSI consists of eighteen measures of four latent factors including social astuteness (SA), networking ability (NA), apparent sincerity (AS), and interpersonal influence (IF). The items on the PSI are continuous variables, but several items are not normally distributed. Robust Maximum likelihood (MLR) is used in the estimation procedure that is robust to violations of non-normality (Brown, 2006). Therefore, this model is examined by CFA with MLR as well as PPS. The model indices are displayed in Table 5.5. In spite of the significant magnitude for each item loaded into each latent factor, the current model is inconsistent with adequate fit (CFI=0.852; TLI=0.824; RMSEA=0.087; SRMR=0.073). Next, the examination of MI stresses the issues of cross loadings and residual correlation. One item (PSI05) loaded into two factors, SA and IS, has a particularly large MI (e.g., 59.039). After removing PSI05, the validity of the revised 17-item model is examined and the tests of model fit display that fit indices approach the cut-off values (CFI=0.889; TLI=0.866; RMSEA=0.075; SRMR=0.068) but are still not an acceptable fit. The examination of MI indicates that one item PSI06 cross loads with both IF and NA (43.529). After dropping the item PSI06, the revised model with 16 items demonstrates the model fit indices improved (CFI=0.911; TLI=0.891; RMSEA=0.069; SRMR=0.057); however, the residual correlation of item PSI01 shows a large value (36.309) with other items (PSI10 and PSI11), suggesting the need to remove it. After dropping the item PSI01, the revised model with 15 items in CFA fits the model well (CFI=0.944; TLI=0.930; RMSEA=0.055; SRMR=0.055). The investigation of MI shows that item PSI12 had both residual correlations with other items and cross loading. Following the same procedure and removing PSI12, the results of fit indices in the revised 14-item model demonstrate a good model fit (CFI=0.976; TLI=0.969; RMSEA=0.039; SRMR=0.047). No further modifications to the revised 14-item model appeared necessary after using these MI as a guide.

Table 5.5: Fit Indices in CFA for PSI: MLR (n=306) Latent factor Chi-square CFI TLI RMSEA SRMR 4 latent factors Original 18 items 425.745 (df=129) 0.852 0.824 0.087 0.073 P-value=0.000 Revised 17 items 306.007 (df=113) 0.889 0.866 0.075 0.068 p-value=0.000 Revised 16 items 239.082 (df=98) 0.911 0.891 0.069 0.057 p-value=0.000 Revised 15 items 162.823 (df=84) 0.944 0.930 0.055 0.055 p-value=0.000 c=1.334 Revised 14 items 103.415 (df=71) 0.976 0.969 0.039 0.047 p-value=0.000 c=1.286 Second-order CFA 124.551(df=73) 0.961 0.952 0.048 0.054 (14 items) p-value=0.000 scaling correction factor: c= 1.269

PSI could control first-order factors of social astuteness, interpersonal influence, networking ability, and apparent sincerity, which could be interpretable as a second order CFA as well. Thus, the data is re-analyzed in second-order CFA and the model fit indices are shown in Table 5.5. Since the two models are hierarchical and both models reasonably fit the data, a chi- square difference test with MLR can be performed to assess their relative fit. According to the chi-square difference test with Robust MLE, the result suggests that the model correlates with four factors fits significantly better than the second-order model2.

The chi-square difference showed significance suggesting the simpler model fit is worse than the complex model.

Therefore, retain the complex model.

5.3 Distinctive Validity of PPS and PSI Built upon PSI, the new construct of PPS may share similar behavior or overlap with PSI. Thus, the new construct should be detected its covariance with PSI. Before analyzing both constructs, PSI is validated by the data as a multidimensional construct based on the CFA model. PSI with 14 items and PPS with 15 items are tested in CFA to evaluate distinctive validity. Both CFI and TLI do not provide goodness of fit (CFI=0.889; TLI=0.877), while RMSEA and SRMR show good fit (RMSEA=0.057; SRMR=0.065). The MI suggests that PA03 (I am good at sensing the hidden agenda of major political institutions (parties, courts, legislators) showed high residual correlation (29.027) with PSI07 (I am particularly good at sensing the motivations and hidden agendas of others). After removing PA03, the model fit improved (CFI=0.908; TLI=0.898; RMSEA=0.052; SRMR=0.063). The investigation of MI does not appear to show large values of residual correlation with other items and cross loading. Thus, the final model for the new construct of PPS contains 14 question items in Table 5.6. Figure 5.4 demonstrates the final model of the new construct PPS with 14 items.

Table 5.6: Items of Public Political Skill (n=14) with Intended Sub-scale PA01 I understand the external political system and government processes very well.

PA02 I pay close attention to media coverage about the policy area that I am working in.

PA03 I am good at sensing the hidden agenda of major political institutions (parties, courts, legislators).

PA04 I know what it takes to get a proposal on the agenda of policy makers.

PA05 I intuitively know whether a proposal is politically feasible.

PA06 I identify key influential people inside and outside the organization who can help get things done.

PA07 I know the politics behind my agency’s spending and budgeting.

IS01 I am good at designing strategies or processes to get relevant people to participate in the decision making and management process. IS02 I am good at choosing stakeholder involvement mechanisms for different purposes and issues.

IS03 When people with conflicts meet, I feel comfortable about my ability to lead them to work together.

IS04 I understand who should be involved in a particular issue.

IS05 I can tell when stakeholders should be involved.

VS01 I can interpret uncertain or difficult situations and provide guidance on future directions.

VS02 I use intuitive and integrative thinking to discern connections and patterns among events.

VS03 I am good at using metaphors and symbols to illustrate the future of a new program or policy.

VS04 I seize the opportunity to be an interpreter and direction giver in a situation of uncertainty and difficulty.

VS05 I spend time thinking about the future of our government and its policies.

VS06 In dealing with emergent problems, I develop action plans and anticipate desired consequences.

Note: The items with cross lines will eventually be deleted. Alpha reliability coefficients are calculated based on the final model.

0.60

0.62 0.78

IS PA VS

0.70 0.73 0.69 0.71 0.64 0.76 0.61 0.66 0.86 0.69 0.77 0.69 0.69 0.74

PA PA PA PA PA IS IS IS IS VS VS VS VS VS 01 02 04 06 07 01 03 04 05 02 03 04 05 06

δ1 δ2 δ4 δ6 δ7 δ8 Δ Δ Δ Δ Δ Δ Δ Δ 10 11 12 14 15 16 17 18

0.42 0.59 0.44 0.59 0.62 0.47 0.57 0.25 0.42 0.53 0.52 0.45 0.53 0.51

Chi-square= 231.933 (df=74) CFI= 0.92; TLI= 0.90; RMSEA= 0.08; SRMR= 0.05

Figure 5.4: The 14-item PPS in CFA Model

Figure 5.5 represents the first order model for both PPS and PSI. The model fit indices suggest that the model fits the data well (CFI=0.919; TLI=0.907; RMSEA=0.050; SRMR=0.054). The focus here concentrates on the covariance to examine whether individual constructs shared a high correlation with each other and that in turn should determine which latent factor was identical with others. Based on the results, this graph illustrates that each latent factor was separate from others but correlated with each other, ranging from .19 to .79. In Figure 5.6, I use second order CFA to detect both constructs. The covariance between PPS and PSI was .64, indicating that both constructs were separate but share similar behavior for measuring political behavior as shown in Figure 5.6.

Figure 5.5: Covariance of 7-latent Factor 76

Figure 5.6: The Covariance of Second-order CFA between PSI and PPS

5.4 Predictive Validity of PPS 5.4.1 Descriptive statistics and intercorrelations Table 5.7 presents the means, standard deviations, intercorrelations, and internal consistency reliability (α) of all variables. Of the respondents, 58% are female and the average age was 44.69. The average tenure within the organization was approximately 12 years and 4 months. As shown in Table 5.7, a significant relationship was found between PPS and PSI with 0.52 (p<0.01) and the correlation between centralization and red tape with 0.42 (p<0.01). All other correlations are illustrated as slight to moderate in nature, between 0.12 to 0.39. Regarding the variable of job satisfaction, both PPS (0.15, p<0.01) and PSI (0.12, p<0.05) illustrate positive correlation with significant magnitude but negatively correlated with job tension (-0.21, p<0.01), red tape (-0.26, p<0.01), centralization (-0.28. p<0.01), and goal ambiguity (-0.27. p<0.01). On the other hand, neither PPS nor PSI had significant correlation with job tension, but job tension positively correlated with red tape (0.27, p<0.01), promotion (0.17, p<0.01), and centralization (0.26, p<0.01). As to the variable of promotion, PPS indicated positive correlation with promotion to be significant (0.22, p<0.01), while PSI showed the positive correlation with not of significant magnitude. Generally, for most demographic variables, the intercorrelation matrix could provide reasonable direction and magnitude such as the variable of salary having positive significant intercorrelations with age, tenure, gender, the level of education. The results implied that the level of salary correlated positively with older male with more tenure and high level of education. The values of coefficient alpha were satisfactory above 0.7 for all latent variables.

Table 5.7: Means, Standard Deviations, Coefficient Alpha Reliabilities, and Intercorrelations

M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 1. Gender 0.42 0.49 1 300 2.Education 2.08 0.72 0.00 1 300 301 3. Salary 5.24 1.72 0.27*** 0.13** 1 296 297 297 4. Tenure 12.48 7.77 -0.03 -0.22** 0.25*** 1 296 298 294 303 5. Age 44.64 8.54 -0.05 -0.06 0.27*** 0.39*** 1 294 295 293 292 295 6. Red 6.57 2.16 -0.08 0.01 -0.07 0.08 -0.03 1 294 295 293 297 291 295 7.Promotion 3.80 2.67 0.01 -0.15** 0.18** 0.18*** 0.15*** 0.1* 1 300 301 297 303 295 300 306 8.Central 3.51 1.44 -0.15*** -0.02 -0.26** -0.04 -0.11* 0.42*** -0.04 (0.83) 298 299 295 301 293 298 304 304 9. GA 2.97 1.56 -0.10 0.02 -0.03 0.03 0.02 0.13** 0.03 0.07 (0.91) 299 300 296 302 294 299 305 307 305 10.Jab 5.45 1.09 0.07 -0.07 0.20*** 0.07 0.21** -0.27*** 0.05 -0.28*** -0.28*** (0.79) satisfaction 294 295 291 297 289 294 300 299 299 300 11.Job tension 3.70 1.41 -0.13** 0.1* 0.08 0.13** -0.01 0.26*** 0.17*** 0.26*** 0.03 -0.20*** (0.80) 296 297 293 299 291 296 302 301 301 299 300 12. PPS 4.87 0.91 0.05 0.08 0.18*** 0.01 0.12** 0.02 0.23** -0.06 -0.14* 0.16** 0.09 (0.78) 295 296 292 298 290 295 301 299 300 295 297 301 13. PSI 5.69 0.68 -0.07 0.02 -0.14** -0.12** -0.04 -0.04 0.10 -0.00 -0.13** 0.16* -0.00 0.52*** (0.79) 297 298 294 300 292 297 303 301 302 295 299 298 303 *0<0.1; *p<0.05; ** p<0.01 (2-tailed). 1. Correlations were calculated using pairwise deletion. Thus pairwise sample (N) is given. 2. Coefficient alpha reliabilities are given along the diagonal. 3. GA: goal ambiguity; Central: centralization; PPS: public political skill; PSI: political skill inventory;

5.4.2 Analysis of hypotheses In the analysis of the hypotheses concerning the impacts of PPS, multiple and moderated regression is used to examine three different models. As shown in Table 5.8, hypothesis 1 is supported as controlling for the demographic variables and organization characteristics constant. PPS in the first step of the model of promotion illustrates strong significant magnitude and positive relationship with job promotions (β=0.19, p<0.01). Adding PSI in step 2, PPS remains positive and significant relationship with promotions, while PSI displays the same direction without significance. The R square change increases slightly with no significance, suggesting adding this variable does not increase explanatory power. In order to comprehend the effects of the three dimensions of PPS on promotion, step 3 in this model including political astuteness, inclusive skill, and visionary skill is examined. The results show that three variables have a positive relationship with promotion, but only inclusive skill reveals significant magnitude (β=0.18, p<0.05). The R-square change shows significance, indicating that adding these three variables improves the model.

Table 5.8: Results of Multiple Regression Analysis for the Impact of the PPS and PSI on Job Promotion Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 β s.e. β s.e. β s.e. Gender -0.02 0.33 -0.02 0.33 -0.02 0.33 Education -0.15** 0.22 -0.15** 0.22 -0.15** 0.22 Salary 0.12* 0.11 0.13* 0.11 0.10 0.11 Tenure 0.09 0.02 0.09 0.02 0.09 0.02 Age 0.06 0.02 0.06 0.02 0.06 0.02 Centralization -0.05 0.20 -0.05 0.20 -0.05 0.20 Red 0.10 0.08 0.10 0.08 0.10 0.08 GA 0.05 0.17 0.05 0.17 0.05 0.17 PPS 0.19*** 0.19 0.16** 0.22 PSI 0.06 0.22 PA 0.08 0.17 IS 0.17** 0.21 VS -0.01 0.22 Model F (df) 3.98*** 3.64*** 3.39*** (9, 264) (10, 263) (11, 261) 0.12 0.12 0.125 Δ 0.0022 0.04*** N 274 Note: Red: red tape; GA: goal ambiguity; PPS: public political skill; PSI: political skill inventory; PA: political astuteness; IS: inclusive skill; VS: visionary skill *p<0.1, **p<0.05; ***p<0.01 (two-tailed) β is the standardized regression coefficient.

For both job satisfaction and job tension models, the hypotheses are addressed regarding moderating PPS between perceived organizational red tape and goal ambiguity in such a way that greater PPS can reduce the negative effect of red tape and goal ambiguity on job tension and job satisfaction. Thus, all independent variables in both models of job satisfaction and job tension are centered prior to their entry in regression equations, and tests for normality demonstrate no violations of assumptions underlying the regressions. In order to test for moderating effects, the regression analyses are conducted in two ways: first, using the construct of PPS and PSI as the independent variables; and second, three dimensions of PPS substitute as predictor variables. Tables 5.9 and 5.10 present the results of the moderated regression analyses for job satisfaction; and Tables 5.11 and 5.12 present the results for job tension. As shown in the column labeled step 1 in Table 5.9, several control variables are significant predictors of individual job satisfaction. Organizational centralization, perception of red tape, and goal

81 ambiguity demonstrate negative and significant association with job satisfaction while age could contribute positive and significant relationship with job satisfaction. The results support both hypothesis 4 and hypothesis 7. The perception of red tape and goal ambiguity are unfavorable elements that can decrease individual job satisfaction significantly. The main effect of PPS is significantly and positively related to job satisfaction, which is supported by hypothesis 2 (β=0.12, p<0.05). Next, adding PSI in step 2, the main effect of PPS is positive but not a significant predictor for job satisfaction. Instead, only PSI is a significant predictor (β=0.17, p<0.05). Step 3 includes the interaction term of PPS with red tape and goal ambiguity. The variable of red tape shows a negative and significant relationship with job satisfaction but goal ambiguity does not. The interaction term of PPS with red tape has significant magnitude (PPSxRed, β=0.11, p<0.05). In addition, the interaction term of PPS with red tape in the last column of step 4 is significant as well (PPSxRed, β=0.12, p<0.05). The interaction term significantly predicted perception of red tape in the job satisfaction model. However, goal ambiguity does not display significant magnitude in either step 3 or step 4.

Table 5.9: Results of Multiple Regression Analysis for the Impact of the PPS and PSI on Job satisfaction Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 β s.e. β s.e. β s.e. β s.e. Gender -0.04 0.09 -0.04 0.09 -0.05 0.09 -0.05 0.09 Education -0.06 0.06 -0.06 0.06 -0.09 0.06 -0.09 0.06 Salary 0.10 0.03 0.14* 0.03 0.12* 0.03 0.15** 0.03 Tenure -0.00 0.01 -.00 0.01 -0.02 0.01 -0.01 0.01 Age 0.15** 0.01 0.15** 0.01 0.13** 0.01 0.13** 0.01 Centralization -0.19*** 0.06 -0.19** 0.06 -0.19*** 0.06 -0.19*** 0.06 Red -0.16** 0.02 -0.15** 0.02 -0.18*** 0.02 -0.15** 0.02 GA -0.25*** 0.05 -0.25*** 0.05 -0.24*** 0.05 -0.24*** 0.05 PPS 0.12** 0.05 0.02 0.06 0.11** 0.05 0.04 0.06 PSI 0.17** 0.06 0.14** 0.06 PPSxRed 0.11** 0.02 0.12** 0.03 PPSxGA -0.02 0.06 -0.05 0.06 PSIxRed -0.08 0.03 PSIxGA 0.06 0.06 Model F(df) 9.41*** 9,28 8.14*** 7.07*** (9, 259 (10, 258 (11, 257) (14, 254) 0.25 0.26 0.26 0.28 0.02** 0.01 0.02* N 269 Note: Red: red tape; GA: goal ambiguity; PPS: public political skill; PSI: Political skill inventory; *p<0.1, **p<0.05; ***p<0.01 (two-tailed) β is the standardized regression coefficient.

In order to examine the moderating effects, the plots follow Aiken and West (1991) procedures. A plot of the significant interaction, split by low (-1SD) and high (+1SD) level of PPS is shown in Figure 5.7. This figure supports hypothesis 5. There appears sufficient evidence that the relationship between perception of red tape and job satisfaction becomes significantly exacerbated when PPS is low but attenuated when PPS is high (an essentially flat slope). 0 -.5 Job satisfaction Job -1 -1.5 0 2 4 6 8 10 Perception of red tape

High PPS Low PPS

Figure 5.7: Interaction between Perception of Red Tape and PPS on Job Satisfaction

Further examination of the three dimensions on PPS in Table 5.10 displays that VS could contribute to job satisfaction more than the other two variables with significant magnitude in step 1 (β=0.13, p<0.1). Including three interaction terms with red tape in step 2, VS has significant magnitude with positive direction (β=0.16, p<0.5). In addition, interaction of PA with red tape has slight significant magnitude (β=0.11, p<0.1). In step 3, three interaction terms with goal ambiguity are added. The results reveal no significance when adding these three new variables in that the R square change does not show significant magnitude. Following the same procedure to draw the interaction figure, Figure 5.8 shows the interaction of PA with red tape on job satisfaction.

Table5.10: Results of Multiple Regression Analysis for the Impact of three dimensions of the PPS on Job satisfaction Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 β s.e. β s.e. β s.e. Gender -0.04 0.09 -0.05 0.10 -0.05 0.10 Education -0.06 0.06 -0.08 0.06 -0.07 0.07 Salary 0.11* 0.03 0.14** 0.03 0.12* 0.03 Tenure -0.01 0.01 -0.01 0.01 -0.02 0.01 Age 0.15** 0.01 0.13** 0.01 0.15** 0.01 Centralization -0.19*** 0.06 -0.17*** 0.06 -0.19*** 0.06 Red -0.16*** 0.02 -0.15*** 0.02 -0.16*** 0.02 GA -0.25*** 0.05 -0.24*** 0.05 -0.25*** 0.05 PA 0.02 0.05 -0.01 0.05 -0.02 0.05 IS 0.01 0.06 -0.02 0.06 0.01 0.06 VS 0.13* 0.06 0.16** 0.06 0.13* 0.06 PAxRed 0.11* 0.02 ISxRed 0.04 0.03 VSxRed 0.01 0.04 PAxGA -0.00 0.05 ISxGA -0.06 0.06 VSxGA 0.03 0.06 Model F(df) 7.80*** 6.63*** 6.12 (11, 257) (14, 254) (14, 254) 0.25 0.27 0.25 0.02 0.002 N 269 Note: Red: red tape; GA: goal ambiguity; PPS: public political skill; PSI: Political skill inventory; PA: political astuteness; IS: inclusive skill; VS: visionary skill *p<0.1, **p<0.05; ***p<0.01 (two-tailed) β is the standardized regression coefficient.

-.8 -1 -1.2 -1.4 Job satisfaction Job -1.6 -1.8 0 2 4 6 8 10 Red tape

High PA Low PA

Figure 5.8 Interaction between Perception of Red Tape with PA on Job Satisfaction

To test the effects of PPS and PSI on job tension, I repeat the moderated regression analysis. The results of the analyses are demonstrated in Table 5.11. As shown in step 1, among these control variables, both centralization and perception of red tape illustrate strong significant magnitude and a positive relationship with job tension (red tape: β=0.17, p<0.01; centralization: β=0.18, p<0.01), while goal ambiguity does not have significant magnitude. In other words, both red tape and centralization are stressors for public employees but goal ambiguity is not. The results disclose that hypothesis 7 cannot be fully supported. The other variables such as education, salary, and tenure display positive and significant association with job tension but gender has a negative direction. However, the main effect of PPS is positive but is not a significant predictor. Thus, the findings cannot underpin hypothesis 3, suggesting that PPS has no relationship with job tension. As for adding PSI in step 2, neither PPS nor PSI has significant magnitude but are opposite in direction, which means PPS has a positive sign but PSI has a negative sign. In step 3, the interaction terms of PPS with both perception of red tape and goal ambiguity present significant magnitude (PPSxRed, β=-0.10, p<0.1; PPSxGA, β=0.15, p<0.01). While adding interactions of PSI and PPS with both perception of red tape and goal ambiguity in step 4, the results reveal only two interaction terms are significant. That is the interaction of PPS with perception of red tape and the interaction of PSI with goal ambiguity show significant association with job tension.

Table 5.11: Results of Multiple Regression Analysis for the Impact of the PPS and PSI on Job tension Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 β s.e. β s.e. β s.e. Β s.e. Gender -0.12** 0.10 -0.12** 0.10 -0.11* 0.10 -0.11* 0.10 Education 0.12** 0.07 0.12** 0.07 0.15** 0.07 0.15** 0.07 Salary 0.13** 0.03 0.13* 0.03 0.12* 0.03 0.13* 0.03 Tenure 0.16** 0.01 0.16** 0.01 0.16** 0.01 0.16** 0.01 Age -0.09 0.01 -0.09 0.01 -0.07 0.01 -0.07 0.01 Centralization 0.18*** 0.06 0.18*** 0.06 0.18*** 0.06 0.19*** 0.06 Red 0.18*** 0.03 0.17*** 0.03 0.20*** 0.02 0.18*** 0.03 GA -0.02 0.05 -0.02 0.05 -0.03 0.05 -0.04 0.05 PPS 0.07 0.06 0.09 0.07 0.09 0.18 0.08 0.07 PSI -0.03 0.07 -0.03 0.07 PPSxRed -0.10* 0.03 -0.13** 0.03 PPSxGA 0.15*** 0.06 0.09 0.07 PSIxRed 0.08 0.03 PSIxGA 0.11* 0.07 Model F(df) 5.54 4.99 5.54 4.73 (9, 261) (10, 260) (11, 258) (14, 256) 0.16*** 0.16*** 0.19*** 0.21*** 0.00 0.03*** 0.05** N 271

Note: Red: red tape; GA: goal ambiguity; PPS: public political skill; PSI: political skill inventory; *p<0.1, **p<0.05; ***p<0.01 (two-tailed) β is the standardized regression coefficient.

Focusing on Step 3 in Table 5.11, the interaction relationship between red tape and PPS is highlighted in Figure 5.9. In Figure 5.9, hypothesis 6 is supported where at the low level of PPS, increased magnitude of perception of red tape is associated with higher level of job tension, and also significantly attenuated when PPS is high. Additionally, public employees with high level of PPS could ameliorate job tension as increasing perception of red tape. However, Figure 5.10 presents an opposite relationship as opposed to hypothesis 9. That is, job tension could be reduced as organizational goals become more ambiguous at a low level of PPS, while the level of job tension remains similar at a high level of PPS.

.2 0 -.2 -.4 Job tension Job -.6 -.8

0 2 4 6 8 10 Perception of red tape

High PPS Low PPS

Figure 5.9: Interaction between Red tape and PPS on Job Tension

0 -.5 Jobtension -1 -1.5 -1 0 1 2 3 Goal ambiguity

High PPS Low PPS

Figure 5.10: Interaction between Goal Ambiguity and PPS on Job Tension

I further follow with examination of 3-dimensions of PPS on job tension. The results in Table 5.12 display three steps of models. In the step 1 model with no interaction term, two variables, IS and VS, show significant magnitude but opposite directions. The IS has a negative relationship with job tension (β=-0.16, p<0.1) while the VS positively associates with job tension (β=0.15, p<0.05). As for adding the interaction of 3-dimensions of PPS with red tape in step 2, only the interaction between PA and red tape has a significant relationship with job tension (β=-0.15, p<0.05). As for adding the interaction of 3-dimensions of PPS with goal ambiguity, only the interaction of IS with GA shows significant association with job tension (β=0.13, p<0.1).

Table 5.12: Results of Multiple Regression Analysis for the Impact of 3-dimensions of the PPS on Job Tension Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 β s.e. β s.e. β s.e. Gender -0.13** 0.10 -0.13** 0.10 -0.13** 0.10 Education 0.11* 0.07 0.12** 0.07 0.10* 0.07 Salary 0.14** 0.03 0.12* 0.03 0.13** 0.03 Tenure 0.17*** 0.01 0.16** 0.01 0.18*** 0.01 Age -0.10 0.01 -0.07 0.01 -0.11* 0.01 Centralization 0.18*** 0.06 0.17*** 0.06 0.18*** 0.06 Red 0.17*** 0.02 0.18*** 0.02 0.18*** 0.02 GA -0.01 0.05 -0.02 0.05 -0.02 0.05 PA 0.06 0.05 0.06 0.05 0.09 0.05 IS -0.16* 0.07 -0.13 0.07 -0.15* 0.07 VS 0.19** 0.07 0.15* 0.07 0.16** 0.07 PAxRed -0.15** 0.02 ISxRed -0.01 0.03 VSxRed 0.04 0.03 PAxGA -0.07 0.05 ISxGA 0.13* 0.07 VSxGA 0.08 0.06 Model F(df) 5.18*** 4..54*** 4.81*** (11, 259) (14, 256) (14, 256) 0.18*** 0.20*** 0.21*** 0.02 0.03** N 271 Note: Red: red tape; GA: goal ambiguity; PPS: public political skill; SPS: social political skill; PA: political astuteness; IS: inclusive skill; VS: visionary skill *p<0.1, **p<0.05; ***p<0.01 (two-tailed) β is the standardized regression coefficient.

Two interaction plots are drawn in Figure 5.11 and 5.12. Figure 5.11 illustrates that job tension could be attenuated as increasing perception of red tape on high level of PA. Yet, job tension becomes worse with increased perception of red tape at a low level of PA. In Figure 5.12, when increasing goal ambiguity at a low level of IS, job tension decreases while at a high level of IS, the level of job tension remains similar (essential flat slope). This finding of the interaction between inclusive skill and goal ambiguity on job tension model requires further discussion.

0 -.2 -.4 -.6 Job Job tension -.8 -1

0 2 4 6 8 10 Red tape

High PA at m+1sd Low PA at m-1sd

Figure 5.11: Interaction between PA and Red Tape on Job Tension -.2 -.4 -.6 Job tension Job -.8 -1

-1 0 1 2 3 Goal ambiguity

High IS at m+1sd Low IS at m-1sd

Figure 5.12: Interaction between IS and GA on Job Tension

CHAPTER SIX

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

This study extends the research on PSI developed by Ferris and his colleagues (Ferris, et al., 2000; Ferris, Treadway, et al., 2005; Ferris, et al., 2007), which concentrates on managing politics in interpersonal situations. All organizations need to take account of politics, and public administrators in particular must be sensitive to the interplay of politics within a democratic political system. In this chapter, I will discuss the results regarding the development and validation of the new construct of PPS and its association with PSI. Then, I address the hypothesis testing models demonstrate how PPS affects public employees and discuss the predictions of PPS dimensions. Finally, the strengths and limitations are provided for the present research, and I conclude by considering directions for future research and implications from the results of this study.

6.1 Summary of Major Findings 6.1.1 Findings concerning the construct validity of PPS Using a sample of public employees (n=306) who work for different levels of government in the state of Florida, this study develops the new construct of PPS for public employees. Based on the results, the construct validity of PPS is supported by the data. Based on CFA analyses, the primary findings determine that PPS is a multidimensional construct with three facets including political astuteness, inclusive skill, and visionary skill. Both inclusive skill and visionary skill show high covariance with each other. However, chi square difference test and Wald test are used to demonstrate the discriminant validity that the two dimensions are distinct. The main idea of visionary skill is to look beyond public administrators’ immediate needs and results to create public value that shares a similar proportion of PPS to involve citizen groups in solving collective problems. Additionally, the findings reveal that both constructs, PPS and PSI, are separate but correlate with each other in terms of measuring similar political skills. However, each dimension could raise questions of its interrelationship with each other as being predictors of political skill. Thus, bivariate covariance is tested to assure the quality of each dimension (see Figure 5.1). Since political astuteness indicates that public administrators should be astute about political systems, political astuteness may be highly correlated with the social astuteness of PSI, which refers to be astute observers of others and

90 understand the social interactions well. However, the results reveal that the covariance between political astuteness and social astuteness is moderately low (.31). Instead of focusing on small politics (social interaction and interpersonal relationships), political astuteness pinpoints big politics, in that public administrators should possess substantial knowledge of political systems and processes in and outside their agencies. The covariance of political astuteness with the other dimensions of PSI ranges from .19 to .46, suggesting a logical and sound connection in this model. On the other hand, inclusive skill refers to the ability to bring the right people at the right time in the right way, implying a potential high correlation with networking ability in terms of the ability to connect with outside resources and alliances. The finding shows a moderate covariance (.52) between inclusive skill and networking ability. Both networking ability and inclusive skill share a similar perspective of bridging and search for resources; however, the difference is that the former extends network building outward and the latter is involved in citizen or stakeholder participation. In addition to the covariance between inclusive skill and networking ability, inclusive skill with the other covariance ranging from .33 to .49 illustrated a proper and fair association. The mission of visionary skill is to identify the level of problems and set the goals in order to envision the public good and create public value. Visionary skill shares a similar function with social astuteness that is the ability to read people and situations to attain a better understanding of people’s needs and agendas. The covariance between visionary skill and social astuteness appears to be a moderate relationship (.50). Overall, the covariance between visionary skill and the other dimensions of PSI displayed a reasonable and moderate relationship, ranging from .42 to .44. 6.1.2 Finding concerning the predictive validity of PPS In order to verify the predictive validity of the new construct, hypotheses are proposed to examine the effectiveness of PPS to predict job promotions, satisfaction, and job tension. The findings suggest that public administrators with a higher level of PPS will be more likely to attain job promotions and feel more satisfied with their jobs. As public administrators equipped with a higher level of PPS, they can have better career advancement. However, PPS do not have a significant relationship with job tension, indicating that PPS as such may not relieve job tension. With regard to the interactive effect of PPS, the findings corroborate that the interaction between PPS and red tape appears significant in associations with both job satisfaction and job tension models. Figure 5.3 shows that the negative relationship between red tape and job satisfaction can be attenuated when public administrators have a higher level of PPS, while it becomes worse when public administrators have lower levels of PPS. In addition, individuals having a higher level of PPS can 91 alleviate the positive relationship between red tape and job tension. PPS is designed to tackle political difficulties, while red tape implies that political leaders want to use more political control to constrain administrative behaviors. The results suggest that if public administrators have higher levels of PPS, they are better able to deal with political control and adapt to political environments. However, the PPS interaction with goal ambiguity displays intriguing results. Goal ambiguity as such has a negative and significant relationship with job satisfaction but a negative with no significant magnitude on the job tension model. On the one hand, PPS was unable to moderate the relationship between goal ambiguity and job satisfaction. However, the interactive effect of PPS with goal ambiguity has a significant relationship with job tension. Consequently, when perception of organizational goals is more ambiguous, job tension could be reduced on the low level of PPS. The results indicate that goal ambiguity can bring negative influence on job satisfaction but cannot account for stressors for public employees. Therefore, it is necessary to further investigate which dimension of PPS contributes to the outcome variables. As for adding 3-dimesions of PPS, the variable of visionary skill displays a positive and significant relationship with both job satisfaction and job tension models (see Table 5.12 and 5.14). Visionary skill mainly features the ability to look beyond public administrators’ immediate needs and results and in turn to create public value. Visionary skilled public administrators have strategic vision using metaphor and persuasive language to envision the future for the public. Since visionary skilled individuals can identify problems and set the goals, they feel more positive and certain with their jobs. In other words, they are more likely to have higher job satisfaction on the high level of visionary skill. In contrast, the traditional discipline of public administration focuses on efficiency and economics as well as its business counterpart. Therefore, strategic leadership for public administrators should pursue organizational goals and complete functional responsibility. Yet, organizational goals, such as efficiency and economics, sometimes are contradictory to societal expectations, which can possibly be very time consuming and resource demanding to achieve. Visionary skilled public administrators realize that they sometimes should give up organizational goals and aim at creating public value instead. As a matter of fact, contextual factors create cognitive dissonance for public administrators, such as organizational goal vs. public value, both accepted and denied impacts of politics, and interpreting potential tension and conflict without solution. Thus, visionary skill can cause job tension as well. In the 3-dimensions of PPS on job satisfaction model, the interaction of political astuteness with red tape has significant magnitude for job satisfaction compared to the other two interaction terms 92 in Table 5.12. Figure 5.4 illustrates clearly that the relationship between red tape and job satisfaction can be attenuated on a high level of political astuteness. When perceiving more red tape, job satisfaction decreases at the low level of political astuteness. Similarly, in the job tension model, red tape is perceived as a stressor for public administrators in public organizations. As for interacting with political astuteness, the results have a significant relationship with job tension. Figure 5.5 shows that as perception of red tape increases, job tension is relieved at the high level of political astuteness; however, the situation becomes worse at the low level of political astuteness. Political astuteness punctuates the cognitive skill of substantive knowledge about the political systems and being alert to one’s political surroundings such as role of players, the rule of games, and financial resources. Red tape is viewed as excessive paperwork, dysfunctional regulations, and task delays that entails a compliance burden but does not advance the legitimate purposes the rules are intended to serve (Bozeman, 1993, 2000). Therefore, the findings sustain that politically astute individuals can counteract both the unfavorable impact of red tape on job satisfaction and job tension. As for the interactive effect of goal ambiguity with 3-dimensions of PPS on job tension model, the results find that interaction between inclusive skill and goal ambiguity has a significant relationship with job tension in Table 5.14. Although goal ambiguity is not a significant stressor, the interaction term with significant magnitude is meaningful. Inclusive skill emphasizes the ability to design strategies involving different citizen groups and facilitating interaction among participants. Inclusive skill, as such, could reduce conflicts from different perspectives so that the finding in Table 5.14 shows the negative and significant association with job tension. As for interacting with goal ambiguity in step 3, job tension decreases at a low level of inclusive skill while organizational goals become more ambiguous. The possible interpretation could be that public administrators should involve different stakeholders and work together. Working with citizens or stakeholders can not only bring heavy workloads but also create more ambiguity for organizational goals. At a high level of inclusive skill, public administrators could maintain their job performance without increasing their job tension as organizational goals become more ambiguous. However, those public administrators at a low level of inclusive skill who are reluctant to work with other groups would relieve job tensions as organizational goal become more ambiguous. Those who have lower level of inclusive kill could simply focus on individual tasks due to lack of clear organizational goals.

6.2 Theoretical Contributions This study has significant theoretical implications for research in public management and organizational behavior. The findings contribute to the scholarship by enriching public leadership theory in the following ways. First, pubic management researchers consider how external political environments affect organizational performance and individual outcomes, but they do not provide an effective way to analyze what it takes to deal with political influences and environments. This study is among the first research efforts to analyze the interaction between politics and public management to explore the public political skill of public administrators in public organizations. Additionally, PPS is established as a multidimensional construct including political astuteness, inclusive skill, and visionary skill that can carry through the effective leadership skills of political dimensions. Second, the major purpose of this study is to develop a new construct of PPS built upon the PSI. The covariance between PPS and PSI suggests that both constructs are separate but share similar behaviors when measuring political skills. In other words, the results demonstrate that public administrators should develop special leadership skills to overcome the challenges resulting from external political environments. Confronted with more complicated political environments, public administrators need not only deal with internal focus politics but also carry an external focus on their political surroundings. The goal of public administration is not just about managing programs and policies but about managing democracy. Thus, PPS provides insights to differentiate public organizations from private sectors. While political skill is perceived as one of the most socially effective competencies to cope with organizational politics, political skill calls for more consideration when applied to the public arena. Third, this study explicitly manifests the predictive validity of PPS by testing its consequences and interactive effects. Three outcome variables used in the analysis include job promotions, satisfaction, and job tension. The findings illuminate that PPS is a significant predictor for both job promotions and job satisfaction. In other words, PPS can enhance public administrators’ career success. After examining the interactive effects of PPS, two typical variables representing the traditional perception of public organizations were used including red tape and goal ambiguity. Perception of red tape per se can decrease job satisfaction but heighten job tension. Whereas goal ambiguity can only negatively affect job satisfaction but has no effect on job tension. The findings strongly corroborate that PPS can effectively deal with the adverse effects of red tape on both the job satisfaction and job tension models.

Red tape is perceived as burdensome administrative rules and requirements. Recent research on red tape has found the formation and different dimensions of red tape, discussed the differences between private and public sectors, and examined how red tape can affect individual outcomes and organizational performance. However, little attention has been paid to discovering what kinds of specific skills public administrators need in order to conquer the disadvantageous effects of red tape. This study suggests PPS as an alternative solution that can ameliorate the negative effects of red tape. This study provides further evidence from examination of 3-dimensions of PPS on both job satisfaction and tension models. Political astuteness in particular outweighs the other two variables on both models as interacting with red tape. The idea of political astuteness aims at being agile and making various kinds of decisions and adapting to complicated political environments. Apparently, political astuteness can neutralize the relationship between red tape and job satisfaction as well as red tape and job tension. Thus, political astuteness can complement the assumptions of rational decision making models proposed by political scientists. Political astuteness can be applied in both internal and external political arenas and adjusts management and skills to diverse environments.

6.3 Implications for Practice The findings of the current study provide practical implications for public administrators in many ways. First, elaboration of the establishment of PPS is important for public organizations to develop effective leadership skills. The traditional training for public administrators stressing neutral and professional competency against from politics is impertinent and outdated. It is imperative to develop this new construct of PPS, which can guides public administrators to face politics squarely and deal with it. Additionally, the results found that PPS is different from PSI, suggesting that public administrators should realize their unique role and special governmental characteristics. Public administrators should not only target internal organizational goals, but care for public values and satisfy societal needs. The hierarchical governmental structure has evolved into network governance, which is largely concerned with relationships with stakeholders and community groups. Thus, mechanically borrowing leadership models developed by business scholars may not be effective. Instead, the urgent need is to develop special PPS that depend upon contextual elements faced by governments. Empirical testing has provided evidence that PPS contributes to job satisfaction and promotions. PPS can also buffer individuals against the potentially negative impacts of organizational 95 characteristics such as red tape and goal ambiguity. For practitioners, because PPS is the key to performing an excellent job, public administrators will benefit from developing PPS. Thus, government agencies can develop and enhance employees’ PPS through coaching, mentoring, learning.

6.4 Limitations and Future Research Notwithstanding the contributions of the present study regarding the importance of effective leadership skills in governmental settings, the study is limited in scope in the development of the new construct of PPS. Because of the purposive sample targeted at FCPM, most public employees who participated in this program were selected by their department; therefore, they may have been highly motivated to engage in their jobs. Thus, the results may not be generalizable. However, this is an initial step to use this purposive sample to develop a new construct and further study is needed to validate the measurement. Future study requires a nation-wide survey, or follow-up with management studies utilizing three random samples in different places or in different states (Ferris, Treadway, et al., 2005). Realizing that a single study may not adequately establish construct validity, the purpose of this investigation is to provide the initial step in building the construct validity of PPS concerning external political environments in public organizations. Current theory and empirical studies suggest that PPS can affect a number of other constructs, specifically mentioned earlier in this study, such as job performance, turnover, and organizational performance. Results of future studies investigating these relationships will be critical to establishing the construct validity of PPS. Moreover, this measure of the PPS scale reflects one’s overall public political skill and is regarded within public organizations as an effective leadership skill. Exploring the multidimensionality of PPS (e.g., political astuteness, inclusive skill, and visionary skill) and discovering which dimension has a greater impact than the others on job performance and organizational outcomes would be advantageous. Thus, in order to validate the new construct, the aim of future research should address comprehensive understanding of the antecedents and consequences of PPS. The antecedents of PPS explain how public employees develop their PPS (or constrain their ability) to engage in their daily work and successfully finish their tasks or achieve their goals. For instance, organizational contexts reveal the issues that are integral to the creation of political environments (Pandey, et al., 2007; Pandey & Wright, 2006). Context is vital to any discussion of political activity in public organizations as well as motives such as public service motivation and performance incentives that can result in individual political behaviors and in turn produce different levels of PPS. The consequences of PPS are gauged through work-related outcomes including both 96 individual outcomes and organizational effectiveness. The basic notion of PPS is to produce certain levels of leverage to moderate negative impacts on individual performance and improve organizational outcomes. Clearly, there is a need to examine the interactive effect of PPS, which can help us to realize the effectiveness of political skill and give a better understanding of public management. Further validation of PPS should consider collecting data from sources other than government organizations. Additional work should also assess the construct of PPS in private organizations and voluntary or non-profit organizations (NPOs). The mission of NPOs lies between government and the private sector. NPOs deliver public services and generally partner with governments. Effective chief executives must accept responsibility as initiators of actions with their boards and find resources to revitalize the missions of their organizations. These actions are carried out as part of the political dimension of effective public leadership. The importance of this criterion for leadership practice in NPO settings must be examined in light of both internal and external political environments as well as PPS. Future research inquiries in leadership study should apply the construct of PPS to NPOs and examine the difference between NPOs and public organizations.

6.5 Conclusions This dissertation explores how to manage the interface between politics and management. The answer to this question is to elaborate the development of public political skill for public administrators built upon inductive analysis of theoretical arguments and empirical testing. This study analyzed data from 305 public administrators from different levels of governments and a variety of agencies to establish the construct of PPS and explain the consequences of individual career success, and job stress. The results demonstrate that PPS can be an effective leadership skill to neutralize the disadvantageous effects of red tape on job satisfaction and tension. The political dimension of public leadership is a largely understudied empirical phenomenon where scholars have only captured the tip of the iceberg, leaving numerous questions for future study. Going beyond interpersonal political skills, this study provides an explanation of behavioral skill to integrate different political dimensions into public management. The results have practical implications for providing and developing more effective leadership skills in public organizations. Thus, public administrators are able to capitalize on the knowledge of PPS and apply it to the complex political surroundings in order to improve organizational performance and thus win back governments’ reputation.

APPENDIX A

SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE

[Please do not write your name on this questionnaire] Public Leadership Questionnaire An Anonymous Survey of Public Employees in Florida

Researcher: Kaijo Carol Fu Askew School of Public Administration & Policy

Florida State University Phone: 850-644-3525 Fax: 850-644-7617

Faculty Advisor: Professor Kaifeng Yang Askew School of Public Administration & Policy Florida State University

Phone: 850-644-7611

The purpose of this survey is to learn about jobs that require employees to work in dynamic situations. Although the survey is volunteer, we hope that you will share with us your assessment of the state of public service in Florida. Your participation is greatly valued. Please be candid with your responses; they will be kept fully confidential.

SECTION A: Current Job

A1 Which level of government job do you currently hold? Please circle a number. 1 Federal level 2 State level 3 Local level 4 Others please specify______)

A2 Are you currently working full-time or part-time?

___1. Full-time ___2. Part-time A3 Total number of working years counting all of your full-time jobs: year(s)

A4 How many years have you worked for this organizations? year(s) What is your supervisory status in your current job?

□ Non-supervisor: You do not supervise other employees. □ Team Leader: You are not an official supervisor; you provide employees with day-to-day guidance in work projects, but do not have supervisory responsibilities or conduct performance appraisals. □ Supervisor: You are responsible for employees’ performance appraisals and approval of their leave, but you do not supervise other supervisors. □ Managers: You are in a management position and supervise one or more supervisors. □ Department/ agency head

A5 In which policy/ service area do you work in this agency? (Please circle a number)

1 Administrative services 7 Legal services 2 Corrections 8 Parks and recreation 3 Education 9 Social work 4 Fire 10 Transportation 5 Health care 11 Utilities 6 Law enforcement 12 Other(please specify______)

SECTIONB: Work Environment

B1 How often do you have the following feelings about your job? Please circle a number for each statement on the scale where 1 is never, and 7 is always. Never………………………………..Always 01 I am very satisfied with the kind of work that I do. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

02 At least for now, my current position is well suited to my needs. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

03 I would not recommend working here to others. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

04 My job tends to directly affect my health. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

05 I work under a great deal of tension. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

06 I have felt fidgety or nervous as a result of my job. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

B2 Please indicate your level of agreement or disagreement with each of the following statements:

Strongly Strongly Disagree………………………………….Agree 01 There can be little action here until a supervisor approves a 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 decision. 02 In general, a person who wants to make her or his own 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 decisions would be quickly discouraged. 03 Even small matters have to be referred to someone higher up 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 for final answer. 04 This organization’s mission is clear to almost everyone who 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 works here. 05 It is easy to explain the goals of this organization to outsiders. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

06 This organization has clearly defined goals. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

B3 If red tape is defined as burdensome administrative rules and procedures that have negative effects on the organization’s performance, how would you assess the level of red tape in your organization? (Please circle the appropriate response).

Almost No Red Tape Great Deal of Red Tape 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

100

B4 How much do you agree or disagree with the following statements regarding public service? Please circle a number for each statement on the scale where 1 is strongly disagree, and 7 is strongly agree. Strongly Strongly Disagree……………………………………Agree 01 Politics is a dirty word. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

02 The give and take of public policy making doesn't appeal to me. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

03 I don't care much for elected officials. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

04 I unselfishly contribute to my community. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

05 Meaningful public service is important to me. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

06 I would prefer that public officials do what is best for the whole 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 community even if it does not benefit me. 07 I consider public service my civic duty. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

08 It is difficult for me to contain my feelings when I see people in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 distress. 09 I am often reminded by daily events about how dependent we 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 are on one another. 10 I have little compassion for people in need who are unwilling to 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 take the first step to help themselves.

SECTION C: Leadership and Management Skill

C1 Please respond to the following statements using the scale provided below. Simply provide the number that best reflects your opinion to the left of each statement. Strongly Strongly Disagree…………………………………Agree 01 I understand the external political system and government 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 processes very well. 02 I pay close attention to media coverage about the policy area 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 that I am working in. 03 I am good at sensing the hidden agenda of major political 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 institutions (parties, courts, legislators). 04 I know what it takes to get a proposal on the agenda of policy 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 makers. 05 I intuitively know whether a proposal is politically feasible. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

06 I identify key influential people inside and outside the 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 organization who can help get things done. 07 I know the politics behind my agency’s spending and 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 budgeting.

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C2 Please respond to the following statements using the scale provided below. Simply provide the number that best reflects your opinion to the left of each statement. Strongly Strongly Disagree………………………………Agree 01 I am good at designing strategies or processes to get relevant 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 people to participate in the decision making and management process. 02 I am good at choosing stakeholder involvement mechanisms 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 for different purposes and issues 03 When people with conflicts meet, I feel comfortable about my 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ability to lead them to work together. 04 I understand who should be involved in a particular issue. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

05 I can tell when stakeholders should be involved. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

C3 Please indicate your level of agreement or disagreement with each of the following statements:

Strongly Strongly Disagree………………………………Agree 01 I can interpret uncertain or difficult situations and provide 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 guidance on future directions. 02 I use intuitive and integrative thinking to discern connections 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 and patterns among events. 03 I am good at using metaphors and symbols to illustrate the 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 future of a new program or policy. 04 I seize the opportunity to be an interpreter and direction giver 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 in a situation of uncertainty and difficulty. 05 I spend time thinking about the future of our government and 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 its policies. 06 In dealing with emergent problems, I develop action plans and 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 anticipate desired consequences.

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C4 Please respond to the following statements using the scale provided below. Simply provide the number that best reflects your opinion of each statement on the left.

Strongly Strongly Disagree………..…………………………………Agree 01. I spend a lot of time and effort at work networking with 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 others. 02. I am able to make most people feel comfortable and at 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ease around me. 03. I am able to communicate easily and effectively with 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 others. 04. It is easy for me to develop good rapport with most 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 people. 05. I understand people very well. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

06. I am good at building relationships with influential people 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 at work. 07. I am particularly good at sensing the motivations and 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 hidden agendas of others. 08. When communicating with others, I try to be genuine in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 what I say and do. 09. I have developed a large network of colleagues and 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 associates at work who I can call on for support when I really need to get things done. 10. At work, I know a lot of important people and am well 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 connected. 11. I spend a lot of time at work developing connections with 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 others. 12. I am good at getting people to like me. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

13. It is important that people believe I am sincere in what I 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 say and do. 14. I try to show a genuine interest in other people. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

15. I am good at using my connections and network to make 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 things happen at work. 16. I have good intuition and am savvy about how to present 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 myself to others. 17. I always seem to instinctively know the right things to say 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 or do to influence others. 18. I pay close attention to people's facial expressions 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

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SECTION D: Citizen Participation

Strongly Strongly Disagree…………………...…………….Agree 01 Citizens don’t understand what you are doing. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

02 When regulations are ambiguous, citizens always try to take 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 advantage of them. 03 You cannot rely on citizens to always tell the truth. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

04 Citizens always want to help you with your job. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

05 Citizens are trustworthy. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

06 Involving citizens in the decision making process takes more 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 effort than it is worth. 07 In most instances, the administration would have come to the 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 same decision without citizen input. 08 The value of public participation is overrated. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

SECTION E: Professional Experience and Demographics

1. Please provide the following details: (Your best estimate will do) Total number of employees in your organization: ______

2. How many years have you worked in your current position? year(s) month(s)

3. How many promotions have you received with your current employer? Times

4. How many promotions have you received from your prior government employers (other than your current employer)? Times

5. Except for across-the-board pay raise, how many times have you got pay raises in terms of your performance in your current job? ______times

6. Your political party affiliation (Mark one box) □ Republican □ Democratic □ Independent □ Other______

7. Where would you place yourself on this scale? (Mark one box) □ Extremely liberal □ Liberal □ Slightly liberal □ Moderate; Middle of the road □ Slightly conservative □ Conservative □ Extremely conservative

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SECTION F: Demographic Characteristics

1. In what year were you born? 19______

2. Are you male or female? □ Male □ Female (Mark one box)

3. Which of the following best describes your highest educational level: (Mark one box) □ High school □ Some College □ Bachelor’s Degree □ Associate degree □ Masters in Public Administration (or Public Affairs, or Public Policy) □ Masters in Business Administration □ Other Graduate Degree (Please Specify below)

4. Do you consider yourself to be: (Mark one box)

4. Do you consider yourself to be (Mark one box) □ Hispanic Origin (any race) □ American Indian □ Black/African American (non-Hispanic) □ White/Caucasian (non-Hispanic) □ Asian or Pacific Islander (non-Hispanic) □ Other (Please Specify below):

5. Which of the following categories best describes your income from the organization during the last year:

(Mark one box)

under $20,000 $50,000 - $59,999 $20,000 - $29,999 $60,000 - $69,999 $30,000 - $39,999 $70,000 - $79,999 $40,000 - $49,999 $80,000 or above

Thank you very much for your participation. If there is anything else you would like to tell me, please do so in the space provided below:

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APPENDIX B

COVER LETTER FOR QUESTIONNAIRE

Sample of Cover Letter Dear Future Certified Public Managers: You are being invited to volunteer for a research project at the Reubin Askew School of Public Administration and Policy, Florida State University. The project seeks information about the career of administrators working in public organizations. The purpose is to increase our understanding of managers’ competencies in dealing with a turbulent environment in Florida. Your participation is voluntary and you may stop taking part at any time. The questionnaire should take about 15 minutes to complete. There are no right or wrong answers. Candid responses based on your personal experience are greatly appreciated. The records of this study will be kept confidential to the extent permitted by law. The questionnaire is anonymous so that no information will identify you. The survey is for scientific purposes and individual data will not be analyzed. All analyses will be conducted at the aggregate level. Records will be stored securely and the survey will be destroyed two months after we receive it. . If you have any questions concerning the study, please contact us. The Florida State University Institutional Review Board has approved the project. If you would like to talk to someone other than the researchers, you may contact the FSU IRB at: 2010 Levy Street, Research Building B, Suite 276, Tallahassee, FL 32306-2742, 850-644-8633, or [email protected]. Please return the questionnaire in the envelope provided. Its return will be your consent to participate. Thank you in advance for your help. It is greatly appreciated! Sincerely,

Kaifeng Yang Kaijo (Carol) Fu Associate Professor and Ph.D. Director PhD. candidate Askew School of Public Administration and Policy Askew School of Public Administration and Policy Florida State University Florida State University

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APPENDIX C

HUMAN SUBJECTS COMMEITTE APPROVAL

Office of the Vice President For Research Human Subjects Committee Tallahassee, Florida 32306-2742 (850) 644-8673, FAX (850) 644-4392

APPROVAL MEMORANDUM

Date: 7/5/2011

To: Kai-Jo Fu

Address: Askew School, 627 Bellamy Building, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306-2250 Dept.: PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND POLICY

From: Thomas L. Jacobson, Chair

Re: Use of Human Subjects in Research The Interaction of Politics and Management in Public Organizational Leadership: The Construct of Public Political Competency and its Effects

The application that you submitted to this office in regard to the use of human subjects in the proposal referenced above have been reviewed by the Secretary, the Chair, and one member of the Human Subjects Committee. Your project is determined to be Expedited per 45 CFR Â§ 46.110(7) and has been approved by an expedited review process.

The Human Subjects Committee has not evaluated your proposal for scientific merit, except to weigh the risk to the human participants and the aspects of the proposal related to potential risk and benefit. This approval does not replace any departmental or other approvals, which may be required.

If you submitted a proposed consent form with your application, the approved stamped consent form is attached to this approval notice. Only the stamped version of the consent form may be used in recruiting research subjects.

If the project has not been completed by 6/29/2012 you must request a renewal of approval for continuation of the project. As a courtesy, a renewal notice will be sent to you prior to your expiration date; however, it is your responsibility as the Principal Investigator to timely request renewal of your approval from the Committee.

You are advised that any change in protocol for this project must be reviewed and approved by the Committee prior to implementation of the proposed change in the protocol. A protocol change/amendment form is required to be submitted for approval by the Committee. In addition, 107

federal regulations require that the Principal Investigator promptly report, in writing any unanticipated problems or adverse events involving risks to research subjects or others.

By copy of this memorandum, the Chair of your department and/or your major professor is reminded that he/she is responsible for being informed concerning research projects involving human subjects in the department, and should review protocols as often as needed to insure that the project is being conducted in compliance with our institution and with DHHS regulations.

This institution has an Assurance on file with the Office for Human Research Protection. The Assurance Number is FWA00000168/IRB number IRB00000446.

Cc: Kaifeng Yang, Advisor HSC No. 2011.6601

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Kai-Jo (Carol) Fu was born and raised in Taiwan. She started her education career after graduating from Civic Education and Leadership at the National Taiwan Normal University. Her focus was on citizen education, with emphasis on interdisciplinary integration. She taught using a combination normative theory and practical experience. Following five years as a teacher and education administrator, she attended the Graduate Institute of Political Science at National Taiwan Normal University, where she concentrated on researching citizen participation. A year after earning her master degree, Carol enrolled in the doctoral program in Public Administration and Policy at Florida State University, where her research mainly concentrated on public management, public service delivery, and human resource management. She had a co-authored article in Public Administration Review, which examines the relationship between public service motivation and emotional labor. She has won several conference scholarships from the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) and Ruth “Sweetie” Cox Dissertation Award.

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