Meghna Sabharwal
Biographic Data
| ID | 3919846 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Meghna Sabharwal |
| GIVEN NAMES | Meghna |
| FAMILY NAME | Sabharwal |
| SIGNATURE | SABHARWAL M |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Texas at Dallas |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1294-559X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 39 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 315 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 39 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
A Case for Liberatory Public Service in Public Performance Measurement and Management
Public Performance Measurement and Management (PPMM) has traditionally emphasized efficiency, effectiveness, and economy, with equity issues often receiving less sustained engagement. This imbalance can cause performance systems to reproduce harm, particularly for multiply marginalized communities. This article advances theory and praxis for social equity and justice in public performance measurement and management (PPMM) by applying the Liberato…
Fostering Innovation at Work
While previous studies have identified transformational leadership, job autonomy, and innovative organizational culture as key factors influencing employees’ innovative work behavior within public organizations, the interactive effects remain underexplored. To address this gap, this study draws on leader–member exchange, self-determination, and job characteristics theories to examine how these elements synergistically contribute to employees’ inn…
New Public Management Reform Strategies
New Public Management (NPM) reform strategies have been adopted globally by policy makers and administrators as market‐based approaches to improve traditional civil service systems. This study examines the cross‐national impact of five NPM reform strategies identified in the literature to determine whether they have positive impacts on performance‐oriented management (POM) for public organizations. The argument is that these strategies are promot…
Impact of public leadership on public service motivation and performance in complex environments
This study empirically investigates the effects of public leadership (PL) on job performance (JP) and notes the mediating role of public service motivation (PSM) and the moderating role of environmental complexity (ENC) between PSM and JP. The research framework was tested using a survey of 211 civil servants working in Pakistan. The findings indicate significant positive effects of PL on JP. This relationship was partially mediated by PSM. Addit…
Covid‐19 management in India
Understanding Accountability Overload
Public administration emphasizes accountability to various entities, including elected representatives, courts, oversight agencies, civil society, and citizens. However, the constant addition of accountability measures may lead to overload, negatively impacting public sector employees and undermining the accountability system. This article conducts a systematic literature review on accountability overload (AO), focusing on Public Administration j…
The Green Card Drag
Foreign-born Asian Indians in the United States are among the most highly educated and highly paid. A major facilitator of this population's migration has been the H-1B, a temporary work visa that has brought in foreign scientists and engineers since 1990. Immigration scholarship would regard H-1Bs’ high socioeconomic status as a factor that smooths their integration. Yet an aspect usually not associated with high-skilled migrants–legality–may be…
Effect of Ethical Leadership on Affective Organizational Commitment and the Mediating Role of Ethical Environment
Building blocks of good governance
Promoting an ethical work environment in public‐sector organizations is crucial for good governance, particularly in developing countries that face internal and external pressures to modernize their public service and combat corruption. This study examined the mechanisms by which an ethical environment in public‐sector organizations is enhanced by investigating the role that employee public service motivation (PSM) as well as ethical leadership p…
The Conditional Effects of the Transformational Leadership Behaviors on Leaders’ Emotional Exhaustion
This study used the model of emotional labor as emotion regulation to examine the indirect effect of transformational leadership behaviors on leaders’ emotional exhaustion through leaders’ deep acting. Further, it is hypothesized that this indirect effect varies depending on the level of leaders’ emotional intelligence. The sample included 230 leader-follower dyads working in public sector organizations in Pakistan. The results of the regression …
Strategic program management
Strategic program management (SPM) is an approach for advancing the aspirations of programs and their impact. While programs are omnipresent in government, concerns exist that they are not always strategically managed. Studies that examine SPM are lacking. This study defines and conceptualizes SPM, examines it in two national governments (Brazil and Indonesia), and focuses on felt performance accountability as a driver of SPM use. SPM use is high…
Beyond social equity
Faking Versus Feeling Emotions
Emotional labor (EL) involves regulating, managing, and sensing others’ emotions to achieve organizational goals. However, it is often considered a unitary variable, without examining the specific types of emotional labor (i.e., deep acting and surface acting). Thus, the purpose of this research is to extend the under-researched work on surface-acting and deep-acting strategies of EL on job involvement in the public sector by examining the mediat…
The Impact of Human Resources Environment and Organizational Identification on Employees’ Psychological Well-Being
This study explores how Human Resources (HR) environment (i.e., job autonomy, opportunities for advancement, involved communication, and decisive action) promotes psychological well-being of public employees. We advance the literature by identifying organizational identification (OID) as the underpinning mechanism through which HR environment can foster employees’ well-being. OID is termed as a “social cure,” owing to its strong link with employe…
Organizational Practices and Second-Generation Gender Bias
Ely and Meyerson’s gendered organizations framework reconceptualizes traditional gender differences defined by biology and lack of structural opportunities, to a complex set of social relations in the workplace. We apply this framework to second-generation gender bias to further understand impediments to women's career progression in the public sector workplace. In-depth interviews of state-level administrators in U.S. public sector agencies indi…
Careers of women public managers
This study examines women's managerial experiences in leadership roles and reflects on their career needs. Women's career needs are understood by applying the Kaleidoscope Career Model (KCM), which is yet to be widely explored in public sector settings. The KCM recognizes the interplay of multiple experiences that shape the career development of women in the workforce. Using 21 in‐depth interviews with women municipal government leaders in the Un…
Beyond a Numbers Game? Impact of Diversity and Inclusion on the Perception of Organizational Justice
Organizational justice, diversity, and inclusion are central tenets of social equity in public organizations. This study explores the effects of diversity management and inclusive leadership practices on employees' perceptions of organizational justice. Drawing from FedScope and the 2019 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, we find that an increase in the number of women and Black, Indigenous and other People of Color (BIPOC) is not sufficient to i…
A long road
Public Administration , the field's oldest journal, is now 100 years old. Despite this centenary, it has only been relatively recently that scholars have examined questions of: (1) how diverse, equitable, and inclusive the field is; (2) how oppressive administrative structures marginalize groups; and (3) what principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) mean globally. We seek to contribute to this conversation by reflecting on what is cur…
Enriching Transactional Leadership with Public Values
Past studies raise concerns that generic transactional leadership has low effectiveness and may reduce intrinsic motivations and commitments in the public sector. This study introduces public value‐focused transactional leadership (PVTL) as transactional leadership that makes public values central in employee job expectations and rewards and fills gaps in transformational leadership. A dyadic study finds that managers using public values in trans…
From the Chinese Exclusion Act to the Covid-19 Pandemic
In 2020, the world witnessed the worst pandemic in more than a century that continues to impact and stigmatize minorities and immigrants disproportionately. During this time Asian Americans in the United States (US) have been subject to racist tropes, xenophobic attacks, and widespread hate crimes. The xenophobia and racism experienced by this group are not new, as demonstrated in this study. The injustices experienced by Asians in the US are emb…
Ethnic Organizations and Adaptation
The United States has witnessed waves of immigration throughout its history, with the current immigration policies regulated by the reforms enacted under President Lyndon Johnson in 1965. Immigrants now come from all over the world, with China and India supplying the largest numbers in science and engineering (S&E) fields. Although the US is seen as coping rather successfully with immigration from Europe, that is not the case with Asian immigrati…
More than a decade in the making
Race and Gender Representation in Presidential Appointments, SES, and GS Levels, During Clinton, Bush, and Obama Administrations
Achieving a representative bureaucracy that reflects the attitudes, values, and policy choices of women and racial minorities is imperative, as the gap in the representation of those groups in the federal workforce is growing. We examine to what extent female and minority representation in political appointments, Senior Executive Service (SES), and General Schedule (GS) 1-15 levels reflect presidents’ commitment to diversity. We use data from the…
Ethics in American Public Administration
This article tracks the evolution of ethics in American public administration from the inception of the field in the late nineteenth century to the present, and employs the ethical lens to address some of the current pressing problems (e.g., immigration, climate change, and e-surveillance). The study acknowledges the fact that ethics has not evolved in a vacuum. Ever since the Progressive Era, various forces—social, political, legal, as well as t…
Inclusive Work Practices
The federal government lags behind in progressive civil rights policies in regard to universal workplace antidiscrimination laws for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Americans. The slow progress matters to inclusionary workplace practices and the theory and practice of public administration generally, as recognition of LGBT rights and protection are constitutive of representative bureaucracy and promoting social equity. This study e…
From Glass Ceiling to Glass Cliff
The dominant paradigm that frames the challenges women face in attaining upward mobility has been the glass ceiling metaphor (Bowling, Cynthia, Kelleher, Christine, Jones, Jennifer, and Deil Wright. 2006. Cracked ceilings, firmer floors, and weakening walls: Trends and patterns in gender representation among executives leading American state agencies, 1970–2000. Public Administration Review 66 (6): 823–36; Bullard, Angela, and Deil Wright. 1993. …
Perceptions of transparency of government policymaking
A long road
Public Administration , the field's oldest journal, is now 100 years old. Despite this centenary, it has only been relatively recently that scholars have examined questions of: (1) how diverse, equitable, and inclusive the field is; (2) how oppressive administrative structures marginalize groups; and (3) what principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) mean globally. We seek to contribute to this conversation by reflecting on what is cur…
Scholarly Collaboration and Productivity Patterns in Public Administration
Previous studies have confirmed the interdisciplinary nature of the field of public administration (Mosher 1956; Ventriss 1991; Forrester 1996; Rodgers and Rodgers 2000; Schroeder et al. 2004) and encouraged the exploration of one important indicator of interdisciplinarity: research collaboration. One way that collaboration patterns are explored is through the study of co-authorship among faculty members (Smart and Bayer 1986; Forrester 1996; Kat…
Beyond social equity
Inclusive Work Practices
The federal government lags behind in progressive civil rights policies in regard to universal workplace antidiscrimination laws for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Americans. The slow progress matters to inclusionary workplace practices and the theory and practice of public administration generally, as recognition of LGBT rights and protection are constitutive of representative bureaucracy and promoting social equity. This study e…
Beyond a Numbers Game? Impact of Diversity and Inclusion on the Perception of Organizational Justice
Organizational justice, diversity, and inclusion are central tenets of social equity in public organizations. This study explores the effects of diversity management and inclusive leadership practices on employees' perceptions of organizational justice. Drawing from FedScope and the 2019 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, we find that an increase in the number of women and Black, Indigenous and other People of Color (BIPOC) is not sufficient to i…
Faculty job satisfaction across gender and discipline
It is projected that by 2014 colleges, universities, and professional schools will witness an employment growth of 34.3% (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2005). Thus, issues of faculty satisfaction, retention, and persistence will become increasingly important for university administrators and education policy makers. The need to study faculty satisfaction at universities also stems from the fact that the intellectual and social structures of higher …
Return Migration to India
The decision‐making process among migrants, whether to leave their country of birth for a foreign country or deciding to return to their native country is complex and laden with challenges. This article seeks to understand the decision‐making process by which immigrant engineers and scientists select to return to India after study and work in the United States. It is based on in‐depth interviews conducted with 54 returned engineers and scientists…
Affective Organizational Commitment and Job Satisfaction
Public managers across countries are faced with challenges of attracting and retaining high‐quality employees in the context of widespread financial constraints and increasing inter‐sectoral competition. These changing circumstances have reinforced the need to enhance public employees' affective organizational commitment, which is related to important outcomes such as employees' performance and retention. However, we know little about the factors…
Comparing Research Productivity Across Disciplines and Career Stages
In academia, productivity continues to be a major factor in decisions of salary raises as well as promotion. The current study thus examines and compares the research productivity of faculty members across disciplines and career stages. The research tests three life course theories (cumulative advantage, utility maximization theory and obsolescence theory) with data from eight disciplines (biology, computer sciences, mathematics/statistics, physi…
From the Chinese Exclusion Act to the Covid-19 Pandemic
In 2020, the world witnessed the worst pandemic in more than a century that continues to impact and stigmatize minorities and immigrants disproportionately. During this time Asian Americans in the United States (US) have been subject to racist tropes, xenophobic attacks, and widespread hate crimes. The xenophobia and racism experienced by this group are not new, as demonstrated in this study. The injustices experienced by Asians in the US are emb…
Ethics in American Public Administration
This article tracks the evolution of ethics in American public administration from the inception of the field in the late nineteenth century to the present, and employs the ethical lens to address some of the current pressing problems (e.g., immigration, climate change, and e-surveillance). The study acknowledges the fact that ethics has not evolved in a vacuum. Ever since the Progressive Era, various forces—social, political, legal, as well as t…
Careers of women public managers
This study examines women's managerial experiences in leadership roles and reflects on their career needs. Women's career needs are understood by applying the Kaleidoscope Career Model (KCM), which is yet to be widely explored in public sector settings. The KCM recognizes the interplay of multiple experiences that shape the career development of women in the workforce. Using 21 in‐depth interviews with women municipal government leaders in the Un…
More than a decade in the making
The Importance of Ethical Environment to Organizational Performance in Employment at Will States
This article highlights the importance of ethical environment in enhancing organizational performance. It is vital that organizations set ethical standards for their employees alongside providing an environment that fosters trust and commitment, provides leadership, and creates a high quality of workforce to improve organizational performance. To study the impact of ethical environment on organizational performance, we employ elements from André …
Organizational Practices and Second-Generation Gender Bias
Ely and Meyerson’s gendered organizations framework reconceptualizes traditional gender differences defined by biology and lack of structural opportunities, to a complex set of social relations in the workplace. We apply this framework to second-generation gender bias to further understand impediments to women's career progression in the public sector workplace. In-depth interviews of state-level administrators in U.S. public sector agencies indi…
Convergence or Divergence
Do immigrant faculty trained in American higher education institutions adopt the outlook and practices of native US scientists and engineers ("convergence"), or do they diverge from such practices? The modern science paradigm holds that location will not matter significantly and that immigrants in either place will converge to a common standard of scientific practice. Drawing upon 134 in-depth interviews, this paper compares the scientific practi…
The Green Card Drag
Foreign-born Asian Indians in the United States are among the most highly educated and highly paid. A major facilitator of this population's migration has been the H-1B, a temporary work visa that has brought in foreign scientists and engineers since 1990. Immigration scholarship would regard H-1Bs’ high socioeconomic status as a factor that smooths their integration. Yet an aspect usually not associated with high-skilled migrants–legality–may be…
Race and Gender Representation in Presidential Appointments, SES, and GS Levels, During Clinton, Bush, and Obama Administrations
Achieving a representative bureaucracy that reflects the attitudes, values, and policy choices of women and racial minorities is imperative, as the gap in the representation of those groups in the federal workforce is growing. We examine to what extent female and minority representation in political appointments, Senior Executive Service (SES), and General Schedule (GS) 1-15 levels reflect presidents’ commitment to diversity. We use data from the…
Foundations of Qualitative Research
Foundations of qualitative research is a book that explores the assumptions that underlie the major paradigms of qualitative research, with a special focus on interpretivist and critical approaches
Perceptions of transparency of government policymaking
Faculty job satisfaction across gender and discipline
It is projected that by 2014 colleges, universities, and professional schools will witness an employment growth of 34.3% (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2005). Thus, issues of faculty satisfaction, retention, and persistence will become increasingly important for university administrators and education policy makers. The need to study faculty satisfaction at universities also stems from the fact that the intellectual and social structures of higher …
Scholarly Collaboration and Productivity Patterns in Public Administration
Previous studies have confirmed the interdisciplinary nature of the field of public administration (Mosher 1956; Ventriss 1991; Forrester 1996; Rodgers and Rodgers 2000; Schroeder et al. 2004) and encouraged the exploration of one important indicator of interdisciplinarity: research collaboration. One way that collaboration patterns are explored is through the study of co-authorship among faculty members (Smart and Bayer 1986; Forrester 1996; Kat…
Comparing Research Productivity Across Disciplines and Career Stages
In academia, productivity continues to be a major factor in decisions of salary raises as well as promotion. The current study thus examines and compares the research productivity of faculty members across disciplines and career stages. The research tests three life course theories (cumulative advantage, utility maximization theory and obsolescence theory) with data from eight disciplines (biology, computer sciences, mathematics/statistics, physi…
Introduction
A recent report issued by the Pew Research Center forecasted that one in five Americans (19 per cent) will be foreign-born by 2050, which surpasses the historical wave of immigration of 14.8 per ce
Is Diversity Management Sufficient? Organizational Inclusion to Further Performance
This study focuses on the concept of organizational inclusion, which goes beyond diversity management, the dominant paradigm in the field of public administration. Although several studies in public administration mention the importance of inclusion, none of these studies have empirically tested its association with performance beyond diversity management. Data for this study comes from a survey conducted among public managers in Texas agencies. …
Transnational Research Collaboration
In the last two decades, research collaborations inside the United States and with other countries have increased. Scholars who have studied the composition in scientific collaborations have noted demographic factors as important personal attributes. However, little scholarly work has examined how national origin affects international research collaboration in the United States. This article presents some findings from a National Science Foundati…
From Glass Ceiling to Glass Cliff
The dominant paradigm that frames the challenges women face in attaining upward mobility has been the glass ceiling metaphor (Bowling, Cynthia, Kelleher, Christine, Jones, Jennifer, and Deil Wright. 2006. Cracked ceilings, firmer floors, and weakening walls: Trends and patterns in gender representation among executives leading American state agencies, 1970–2000. Public Administration Review 66 (6): 823–36; Bullard, Angela, and Deil Wright. 1993. …
Return Migration to India
The decision‐making process among migrants, whether to leave their country of birth for a foreign country or deciding to return to their native country is complex and laden with challenges. This article seeks to understand the decision‐making process by which immigrant engineers and scientists select to return to India after study and work in the United States. It is based on in‐depth interviews conducted with 54 returned engineers and scientists…
Grass Is Greener on the Other Side
Studies on skilled return migration from developed to developing countries have focused on the industrial sector. This article focuses on why academic engineers and scientists from developing countries leave developed countries to return to their countries of birth. Data for this study comes from a National Science Foundation funded study with 83 engineers and scientists who returned to India after study and work in U.S. universities. Better care…
The Importance of Ethical Environment to Organizational Performance in Employment at Will States
This article highlights the importance of ethical environment in enhancing organizational performance. It is vital that organizations set ethical standards for their employees alongside providing an environment that fosters trust and commitment, provides leadership, and creates a high quality of workforce to improve organizational performance. To study the impact of ethical environment on organizational performance, we employ elements from André …
Affective Organizational Commitment and Job Satisfaction
Public managers across countries are faced with challenges of attracting and retaining high‐quality employees in the context of widespread financial constraints and increasing inter‐sectoral competition. These changing circumstances have reinforced the need to enhance public employees' affective organizational commitment, which is related to important outcomes such as employees' performance and retention. However, we know little about the factors…
Convergence or Divergence
Do immigrant faculty trained in American higher education institutions adopt the outlook and practices of native US scientists and engineers ("convergence"), or do they diverge from such practices? The modern science paradigm holds that location will not matter significantly and that immigrants in either place will converge to a common standard of scientific practice. Drawing upon 134 in-depth interviews, this paper compares the scientific practi…
Ethics in American Public Administration
This article tracks the evolution of ethics in American public administration from the inception of the field in the late nineteenth century to the present, and employs the ethical lens to address some of the current pressing problems (e.g., immigration, climate change, and e-surveillance). The study acknowledges the fact that ethics has not evolved in a vacuum. Ever since the Progressive Era, various forces—social, political, legal, as well as t…
Inclusive Work Practices
The federal government lags behind in progressive civil rights policies in regard to universal workplace antidiscrimination laws for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Americans. The slow progress matters to inclusionary workplace practices and the theory and practice of public administration generally, as recognition of LGBT rights and protection are constitutive of representative bureaucracy and promoting social equity. This study e…
Race and Gender Representation in Presidential Appointments, SES, and GS Levels, During Clinton, Bush, and Obama Administrations
Achieving a representative bureaucracy that reflects the attitudes, values, and policy choices of women and racial minorities is imperative, as the gap in the representation of those groups in the federal workforce is growing. We examine to what extent female and minority representation in political appointments, Senior Executive Service (SES), and General Schedule (GS) 1-15 levels reflect presidents’ commitment to diversity. We use data from the…
More than a decade in the making
Ethnic Organizations and Adaptation
The United States has witnessed waves of immigration throughout its history, with the current immigration policies regulated by the reforms enacted under President Lyndon Johnson in 1965. Immigrants now come from all over the world, with China and India supplying the largest numbers in science and engineering (S&E) fields. Although the US is seen as coping rather successfully with immigration from Europe, that is not the case with Asian immigrati…
Faking Versus Feeling Emotions
Emotional labor (EL) involves regulating, managing, and sensing others’ emotions to achieve organizational goals. However, it is often considered a unitary variable, without examining the specific types of emotional labor (i.e., deep acting and surface acting). Thus, the purpose of this research is to extend the under-researched work on surface-acting and deep-acting strategies of EL on job involvement in the public sector by examining the mediat…
The Impact of Human Resources Environment and Organizational Identification on Employees’ Psychological Well-Being
This study explores how Human Resources (HR) environment (i.e., job autonomy, opportunities for advancement, involved communication, and decisive action) promotes psychological well-being of public employees. We advance the literature by identifying organizational identification (OID) as the underpinning mechanism through which HR environment can foster employees’ well-being. OID is termed as a “social cure,” owing to its strong link with employe…
Organizational Practices and Second-Generation Gender Bias
Ely and Meyerson’s gendered organizations framework reconceptualizes traditional gender differences defined by biology and lack of structural opportunities, to a complex set of social relations in the workplace. We apply this framework to second-generation gender bias to further understand impediments to women's career progression in the public sector workplace. In-depth interviews of state-level administrators in U.S. public sector agencies indi…
Careers of women public managers
This study examines women's managerial experiences in leadership roles and reflects on their career needs. Women's career needs are understood by applying the Kaleidoscope Career Model (KCM), which is yet to be widely explored in public sector settings. The KCM recognizes the interplay of multiple experiences that shape the career development of women in the workforce. Using 21 in‐depth interviews with women municipal government leaders in the Un…
Beyond a Numbers Game? Impact of Diversity and Inclusion on the Perception of Organizational Justice
Organizational justice, diversity, and inclusion are central tenets of social equity in public organizations. This study explores the effects of diversity management and inclusive leadership practices on employees' perceptions of organizational justice. Drawing from FedScope and the 2019 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, we find that an increase in the number of women and Black, Indigenous and other People of Color (BIPOC) is not sufficient to i…
A long road
Public Administration , the field's oldest journal, is now 100 years old. Despite this centenary, it has only been relatively recently that scholars have examined questions of: (1) how diverse, equitable, and inclusive the field is; (2) how oppressive administrative structures marginalize groups; and (3) what principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) mean globally. We seek to contribute to this conversation by reflecting on what is cur…
Political science (33 works) · Public relations (20 works) · Law (19 works) · Sociology (18 works) · Business (16 works) · Law (16 works) · Psychology (16 works) · Public Policy and Administration Research (15 works) · Economics (14 works) · Social Psychology (13 works)