Leisha Dehart‐davi
Biographic Data
| ID | 4392547 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Leisha Dehart‐davi |
| GIVEN NAMES | Leisha |
| FAMILY NAME | Dehart‐davi |
| SIGNATURE | DAVI L D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9406-3851 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 29 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 316 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 29 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Fight or flight: How gender influences follower responses to unethical leader behaviour
Does unethical leader behaviour produce gendered responses? We study follower response to unethical leader behaviours of bribery and workplace harassment. Our findings, based on an experiment, suggest that leader gender, gender congruence, and implicit gender biases influence follower responses to unethical leader behaviour. These findings raise the troubling implication that unethical male leaders will remain entrenched in positions of power
Does workplace inclusion mitigate emotional exhaustion? Evidence from local government organizations
Over the past few years, many local government organizations have become more concerned with employee burnout and identifying strategies to support employees. In this paper we examine inclusion as a resource that can shape emotional exhaustion and buffer against two demands, workplace incivility and COVID-19 job-related changes. With survey data collected from three local governments, we find that inclusion is associated with reduced feelings of …
Where power and scholarship collide: Gender and coauthorship in public administration research
Publishing is a source of capital and power in academia, and coauthoring is a common way to publish. However, studies in public administration have not yet examined the structure of coauthorship patterns, how these patterns have evolved over time, or the extent to which these patterns are gendered. We use bibliometric data to examine coauthorship in public administration scholarship over four decades with a particular focus on gendered patterns. …
Can effective organizational rules keep employees from leaving? a study of green tape and turnover intention
Employee turnover intention is a serious concern for public organizations. In this study, we investigate if the presence of effective organizational rules, or green tape, can help keep employees from leaving the organization. Using cross-sectional survey and administrative data collected from three local government organizations, we find that effective organizational rules, defined by valid means-ends relationships, consistent application, optima…
Does Bureaucracy Diminish Inclusion? Evidence from a County Government
This article examines the influence of bureaucratic structure on a public employee’s sense of inclusion. We argue that bureaucratic structure influences inclusion by accentuating or minimizing status differences. To test this argument, we investigate three types of bureaucratic structure: centralization, hierarchy, and span of control, all expected to lower inclusion, and “green tape,” or effective organizational rules, expected to increase inclu…
Beyond social equity: Talking social justice in public administration
Herbert Kaufman: Celebrating a Century of Contributions to Public Administration
Melvin J. Dubnick Donald F. Kettl In accepting American Society for Public Administration’s Dwight Waldo Award in 1996, Herbert Kaufman reflected on his relationships with both the award’s namesake and its previous awardee, Herbert Simon. On one hand, Kaufman throughout his career emphasized the strong influence Simon’s work on process and efficiency had on his approach to public administration. On the other hand, he deeply appreciated Waldo’s ef…
Introduction to the Symposium Issue on Reappraising Bureaucracy in the 21st Century
This essay introduces the special symposium issue Reappraising Bureaucracy in the 21st Century in Perspectives on Public Management and Governance. The symposium seeks to place Weberian bureaucracy in the context of contemporary public administration and evaluate its relevance to modern-day concerns
Reckoning With Race and Gender in Public Administration and Public Policy: A Substantive Social Equity Turn
Promoting race‐aware and gender‐aware scholarship is essential for giving substance to social equity research. This review and introduction provides an account of one such initiative to promote race and gender scholarship through collaboration between Public Administration Review (PAR), and the Consortium of Race and Gender Scholars (CORGES), and introduces the PAR Race and Gender Symposium. CORGES is an informal group of scholars motivated by th…
Managerial Practice and Diversity Climate: The Roles of Workplace Voice, Centralization, and Teamwork
Diversity climate—shared employee perceptions of the extent to which an organization is inclusive and fair—is of increasing interest to public administration scholars . While research has linked diversity climate to a range of employee and organizational outcomes , less is known about how common managerial practices affect diversity climate . This article addresses this gap by examining three such practices: workplace voice , centralized decision…
Formal Hierarchies and Informal Networks: How Organizational Structure Shapes Information Search in Local Government
Attention to informal communication networks within public organizations has grown in recent decades. While research has documented the role of individual cognition and social structure in understanding information search in organizations, this article emphasizes the importance of formal hierarchy. We argue that the structural attributes of bureaucracies are too important to be neglected when modeling knowledge flows in public organizations. Empi…
Mechanisms of Social Capital in Organizations: How Team Cognition Influences Employee Commitment and Engagement
While previous research has shown that organizational social capital benefits organizations and creates performance gains, most of this work examined this relationship at the macro level based on organizational aggregates. In this article, we study organizational social capital effects at the micro level, that is, its impact on important work-related attitudes of employees within organizations. We argue that individual perceptions of organization…
How empowering leadership reduces employee silence in public organizations
The intentional withholding of critical work‐related information can have serious negative consequences in public organizations. Yet, few studies have examined why public employees intentionally remain silent about problems and how to prevent such behaviour. This article provides insights into how managers may lower employee silence in government organizations. We develop a model that suggests that empowering leadership by frontline supervisors r…
Formalization and consistency heighten organizational rule following: Experimental and survey evidence
This study examines the attributes of organizational rules that influence rule following. Rule following fosters organizational effectiveness by aligning individual behaviours with organizational preference. While a range of theoretical explanations have been offered for rule following, the characteristics of rule design and implementation have received less empirical attention. Borrowing from the green tape theory of effective rules, this study …
More than Pathological Formalization: Understanding Organizational Structure and Red Tape
Most research has conceptualized red tape as being a pathological subset of organizational formalization. This article argues that focusing on a single dimension of organizational structure as a red tape driver is unrealistically narrow. Specifically, the article advances hypotheses as to how organizational centralization and hierarchy affect perceived red tape, in addition to formalization. This reasoning is tested using survey data from employe…
Green Tape and Job Satisfaction: Can Organizational Rules Make Employees Happy
Organizational rules are the backdrop of public employee life, with research suggesting both beneficial and harmful effects to employee morale. In contrast to the traditional approach of comparing employee morale in workplaces with higher versus lower levels of rules, this study examines the relationship between specific attributes of organizational rules and job satisfaction. A combination of three organizational rule attributes is expected to i…
Public Management Research Association
Opening the Black Box of Red Tape Research
Wrestling with Intellectual Diversity in Public Administration: Avoiding Disconnectedness and Fragmentation while Seeking Rigor, Depth, and Relevance
Public Administration (PA) is a field characterized by great diversity in theoretical approaches and methodological tactics. This wide scope lends itself to potential epistemological and methodological fragmentation, which prevents scholars from adequately appreciating and building on each other's work. Although many scholars value PA's theoretical and methodological diversity, this intellectual diversity brings some important trade-offs that mus…
Can Bureaucracy Benefit Organizational Women: An Exploratory Study
A significant body of evidence suggests that bureaucratized organizations provide greater career rewards to women than do less bureaucratized organizations. Beyond career rewards, are there ways in which bureaucracy can benefit organizational women? This study explores potential answers to this question by examining perceptions of bureaucracy held by public employees. Analyzing qualitative and quantitative data collected from the employees of fou…
Gender and Organizational Rule Abidance
A long‐standing contention in the public and private management literatures is that women use rule abidance as a way to compensate for their relative lack of organizational power. Many of the studies making this assertion rely on anecdotal evidence rather than theory‐guided empirical studies. In this paper, the authors use survey data collected from four cities in a midwestern state to empirically test gender dimensions of rule abidance. The find…
Green Tape and Public Employee Rule Abidance: Why Organizational Rule Attributes Matter
Ever since Max Weber identified formal rules as one attribute of bureaucratic organizations, scholars have uncovered a range of cooperative and uncooperative behavioral responses to organizational rules. The question for public management theory and practice is how to design and execute organizational rules in ways that elicit cooperation rather than resistance. Green tape, a theory of effective rules, provides one answer to this question. Green …
Green Tape: A Theory of Effective Organizational Rules
Public management scholars over the past decade have shed significant light on ineffective rules or “red tape.” This article takes a different approach by conceptualizing a theory of green tape or effective rules. The theory argues that the probability of rule effectiveness depends on the combined presence of (1) written requirements, (2) with valid means-ends relationships, which (3) employ optimal control, (4) are consistently applied, and that…
The Unbureaucratic Personality
After 60 years of scholarship on the rule‐bound bureaucratic personality, this article turns attention to the unbureaucratic personality. Identified by a willingness to bend rules, the unbureaucratic personality is thought to be influenced by individual and workplace attributes. The individual attributes investigated in this article include nonconformity, risk propensity, and public service commitment, all of which are expected to stimulate the u…
Gender Dimensions of Public Service Motivation
Feminist scholars of public administration have critiqued the dominance of masculine imagery in public administration theory and practice. However, public service motivation is one area of public administration discourse that contains both feminine and masculine imagery. Focusing on Perry’s multidimensional public service motivation scale, the authors borrow from a range of social science literatures to contend that compassion is a feminine dimen…
Gender Dimensions of Public Service Motivation
Feminist scholars of public administration have critiqued the dominance of masculine imagery in public administration theory and practice. However, public service motivation is one area of public administration discourse that contains both feminine and masculine imagery. Focusing on Perry’s multidimensional public service motivation scale, the authors borrow from a range of social science literatures to contend that compassion is a feminine dimen…
Green Tape: A Theory of Effective Organizational Rules
Public management scholars over the past decade have shed significant light on ineffective rules or “red tape.” This article takes a different approach by conceptualizing a theory of green tape or effective rules. The theory argues that the probability of rule effectiveness depends on the combined presence of (1) written requirements, (2) with valid means-ends relationships, which (3) employ optimal control, (4) are consistently applied, and that…
Red Tape and Public Employees: Does Perceived Rule Dysfunction Alienate Managers
This study explores the relationship between organizational red tape and work alienation. While bureaucratic controls have long been considered sources of worker detachment, the relationship between red tape and managerial alienation has not been explicitly tested. When managers encounter rules, regulations, or procedures that seem pointless yet burdensome, these encounters may simultaneously trigger the key psychological ingredients of alienatio…
Reckoning With Race and Gender in Public Administration and Public Policy: A Substantive Social Equity Turn
Promoting race‐aware and gender‐aware scholarship is essential for giving substance to social equity research. This review and introduction provides an account of one such initiative to promote race and gender scholarship through collaboration between Public Administration Review (PAR), and the Consortium of Race and Gender Scholars (CORGES), and introduces the PAR Race and Gender Symposium. CORGES is an informal group of scholars motivated by th…
Beyond social equity: Talking social justice in public administration
Green Tape and Job Satisfaction: Can Organizational Rules Make Employees Happy
Organizational rules are the backdrop of public employee life, with research suggesting both beneficial and harmful effects to employee morale. In contrast to the traditional approach of comparing employee morale in workplaces with higher versus lower levels of rules, this study examines the relationship between specific attributes of organizational rules and job satisfaction. A combination of three organizational rule attributes is expected to i…
Wrestling with Intellectual Diversity in Public Administration: Avoiding Disconnectedness and Fragmentation while Seeking Rigor, Depth, and Relevance
Public Administration (PA) is a field characterized by great diversity in theoretical approaches and methodological tactics. This wide scope lends itself to potential epistemological and methodological fragmentation, which prevents scholars from adequately appreciating and building on each other's work. Although many scholars value PA's theoretical and methodological diversity, this intellectual diversity brings some important trade-offs that mus…
Red Tape and Clean Air: Title V Air Pollution Permitting Implementation as a Test Bed for Theory Development
The greatest test of a theory's utility is the degree to which it translates to subject areas for which it was not designed. This article conducts such a test, by applying an etiological theory of red tape to Title V of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments. Title V significantly expands the paperwork requirements for certain industrial sources of air pollution in an attempt to—among many other things—facilitate enforcement of air quality regulations…
Formalization and consistency heighten organizational rule following: Experimental and survey evidence
This study examines the attributes of organizational rules that influence rule following. Rule following fosters organizational effectiveness by aligning individual behaviours with organizational preference. While a range of theoretical explanations have been offered for rule following, the characteristics of rule design and implementation have received less empirical attention. Borrowing from the green tape theory of effective rules, this study …
Regulatory Compliance and Air Quality Permitting: Why Do Firms Overcomply
Industry overcompliance with pollution standards has puzzled economists, leading to a variety of hypotheses about the objectives companies expect to achieve by doing so. This article examines the possibility of overcompliance with a different type of environmental regulation: the paperwork requirements for completing a federal Title V air operating permit application. We suggest that unique political circumstances set the stage for companies to o…
How empowering leadership reduces employee silence in public organizations
The intentional withholding of critical work‐related information can have serious negative consequences in public organizations. Yet, few studies have examined why public employees intentionally remain silent about problems and how to prevent such behaviour. This article provides insights into how managers may lower employee silence in government organizations. We develop a model that suggests that empowering leadership by frontline supervisors r…
Formal Hierarchies and Informal Networks: How Organizational Structure Shapes Information Search in Local Government
Attention to informal communication networks within public organizations has grown in recent decades. While research has documented the role of individual cognition and social structure in understanding information search in organizations, this article emphasizes the importance of formal hierarchy. We argue that the structural attributes of bureaucracies are too important to be neglected when modeling knowledge flows in public organizations. Empi…
Fight or flight: How gender influences follower responses to unethical leader behaviour
Does unethical leader behaviour produce gendered responses? We study follower response to unethical leader behaviours of bribery and workplace harassment. Our findings, based on an experiment, suggest that leader gender, gender congruence, and implicit gender biases influence follower responses to unethical leader behaviour. These findings raise the troubling implication that unethical male leaders will remain entrenched in positions of power
Mechanisms of Social Capital in Organizations: How Team Cognition Influences Employee Commitment and Engagement
While previous research has shown that organizational social capital benefits organizations and creates performance gains, most of this work examined this relationship at the macro level based on organizational aggregates. In this article, we study organizational social capital effects at the micro level, that is, its impact on important work-related attitudes of employees within organizations. We argue that individual perceptions of organization…
Does workplace inclusion mitigate emotional exhaustion? Evidence from local government organizations
Over the past few years, many local government organizations have become more concerned with employee burnout and identifying strategies to support employees. In this paper we examine inclusion as a resource that can shape emotional exhaustion and buffer against two demands, workplace incivility and COVID-19 job-related changes. With survey data collected from three local governments, we find that inclusion is associated with reduced feelings of …
Can Bureaucracy Benefit Organizational Women: An Exploratory Study
A significant body of evidence suggests that bureaucratized organizations provide greater career rewards to women than do less bureaucratized organizations. Beyond career rewards, are there ways in which bureaucracy can benefit organizational women? This study explores potential answers to this question by examining perceptions of bureaucracy held by public employees. Analyzing qualitative and quantitative data collected from the employees of fou…
Employers as Mediating Institutions for Public Policy: The Case of Commute Options Programs
Scholars have recently noted the role that employers can play as “mediating institutions” for public policy. Mediating institutions connect the private lives of individuals with public policy concerns by communicating societal norms to members and providing social contexts that encourage a commitment to these norms. Despite the potential importance of employers as mediating institutions for public policy, little scholarly attention has been devot…
Red Tape and Clean Air: Title V Air Pollution Permitting Implementation as a Test Bed for Theory Development
The greatest test of a theory's utility is the degree to which it translates to subject areas for which it was not designed. This article conducts such a test, by applying an etiological theory of red tape to Title V of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments. Title V significantly expands the paperwork requirements for certain industrial sources of air pollution in an attempt to—among many other things—facilitate enforcement of air quality regulations…
Regulatory Compliance and Air Quality Permitting: Why Do Firms Overcomply
Industry overcompliance with pollution standards has puzzled economists, leading to a variety of hypotheses about the objectives companies expect to achieve by doing so. This article examines the possibility of overcompliance with a different type of environmental regulation: the paperwork requirements for completing a federal Title V air operating permit application. We suggest that unique political circumstances set the stage for companies to o…
Employers as Mediating Institutions for Public Policy: The Case of Commute Options Programs
Scholars have recently noted the role that employers can play as “mediating institutions” for public policy. Mediating institutions connect the private lives of individuals with public policy concerns by communicating societal norms to members and providing social contexts that encourage a commitment to these norms. Despite the potential importance of employers as mediating institutions for public policy, little scholarly attention has been devot…
Red Tape and Public Employees: Does Perceived Rule Dysfunction Alienate Managers
This study explores the relationship between organizational red tape and work alienation. While bureaucratic controls have long been considered sources of worker detachment, the relationship between red tape and managerial alienation has not been explicitly tested. When managers encounter rules, regulations, or procedures that seem pointless yet burdensome, these encounters may simultaneously trigger the key psychological ingredients of alienatio…
Gender Dimensions of Public Service Motivation
Feminist scholars of public administration have critiqued the dominance of masculine imagery in public administration theory and practice. However, public service motivation is one area of public administration discourse that contains both feminine and masculine imagery. Focusing on Perry’s multidimensional public service motivation scale, the authors borrow from a range of social science literatures to contend that compassion is a feminine dimen…
The Unbureaucratic Personality
After 60 years of scholarship on the rule‐bound bureaucratic personality, this article turns attention to the unbureaucratic personality. Identified by a willingness to bend rules, the unbureaucratic personality is thought to be influenced by individual and workplace attributes. The individual attributes investigated in this article include nonconformity, risk propensity, and public service commitment, all of which are expected to stimulate the u…
Green Tape: A Theory of Effective Organizational Rules
Public management scholars over the past decade have shed significant light on ineffective rules or “red tape.” This article takes a different approach by conceptualizing a theory of green tape or effective rules. The theory argues that the probability of rule effectiveness depends on the combined presence of (1) written requirements, (2) with valid means-ends relationships, which (3) employ optimal control, (4) are consistently applied, and that…
Can Bureaucracy Benefit Organizational Women: An Exploratory Study
A significant body of evidence suggests that bureaucratized organizations provide greater career rewards to women than do less bureaucratized organizations. Beyond career rewards, are there ways in which bureaucracy can benefit organizational women? This study explores potential answers to this question by examining perceptions of bureaucracy held by public employees. Analyzing qualitative and quantitative data collected from the employees of fou…
Gender and Organizational Rule Abidance
A long‐standing contention in the public and private management literatures is that women use rule abidance as a way to compensate for their relative lack of organizational power. Many of the studies making this assertion rely on anecdotal evidence rather than theory‐guided empirical studies. In this paper, the authors use survey data collected from four cities in a midwestern state to empirically test gender dimensions of rule abidance. The find…
Green Tape and Public Employee Rule Abidance: Why Organizational Rule Attributes Matter
Ever since Max Weber identified formal rules as one attribute of bureaucratic organizations, scholars have uncovered a range of cooperative and uncooperative behavioral responses to organizational rules. The question for public management theory and practice is how to design and execute organizational rules in ways that elicit cooperation rather than resistance. Green tape, a theory of effective rules, provides one answer to this question. Green …
Wrestling with Intellectual Diversity in Public Administration: Avoiding Disconnectedness and Fragmentation while Seeking Rigor, Depth, and Relevance
Public Administration (PA) is a field characterized by great diversity in theoretical approaches and methodological tactics. This wide scope lends itself to potential epistemological and methodological fragmentation, which prevents scholars from adequately appreciating and building on each other's work. Although many scholars value PA's theoretical and methodological diversity, this intellectual diversity brings some important trade-offs that mus…
Public Management Research Association
Opening the Black Box of Red Tape Research
Green Tape and Job Satisfaction: Can Organizational Rules Make Employees Happy
Organizational rules are the backdrop of public employee life, with research suggesting both beneficial and harmful effects to employee morale. In contrast to the traditional approach of comparing employee morale in workplaces with higher versus lower levels of rules, this study examines the relationship between specific attributes of organizational rules and job satisfaction. A combination of three organizational rule attributes is expected to i…
How empowering leadership reduces employee silence in public organizations
The intentional withholding of critical work‐related information can have serious negative consequences in public organizations. Yet, few studies have examined why public employees intentionally remain silent about problems and how to prevent such behaviour. This article provides insights into how managers may lower employee silence in government organizations. We develop a model that suggests that empowering leadership by frontline supervisors r…
Formalization and consistency heighten organizational rule following: Experimental and survey evidence
This study examines the attributes of organizational rules that influence rule following. Rule following fosters organizational effectiveness by aligning individual behaviours with organizational preference. While a range of theoretical explanations have been offered for rule following, the characteristics of rule design and implementation have received less empirical attention. Borrowing from the green tape theory of effective rules, this study …
More than Pathological Formalization: Understanding Organizational Structure and Red Tape
Most research has conceptualized red tape as being a pathological subset of organizational formalization. This article argues that focusing on a single dimension of organizational structure as a red tape driver is unrealistically narrow. Specifically, the article advances hypotheses as to how organizational centralization and hierarchy affect perceived red tape, in addition to formalization. This reasoning is tested using survey data from employe…
Mechanisms of Social Capital in Organizations: How Team Cognition Influences Employee Commitment and Engagement
While previous research has shown that organizational social capital benefits organizations and creates performance gains, most of this work examined this relationship at the macro level based on organizational aggregates. In this article, we study organizational social capital effects at the micro level, that is, its impact on important work-related attitudes of employees within organizations. We argue that individual perceptions of organization…
Formal Hierarchies and Informal Networks: How Organizational Structure Shapes Information Search in Local Government
Attention to informal communication networks within public organizations has grown in recent decades. While research has documented the role of individual cognition and social structure in understanding information search in organizations, this article emphasizes the importance of formal hierarchy. We argue that the structural attributes of bureaucracies are too important to be neglected when modeling knowledge flows in public organizations. Empi…
Herbert Kaufman: Celebrating a Century of Contributions to Public Administration
Melvin J. Dubnick Donald F. Kettl In accepting American Society for Public Administration’s Dwight Waldo Award in 1996, Herbert Kaufman reflected on his relationships with both the award’s namesake and its previous awardee, Herbert Simon. On one hand, Kaufman throughout his career emphasized the strong influence Simon’s work on process and efficiency had on his approach to public administration. On the other hand, he deeply appreciated Waldo’s ef…
Introduction to the Symposium Issue on Reappraising Bureaucracy in the 21st Century
This essay introduces the special symposium issue Reappraising Bureaucracy in the 21st Century in Perspectives on Public Management and Governance. The symposium seeks to place Weberian bureaucracy in the context of contemporary public administration and evaluate its relevance to modern-day concerns
Reckoning With Race and Gender in Public Administration and Public Policy: A Substantive Social Equity Turn
Promoting race‐aware and gender‐aware scholarship is essential for giving substance to social equity research. This review and introduction provides an account of one such initiative to promote race and gender scholarship through collaboration between Public Administration Review (PAR), and the Consortium of Race and Gender Scholars (CORGES), and introduces the PAR Race and Gender Symposium. CORGES is an informal group of scholars motivated by th…
Managerial Practice and Diversity Climate: The Roles of Workplace Voice, Centralization, and Teamwork
Diversity climate—shared employee perceptions of the extent to which an organization is inclusive and fair—is of increasing interest to public administration scholars . While research has linked diversity climate to a range of employee and organizational outcomes , less is known about how common managerial practices affect diversity climate . This article addresses this gap by examining three such practices: workplace voice , centralized decision…
Can effective organizational rules keep employees from leaving? a study of green tape and turnover intention
Employee turnover intention is a serious concern for public organizations. In this study, we investigate if the presence of effective organizational rules, or green tape, can help keep employees from leaving the organization. Using cross-sectional survey and administrative data collected from three local government organizations, we find that effective organizational rules, defined by valid means-ends relationships, consistent application, optima…
Does Bureaucracy Diminish Inclusion? Evidence from a County Government
This article examines the influence of bureaucratic structure on a public employee’s sense of inclusion. We argue that bureaucratic structure influences inclusion by accentuating or minimizing status differences. To test this argument, we investigate three types of bureaucratic structure: centralization, hierarchy, and span of control, all expected to lower inclusion, and “green tape,” or effective organizational rules, expected to increase inclu…
Political science (24 works) · Public Policy and Administration Research (20 works) · Psychology (17 works) · Economics (14 works) · Business (13 works) · Public relations (13 works) · Law (12 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · Management (11 works) · Law (10 works)