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Item Understanding Public Sector Debt: Financial Vicious Circle under the Soft Budget Constraint(Springer Nature, 2018) Park, SangheeThe article explains why debt of public sector organizations grows beyond the sustainable level by focusing on the principal-agent relationship under the soft budget constraint. Specifically, this article explores the extent to which factors affect the level of public sector debt in the context of quasi-autonomous non-governmental organizations (quangos) in Korea over the past two decades (1993-2012). The findings from the panel data analysis suggest that the level of public sector debt increases as an outcome of the financial vicious circle created by the soft budget constraint: a knock-on effect of the moral hazard of quangos as well as the opportunistic behavior of political principals. Public sector debt is positively associated with agency-specific factors such as the size of quangos as well as the factors related to the political incentives such as policy preferences and electoral considerations. However, macroeconomic factors made little difference to the general pattern of the evidence.Item Political and administrative decentralization and responses to COVID-19: comparison of the United States and South Korea(Emerald, 2021) Park, Sanghee; Fowler, LukePurpose: This study explains the variation of government responses to the pandemic by focusing on how centralization/decentralization in politics and administration creates conflicts and coordination problems. Specifically, the authors make comparisons between the U.S. and South Korea to reveal differences in macro-level structures and associated responses. One of the key points of comparison is the centralized, hierarchical governance system, which may thwart or facilitate a coordinated response. Design/methodology/approach: This is an in-depth comparative case study of the two countries that showed different trajectories during the initial response to COVID-19. The comparison allows us to highlight the long-standing debate about centralization/decentralization and offers implications for government responses to crises shaped by political systems and administrative structures. Findings: While there are inherent pros and cons to decentralization, the COVID-19 pandemic highlights the institutional limitations in American federalism and the advantages that centralized administrative coordination creates during times of crisis. American federalism has unveiled systematic problems in coordination, along with the leadership crisis in polarized politics. The response from South Korea also reveals several issues in the administratively centralized and politically polarized environment. Research limitations/implications: While the authors risk comparing apples and oranges, the variation unveils systematic contradictions in polarized politics and offers important implications for government responses in times of crisis. However, this article did not fully account for individual leadership as an independent factor that interacts with existing political/administrative institutions. Practical implications: There is certainly no one best way or one-size-fits-all solution to mitigating the COVID-19 pandemic in countries under different circumstances. This article demonstrates that one of the essential determining factors in national responses to the pandemic is how the political and administrative dimensions of centralization/decentralization are balanced against each other. Originality/value: Unlike previous studies explaining the country-level responses to COVID-19, this study focuses on the variance of political and administrative decentralization within each country from the political-administrative perspective and reveals the systematic contradictions in coordination and the leadership crisis in polarized politics.Item Representative Bureaucracy, Distributional Equity, and Environmental Justice(Wiley, 2020) Liang, Jiaqi; Park, Sanghee; Zhao, TianshuThis article explores the role of bureaucratic representation and distributional equity in the implementation of environmental policy, which has been shaped by the politics of identity, administrative discretion, and a contested discourse on the redistribution of public resources. We examine whether minority bureaucratic representation fosters policy outputs for race-related disadvantaged communities, and whether the behavior of public administrators reflects distributional equity. Linking representative bureaucracy to environmental justice, this research contributes to the understanding of social equity in public administration and sheds light on the relationship between bureaucratic representation and democratic values. Analyzing a nationwide, block-group-level dataset, we find that a more racially representative workforce in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency promotes the agency’s enforcement actions in communities that have large local-national disparity in minority population and severe policy problem. But the size of bureaucratic representation effect is larger for neighborhoods that are overburdened with race-related social vulnerability.Item Gender and Performance in Public Organizations: A Research Synthesis and Research Agenda(Taylor & Francis, 2021) Park, SangheeThis study examines the variations among empirical findings of gender effects on performance in public organizations; and identifies and discusses areas to be addressed in future research. The meta-analysis using 72 studies published between 1999 and 2017 presents evidence that greater representation of women in the workforce and more women in leadership roles have a positive effect on public organization performance. Study characteristics such as policy/service areas, geographical context, and time frames of the study affect the findings of gender effects, while the variance in measurement strategies and publication status do not make a difference in empirical evidence.Item The Politics of Expertise in Policymaking: The Case of Erin’s Law Adoption and Diffusion Across the U.S. States(Sage, 2024) Vallett, Joel D.; Park, SangheeThis study examines whether and how policy entrepreneurs and their interactions with state legislatures influence the adoption and diffusion of a child abuse prevention policy, i.e., Erin’s Law, across U.S. state legislatures. Employing eight years of state-level data (2011–2018), we claim that a policy entrepreneur’s impact on policy adoption is conditional on the degree of legislative professionalism and the state’s political ideology. The event history analysis (EHA) and logistic regression (Logit) analyses reveal that policy entrepreneurs’ speaking engagements decrease the time to adoption and increase the likelihood of adoption, and the effect becomes stronger when states’ political ideology aligns with the political landscape surrounding the issue. However, our findings did not support the countervailing role of a policy entrepreneur in leveling gaps in the degree of legislative professionalism and ideological preferences across state legislatures.Item What Causes the Death of Public Sector Organizations? Understanding Structural Changes and Continuities in Korean Quangos(Taylor & Francis, 2013) Park, SangheeThis study explores the determinants of structural changes and continuities of public sector organizations in Korea using longitudinal data. Focusing on the political costs of termination, we examine external and internal factors that are closely linked to the political incentives to terminate quangos. This article primarily addresses the following question: What determines the termination of public sector organizations? The model suggests that survivability of public sector organizations largely depends on external factors such as political, institutional, and social changes. Specifically, quangos are more likely to be terminated during political turnovers and the period when presidential power is maximized. Termination seems easier for politicians when social demands are mature enough to blow away political burdens and cynicism. Although organizations with fewer resources are more vulnerable to external pressures and shocks, none of the quango-specific factors significantly affect the survivability of Korean quangos.Item Merit, Diversity, and Performance: Does Diversity Management Moderate the Effect of Merit Principles on Governmental Performance?(Sage, 2020) Park, Sanghee; Liang, JiaqiThe compatibility of merit principles and diversity management is particularly intriguing in theory and practice. Although theoretical arguments for merit-based practices and diversity management are well established, the effect of their dynamics on governmental performance remains an empirical issue. This article examines the effect of merit principles, workforce diversity, and diversity management on government performance, and inquires about whether diversity management efforts moderate the effect of merit-based practices. Analyzing a combined data set on federal agencies, this study finds that merit-based practices and diversity management have independent positive impact on organizational performance, but there is no significant relationship between workforce diversity and performance. Furthermore, the effect of merit-based practices on organizational performance is moderated by gender diversity and diversity management. Specifically, if an agency has a more diverse workforce in terms of gender or more effective diversity management efforts, the positive effect of merit-based practices on organizational performance is strengthened.Item Challenges and Opportunities: The 21st Century Public Manager in a VUCA World(Oxford University Press, 2018) Park, SangheeItem Gendered leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic: How democracy and representation moderate leadership effectiveness(Taylor & Francis, 2022) Park, SangheeThis article investigates whether and how gendered leadership makes a difference in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. The country-level variances in the initial trajectories provide a unique comparative setting that allows us to examine the link between leadership and performance, moderated by institutional contexts – democracy and representation. Using daily panel data over the first half of the year 2020 across OECD countries, I find that women-led countries show epidemiologic patterns different from male-led countries. The effect of gendered leadership was contingent on the maturity of democracy and the degree of gender representation in both parliament and bureaucracy.Item Seeking changes in ivory towers: The impact of gender quotas on female academics in higher education(Elsevier, 2020) Park, SangheeThis study examines whether and how gender quotas achieve their primary objective to increase female representation in university faculty positions. Using a longitudinal dataset from South Korea (2001–2017), this study highlights vertical and horizontal segregation in academia and the differential impact of quotas on faculty composition across academic ranks and disciplines. The data shows that gender quotas have a positive effect on female faculty representation at all levels of tenured and tenure-track professorship but not for leadership and higher administrative positions such as Dean, Provost, and President. The findings suggest that uniformly implemented gender quotas focusing on entry-level faculty may not be sufficient to improve gender inequality in higher levels of the academic hierarchy. The mixed evidence as to whether gender quotas are effective at closing the gap across and within academic disciplines implies that the effect of these quotas can be limited and slow-acting in the areas where women are severely underrepresented.