Doctoral Dissertation Research: Developing Perspectives on Principal-Agent Theory

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This dissertation combines qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews with civic employees in three U.S. states with quantitative analysis of an original survey of public policy students to explore several research questions: How do bureaucratic agents shield themselves from political attacks? Under what circumstances do these agents rebel? How does this principal-agent problem affect the balance between principal and agent? The results will provide evidence on the social-psychological and/or organizational consequences of introducing intrusive actions into the civil service context. This project examines what happens when civil service principals directly attack their bureaucratic agents. By exploiting differences across U.S. states in principal-on-agent attacks in the 2011-2014 period, this study describes the effect of working under "attack" on the behavior of state government bureaucrats. In particular, it examines the effect on retention, morale and recruitment in government organizations. This research also extends principal-agent theory to cover instances where the implicit contract between principal and agent is breached.This will make important contributions to both sociology and public administration. First, the qualitative data will provide an opportunity to better understand workers within government bureaucracies by investigating individual and organizational behaviors and mechanisms workers employ to respond to conflict and threat. Second, from the public administration practitioner perspective, understanding variation in civic pressure in the state context will be important to developing recruitment and retention programs to ensure continued competitiveness for high quality labor.