An empirical analysis of public administrators' trust in citizens: A missing link in citizen-centered administrative reforms.

摘要

This study raises three important questions in the field of public administration: Do public administrators trust citizens? If not, will they formulate and implement policies that really engage, empower, and emancipate citizens? And how can we improve administrators' trust in citizens?; This study rejects the dominant rationalistic view of trust as a behavioral decision based on risk-benefit analysis, and aims to balance this view with moral philosophy and democratic governance. "Citizens" is defined as citizens on whom public administrators have a meaningful impact, and the research context is citizen involvement in the administrative or governing process. The theory is that administrators should "trust, unless otherwise proved."; Eleven latent variables are included in the structural equation modeling. Among seven independent variables, propensity to trust, self-efficacy , and prior experience are at the individual level; procedural orientation, market orientation, and network orientation are at the organizational level; and government bashing is at the societal level. Four dependent variables are introduced: administrators' trust in citizens, implementation of citizen-driven performance measurement, implementation of citizen participation programs, and transformational learning. Administrators' trust in citizens is a partial mediator in the model.; Questionnaires were administered to public administrators who earned a public administration or policy degree from all campuses of Rutgers University. A total of 316 responses were identified as valid. The respondents are from all levels of government and nonprofits, and a majority of them agree that trust in citizens is relevant to their decision-making on the job. Generally they have a neutral (neither trustful, nor distrustful) view of citizens.; Multiple least square regression analyses and structural equation analyses reveal that most of the hypotheses should not be rejected. As expected, propensity to trust and prior experience have a positive impact on trust in citizens; procedural orientation and government bashing have a negative impact on trust in citizens; and market orientation had no significant impact on trust in citizens. Network orientation turns out to have no significant impact on trust in citizens. Administrators' implementation of citizen participation programs is explained to a great extent by trust in citizens . Implementation of citizen-driven performance measurement is positively influenced by trust in citizens, prior experience , and network orientation. However, transformational leaning is positively influenced by prior experience and market orientation, but is not influenced by trust in citizens.; Major conclusions include: (a) female administrators are more likely than their male counterparts to trust citizens and proactively implement citizen-centered reforms; (b) functional area makes a difference in terms of trust in citizens and it can be explained by the strength of professionalism and the value orientation of the profession; (c) policy makers should pay more attention to developing a trust-in-citizens culture in public organizations to ensure the success of citizen-centered reforms; (d) public organizations should support and participate in community development and social capital building in order to improve administrators' propensity to trust; (e) public organizations should make more citizen involvement efforts and interpret the process and results in a way that is beneficial to trust building; (f) values and orientations associated with traditional procedural bureaucracy should be rejected in order to enculturate trust in citizens; and (g) public administrators should keep an open mind in searching for alternatives for procedural bureaucracy since market orientation and network orientation do not produce trustful and humanistic organizations.