Suchergebnisse

Government support and commitment are of particular importance for renewable energy technology innovation activities, which are highly contingent on policy and market uncertainty. The research focus of this article is to examine the relationship between policy stability in public resource allocation and policy outcomes in renewable energy technologies. With time‐series cross‐sectional analyses, we test effects of both the stability and magnitude of federal R&D expenditures on patent applications in five renewable energy sectors (i.e., solar, wind, hydropower, geothermal, and bioenergy) from 1974 to 2009. The findings show that technology innovation is affected by both the magnitude and stability of government financial commitment. Nevertheless, when industries perceive government support over longer time frames, the magnitude effect loses explanatory power to the stability effect. In addition to federal R&D expenditures, policies pertaining to technology commercialization and marketization are a critical determinant of innovation activities. This study demonstrates that incremental, predictable, and credible expenditures facilitate renewable energy technology development. Conversely, a boom‐bust cycle of resource support fails to translate policy goals into intended results.

AbstractOpen government data (OGD) are critical for environmental justice (EJ) policymaking, which is characterized by power and information asymmetries across government agencies, affected populations, and advocacy groups. We contend that not only should state governments provide OGD but also they should remove the burden associated with data access and use it to address the data divide and facilitate the participation of vulnerable populations in policymaking. Applying a user‐oriented approach, this article evaluates the completeness, usability, and accessibility of EJ‐OGD initiatives across the 50 US states. Results show that only one out of five states achieves at least half points on our EJ‐OGD Implementation Score, suggesting that most states do not provide OGD to answer two core EJ questions: "To what extent is my community exposed to environmental harm and health hazards? Is the exposure disproportionately high given my community's socioeconomic characteristics?" We discuss implications for equity and next steps for the government.

AbstractThis 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. The authors 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 data set, the authors 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 disparities in minority populations and severe policy problems. The size of the bureaucratic representation effect is larger for neighborhoods that are overburdened with race‐related social vulnerability.Evidence for Practice

Public administrators can play a critical role in representing the general public, particularly those who have historically been marginalized and underserved, and acting in their interests.
Non‐service‐oriented regulatory agencies have taken equity into account in the process of implementing policies and serving socially vulnerable clients.
Public administrators need to be cognizant of the degree of preexisting inequity in local communities, acquire adequate information to ascertain the equity point, and devise public policies and programs to achieve various democratic values.
It is important to recruit more underrepresented and historically disadvantaged members of society into the public workforce.

A considerable body of research substantiating the importance of workforce diversity to public organizations has accrued over the past two decades. However, research on workforce diversity has also been narrow in scope and frequently fails to link diversity to important individual and organizational outcomes. Using data (n = 1,109,134 employees from 500 sub-agencies) collected in three waves (2010, 2011, and 2012) of the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS), this study examines whether (1) increased diversity influences organizational goal clarity, (2) diversity and goal clarity, in turn, influence employee job satisfaction, and (3) diversity management policies influence job satisfaction by clarifying organizational goals for workers. FEVS is administered yearly by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and is designed to assess whether and to what extent federal employees believe the characteristics of successful organizations are present in their agency. Results from a multi-level structural equation model (MSEM) suggest diversity is associated with greater goal clarity and that diversity management policies, by clarifying organizational goals, positively affect job satisfaction. Findings also indicate that the type of diversity matters.