Suchergebnisse

We present three studies that examine the relationship between perceptions about public personnel management and social resilience during a crisis among frontline public healthcare servants who battled the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on theories of public personnel management, crisis management, trust, and resilience, we suggest a model and hypotheses that may extend our knowledge about perceived social resilience, both internal (organizational) and external (communal and national). We tested our model with the results of an online survey conducted in early 2021 among 437 healthcare employees from the Ministry of Health ( n1 = 87), hospitals ( n2 = 200), and Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs; n3 = 150) across Israel. The findings generally support direct and indirect relationships between perceptions of good public personnel management, defined as healthcare system resilience, participation in decision-making and information sharing, and group-level organizational citizenship behavior, and perceived national and community resilience, and trust. Implications, extensions, and recommendations for future theoretical and empirical studies are discussed along with practical proposals.

AbstractThe COVID‐19 pandemic clearly highlighted the importance of effective crisis management and its relationship with citizens' willingness to cooperate with the government in such turbulent times. We develop a theory and hypotheses about the impact of citizens' experiences on their perceptions of the government's effectiveness during times of crisis. We do so with data collected at two points in time: in late March 2020 during the first peak of the COVID‐19 crisis in Israel, and in October 2020 when Israel was exiting from a second lockdown. The findings demonstrate that during crises citizens focus on the short term and seek immediate results in terms of readiness and preparedness. During such times, the government's responsiveness and transparency, as well as the public's participation in decisions, seem even more important than their trust in the government. Implications and practical recommendations follow.

This article investigates the complex relationships between citizens' perceptions about the government's social responsibility, their satisfaction with public services and their trust in government institutions. It uses data from a national survey of citizens in Israel and focuses on satisfaction with health care. We build on previous bureaucratic and administrative theory, and suggest two competing models of these relationships: (1) perceptions about the government's social responsibility are a source of citizens' satisfaction and trust; and (2) perceptions about the government's social responsibility are an outcome of citizens' satisfaction and trust. Our findings demonstrate the important role of public perceptions about the government's social responsibility, as well as the perceived performance of public health-care services, in building trust among citizens. The article also highlights the methodological challenges of determining cause and effect in research on trust.