Public Perceptions of Administrative Values Tradeoff: Do Sector Types Matter?

Scholarly debate over bureaucratic and democratic values has been one of the fundamental questions in the field of public administration. Despite a volume of theoretical discussions, we know little about how the general public cares about these two sets of administrative values in practice, and whether the service sectors affect public perceptions of administrative values. This paper fills the gap in the literature by conducting a vignette experiment using the context of US nursing homes where bureaucratic and democratic values (effectiveness, efficiency, equity, and participation), as well as sectors (for-profit, nonprofit, and public), serve as treatment manipulations. The experiment participants will complete a set of survey questions (that have previously been validated) that ask their perceptions of different aspects of organizational performance, after reading a vignette that describes various managerial activities of a hypothetical US nursing home (which will be manipulated for-profit, nonprofit, or public nursing homes). Using the data from this experiment, we will be able to assess public perceptions of key administrative values in evaluating government performance. The findings from this research will have broad implications to multiple streams of public administration literature, including public values, performance management, and bureaucratic and democratic ethos.