Toward a micro-level perspective of organizational publicness: Felt organizational publicness in the eyes of state government employees

Abstract

Organizational publicness is a foundational construct for public administration. It has largely been conceptualized deductively and focuses mostly on the macro- and meso-levels of analysis, leaving under-explored how public employees perceive it at the micro-level. Through a grounded theory analysis of state government employees' interview data, this study aims to uncover public officials' perceptions about organizational publicness. We find that participants' perception of organizational publicness is a composite of five themes: four represent the core meanings of felt organizational publicness, essentially reflecting a cultural/ethical perspective (purpose, value, behavior, and outcome), and one represents the context of the meanings (external environment). Linking the dimensions with the literature and publicness at other analytical levels, we discuss the findings' implications. We emphasize that employee perceptions of organizational publicness play an important role in achieving realized publicness.