Conference Agenda

The staffing of government organizations is central to the field of public administration, going back to the development of civil service systems and Luther Gulick's POSDCORB. In 2025, public administration has two highly ranked journals that focus specifically on human resource management (HRM), which demonstrates a strong interest in HRM. However, how well are mainstream or generalist PA journals addressing HRM topics? As so much of government performance and effectiveness centers on human capital, if sufficient discussion of these issues is missing from the generalist public administration journals, this raises the question to whether HRM research is siloed into these journals and what this means for the body of knowledge in the field overall.

From a database of 25 years of research (from 2000 to 2024), built from 8 public administration journals (US based and international), this paper conducts an exploratory analysis of these journals in terms of the HRM topics covered (using key words from the Review of Public Personnel Administration as a starting search frame), highlight the scope and depth of topics covered and generating directions for avenue to re-center (if needed) HRM in the general PA knowledge base and generate research directions for the future.

The public sector across the globe is characterized by high rates of employee burnout due to issues such as long working hours, understaffing, and low employee empowerment among others. However, studies on employee burnout in the public sector are mostly focused on the western and European countries, with very little focus on countries in the Middle East. Considering that the Dubai public sector employs more than 46,000 people, it is imperative that the prevalence of burnout in the sector and the organizational actions against burnout are explored. This systematic review was conducted to determine the prevalence of burnout in the Dubai public sector with a focus on the police department and Dubai Health Authority (DHA). The study will contribute to literature on public sector burnout in the Middle East region, highlighting organizational interventions and their impacts for implementation in the region. The literature for inclusion was selected from a range of databases including Google Scholar, Scopus, Web of Science, and PsycINFO, using a search string and a series of inclusion criteria. Only articles available in full text, published in English or Arabic, published within the last 10 years, and relevant to the study goals were included. Articles outside the inclusion criteria were excluded from the study. From an initial search, 9,000 articles were identified, which were reduced to 15 articles by application of the inclusion criteria. The results show a high prevalence of burnout in the Dubai public sector, with the most common causes being the workload, lack of organizational support, and staffing shortage. The organizational cultures were found to foster burnout. The findings have implications for the Dubai public sector. The study successfully answers the research questions, despite its methodological constraints.

Employee retention and loyalty are essential challenges for organizations, particularly in the public sector. Despite higher levels of loyalty among French civil servants compared to private sector employees, many public sector workers experience low morale due to inadequate support. This lack of support harms their loyalty, which is defined as the psychological bond between an individual and their organization. Recent studies highlight the growing problem of organizational cynicism in public management, characterized by negative emotions toward employers due to perceived deficits in organizational integrity. This cynicism manifests itself in withdrawal, which ultimately impacts job performance. The concept of person-organization fit (PO-fit), which refers to aligning individual and organizational values, is essential for addressing these issues. Public service motivation provides insight into how this fit influences employee selection and retention. This research examines the impact of value congruence on civil servants' intention to leave their jobs, focusing on the mediating role of emotional cynicism. Using a quantitative questionnaire survey of 321 civil servants in France, structural equation modeling and mediation analysis will be employed to explore these relationships. The results aim to enhance understanding of employee attitudes in public management and provide practical recommendations for improving retention strategies within government organizations.

This study empirically examines the concept of Public Employee Identity (PEI) – an identity grounded in an individual’s affiliation within public institutions ¬– and its relationship with turnover intentions in the public sector. While much of the existing literature on individual-level retention motivation in the public sector has focused on work attitudes and motivational constructs such as Public Service Motivation (Hur and Abner 2024), little is known about how public values and norms are internalized to shape these motivations and subsequent behavioral outcomes (Ripoll and Breaugh 2025). Research has shown that how perceptions of the self overtime can dramatically affect individual intertemporal decision-making such as saving and investment behaviors (Sedikides et al., 2023).

Using a large N quantitative survey with 1000 German public employees, we investigate how public employee identity impacts one’s intention to stay in the public sector using the future self continuity model. Germany is chosen as the focal country using a most likely case selection strategy, given its highly centralized administration rooted in the Rechtsstaat tradition (Peters, 2021). This tradition emphasizes a strong state and legalism, limiting bureaucratic discretion compared to other nations and fostering uniformity among public employees. German public employees typically serve long term and are promoted based on tenure and maintain their status even after leaving office (ibid.). These characteristics may enhance public employee identity, making Germany an ideal setting for exploring our research questions.

This study is theoretically and practically important. It provides insight into how public employees define and maintain their identities. It provides an avenue to identify where and how institutional and organizational factors can influence the cognitive process of identification to design impactful aimed at talent retention in the public sector. Data collection is scheduled for June 2025.