TY - JOUR

T1 - Public Value and Happiness

T2 - ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT ANNUAL MEETING PROCEEDINGS 2015

AU - Meynhardt, Timo

AU - Strathoff, Pepe

AU - Brieger, Steven

N1 - Conference code: 75

PY - 2015

Y1 - 2015

N2 - The factors that make people satisfied with their lives have been thoroughly researched by economists. It has been found that individual level, socioeconomic, macroeconomic as well as institutional factors can explain to a large extent why some people are happy with their lives and others are not. The public value debate in public management research has concentrated on the question how public administration organizations’ broader societal outcomes can be understood and measured. Public value describes how public administrations form a vital part of the social context, in which people develop and grow. However, it has not yet been analyzed how the public administration contributes to happiness. We propose to link the two debates by analyzing empirically the relationship between public administration’s public value and people’s happiness. Our empirical approach is based on a novel and unique dataset from Switzerland which comprises 870 individuals, who reported on their happiness and evaluated the Swiss public administration’s public value in a survey. Using OLS regression to test our hypotheses, we found support for a positive relationship between public administration public value and happiness. Also, a model that includes public administration’s public value as an explanatory variable explains significantly more variance than the standard happiness model. We discuss the implications of our findings for public administration performance measurement, economic models for explaining wellbeing as well as broader questions of political economy.

AB - The factors that make people satisfied with their lives have been thoroughly researched by economists. It has been found that individual level, socioeconomic, macroeconomic as well as institutional factors can explain to a large extent why some people are happy with their lives and others are not. The public value debate in public management research has concentrated on the question how public administration organizations’ broader societal outcomes can be understood and measured. Public value describes how public administrations form a vital part of the social context, in which people develop and grow. However, it has not yet been analyzed how the public administration contributes to happiness. We propose to link the two debates by analyzing empirically the relationship between public administration’s public value and people’s happiness. Our empirical approach is based on a novel and unique dataset from Switzerland which comprises 870 individuals, who reported on their happiness and evaluated the Swiss public administration’s public value in a survey. Using OLS regression to test our hypotheses, we found support for a positive relationship between public administration public value and happiness. Also, a model that includes public administration’s public value as an explanatory variable explains significantly more variance than the standard happiness model. We discuss the implications of our findings for public administration performance measurement, economic models for explaining wellbeing as well as broader questions of political economy.

KW - Management studies

KW - Public Value

KW - happiness

KW - public administration

KW - public value

U2 - 10.5465/AMBPP.2015.18440abstract

DO - 10.5465/AMBPP.2015.18440abstract

M3 - Conference article in journal

VL - 2015

SP - 1

EP - 35

JO - Academy of Management Proceedings

JF - Academy of Management Proceedings

SN - 0065-0668

IS - 1

Y2 - 7 August 2015 through 11 August 2015

ER -