Bureaucratic reputation in the eyes of citizens: an analysis of US federal agencies
| Date | 01 March 2020 |
| Author | Gregg G. Van Ryzin,Danbee Lee |
| Published date | 01 March 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852318769127 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Review of
Administrative
Article
Sciences
International Review of Administrative
Bureaucratic reputation
Sciences
2020, Vol. 86(1) 183–200
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in the eyes of citizens:
The Author(s) 2018
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an analysis of US
DOI: 10.1177/0020852318769127
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federal agencies
Danbee Lee and Gregg G. Van Ryzin
School of Public Affairs and Administration, Rutgers
University–Newark, USA
Abstract
Bureaucratic reputation has been defined as a set of beliefs about a public organization’s
capacities, roles, and obligations that are embedded in a network of multiple audiences
(Carpenter, 2010). Although one of the most important audiences in a democracy is the
citizenry, very little empirical investigation has looked at citizens’ beliefs about specific
government agencies and what individual or contextual factors influence these beliefs.
To examine this question, this study analyzes data from a unique 2013 Pew Political
Survey that represents the responses of 1500 US citizens on the reputations of 12
federal agencies. Results demonstrate that citizens view the reputations of some agen-
cies (such as the CDC and NASA) much more favorably than other agencies (such as
the IRS and the Department of Education). In regression analyses, findings suggest that
the reputation of federal agencies varies according to citizens’ general level of trust in
government and their political ideology, but that demographic, socioeconomic and
regional differences also shape reputation judgments. These findings provide some
preliminary empirical understanding of the reputation of government agencies in the
eyes of the citizenry and may have implications for agencies seeking to manage their
relationship with the public.
Points for practitioners
Bureaucratic reputation has important implications for public administrators because of
its influence on a government agency’s autonomy, power, and legitimacy. Our study
Corresponding author:
Danbee Lee, School of Public Affairs and Administration, Rutgers University–Newark, 111 Washington Street,
Newark 17102, USA.
Emails: dl757@scarletmail.rutgers.edu; danbee.lee071@gmail.com
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International Review of Administrative Sciences 86(1)
examines the reputations of 12 US federal government agencies and identifies individual
and contextual determinants of citizens’ reputation ratings. We demonstrate that rep-
utations differ between agencies and that certain factors – especially political ideology
and trust in government – shape how the public views an agency’s reputation. These
findings can help practitioners understand better how to strategically manage their
agency’s reputation given an increasingly critical citizenry.
Keywords
federal government, public agency, public opinion, reputation
Introduction
Bureaucratic reputation has been defined as a set of beliefs about a public organ-
ization’s capacities, roles, and obligations that are embedded in a network of
multiple audiences, including citizens (Carpenter, 2001, 2010). Bureaucratic repu-
tation has received growing scholarly attention in the field of public administra-
tion, with a body of studies showing the significant role reputation plays in guiding
the behavior of public organizations and shaping their power and effectiveness
(Carpenter, 2001, 2010; Maor, 2011; Maor and Sulitzeanu-Kenan, 2013). These
studies suggest that government agencies attempt to avoid being viewed negatively
by the public and thus engage in strategies that enhance their reputations, such as
blame shifting (Gilad et al., 2013). Although researchers have written extensively
about the relationship between public organizations and reputation at a macro
level, little work has been done on the formation of reputation judgments by
citizens and other audiences at the micro level. Previous studies have tended to
rely on proxy data to measure reputation, such as the coverage of agencies in
newspapers or websites, assuming that these sources reflect the views of the
public and other audiences. However, studying bureaucratic reputation as
viewed directly by citizens at the individual level remains important, especially
in the context of the US with its large population and wide variety of cultural
backgrounds, ideological views, and geographical settings. It is especially interest-
ing to focus on US federal agencies, as their functions often concentrate on par-
ticular segments of the population or regions of the country and thus their
reputations may be dependent on associated interests or beliefs (Meier, 1987;
Morgeson and Petrescu, 2011).
This study, therefore, provides an exploratory investigation of the reputation
of US federal agencies in the eyes of citizens using data from a 2013 Pew
Political Survey. This survey is unique in that, rather than asking about the
federal government in general, it taps into citizens’ favorability judgments of
12 specifically named federal agencies. Capturing reputation with a survey ques-
tion has its limitations because public agencies are viewed within a complex
Lee and Van Ryzin
185
network of multiple audiences having pluralistic interests. As Carpenter and
Krause (2012: 27) observe, ‘[c]omplex public organizations are seen “through a
glass but dimly’ by their manifold audiences”. The Pew survey does a good job,
we would argue, of capturing this ‘dim’ view of bureaucratic reputation as seen
by citizens. Results demonstrate that citizens view the reputations of some fede-
ral agencies (such as the CDC and NASA) much more favorably than other
organizations (such as the IRS and the Department of Education (DOE)). In
regression analyses, findings suggest that the reputation of federal agencies varies
according to citizens’ general level of trust in government and their political
ideology, but that demographic, socioeconomic and regional differences also
shape reputation judgments. The following sections provide the theoretical back-
ground, data, and results of our study.
Background
Reputations are either positive or negative, meaning that they have direction or
valence (Walker, 2010). Also, according to Fombrun (2012: 100), reputation can
be understood as ‘a collective assessment’ of an organization’s ‘attractiveness’ in
the eyes of a particular group of stakeholders. Our study relies on this definition
in part, as it focuses on the ‘favorability’ of federal agencies in the eyes of
citizens. In the field of public administration, bureaucratic reputation has been
defined by Carpenter (2010: 45) as ‘a set of symbolic beliefs about the unique or
separable capacities, roles, and obligations of organizations, where these beliefs
are embedded in audience networks’. Indeed, Carpenter’s work has inspired a
growing body of research on the importance of reputation in the public sector,
initially focused on the relationship between administration and politics
(Carpenter, 2001, 2010; Maor, 2011; Roberts, 2006). These scholars argue in
particular that favorable reputations give legitimacy to agencies and thus
become a source of bureaucratic autonomy and power in a system of democratic
governance (Carpenter, 2001).
Another stream of research in this area has focused on the impact of reputation
on the behaviors of public agencies. These studies have found that reputation
influences bureaucratic performance, administrative choices, and cooperation
within networks (Busuioc, 2016; Christensen and Lodge, 2018; Gilad et al.,
2013; Ingold and Leifeld, 2014; Krause and Douglas, 2005; Maor et al., 2012;
Maor and Sulitzeanu-Kenan, 2013; Moynihan, 2012). Findings from these studies
suggest that public organizations try to avoid being negatively perceived by
improving their performance as well as by choosing strategic responses to reduce
blame. In addition, findings indicate that agencies attempt to manipulate their
reputation as a way to increase their power in policy networks. However, as
Moore (2015) showed with the example of the US Department of Veterans
Affairs (VA), it is sometimes possible for organizations to have good performance
even when they suffer from a poor reputation because of high-profile scandals.
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International Review of Administrative Sciences 86(1)
The fact that bureaucratic reputation is characterized by externally formed
subjectivity (Carpenter, 2010) implies that factors outside of the actions or perfor-
mance of a public organization could affect its reputation. These factors include
characteristics of the audience members themselves and the contexts in which they
experience or perceive an agency. While reputation is seen as the aggregated per-
ceptions of multiple audiences, it could possibly cover the opinion of particular
subgroups of the public (Page and Shapiro, 1992). Citizens have fragmentary and
conflicting attitudes based on different values, expectations or interests that can
lead them to perceive the same objective circumstances in various ways and thus
lead to diverse policy preferences (Chong and Druckman, 2007; Page and Shapiro,
1992). Moreover, citizens’ attitudes towards a federal agency tend to be shaped by
how they value that agency’s functions and responsibilities (Meier, 1987). These
considerations imply that even if an agency performs well, some people could still
perceive the agency in less favorable terms because of ideological or other attrib-
utive factors. Indeed, previous studies have found that general attitudes toward
government tend to be associated in predictable ways with various demographic,
socioeconomic, geographic and ideological characteristics,...
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