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This research explores stakeholders' perspectives on administrative procedures, focusing on basic psychological needs. The goal is to understand the motives driving evaluations of administrative quality and performance, particularly for constitutive administrative acts. Using a multi-method approach, the study analyzes five stakeholder groups' central motives at different stages of administrative procedures. To achieve this, the user experience journey technique is adapted to identify stakeholders' motivations, including achievement, affiliation, and power. Guided workshop discussions, qualitative expert interviews, and a review of legal sources are utilized to determine stakeholders' urgencies at each step of the process. Through qualitative content analysis of expert interviews, the study deduces the central concepts underlying these urgencies. The findings provide valuable insights into stakeholders' perspectives, motivations, and urgencies regarding administrative procedures and thus important attributes of good administration. This understanding is crucial for evaluating administrative performance and shaping potential goals for administrative reforms.
For successful digitalization of the public sector, insights into how digitalization affects the work of public sector employees must be attained. Hence, integrative conceptual models and metrics of digital work are needed. A five-dimensional model describing the degree of digitalization of administrative action (Kaesmayr, Schorn & Steidle 2021) provides the point of departure for this paper. To enable actual measurement, the development and validation of a corresponding questionnaire is presented. Its development includes the item formulation by specifying attributes, raters and objects of the underlying constructs as well as the formation of indices by means of a contrast weighting specifically augmented for this type of work. The validation of the scale includes component as well as confirmatory factor analyses based on data from 519 administrative employees in Germany. The scale provides the opportunity to describe and evaluate the degree of digitalization of administrative procedures and to evaluate measures to improve digital case processing. Furthermore, it enables research into conditions and consequences for a successful digital transformation. However, further research is required to verify the predictive validity and practical benefits of the scale.
Although good administration plays a crucial role for a state to function, to date no comprehensive and accepted conceptualization exists. Scholars and policymakers, however, are depending on a comprehensive and valid set of criteria to assess the quality of administrations and the effects of reforms and interventions. To develop an appropriate conceptualization, we draw on literature from jurisprudence, administrative, political, economic, as well as social sciences. Applying Rossiter’s C OAR SE approach to ensure content validity, 30 constructs underlying good administration were derived. The items formulated to measure these constructs were empirically validated in an online survey with 519 case workers in German municipal agencies. Principal components analysis yielded four components, i.e., diligence/mission, efficiency, information, and responsivity/support. Thereby, it becomes apparent that some of the criteria used in the literature, such as proportionality, load on multiple components.