Publications.
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Representation through Lived Experience: Expanding Representative Bureaucracy Theory
Merritt, Farnworth, Kennedy, Abner, Wright, and Merritt (2020)
This study draws on the insights of managers in the behavioral health treatment system to explore the value of persons who bring lived experience to their organizational positions. Within these organizations, persons with relevant lived experience occupy various nonclinical and clinical positions. When facilities incorporate workers with lived experience, managers observe increased levels of trust between clients and service providers, an enhanced client-centered perspective among service providers, and higher quality in the services provided. This study may guide managers in considering how (or whether) human service organizations might institutionalize lived experience as a mechanism to help create a representative bureaucracy.
Merritt, Farnworth, Kennedy, Abner, Wright, and Merritt (2020)
This study draws on the insights of managers in the behavioral health treatment system to explore the value of persons who bring lived experience to their organizational positions. Within these organizations, persons with relevant lived experience occupy various nonclinical and clinical positions. When facilities incorporate workers with lived experience, managers observe increased levels of trust between clients and service providers, an enhanced client-centered perspective among service providers, and higher quality in the services provided. This study may guide managers in considering how (or whether) human service organizations might institutionalize lived experience as a mechanism to help create a representative bureaucracy.
Do Personnel with Lived Experience Cultivate Public Values? Insights and Lessons from Mental Healthcare Managers
Merritt (2019)
Health care organizations charged with addressing public problems sometimes employ persons with relevant lived experience in meaningful organizational roles. Because of their prior experience living with the challenges their facilities are charged with addressing, these individuals have intimate knowledge of the subject matter that professional training and education cannot replicate. Mental health treatment facilities in particular have demonstrated a growing trend toward incorporating staff members with lived experience. This study conducted semi-structured interviews with senior-level managers of organizations in this field to gain insight into the public values associated with this practice. Findings reveal that several public values, including dialogue, social cohesion, sustainability, productivity, and altruism, are cultivated when treatment facilities incorporate staff members with lived experience into service delivery. This study concludes with lessons for mental health care managers seeking to innovatively address mental illness
The Cost of Saving Money: Public Service Motivation, Private Security Contracting, and the Salience of Employment Status
Merritt, Kennedy, and Kienapple (2019)
The growth of government outsourcing has triggered significant legal and social science research. That research has focused primarily on issues of cost, accountability, and management. A thus-far understudied question concerns the relevance and importance of public service motivations (PSM), especially when a government agency is proposing to outsource services that are considered inherently governmental. Using a grounded theory approach, this exploratory study centers on the use of private security guards to augment government-provided public safety, and investigates the public service motivations of part-time and full-time employees of private security firms that regularly partner with—or seek to protect the public independent of—local police. Findings reveal that the presence or absence of motivations consistent with PSM was attributable not to private sector employment but to whether informants were part-time or full-time employees.
Considering the Effects of Time on Leadership Development: A Local Government Training Evaluation
Getha-Taylor, Fowles, Silvia and Merritt (2015)
As local governments across the United States adapt to economic shifts, workforce reshaping, and continued demand for services, training to confront these challenges has become more important. However, training resources are limited, investment in these programs is not always prioritized, and evaluating outcomes is difficult. This study analyzes data from a local government leadership development program to examine training impacts over time. It focuses on leadership skills and the ways in which individual’s self-assessments change over time. The findings indicate that although leadership training is an important factor in the development of both conceptual and interpersonal leadership skills, the long-term effects of training on these two types of skills vary significantly. Understanding the training effect decay associated with leadership skills development can help human resource managers and public organizations strategically plan, evaluate, and invest in these training activities to better prepare their workforce to meet future challenges.