An Exploratory Study of the Consequences of Perceived Organizational Prestige on a Range of Work Attitudes and Behaviors among Public Employees: A Call to Future Research

Government organizations in the United States routinely face harmful scrutiny from the mainstream media, politicians, and citizens. The messages from these sources communicate that many Americans are not happy with their government nor its public agencies. These sentiments are likely to lower the prestige of public organizations in the eyes of current employees and hamper retention efforts. However, there is a limited amount of empirical research that has explored the consequences of employees’ perceived organizational prestige (POP) perceptions in public organizations. This study seeks to fill this gap by exploring the direct association that POP perceptions have on a range of work outcomes for the purpose of stimulating future research on the topic. Based on a sample of federal employees working for the Department of Homeland Security in the United States, this study found that POP was significantly related to job and organizational satisfaction, commitment, self-reported performance, work related stress, and turnover intentions. The implications of findings for future research are discussed.


Introduction
The scrutiny that government organizations face in America is unique, especially when compared to their nonprofit and business counterparts. One source of scrutiny that government organizations must routinely face is public opinion polls. Citizens are repeatedly asked for their viewpoints of the American political system and its government organizations. The results of these polls have historically issued a clear and consistent cultural message. That is, many Americans are not happy with their government nor its public agencies. Hence, it would be important to understand the effect this message has on public employees.
The perceptions that citizens hold about federal agencies are likely to influence not only the reputations of these agencies, but also the prestige of these organizations in the eyes of current public employees. Some researchers have found that the beliefs employees hold about the viewpoints of outsiders has consequences for a range of attitudes and behaviors especially job satisfaction and turnover intentions (Akgunduz & Bardakoglu, 2015;Fosam, Grimsley, & Wisher, 1998;Helm, 2013;Herrbach & Mignonac, 2004;Mishra, 2013;Shim, Park, & Eom, 2017;Tuna, Ghazzawi, Yesiltas, Tuna, & Arslan, 2016;Yim & Schafer, 2009). However, despite the importance of the viewpoints that public employees hold about citizen views of their agencies, there is not much research that has focused on exploring its effects on work outcomes in the public administration literature. Thus far, the published research that has been conducted on this topic has found that prestige perceptions do have important consequences on absenteeism and extra-role behavior (Rho, Yun, & Lee, 2015), and employee engagement (Hameduddin & Lee, 2019). However, the field has not yet published research that has investigated the influence that prestige perceptions have on a range of other important work outcomes, such as job and organizational satisfaction, commitment, self-reported performance, and turnover intentions among public employees, just to name a few.
This study seeks to add to the body of research by exploring the relationship that employees' prestige perceptions has to a range of work outcomes in the public sector. More research can help identify areas that show the promise of deepening our understanding of the effects of perceived organizational prestige in the public sector. One federal agency that is well situated for such a study is the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The DHS is a complex federal department that has a broad mission. It was created in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11 th , 2011. It oversees a broad range of efforts that safeguard America by air, land, sea, or in cyberspace, and houses twenty-two federal agencies, which includes the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the U.S. Secret Service, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and the U.S. Coast Guard. The DHS literally touches the lives of millions of citizens in the course of their daily work. For example, DHS employees screen more than 2.5 million travelers per day nationwide, have saved 10 lives in more than 45 search and rescue operations, and provide millions of dollars in federal assistance to state, local, and tribal governments (DHS, 2018).
Adding to the scope of their work, employees working within the DHS are routinely the focus of the mass media which broadcasts stories and images of frustrated citizens who endured long lines, invasive security measures, failed detections of drugs, weapons, and fake bombs, and lackluster emergency management responses to natural disasters (Block, Schatz, Fields, & Cooper, 2005;Brian, 2013;Chiquillo & Breen, 2017;Glor & Yuccas, 2016;Jackovics, 2008;Kerley, 2016;Leve, 2005;Thomas, 2007). These negative images most certainly change how citizens view the work of the DHS, which in turn is likely to influence the attitudes and behaviors of DHS employees. In fact, the Partnership for Public Service routinely ranks the DHS and several of its sub-agencies as the lowest ranked among federal agencies in terms of job and organizational satisfaction levels, and turnover intentions of its employees (Partnership for Public Service, 2019). Hence, studying the DHS is an excellent opportunity to understand how government employees are influenced by and respond to negative citizen viewpoints and hostile workplace environments. Therefore, this study is a call for more research on the relationships between prestige perceptions and work outcomes in the public sector. However, this call is more unconventional in its approach. Many calls to research in the public administration literature start with a theoretical contribution that sets out a series of hypotheses for which future researchers are expected to empirically confirm. This study seeks to make a similar call but from the standpoint of empirical findings. That is, it seeks to empirically confirm the direct relationships between perceived organization prestige and a range of work outcomes, and then encourage future research to confirm these findings and explore more deeply the processes (direct and indirect) that lead to them.

Citizen Perceptions of Government Agencies
The negative images that citizens hold about government is well documented in the popular and academic literatures. Citizens have historically held low levels of trust and confidence in government and its institutions (Berman, 1997;Garrett, Thurber, Fritschler, & Rosenbloom, 2006;Goodsell, 2003). According to the Pew Research Center (September, 2020), only 20% of Americans believe that government can be trusted to "do the right thing" always or most of the time. Yet, citizen attitudes toward government are much more nuanced than what the results of global polls suggest. For example, when asked about specific federal agencies, citizens viewpoints tend to be more positive (Goodsell, 2003;Pew, 2015;Van de Walle, 2004). Similarly, given the proximity that local government officials have to the everyday lives of citizens, the image of these agencies are more positive than the images of state or the federal government. As one poll indicated, 71% of Americans had more trust in local governments to handle problems than state governments (Gallup, 2016).
There are many predictors of the attitudes that citizens hold about public organizations, such as their perceptions of government performance (Chanley, Rudolph, & Rahn, 2000;Mishler & Rose, 2001;Nye, Zelikow, & King, 1997), satisfaction with the quality of public services (Citrin & Green, 1986), citizen participation rates (Bowler par.ccsenet.org & Donovan, 2002); proximity to local governments (Rahn & Rudolph, 2002) and social conditions (Berman, 1997). Another predictor that has received attention in the field of public administration is bureaucratic bashing (Caillier, 2018;Garrett et al., 2006;Hvidman & Andersen, 2016;Van de Walle, 2004). Bureaucratic bashing is a strategy of fabricating and promoting negative stereotypes about government agencies and programs to win elections and popular support. These practices are known to lower the reputations of public organizations (Bankins & Waterhouse, 2019;Luoma-Aho, 2007;Moffitt, 2010;Waeraas & Byrkjeflot, 2012), as well as feed into the tendency of the mass media to regularly broadcast negative messages that deepen citizen skepticism of government.
What do we know about the effects of negative messages and images on POP? While there is body of research that has focused understanding the reputation of public organization from the perspective of the citizenry (Lee & Van Ryzin, 2020), research on POP in the field of public administration is scarce. We know very little about what public employees believe about citizen viewpoints of their organization and behavioral outcomes. Only a handful of studies have explored this issue. Melkers and Thomas (1998) was one of the first studies to investigate the accuracy of public employees' perceptions of citizen satisfaction with various departments, programs, and services. The results of their study revealed that public officials tended to have a more negative viewpoint of citizen attitudes when compared to the actual viewpoints of citizens. In a similar vein, Garrett et al. (2006) explored the extent to which public employees believed that they were supported by their political leaders. The results of their study revealed that senior federal managers believed that political leaders had a low regard for their agencies as reflected in their tendency to engage in bureaucratic bashings.

Organizational Prestige and Work Outcomes
Even more, while scholars have long suggested that a relationship does exist between POP and the attitudes and behaviors of public employees (Bankins & Waterhouse, 2019), few studies have actually empirically explored this connection (Garrett et al., 2006;Goodsell, 2003;Light, 1999;Rho et al., 2015). For example, Garrett et al. (2006), after conducting interviews with senior federal managers, suggested that bureaucratic bashing has long lasting deep effects on a range of issues, such as the public-private sector pay gap, employee morale, and the recruitment and retention of competent employees. Similarly, Rho et al. (2015) found that POP was indirectly related to absenteeism and extra-role behaviors through organizational identification. That is, public employees were less likely to be absent from work for voluntary or involuntary reasons when they strongly identified with their organization, which was then related to their perceptions of client satisfaction with their performance. More recently, Hameduddin and Lee (2019) discovered that job identification fully mediated the relationship between POP and employee engagement. While the current state of the research is beneficial, there is a need for more research that explores the impact of POP on a wider range of work outcomes, especially in terms of job and organizational satisfaction, commitment, work related stress, turnover intentions, nor performance. As a result, there are several important unanswered questions that calls for investigation.
First, there is a plethora of research that have explored job satisfaction and commitment in the public sector. Job satisfaction represents how employees feel about their job and various aspects of their jobs, such as their pay, opportunities for growth, and relationships with co-workers (Spector, 1997). Organizational commitment represents the feelings of obligation to stay with the organization (Meyer & Allen, 1991). Both satisfaction and commitment are influenced by the degree to which the job characteristics of employees fulfill their internal salient needs. Employees display positive levels of satisfaction and commitment when the characteristics of their jobs met their needs (Lambert, Lynne Hogan, & Barton, 2001;Lum, Kervin, Clark, Reid, & Sirola, 1998). The question this study seeks to understand is whether public employees' perceptions of outsiders' views are also influential on their levels of satisfaction and commitment. Are public employees more satisfied and committed when they believe that outsiders hold positive views of their organizations?
Next, work-related stress is among the most research topics in the fields of management. It is argued to be a product of the relationship between the person and the environment that is appraised by the person as taxing or exceeding their resources and endangering their well-being (Folkman & Lazarus, 1984). Yet, many have suggested that stress is not inherently aversive. Stress will become aversive when it leads to a strain, which is a condition that occurs when stress surpass the available resources, coping strategies, and control available to manage it. How does POP contribute to the stress that public employees experience? Is it a resource that help employees cope or a conduit of stress that leads to strain?
Finally, turnover and performance are two of the most important consequences in organizations. Organizations are highly interested in ensuring that it achieves its goals and retain high performing employees. Failure on these fronts leads to great financial and political costs. Hence, the field of public administration is full of research that tries to better understand the conditions that lead to both performance and turnover (Bright, 2007(Bright, , 2008Cho & Lewis, 2012;Jung, 2010;Lee & Jimenez, 2011;Meier & Hicklin, 2008). For example, scholars have found that turnover intentions are associated with numerous factors, such as demographic characteristics (Cho & Lewis, 2012), P-O fit (Bright, 2008;Moynihan & Pandey, 2007), performance management practices (Kim, 2005;Lee & Jimenez, 2011), and goal clarity (Jung, 2012), just to name a few. To what degree does POP perceptions influence these outcomes? Do employees who have favorable perceptions of outsider viewpoints also perform higher and have lower turnover intentions?
Considering the unanswered questions above, the influence of POP in organizations has been explained in terms of social identity, categorization, and exchange theories. These theories hold that most individuals are attracted to associations that enhance their self-image and self-esteem. In work settings, employees agree to direct their energies and talents toward the goals of organizations in exchange for the benefits of salary and esteem. The heart of the argument is that social identity has motivational consequences. Individuals are motivated to keep a positive self-image in their working relationships. Situations that do not support or enhance one's self-image needs will likely lead to what Festinger (1962) called cognitive dissonance, which is a discrepancy between the experiences and expectations of individuals. Discrepancies are associated with lower satisfaction, higher stress, and higher turnover intentions in organizations (Brett, Cron, & Slocum, 1995;Burke, 1991;Doran, Stone, Brief, & George, 1991;Tewksbury & Higgins, 2006;Viswesvaran & Deshpande, 1996). Considering this evidence, one can theorize that the level of dissonance felt by employees will influence their POP. POP strengthens employees' understanding of the benefits their organizational associations have to their self-concepts and esteem. Employees that believe that outsiders consider their organization in low repute are likely to feel dissonance and later display detrimental work outcomes, especially in terms of job and organizational satisfaction, commitment, performance, work related stress, and turnover intentions.
Hypothesis 1: POP will be positively related to job satisfaction, organizational satisfaction, commitment, job performance and negatively related to work related stress and turnover intentions.

Methodology
The data for this study was drawn from a survey of employees working for a federal agency within the Department of Homeland Security in the State of Oregon in 2017. The survey population was employed at the same occupational classification and served on the front-line of the agency. As front-line employees, their work required direct contact with citizens during their daily work. To stay well-informed of the latest rules and regulations that governed their work, the employees had to undergo monthly recertification training sessions. Agency officials integrated the survey instrument into one of these required training sessions. The employees were provided with a workspace and instructions on how to complete the survey. The survey instructed the employees that their participation in the study was completely voluntary; their individual answers would be kept confidential; they could refuse to answer any question that made them uncomfortable; and that they could end the survey at any time with no penalty or loss. Five-hundred and fifty-seven (N=557) useable surveys were collected with a response rate of 97%. The study sample was representative of the study population in terms of age, gender, and full-time status.
Several major variables were collected in this study. See Table 1 for the variable coding strategies. POP was collected using several questions taken from Mael and Ashforth (1992) multi-item scale. The participants were asked to indicate their level of agreement from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree) to the following five statements with several questions such as "People in my community think highly of the agency" and "It is prestigious to be an employee of the agency. The responses were summed and indicated a satisfactory level of internal validity (Cronbach's α =.828). The remaining variables of stress, job and organization satisfaction, commitment, turnover intentions, and performance were each collected using single-item survey questions. While multi-item surveys were generally the preferred method of collecting data, existing research has demonstrated that single item surveys perform at the same level and (sometimes better) as multi-item surveys on the same variables (Bowling, 2005;Hoeppner, Kelly, Urbanoski, & Slaymaker, 2011 missing variables. It was determined that none of the variables had missing data that was greater than 5%. As a result, the missing data was replaced with the series mean. Next, collinearity diagnostics were conducted in SPSS. These tests revealed that multicollinearity was not a problem among the independent and dependent variables used in the regression models in this study. Finally, the data was analyzed using several linear regression models that tested the relationships that the control variables and POP have to job and organizational satisfaction, performance, stress, and turnover intentions. The results of this study are displayed in Table 6 and will be discussed later. Statistical significance was set at .05, two-tailed. All regression weights are standardized maximum likelihood estimates.  Table 3 presents the major descriptive characteristics of the respondents. These findings suggest that the respondents to the survey are demographically diverse. Most of the respondents indicated that they were between 18-40 years old (52%), had some to no college experience (53%), male (55%), White (75%), and worked fulltime (78%). Table 4 displays the responses to the work outcomes. The respondents displayed mostly positive views about their job and organizational satisfaction, commitment, and self-reported performance. As shown in Table 4, an overwhelming majority of the respondents (71%) reported that they were slightly to extremely satisfied with their jobs, which was consistent with their level of satisfaction with their organization. Specifically, sixty-five percent of the respondents reported that they were at the very minimum slightly satisfied with their organization. Their level of commitment was equally high. Eighty-two percent at the very least somewhat agreed that their organization deserved their loyalty. When asked about the most recent performance rating that they received from their supervisor, most of the respondents indicated that their performance was rated as "good" (53%). A lesser but substantial number of respondents reported receiving the highest performance category of excellent (36%). The respondent's perceptions of stress were less rosy. Only eight percent of the respondents indicated that their jobs were slightly or not at all stressful. A clear majority of the respondents felt that their work was at the minimum moderately stressful, although a few of the respondents (11%) believed that their work was extremely stressful.  Notwithstanding the clear majority of opinions that were found among the earlier work outcomes discussed, the turnover intentions of the respondents were more complicated. There were no clear majorities among the results as each response category received an equivalent number of responses. Instead, there are two opposing camps. Forty-eight percent of the respondents reported being more likely to turnover in two years, while forty-seven percent report being unlikely to turnover. Table 5 presents POP survey responses. Several questions were asked to learn the respondents' beliefs about what outsiders believe about their organizations. The respondents reported a very bleak perspective. Some of the most negative responses centered on whether their agency was the best organization to work for, whether citizens looked down on their agency, and if their agency had a good reputation in the community. Responses to these questions were overwhelmingly skewed toward the negative. Sixty percent somewhat to strongly disagreed that their agency is one of the best government agencies in American, 50% somewhat to strongly agreed that their agency did not have a good reputation in their community; and 78% somewhat to strongly agreed that citizens do indeed look down on their agency. However, despite the gloominess of these results, there were a couple of bright spots in this data that are worth highlighting. When asked whether people in their communities think highly of their agency, or if it is prestigious to work for their agency, there were many employees who offered a more positive perspective. At least twenty-four percent of the respondents indicated that they somewhat to strongly agree with both statements.   In addition, this study looked to answer whether POP was related to the attitudes and behaviors of the respondents, while considering the effects of the control variables. This analysis was conducted in two major stages. The first stage investigated the bivariate relationship between the control variables and the work outcomes. As shown in Table 6, the findings revealed meaningful relationships are present. There are a few of these relationships that are worth highlighting. For example, age was positively related to job and organizational satisfaction. The older respondents reported having significantly higher satisfaction with their jobs and organization, and lower turnover intentions than their younger counterparts. However, while the respondents with fewer years of work experience were significantly more likely to report having elevated levels of organizational satisfaction and commitment, they were also more likely to report significantly higher turnover intentions and stress than their more experienced counterparts. Also noteworthy was the relationship between minority status and turnover intentions. Minorities reporting having significantly higher turnover intentions than their counterparts who identified as being a part of the racial majority group. The second stage of this analysis investigated the extent to which POP was related to the work attitudes, over and above the influence of the control variables. Specifically, it was hypothesized that POP perceptions would be positively related to job and organization satisfaction, commitment, and performance, and negatively related to par.ccsenet.org Public Administration Research Vol. 10, No. 1;2021 stress and turnover intentions. The findings of this study confirm this hypothesis. POP had meaningful relationships with all of the dependent variables included in this study, even while controlling for the influence of age, gender, education level, minority status, and full-time status. As the respondents' level of POP increased, they were significantly more likely to report higher job and organizational satisfaction, commitment, and performance, as well as lower stress and turnover intentions.

Findings
In addition to the main findings of this study, it is important to note that POP did not affect each dependent variable equally, even though it was significantly related to them. For example, while POP was found to be the most important predictor of job and organizational satisfaction, commitment, and stress, it was the second most important predictor of performance and turnover. Full time status (β= -.224) was more impactful on self-reported performance, when compared to the influences of age (β= .144), and POP (β=.353). In terms of turnover intentions, age (β= -.271) was more impactful when compared to the influences of education (β= .105), and POP (β= -.237). Relatedly, when compared to commitment, performance, stress, and turnover intentions, POP appeared to be the most strongly related to the respondents' level of satisfaction with their jobs (β= .404) and organizations (β= .494).
In contrast, the self-reported performance ratings of the respondents were the least impacted by POP in this study.
Only 13% of the variance in performance was explained by their level of POP.

Conclusions
The purpose of this study was to explore the effects that POP had on a range of work outcomes for the purpose of stimulating future research. This study adds to the field of public administration by supplying one of the few studies that investigated these issues. This study also confirmed that POP is a strong determinate of employees selfreported performance, stress, job and organization satisfaction, commitment, and turnover intentions. Employees who reported having positive prestige perceptions were significantly more likely to report beneficial levels of these attitudes and behaviors in public organizations. There are several implications this research has to future research.
One implication of this study centers on the consequences of POP. This study confirmed that POP has direct and significant relationships with self-reported performance, stress, job and organization satisfaction, commitment, and turnover intentions. This supports the importance of more research to further explores the process whereby POP impacts these relationships. For example, this is one of the first known studies that revealed a direct and significant relationship between POP and work-related stress among public employees. The respondents who believed that outsiders held favorable views of their organization reported experiencing significantly lower levels of stress. Given this finding, are there other important mediators that can more clearly explain this relationship? Specifically, what are the mediating conditions that POP improves that leads to lower stress perceptions?
Alone these same lines, this is one of the first known study that demonstrated a direct association between POP and organizational commitment. This study showed that the respondents were significantly more likely to report that their organization deserved their loyalty when they also believed that outsiders viewed their organization positively. However, some scholars have suggested that commitment has three rational bases: compliance, identification, and internalization (O'Reilly & Chatman, 1986). The use of a single measure of commitment in this study may have muddled the distinct impacts of these individual bases of commitment. This raises the question of which basis of commitment did POP impact in this study? This is especially important given the discrepancy between the respondents' commitment levels and turnover intentions. While a clear majority of the respondents indicated that their organization deserved their loyalty, nearly half reported that they were likely to leave their organization within two years.
In addition to the consequences of POP, more research should also focus on the causes of POP. Given the meaningful association between POP and the work outcomes in this study, what are the variables that may enhance or diminish these perceptions? One variable that may be a predictor of POP is public service motivation (PSM). PSM is an ethic that attracts individuals to opportunities that support their communities and public service missions, and fulfill their altruistic needs (Perry & Wise, 1990). The concept is associated with a range of work attitudes and behaviors (Bright, 2007(Bright, , 2008(Bright, , 2013Caillier, 2016;Gould-Williams, Mostafa, & Bottomley, 2015;Kim, 2012).
To what extent is PSM related to POP among public employees? Does PSM diminish or improve the POP levels among employees? While there are no published studies that empirically explored this question, forthcoming research suggest that a relationship is present (Bright, Forthcoming). According to Perry and Wise (1990), individuals with elevated levels of PSM are attracted to work opportunities to contribute to the well-being of their communities and societies. If this is the case, then it is likely that PSM influences POP and potentially mediates its relationship with other important work outcomes. In other words, individuals with high levels of PSM may have more enhanced POP perceptions because of their own attraction to public service work.
A second potential predictor of POP centers on PE fit theory. There is a large body of research in the field of par.ccsenet.org Vol. 10, No. 1;2021 general management that has explored the effects of personal environment (PE) fit theory in organizations (Kristof-Brown, Zimmerman, & Johnson, 2005). PE fit is a multidimensional concept that argues that work outcomes are influenced by the relationship between the characteristics of the work environments and the characteristics of individuals. Of the many subtypes housed under PE fit theory, person-organization (PO fit) is one of the most discussed. This theory suggests that misfits will result between individuals and organizations when the demands of organizations exceed the abilities of the individual to meet them. The lack of fit has been associated with a range of work outcomes (Bright, 2007(Bright, , 2008Liu, Tang, & Yang, 2015;Mostafa, 2016;Steijn, 2008). Given this, it would be interesting to explore the relationship between POP and the PE fit sub-concepts. Do high levels of PO fit mediate the relationship between POP and the work outcomes? Or does POP improve the fit between individuals and their work environments? In either case, one would expect POP and PO fit to be positively related. That is, employees that report having high levels of fit to their organizations will also report having more favorable impressions of outsiders' viewpoints of their organization.
In addition to the implications this study has for research, the results of this study should be interpreted cautiously.
For example, the DHS may be a special context for studying POP that may limit the generalizability of the findings. While this is a valid concern, this research has broad implications to a field that has been historically plagued by the negative perceptions that many citizens hold about the federal government in America. Gaining a better understanding of the potential impact that hostile environmental perceptions have on agency personnel is a highly valuable especially from the perspective of one of the largest federal departments in America. Another weakness of this study is that it relied on a cross-sectional research design and single-item survey questions. As a result, common method bias and other validity concerns could have influenced the findings of this study, even though such concerns are too often overstated (Bowling, 2005;Doty & Glick, 1998;Hoeppner et al., 2011).
Still, the research design used in this study leaves many unanswered questions as to the causal directions among the study variables. While POP was found to be strongly related to the attitudes and behaviors of employees, the direction of these relationships is not completely settled. POP could be an effect of the respondents' attitudes and behaviors. For example, the level of satisfaction that employees had with their jobs may have produced favorable POP perceptions. Along these same lines, the respondents who had high levels of job satisfaction may have been more inclined to reporting more positive POP perceptions. Similarly, this study did not explore the moderating or mediating effects among the attitudes and behaviors of the respondents. The correlation analysis showed that significant relationships were present among job satisfaction, organizational satisfaction, performance, stress, and turnover. Not modelling these interrelationships may have overstated the effects of POP in this study.
In conclusion, the results suggest that the perceptions of public employees should be a top priority for public managers, educators, and researchers. The beliefs that public employees hold about citizens or external viewpoints can have significant consequences on how they feel and what they do within government organizations. Employees who believe that outsiders and citizens hold negative viewpoints about them are significantly more likely to report lower performance ratings, higher stress, less commitment, lower job and organizational satisfaction, and higher turnover intentions. This is important because the negative messaging and images directed toward government is a part of the cultural fabric and heritage of the American society. It is unlikely that any strategies aimed at uprooting these images from the citizenry would have immediate success. Public servants and government organizations will likely remain easy targets for the mass media, political rhetoric, and distrusting citizens in the foreseeable future.
In the meantime, managers, teachers, and scholars must work to equip current and future public employees with the necessary skills and dispositions that may neutralize the potency of this work environment, while at the same time acknowledging and addressing legitimate citizen concerns. This could involve strategically publicizing positive messages throughout the workforce in ways that reinforce the importance of public service to society. It should also involve preparing future public servants for this environment by effectively socializing them to the importance of their role in society (Bright, 2018;Bright & Graham, 2015), as well as the production of more research in the field of public administration that can help public managers develop clear strategies for addressing these perceptions.