Three essays on public job security

Three Essays on Public Job Security Job security plays a central role in the identity of public institutions and public debates about public performance and reform, however, we have relatively little theoretical or empirical research about job security. These three essays are empirical studies on different facets of job security and insecurity in the public sector. Empirical results contribute to theory building in the field of public management that seeks to advance usable knowledge about job security, and identify content distinctive to public institutions.;This dissertation is employing a meta-analytical method to test for an inverted U-shaped relationship between job security and employee work attitudes. This study shows that medium sized association between job security and work behavior variables (job satisfaction and organizational commitment) were found, (rho) with .327 for job satisfaction and .253 for organizational commitment.;This dissertation is also evaluating the impact of job security rule changes on U.S. federal government employee work attitudes and behavior, and I am using difference-in-differences methods to assess the impact of 2004, 2005, 2007 year Department of Homeland Security's job security rule changes on employee affective organizational commitment. While some previous work has reported near-time impacts, few studies have examined the impact of different job security rule changes on public employee work attitudes or behavior, comparing the treated units before and after treatment. Result shows that the overall effect of introduction of a new job security rule in DHS is a decrease of approximately 16 percentage points in organizational commitment, which is a substantial negative effect on the affective organizational commitment in the DHS.;This dissertation is also examining how public employees with limited job protections or security have reacted to the variety of new managerial structures associated with the federal and state civil service reform using multinomial logit model. This study demonstrated that federal and state government employee work behavior and attitudes with limited job protections or security were influenced by the set of organizational practices to increase perceived job security (e.g., giving empowerment, offering potential growth opportunity).