The Moderating Effects of Organizational Publicness on Determinants of the US Federal Employee's Job Satisfaction

This study draws on the organizational publicness scholarship to propose that although both executive departments and independent agencies collectively are part of the federal bureaucracy, executive departments have higher organizational publicness that affects their organizational processes and employee's job satisfaction. Analyses of federal employee viewpoint survey indicate that executive departments directly affect job satisfaction and moderate work unit quality, supervisor quality, and leadership quality's effect on job satisfaction. Public organizations' effects on job satisfaction are more nuanced than the existing scholarship suggests. Where constitutional norms allow, public organizations should promote the independent powers of work units' leaders.