The Korean Public Administration Review (KPAR), which has published quarterly volumes since its establishment in 1967, is the official journal of the Korean Association for Public Administration(KAPA). As a scholarly journal, KPAR not only hold the highest authority in the field of public administration in South Korea, but also in social science. Since the National Research Foundation of Korea began evaluating journals, KPAR has been listed in the Korea Citation Index (KCI) journal index.
The Concept and Operating Mechanisms of Power: A “Power Physics” of Action and Compliance 권력의 개념과 작동 메커니즘: 작용과 순응의 ‘권력 물리학’
오재록 ( Oh Jae Rok )
DOI:10.18333/KPAR.60.1.3 Vol.60(No.1) 3-37, 2026
Abstract
This paper examines the concept and operating mechanisms of power through an interdisciplinary approach. It reconceptualizes power not as a possessable entity but as a dynamic mechanism of “action-compliance,” and presents an analytical framework integrating Foucault’s disciplinary power and biopower, Nietzsche’s will to power, Weber’s domination, and Lukes’s three-dimensional power.
The findings reveal that power encompasses both its repressive dimension (power over) and its productive dimension (power to), manifesting through the interaction of “action and compliance.” At the micro level, power induces “voluntary compliance” through “disciplinarization” and “normalization”; at the macro level, it is amplified into “collective action” through “social resonance” and collective consent. “Three-dimensional power” shapes subjects’ desires and preferences through “non-decision-making,” ideology, and discourse, constructing horizons of meaning through naming and language. This paper contributes to providing a theoretical framework for an integrative understanding of power and to expanding the horizons of public administration and government studies.
Key Words
권력의 작용과 순응, 권력의 미시물리학, 권력의 거시물리학, action and compliance of power, micro-physics of power, macro-physics of power
Revisiting Moore’s Theory of Public Value Creation: Addressing Its Practical Limitations Through the Lens of Public Strategic Management 공공가치 창출론의 실행적 한계와 전략적 보완: 공공전략관리 관점을 중심으로
Moore’s theory of public value creation argues that the fundamental purpose of public organizations is to generate socially meaningful value. The theory is particularly significant for identifying public managers as key agents of public value creation and for framing value creation from the perspective of strategic execution. However, it provides limited guidance on the concrete stages and managerial mechanisms of strategy implementation. Public strategic management, by contrast, offers a systematic framework for setting strategic objectives and integrating planning, implementation, evaluation, and feedback to support organizational learning and innovation. Building on the shared concern with public value creation and strategic execution, this study integrates the value-oriented strengths of public value theory with the execution-focused processes of public strategic management to propose a stage-based strategic execution model for public value creation. In doing so, it seeks to extend public value theory from a primarily normative perspective to an execution-oriented analytical framework.
Key Words
공공가치 창출론, 전략 삼각형, 공공전략관리, public value creation, strategic triangle, public strategic management
Under the New Public Management (NPM) paradigm, where the performance of public organizations has become increasingly emphasized, the question of how bureaucrats make ethical decisions has gained importance. This study examines how bureaucrats, who face accountability demands from multiple stakeholders, perceive different forms of accountability and how these perceptions influence their intentions to engage in unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB). The empirical results show that a higher sense of legal accountability is associated with a decreased intention to disregard regulations for organizational benefit. Although legal accountability has often been criticized for fostering passivity, it may also enable bureaucrats to resist unethical practices and maintain a minimum standard of ethics. Moreover, bureaucrats with stronger professional accountability show lower intentions to distort information for organizational gain, whereas higher political accountability is linked to greater tendencies toward information distortion. These results suggest that while professional ethics oriented toward the public interest can guide ethical decision-making, political responsiveness may justify unethical actions under the banner of organizational benefit. By focusing on the darker side of organizational behavior rather than its positive aspects, this study extends scholarly discussion on accountability and offers practical implications for fostering ethical decision-making in today’s performance-driven bureaucratic context.
As turnover in public organizations intensifies, a behavioral understanding of turnover intention is increasingly required. This study conceptualizes turnover intention as a behavioral outcome shaped by the interaction between individual psychological states and organizational contexts, applying the job demands-resources (JD-R) model. Using data from the 2024 Public Ethics and Values Survey of local government officials in Korea, the analysis examines burnout as a job demand, organizational justice as a job resource, and public service motivation as an individual psychological resource. The results show that organizational justice strengthens public service motivation and reduces turnover intention, whereas burnout weakens motivation and significantly increases turnover intention. Public service motivation partially mediates these relationships. These findings suggest that turnover in public organizations is not merely driven by financial incentives, but by the ways in which organizational justice and psychological exhaustion erode commitment to public values, thereby offering theoretical and practical implications for managing turnover in the public sector.
Key Words
이직의도, 직무요구-자원모형, 번아웃, 조직공정성, 공공봉사동기, turnover intention, job demands-resources model, burnout, organizational justice, public service motivation
In recent years, malicious civil complaints have increasingly depleted the psychological resources of frontline public officials, thereby undermining the quality of public services. This study empirically examines the structural pathways through which malicious complaints influence public officials’ turnover intention, focusing on the mediating role of job burnout. To this end, malicious complaints were classified into four types: aggression-based, excessive demand-based, exhaustion-inducing, and authority-undermining. The analysis employed structural equation modeling (SEM) using survey data from the Korea Institute of Public Administration (2021) on “Building a Response System for Malicious Complaints in Seoul.” The results revealed the following. First, authority-undermining complaints had a positive effect on job burnout. Second, job burnout positively influenced public officials’ turnover intention. Third, authority-undermining complaints exerted an indirect effect on turnover intention through the full mediation of job burnout. In contrast, the other types of malicious complaints did not have significant direct or indirect effects on turnover intention. These findings indicate that public officials are more likely to consider leaving the organization when their professional identity and authority as public servants are undermined by malicious complaints. Based on these results, this study presents both academic implications concerning the relationship between malicious complaints and turnover intention, and policy implications for enhancing the quality and sustainability of public services by enabling the public sector to focus more on legitimate complaints.
Key Words
악성민원, 공직이탈, 이직의도, 직무소진, 공직권위, malicious complaints, turnover in the public sector, turnover intention, job burnout, public authority, public officials
The Effects of Structural Characteristics of Childcare Centers and Local Governments on High-Quality Childcare Services: Evidence from Seoul and Gyeonggi Province, South Korea 어린이집과 지방자치단체의 구조적 특성이 고품질 보육서비스에 미치는 영향: 서울특별시와 경기도를 중심으로
This study examines disparities in the provision of high-quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) services, defined as process quality, among 11,868 childcare centers across 56 local governments in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province, South Korea. Using a multilevel logistic regression model, it investigates how organizational characteristics of childcare centers and institutional factors at the municipal level contribute to these disparities. Results from the unconditional model showed that approximately 2.8% of the total variance in high-quality childcare services was attributable to differences across local governments (ICC = 0.028; LR test: χ² = 15.46, p < .001). Findings from the empirical analysis indicated that, at the organizational level, nonprofit and public childcare centers were 6.39 and 6.29 percentage points more likely, respectively (p < .001), to achieve high process quality compared with for-profit centers, while local government-accredited centers exhibited a 4.83 percentage-point higher probability (p < .001). At the contextual level, municipalities with higher childcare budgets per child showed a 4.20 percentage-point increase in the likelihood of high process quality (p < .01), whereas municipalities with greater public childcare center coverage experienced a slight decrease of 0.06 percentage points (p < .05). These results highlight the joint influence of organizational and institutional structures on ECEC quality and underscore the importance of coordinated governance to ensure equitable access to high-quality ECEC services.
Key Words
어린이집 고품질 보육서비스, 지방자치단체 보육서비스, 어린이집 시설평가, high-quality childcare center services, local government ecec sevices, childcare center quality evaluation system
Differentiated Growth Paths Under Public Institution Relocation and Innovation City Policies: Firm Ecosystem Changes across Metropolitan Districts (Gu) and Provincial Cities and Counties (Si and Gun) 공공기관 지방 이전 및 혁신도시 정책의 차별적 성장 경로: 광역시(구)와 광역도(시·군)의 기업생태계 변화
This study examines the impact of public institution relocation and the Innovation City policy on regional firm ecosystems in South Korea, using a si-gun-gu panel dataset covering the period from 2010 to 2022, constructed from Statistics Korea’s Statistical Business Register (SBR). While existing studies primarily focus on average effects measured by macro-level indicators such as gross regional domestic product (GRDP), this study employs firm-level indicators―including the total number of firms, new firm entry, firm counts by size, and total sales―to capture both quantitative expansion and structural change within local firm ecosystems.
Using a multiperiod difference-in-differences (DID) framework, the analysis identifies heterogeneous growth trajectories across regions. In metropolitan districts (gu), policy effects primarily manifested as sales expansion among incumbent firms, reflecting a consolidation-oriented growth pattern. In contrast, provincial cities and counties (si and gun) experienced increased new firm entry alongside concurrent growth among micro, small, and medium-sized firms, indicating a multilayered expansion of local firm ecosystems. These findings suggest that identical place-based policies generate divergent outcomes depending on regional industrial structures and absorptive capacity.
By excluding the direct economic effects of relocated public institutions and focusing on private-sector dynamics, this study clarifies the mechanisms through which relocation policies influence regional economies. The results underscore the importance of region-specific policy design in future rounds of public institution relocation and the forthcoming Innovation City Season 2 initiatives.
Key Words
공공기관 지방 이전, 기업생태계 변화, 이중차분, DID, 모형 분석, public institution relocation, firm ecosystem changes, difference-in-differences, did, analysis
Comparing the Equalization Effects of the Intergovernmental Fiscal Adjustment System Through a Social Welfare Approach: Focusing on Grants 사회후생적 접근을 활용한 지방재정조정제도의 형평화 효과 비교: 보조금을 중심으로
This study evaluates whether national subsidies and provincial grants―the core transfer resources of Korea’s intergovernmental fiscal adjustment system―effectively achieve fiscal equalization and social welfare enhancement amid widening fiscal disparities among lower-tier local governments. Using panel data for 226 basic local governments from 2014 to 2023, the study distinguishes total grants and those allocated to redistribution policy sectors. Inequality and welfare effects are analyzed using the Gini coefficient and the Gini-based social welfare function proposed by Dagum (1990).
The results show that although inequality in total national subsidies slightly increased, overall social welfare improved substantially, suggesting that differentiated allocations by the central government reflect policy-driven structural inequality. Provincial grants exhibit both a decline in the Gini coefficient and an increase in the welfare index, indicating a modest equalization effect despite structural constraints in fiscal transfers from upper-tier to lower-tier governments. Grants in redistribution policy sectors show a clear improvement in social welfare, suggesting that the objectives of protecting vulnerable groups and ensuring basic social services are substantively realized through the intergovernmental fiscal adjustment process.
These findings highlight the importance of evaluating fiscal adjustment systems not only by changes in inequality levels but also by how redistribution structures affect social welfare outcomes.
Key Words
보조금, 지방재정조정제도, 사회후생, 형평성, 지니기반 사회후생함수, intergovernmental grants, intergovernmental fiscal adjustment system, social welfare, equity, gini-based social welfare function
With the rapid advancement of big data analysis technology, interest in digital health data is growing in the healthcare sector. While sharing and utilizing digital health data offers numerous benefits, including promoting precision medicine, improving patient health management, enhancing public health surveillance, reducing healthcare costs, and enhancing healthcare system efficiency, data security, privacy protection, and legal restrictions remain key challenges. Amidst growing interest in sharing and utilizing digital health data, Europe is leading the way in establishing stakeholder-driven digital health data governance through initiatives. This study analyzes digital health data governance across three dimensions: data administration, data participation, and data technology. Focusing on France and Finland, which are expanding governance to the private sector, we examine the policy characteristics and institutional foundations.
Key Words
디지털 헬스 데이터 거버넌스, 데이터 거버넌스, 헬스 데이터, 보건의료 데이터, digital health data governance, data governance, health data
Public Procurement and the Economic Performance of Social Enterprises: A Spatial Analysis of the Moderating Role of Legal Entity Types 공공조달과 사회적기업의 경제적 성과: 법인 유형의 조절효과를 고려한 공간적 접근
This study empirically analyzes the impact of public procurement participation on the economic performance of social enterprises and tests whether legal entity type moderates this relationship. A spatial Durbin model (SDM) was employed to control for spatial correlation in economic performance and spillover effects from neighboring social enterprises. Public procurement participation was measured as the ratio of public procurement sales to total sales, while economic performance was measured as total sales per paid employee. Results showed that higher public procurement participation significantly improved economic performance. However, effects varied by legal entity type: civil law corporations and social welfare corporations showed positive outcomes, whereas general cooperatives experienced negative effects. Public procurement expansion by specific entity types also generated positive spillover effects on spatially adjacent social enterprises, confirming that regional agglomeration and social capital accumulation create synergies.
Key Words
사회적 기업, 사회적 기업 공공조달, 공간회귀분석, 공간더빈분석, 사회적 경제, social enterprises, public procurement, spatial regression, spatial durbin model, social economy, gmm approach
