The association between public managers' type of education and prioritizing core service provision and communication

Abstract An important question in public management is whether public organizations should prefer or avoid specialist managers (i.e., managers whose professional backgrounds match the work they oversee). Research has shown that specialist managers are associated with better field‐specific performance in public organizations, and theory suggests that they lead differently than nonspecialist managers. However, there is no empirical evidence to support this latter claim. To remedy this, we investigate whether specialist managers prioritize core service provision more and communicate better than nonspecialist managers. Through multilevel regressions of employee reports of leaders' behaviors in the contexts of schools, eldercare, daycare, and employment, we find that specialist managers prioritize core service provision more in all contexts but schools and communicate better in eldercare and employment but not elsewhere. These findings are consistent with the theoretical expectations and thus emphasize the importance of educational background in shaping managerial behavior.