Author: Shannon H. Tufts

Chief Information Officers (CIOs) are a transforming public sector leadership group. CIOs have emerged
to connect business units in an organization with information technology staff. They are the linchpin between the seemingly disparate, and often contentious, components of an organization. The potential impact of this population is high but their characteristics and perspectives have been only nominally explored. By investigating leadership within the public sector IT profession through the application of Q-methodology and use of a well-accepted competing values framework, this article contributes to both the leadership and IT scholarship. Using a sample of local government CIOs from North Carolina, Q-methodology is used to examine how individuals view and operationalize the concepts of leadership in their own work and careers. The research reveals four dominate leadership conceptualizations amongst local government IT professionals. These groupings demonstrate high variation in how IT professionals understand and prioritize leadership attributes.

Cite as:

Tufts, Shannon and Jacobson, W. 2010. “Visions of Leadership: An Examination of How IT Professionals Prioritize Leadership Attributes,” Journal of Information Technology Management. Volume XXI, Number 1. 1-1

In line with the theme of this year’s APSA conference, this paper examines issues of
public employee rights as they relate to social media policies. This paper employs an
interdisciplinary approach to examine the issue of employee rights in relationship to social media
actions both on and off the job. The proliferation of the use and forms of social media in the last
five years has been extensive. Significant efforts are being made to capture the power of this
medium as a resource for government while at the same time governments are struggling to
create appropriate, legal, and meaningful policies related to employee usage and behavior.
Stories abound of public employees’ misuse of social media both at and away from work.
Misconduct has led to not just disciplinary action but substantial media attention. Issues of First
and Fourth Amendment rights, human resource policies, and technology policies are all critical
to this topic.

This paper reviews social media policies for public employees with attention to the
employees’ rights. Content analysis of state government policies provide an overview of the
current state of practice and highlight issues of public employee rights. The paper includes a
discussion of key issues of employee rights, recommendations for practice, and future research
needs.

Cited as: 

Jacobson, Willow S. and Tufts, Shannon H.“To Post or Not to Post: Employee Rights and Social Media,” Review of Public Personnel Administration, Vol.33, No. 1. 84-107.

Social media use has quickly become an integral part of people’s personal and professional lives. Although many scholars highlight the benefits of social media for engagement, communication, and outreach, leveraging social media platforms for human resource (HR) practices continues to present interesting questions and challenges. This article examines how municipal and county governments are using social media in recruiting, hiring, monitoring, and disciplining employees. Many local governments are not taking advantage of Facebook, Twitter, and other social media as potential tools for recruitment and screening because of concerns related to liability. The same organizations are conducting workplace monitoring and addressing disciplinary issues around employee social media use, often without guiding policies in place. Based on the findings from this research, recommendations are provided on how and when local government HR departments can more effectively use social media in their practices.

Cite as:

Tufts, S. H., Jacobson, W. S., & Stevens, M. S. (2015). Status Update: Social Media and Local Government Human Resource Practices. Review of Public Personnel Administration, 35(2), 193–207.