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About Leisha
Leisha DeHart-Davis is a professor of public administration and government in the Social Science faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Government, where she holds the Distinguished Term Coates Professorship since October 2020. She earned her Ph.D. in Public Policy from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2000, M.S. in Public Policy from the same institution in 1993, and B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of South Carolina in 1986. Prior to UNC-Chapel Hill, she served as Associate Professor of Public Administration at the University of Kansas from 2009 to 2015, advancing through assistant professor and doctoral program director roles there from 2002. At UNC, she was Albert and Gladys Coates Distinguished Term Associate Professor from 2015 to 2017 and Professor from 2018 to 2020. DeHart-Davis directs the Local Government Workplaces Initiative, a research program conducting surveys, focus groups, and interviews to assess and improve workplace climate and employee engagement in cities and counties. She is a faculty member in the Master of Public Administration program, past-president of the Public Management Research Association, and UNC Thorp Faculty Engaged Scholar from 2016 to 2018.
Her research focuses on public sector organizational behavior, including employee voice, organizational structure, workplace and citizen incivility, and workplace climate in local governments. She developed the influential 'green tape' theory of effective organizational rules, bridging organizational, institutional, and behavioral perspectives on bureaucracy. Key publications include the book Creating Effective Rules in Public Sector Organizations (Georgetown University Press, 2017), co-winner of the 2018 Best Book Award from the American Society for Public Administration and winner of the Academy of Management Public and Nonprofit Division Best Book Award; and Understanding Gender Imbalance in Public Sector Leadership (Cambridge University Press, 2020). Prominent articles are 'Green Tape: A Theory of Effective Organizational Rules' (Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 2009), 'Does Bureaucracy Diminish Inclusion? Evidence from a County Government' (Public Personnel Management, 2023), and 'More than Pathological Formalization: Understanding Organizational Structure and Red Tape' (Public Administration Review, 2019). DeHart-Davis received the 2024 Herbert Simon Award for the Scientific Study of Bureaucracy from the Midwest Political Science Association, Fellowship in the National Academy of Public Administration (Class of 2018), the 2019 Gary Cornia Distinguished Lecturer award, and the 2019 Georgia Institute of Technology School of Public Policy Distinguished Alumni Award. Her scholarship advances public administration theory and practice, enhancing bureaucratic performance and democratic governance through rigorous empirical studies.
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