Hello! Welcome to my website. I am Austin McCrea, an Assistant Professor of Public Administration in the Department of Political Science at Texas Tech University. My research interests span social equity, public management, street-level bureaucracy, and, increasingly, public perceptions of bureaucracy.
Most of my published work addresses questions of bureaucratic representation, diversity, and health outcomes. A common thread through much of my work is a substantive focus on high-risk, time critical public service contexts such as emergency departments, nursing homes, and the opioid crisis. These contexts often face endemic resource shortages, serve highly vulnerable client populations, and perform highly difficult tasks which test the boundary conditions for existing theory. For instance, my work has explored how institutional and organizational constraints shape bureaucratic representation, the importance of administrative capacity in managing wicked problems, and how the organizational environment informs the adoption of diversity management programs.
Besides studying organizational and bureaucratic behavior, my work is increasingly interested in understanding public perceptions towards bureaucracy. My collaborators and I recently fielded two survey experiments which shed interesting insights on the effects of framing government workers as "public servants" rather than "bureaucrats", and what values inform the process of bureaucratic selection. I am very excited about this work as the public's views towards government are important for virtually all indicators of democratic governance.
My work appears in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Public Administration Review, and other outlets.
Email austin.mccrea@ttu.edu