James L. Perry — 2017 John Gaus Award Recipient

The John Gaus Award and Lectureship honors the recipient’s lifetime of exemplary scholarship in the joint tradition of political science and public administration and, more generally, recognizes and encourages scholarship in public administration. The award carries a $2,000 prize and the recipient delivers a lecture at the APSA Annual Meeting.

James L. Perry is Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Chancellor’s Professor of Public and Environmental Affairs Emeritus, School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University, Bloomington.  He is Editor in Chief of Public Administration Review (PAR), the premiere global professional journal in public administration.

Perry’s scholarship covers public management, government and civil service reform, and national and community service. He has pioneered research on public service motivation and public pay for performance. His research on public service motivation has stimulated studies of the construct in more than fifty countries around the world.

His research appears in such journals as Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, American Political Science Review, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, and Public Administration Review. Among the books he has authored and edited are the Handbook of Public Administration, Third Edition (with Robert Christensen, Jossey-Bass, 2015), Civic Service: What Difference Does It Make? (with Ann Marie Thomson; M. E. Sharpe, 2004), and Motivation in Public Management: The Call of Public Service (with Annie Hondeghem; Oxford University Press, 2008).

Perry’s leadership in the field is exemplified by scholarly and professional recognitions received during his career. He received the Yoder-Heneman Award for innovative personnel research from the Society for Human Resource Management.  He is recipient of two awards, the Charles H. Levine Memorial Award for Excellence in Public Administration and the Distinguished Research Award, given jointly by the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) and the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration.  ASPA has recognized him with two awards, the Paul P. Van Riper Award for Excellence and Service and the Dwight Waldo Award for career contributions to the literature of public administration. He received the H. George Frederickson Award for career contributions from the Public Management Research Association in 2015.  Perry has twice been selected for Fulbright Fellowships. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.

Perry received an undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago and M.P.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. In 1992, Perry served as special assistant to the Assistant Secretary for Personnel Administration, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In 1999-2000, he was senior evaluator at the Corporation for National and Community Service. In 2006-2007, he was Senior Postdoctoral Fellow at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium.  He has also held faculty appointments at Yonsei University, University of California, Irvine, Chinese University of Hong Kong, University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the University of Hong Kong.

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