Sang Ok Choi

Sang Ok Choi is an Assistant Professor of the Center for Public Administration and Policy at the School of Public and International Affairs at Virginia Tech. He was previously an Assistant Professor at the Department of Public Administration and Public Policy at the California State University, Dominguez Hills. He teaches courses on Public Management Network, Public Human Resource Management, Public Budgeting and Financial Management, and Advanced Methods.

His research interest focuses on intergovernmental relations, public management network, and emergency management. In particular, he studies what characteristics of a network influence its performance in the public and nonprofit sector. In addition, he examines local government growth and spending priorities. He extended Peterson’s City Limits perspective to counties to empirically examine how economic, political, institutional, and demographic factors influence overall county spending and spending priorities across three core policy arenas in his article, “County Limits: Policy Types and Expenditure Priorities,” in the American Review of Public Administration. Recently, he has expanded the focus of his government spending research to include the “Community Quality of Life (QoL)” concept. He empirically examines how spending priorities influence community QoL.

Professor Choi received a Master of Arts in Public Administration from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, and a Ph.D. in Public Administration at the Florida State University. He received a Best Dissertation Award at the Academy of Management Public and Nonprofit Division. His article, Employee empowerment and team performance: autonomy, responsibility, information, and creativity, has been chosen for a Highly Commended Paper Award from Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2010.

Professor Choi’s work has been published in, among others, Public Administration Review, American Review of Public Administration, State and Local Government Review, Administration & Society, International Journal of Public Sector Management, and Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.