Julie Langer

Julie Langer is an associate professor of public administration at Northern Illinois University. Her scholarship explores how democracy is practiced inside public and nonprofit organizations. She studies how culture, identity and forms of reasoning shape decision-making across individuals and institutions, with the goal of identifying the conditions that foster ethical judgment, sustain democratic governance and support a flourishing civic life.

Langer’s work has been funded by the Illinois Innovation Network Social Innovation Program and recognized with best paper awards from the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action and the journal Nonprofit Management and Leadership. Her research has been featured in top journals, including Perspectives on Public Management and Governance, Public Management Review, Administration & Society and Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. Before entering academia, Julie led collective impact initiatives to address the skills gap in Chicago’s health services sector.

Areas of Expertise

Democratic governance and civic institutions
Organizational culture and identity
Ethical reasoning and decision-making
Institutional and sector theory

Selected Publications

Langer, J., LeRoux, K.and Siciliano, M. (Forthcoming) Timeless Tactics or Modern Misfires: Timeless Tactics or Modern Misfires: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Established Voter Engagement Methods in U.S. Local Elections. Political Studies Review

Langer, J., Camarena, L.and Jong, J. (2024). Organizational Culture and Effectiveness in Community Based Nonprofits . Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly.

Langer, J.and Feeney, M. K. (2023). Who “We” are matters: the influence of organizational identity orientation on public participation in government . Public Management Review, 1-20.

LeRoux, K., Langer, J.and Plotner, S. (2022, August). Nonprofit Messaging and the 2020 Election: Findings from a Nonpartisan Get-Out-The-Vote (GOTV) Field Experiment . In Nonprofit Policy Forum. De Gruyter.

Langer, J. (2022). Bureaucracy and the Imaginal Realm: Max Weber, Rationality and the Substantive Basis of Public Administration . Perspectives on Public Management and Governance.

Langer, J., Siciliano, M. and LeRoux, K. (2022). Applying the Repertory Grid Technique to Advance Nonprofit Collaboration: A Situational Theory of Partner Selection . VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations.

Langer, J.A. and Feeney, M.K. (2022). Organizational Identity Orientation: A Public Sector Research Agenda . In The Handbook of Research on Motivation in Public Administration. Edmund C. Stazyk and Randall S. Davis, Edward Elgar Publishing.

Langer, J. (2021). Understanding the Spirit of the Sectors: Exploring Identity in a New Era of Organizing . Administration & Society.

LeRoux, K. and Langer, J. (2019). From nonprofit leader to elected official: Examining political ambition in the nonprofit sector . Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 48(1), 208-226.