Rankings have become ubiquitous in public service settings. Although there are high hopes that comparative analysis leads to improved processes and outcomes, there is also a growing criticism of rankings as creating perverse effects. In this article, we analyze how public service governance is affected by rankings with a special focus on how, in what ways, and to what extent organizations are made into governable entities as a response to rankings. The article is based on a detailed ethnographic study in three Dutch hospitals, using insights from actor–network theory and institutional work, combining the concepts of performativity and institutional work.
This article explores whether co-creation offers a viable path for the public sector. After an initial account of the transformation of the public sector from a legal authority and a service provider to an arena of co-creation, it defines co-creation and provides some empirical examples. This is followed by a discussion of the risks and benefits of co-creation as well as the drivers and barriers that may stimulate or hamper its expansion. The article also reflects on how institutional design, public leadership, and systemic change can advance co-creation. The conclusion summarizes the findings by setting out some researchable propositions.
The Great Recession resulted in fiscal crises for governments across the Western world. Our article explores whether, as a result of the crisis, the relevance of performance information in organizational decision-making increased. Furthermore, we examine how centralizing shifts in governmental decision-making processes influenced the shifts in the relevance of performance information for public sector organizations. Using a survey of senior government officials in 19 European countries, we find that, in line with the predictions of rationalistic decision-making and principal–agent models, the increase in the relevance of performance information in organizational decision-making was positively associated with our measures of greater centralization.
The present study of an infrastructure project shows how anxiety of repeated organizational failure instigates stronger stakeholder control. This control frustrated the project organization’s efforts to gain trustworthiness, hampering project completion. The study also shows how the public demonstration of stakeholder control was used to curb reputation loss or to preemptively attribute blame. In this way, control inhibits trust relations between supposedly cooperating project partners. We contribute to the debates on political avoidance of reputation loss and trust–control interrelations by showing how the aftereffects of failure (anxiety and avoidance) limit the effectiveness of control as a means to repair trust.
Local and civil society can play decisive roles in disaster response. Yet, the disaster management literature is unclear regarding the conditions that enable cross-sectoral collaboration. Using a collaborative governance framework and 44 semi-structured interviews, this study investigates how trust, pre-existing relations, interdependence, knowledge, and resources affect cross-sectoral collaboration during disaster response in Turkey. The results illustrate how these factors interact with system context factors, such as political compatibility, to facilitate or hinder cross-sectoral collaboration. The study concludes that cross-sectoral collaboration is no panacea for successful disaster response, but empirical examples also suggest that cross-sectoral collaboration can contribute to reducing suboptimal disaster response.
Few cross-country studies examine the effects of auditing quality on public sector corruption. We present a definition of good auditing consisting of three principles: independence, professionalism, and recognizing the people as the principal. Using novel data from an original expert survey covering more than 100 countries, the concept is then operationalized and tested empirically. The results demonstrate that good auditing has a positive effect on national levels of public sector corruption. This lends reason to believe that auditing which is organized according to certain principles has potential to contribute to well-functioning public administrations with a low degree of corruption.
A total of 1.5 million people are incarcerated in the United States’ prisons. Tens of thousands are placed in restrictive, solitary confinement units. Building on theories of representative bureaucracy, this article considers both the race of the inmates and the race of correctional staff. The article has three main findings: that minority prison staff have higher preferences for rehabilitation and lower preferences for punishment, that prisons with a high percentage of Black inmates utilize punishment at higher rates, and that representation, in the form of Black staff, helps ameliorate the high level of punishment associated with a high percentage of Black inmates.
Public administration scholarship has a long-standing tradition of examining the legitimacy of public administration. One of the motives behind this literature is the necessity to defend against constant criticisms directed toward public administration research, theory, and practice. In this article, we shift the focus from defending public administration by conceptualizing and accepting it as an illegitimate and stigmatized institution—one that cannot and should not rid itself of this label. Accepting and presupposing this label of illegitimacy, independent from any particular definition of legitimacy, allows scholars and practitioners to focus on creating new knowledge and performing professional responsibilities.
Research on deliberative governance does not include many case studies on South Korea. We analyze deliberative governance in the Seoul and Gwangju Metropolitan Governments, drawing comparisons and lessons for operating effective deliberative governance to promote consensus building, citizen empowerment, and legitimation of policy choices through collective decision making. The two cases incorporate the characteristics of deliberative governance to a limited degree and in an experimental stage. Based on a comparison of the two cases, we discuss the application and limitations of deliberative processes along with suggestions for potentially improving the practice of deliberative governance in the South Korean context.
Who benefits (cui bono) from an ostensibly public organization’s structures and practices? I draw on interviews, observation, and archival data from 25 independent foundations to examine the mechanisms by which "charitable" institutions are designed to serve the private interests of internal members. I develop a framework to analyze how both private and public goals inform organizational design, exploring the dual, continuous, and dynamic nature of this process. This framework enables scholarship on nonprofit organizational behavior to examine private interests in a uniquely robust manner. Furthermore, it provides tools to study organizations’ evolution through varied functions and forms over time.
This article presents an overview of the rental housing search and occupancy experiences of Veterans with disabilities. Utilizing a mixed-mode survey design, 83 usable responses were obtained. Measures of discrimination, accessibility, and demographics were used as independent variables to explore relationships with housing satisfaction using one-way ANOVA and multiple regression. In addition, chi-square tests were conducted to determine the association between perceived discrimination and independent variables. Findings suggest that Veterans with disabilities are facing challenges in locating and occupying suitable rental housing with factors such as discrimination impacting housing satisfaction. Implications for policy-makers, Veterans, and researchers are discussed.
This contribution explores the functional and dysfunctional roles of interorganizational trust and distrust in the public sector. We construct a conceptual framework and analyze 59 qualitative interviews with key informants in Flemish executive and judiciary public sector organizations. Results indicate that the combination of "trust as rule" and "distrust as reasonable exception" is functional for interorganizational interactions, whereas "trust as dogma" or "distrust as rule" gives rise to dysfunctionalities in interorganizational interactions. The study provides empirical evidence that challenges the "positive bias" toward trust in extant research, and suggests a more balanced perspective on roles of interorganizational trust and distrust.
Using cross-country data from the Citizenship database of the 2004 International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) and relying on multilevel mixed-effects modeling, we investigate the link between government transparency and citizens’ external political efficacy. Results indicate that transparency enhances the perception of institutions’ responsiveness to citizens’ actions, but also highlight that this effect is mediated by citizens’ level of education. In particular, while for better educated people the magnitude of government transparency’s effect on citizens’ external efficacy is substantial, the same effect is negligible for less educated citizens who appear to be "lost in transparency."
Nonprofit managers are influenced by managerial logics that guide their everyday understandings, decisions, and behaviors. This article identifies, conceptualizes, and examines these logics through the lens of institutional theory, which implies a distinction between normative and instrumental modalities of nonprofit managerialism. These modalities are contrasted across seven domains of nonprofit management—portfolio management, organizational growth and capacity-building, fundraising, collaboration and competition, effectiveness, efficiency, and accountability—generating insights for managers, scholars, and society at large. Specifically, the framework identifies contradictory managerial imperatives that can create a "double bind" for practitioners, provides a mechanism for organizing and positioning nonprofit management scholarship, and raises fundamental questions about the attainability of nonprofit missions and the function of the nonprofit sector in society.
Existing conceptualizations and measures of transformational and transactional leadership have unclear theoretical bases, confound leadership and its effects, and are not necessarily suitable for public organizations. Overcoming these problems is necessary to test how leadership affects performance. Many public administration scholars apply the concepts, emphasizing the need to ensure that the concepts are applicable in both public and private organizations. The article reconceptualizes transformational and transactional leadership and develops and tests revised measures that can be employed on employees and leaders, are robust in terms of repeated use by the same respondents, and are applicable to public and private organizations alike.
Stimulating technological innovations and limiting access to expensive health technology require the coordination and coherence of overlapping policy sub-systems: research, market access, and reimbursement. This study investigates which procedural policy instruments proved more successful in integrating collaborative governance arrangements in Great Britain and Germany. A new classification of procedural policy instruments is developed based on the targeted dimensions of collaborative governance (network structure and policy phase). The comparative analysis rests on expert interviews and meeting records and reveals that, in Great Britain, active leadership prevails during the consultations, while Germany, in contrast, presents a case of inconsistent governance.
Dougherty et al. posit that production of complex innovations requires that ecologies be organized, involving three activities: orchestrating knowledge capabilities, ongoing strategizing to frame and direct continuous innovation, and developing public policy to embrace ambiguity. Our study aims to understand how such ecologies emerge. Based on a longitudinal case study, performed in the context of the Quebec health system, our results suggest (a) that the emergence of innovations in highly institutionalized fields requires an additional activity, namely, working on boundaries to make actors perceive their interdependences (b) some levers that can foster the implementation of the model.
Performance audits allow audit institutions to contribute to the improvement of the economy, efficiency, and/or effectiveness of public sector entities through the recommendations of their reports. To assess the impact of the performance audits carried out by EU Supreme and Regional Audit Institutions, this article analyzes whether these recommendations are implemented in practice or not. The results show that there are two main ways in which the recommendations included in the performance audit reports produce an impact: the Anglo-American way, based on auditee actions and follow-up processes, and the Germanic way, based on parliamentary action.
A puzzle that faces public administrators within regulatory networks is how to balance the need for public or democratic accountability with increasing demands from interest groups and elected officials to utilize the expertise of the private sector in developing process-oriented programs that ensure compliance. This article builds upon the network governance accountability framework developed by Koliba, Mills, and Zia to explore the dominant accountability frames and the accountability trade-offs that shape the process-oriented regulatory regime used by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to oversee and regulate air carriers in the United States.
Achieving a representative bureaucracy that reflects the attitudes, values, and policy choices of women and racial minorities is imperative, as the gap in the representation of those groups in the federal workforce is growing. We examine to what extent female and minority representation in political appointments, Senior Executive Service (SES), and General Schedule (GS) 1-15 levels reflect presidents’ commitment to diversity. We use data from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to compare the tenures of presidents William J. Clinton (1993 to 2000), George W. Bush (2001-2008), and Barack H. Obama (2009-2013), and examine the employment trends from 1993 to 2013.
This is a descriptive longitudinal case study of Ontario’s Municipal Performance Measurement Program that examines what happens in the interaction between performance regimes and public agencies. Specifically, from internal databases, archives, and public documents, this study tests propositions of compliance and benchmarking theories with all 444 municipalities in Ontario. Contrary to expectations, there is little evidence that compliance eventually declines for medium to large municipalities; compliance of small municipalities declined for a stretch of years, before being reversed. In addition, we find limited evidence of widespread organizational learning through benchmarking in this intelligence regime.
Nonprofits rely on earned revenue to remain sustainable. Prior studies have generally aggregated all earned revenue and evaluated its influence on financial sustainability. Our study takes a different approach, assessing the effects of three different types of earned revenue on an immediate program outcome. We use Cultural Data Project data from 2,000 arts and culture nonprofits from 2004-2012. We find that embedded and integrated earned revenue are linked to better program outcomes while external earned revenue is related to poorer program outcomes. Results depend on type (performing vs. visual arts) and funding structure (donative vs. commercial).
This article identifies and explains different cultures within the Australian Public Service (APS) using the interaction ritual (IR) theory of Randall Collins. It argues that such cultures vary along two dimensions: power and status. On the power dimension, we may distinguish three cultures: that of the order givers, that of the order takers, and that of those who both give and take orders. On the status dimension, we may distinguish localistic and cosmopolitan cultures. Cultural differences on these two dimensions are associated with variations in organizational rank, educational levels, agency tasks, relationships with clients, and central versus regional office location.
Allocation of scarce heterogeneous life-saving goods confronts society with profound challenges that are analytically complex and morally laden. Deceased-donor kidneys for transplant are heterogeneous in terms of relational and intrinsic quality. In 2014, the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network implemented a new allocation system that more explicitly takes account of intrinsic quality. We trace the evolution of the new allocation system with particular attention to the role of evidence and the ways that concerns about equity were solicited, assessed, and taken into account in modifying the original proposal. These deliberations show the potential for stakeholder rulemaking to integrate evidence and values.
This study draws on information processing theory to investigate predictors of strategic-decision quality in public organizations. Information processing theory argues that (a) rational planning practices contribute to strategic-decision quality by injecting information into decision making and (b) decision makers contribute to strategic-decision quality by exchanging information during decision making. These assumptions are tested upon 55 Flemish pupil guidance centers. Rational planning practices are operationalized as strategic planning, performance measurement, and performance management. Information exchange by decision makers during decision making is operationalized as procedural justice of the decision-making process. Results suggest that procedural justice, strategic planning, and performance management contribute to strategic-decision quality while performance measurement does not.
The dominant narrative about women’s progress in public administration focuses on identifying the obstacles to that progress and how to overcome them. But to make real progress toward gender equality and social justice, we must rethink our entire approach to research. Understanding the difference women make via narrative inquiry is a necessary change to the prevailing dialectic.
The work context reconstructs the feminine and the masculine, rendering public service a mirror of gender asymmetry. Nowhere is this clearer than in local government, where many face-to-face services are delivered. In cities and counties, the largest job categories are education and police work. Almost 90% of elementary school teachers are women and less than 12% of police officers are women. The sequelae to job segregation—overlooking the emotive component of jobs, pay inequity, and glass walls—will not change until organizational logic catches up with a more nuanced appreciation of gender.
This research attempts to determine whether Congress was justified in shutting down the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. I do so by comparing its performance with that of the other federal banking regulators: the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), and the Federal Reserve. Results show that the OTS is not consistently the worst performer across a variety of measures. This finding suggests it was unfairly scapegoated and that many of the problems attributed to the OTS still remain at the other agencies, despite financial reforms in 2010.
Proper hand sanitation prevents spreading of many types of illness and infection, thereby lowering the quantitative and qualitative costs of public and private health care. Research shows that thinking or knowing someone is watching you wash your hands in a public lavatory appreciably improves the odds of you doing so. Nevertheless, most restaurants place their hand washing facilities inside the bathroom, beyond public view. Reformers from the public and private sectors should work cooperatively to incentivize restaurant owners voluntarily to place their hand washing facilities in public spaces. If this uncompelled approach proves unsuccessful, reformers should seek to impose laws requiring that all public eateries place their bathroom washbasins in conspicuous locations. The discussion closes by suggesting ancillary improvements to test in pursuit of further improving hand washing rates and practices in public spaces.
This study conducts a systematic review of 98 peer-reviewed journal articles that empirically investigate the presence of the gender pay gap along with factors that espouse it in organizations. The purposes of this study are threefold. First, it aims to explore trends in recurring themes that surface as factors that engender the gender pay gap in the workforce. Second, based on identified themes, the review summarizes and compares the gender pay gap by sector. Finally, the study presents a discussion on how the public sector fairs out in closing the gender pay gap and factors that predict it.
In 1995, Robert Behn introduced American public administration to the need for common "big questions" to become a significant academic discipline, similar to the physical sciences. Chinese civil service laws were just being promulgated then, and so the discussion that ensued in Public Administration Review and elsewhere was not particularly salient for China. The largely U.S. literature did not take an international or comparative turn, yet it later became an active conversation in the Chinese literature, which is struggling to deal with its own identity crisis and the value of its research. Developing the big questions of Chinese public management research is extremely relevant in today’s environment because China is the world’s second largest economy, and their civil service has had significant time to mature. Chinese researchers have recently called for the development of domestically embedded (i.e., Sinicized) big questions. This article discusses the relevance of Behn’s questions on micromanagement, motivation, and measurement in the Chinese context and proposes alternate wordings of Behn’s questions to make them meaningful within the Chinese cultural and institutional context (while avoiding suggestions of replacing the basic Chinese political structure). Our hope is this discussion will spark a lively debate among the relevant Chinese research community.
The study attempts to reveal the doctrinal foundations of Hungary’s sweeping sub-national governance reforms (SGRs) that took place in the period 2010-2014. It compares actual SGRs with internationally mainstream doctrines of major contemporary reform, to determine the extent to and the ways in which Hungarian SGRs are a mixture of these trends as opposed to being a novel paradigm of its own. The study concludes that Hungary’s reform path substantially diverges from all three major reform paradigms examined—that is, New Public Management, New Public Governance, and the Neo-Weberian State. We end with the proposition that this deviation is not of an unintended or accidental nature; rather, it seems to be part of a coherent and rationally pursued vision of (sub-national) governance, possibly referred to as "illiberal."
This article explores two questions related to whether passive representation leads to active representation using Brazilian municipal data: Does electing women to public office increase the proportion of women in public administration? Does the representation of women in elected office and public administration lead to better representation of women’s interests? Results suggest that women elected leaders increase the probability that women will be appointed to head public agencies, and through these agency heads they indirectly affect representation in other administrative positions. In addition, women elected officials and public administrators are also associated with the adoption of more women-friendly policies.
Bad policy design affects public service delivery and the conditions for providing public services at operational level. Fragmentation of public management due to governance reforms becomes visible in policy failure; a problem for governments, public service providers, and citizens. The poor outcome of a reformed regional museum education policy is the starting point for a study of paradoxes of regional cultural policy implementation. The article opens up the black box of policy implementation and identifies goal conflicts in regional development policy, conflicting expectations among stakeholders, as well as governance paradoxes resulting in gaps between policy intentions, output, and outcome.
This article discusses the social, political, and administrative dynamics behind shifting welfare policies and social innovations in the senior care provided by Danish municipalities. The main argument is that institutional entrepreneurs are key agents of change and that institutional entrepreneurship is rooted in exogenous (e.g., scarce resources) and endogenous (e.g., cognition) factors. The article shows how exogenous factors challenge existing practices or necessitate change, while new ideas among institutional entrepreneurs in politics and administration give direction to institutional change.
Prior studies of public pensions emphasize the effect of the political economy on the performance of pension systems. We argue that this approach overlooks important institutional features of pension governance and fails to account for endogenous, indirect, and lagged effects. In this article, we describe those limitations and develop an institutional framework to explain the complexity of public pension governance. We identify and discuss critical environmental conditions, formal institutions, and the causal pathways between institutions and pension performance. We also use a case study of the Florida Retirement System to illustrate the explanatory power of the institutional framework.
This is an exploratory study that examines federal employee’s satisfaction with work–life balance or family-friendly policies. We rely on intersectionality as a theoretical framework to examine how gender, race, and class interact in the formation of their views. Drawing from the 2014 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, we examine how minority women compare with non-minority women regarding their perception of fairness of programs and policies aimed at the promotion of work–life balance. This topic is significant because satisfaction and participation in work–life balance programs can have implications for overall job performance and satisfaction. Our findings suggest that race, education, and proximity to retirement all play a role in work–life balance (family-friendly) policy satisfaction.
We examine how a good faith effort at collaboration with Native peoples in the regulation of white-fronted geese in North America nonetheless resulted in their marginalization. Our investigation explores how dramatically different ways of knowing are articulated and contested in a complex, structurally differentiated, and highly professionalized institutional setting—the Migratory Bird Management Regime of North America. We find local knowledge emerging among and being legible to the street-level administrators of the management regime, but unable to penetrate regional management, where methodological commitments reinforced existing problem frames and administrative objectives.
Performance audit is widespread but contested. The "audit society" proposition holds that audits are rituals producing comfort, whereas the "mandatory audit" proposition in public policy presumes that audits have positive impacts. Common to both propositions is the lack of empirical evidence of audit impact. This article analyzes survey data of the auditees’ tendency to make changes as a consequence of Supreme Audit Institutions’ performance audits. Civil servants who had experienced performance audits responded that ministries and agencies tend to make changes, but instrumental, institutional, and political factors have an effect on the institution’s propensity to make changes.
This article introduces a theory of government and voluntary sector failure in the context of disaster relief and recovery. It theorizes that government and voluntary sectors will fail based on the amount of demand. This implies that the supply of public services is fixed and demand for public services varies to a greater degree than previously considered. This article argues that government, formal nonprofit organizations, and informal voluntary groups will simultaneously fail (or partially fail) to supply public services. Furthermore, limited supply of services and varying levels of demand predict failure to deliver relief and recovery services.
Research on organizational commitment has generally ignored the role that social networks may play in shaping work-related attitudes. In this article, we explore two network-based mechanisms: (a) structural position effects, based on centrality, and (b) social influence, based on direct social contact with peers. Relying on network, survey, and administrative data for more than 400 employees in 21 different organizations, our findings suggest that both structural position and social influence are associated with organizational commitment. These findings have important implications for how public organizations structure work teams, hire and promote employees, and engage in reform efforts.
This study uses data from a national survey of economic developers working in local government to explore gender differences in the perceived importance of public services in the business recruitment process. The results of a series of ordinal logistic regression models suggest women are more likely than men to believe public service quality and availability are important concerns for companies considering their region. These findings are consistent with the body of work examining gender gaps in the perceptions of both policymakers and the general public that may have important implications for local governments interested in promoting economic growth.
Understood in economic terms, interest elevates baser human impulses and degrades higher human potential as it motivates individuals to value material gains over moral ones. Because of this influence, it is difficult to consider interest as a regime value. But just because it is beleaguered does not mean it ought to be abandoned, especially because interest is placed front and center in the constitutional order. Providing a perspective of the merits of interest, Alexis de Tocqueville offers a conceptualization that allows this regime value to be relevant even for contemporary administrators operating in spaces of diffused public responsibility.
Although the transparency and sustainability of governments are currently of great interest to researchers, few studies have specifically addressed these issues. Nevertheless, previous research has found sustainability transparency as a key issue in government–citizen relations, especially for local governments (LGs). The aim of this article is to identify factors that promote online transparency regarding the sustainability of public policies, by means of an empirical study of 62 LGs in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Southern Europe. Our results show that the prevailing administrative tradition may influence the degree of transparency of LGs, with population, socioeconomic, and financial factors being relevant.
This article places the Obama administration’s open government initiative within the context of evolution of the U.S. information society. It examines the concept of openness along the three dimensions of Daniel Bell’s social analysis of the postindustrial society: structure, polity, and culture. Four "missing questions" raise the challenge of the compatibility of public service values with the culture of openness, address the right balance between postindustrial information management practices and the capacity of public organizations to accomplish their missions, and ask to reconsider the idea that greater structural openness of public organizations will necessarily increase their democratic legitimacy.
The enforcement of Access to Information laws is crucial to their effectiveness. Information commissioners, who enforce about one quarter of federal policies, are granted powers to help them execute their tasks. Many scholars argue that a commissioner should have the right to issue legally binding orders. However, we found that a commissioner with recommendation power is not necessarily less effective. This article argues that one must consider what binding decision power really means, whether the body uses it, and how the body uses its other powers and fulfills its tasks before declaring that binding decision power is the ultimate enforcement tool.
This article explores some aspects of the place of gender in educating public administrators for leadership, an important component of re-orienting women’s public sector role. While previous research has examined the place of gender in the Master of Public Administration (MPA) diversity and core courses, this study adds to our knowledge by analyzing gender in popular introductory MPA textbooks and in leadership courses. The aim is not only to see whether these offerings cover gender issues but whether they explore such issues only through a legal lens or supplement that approach with analysis of stereotypes in the gendered workplace—what management scholars call second-generation bias issues. The research finds that introductory textbooks and most leadership courses do not include material on second-generation bias issues. This tendency is unfortunate as some feminist theorists argue that adding education in second-generation bias issues to MPA education would help increase the role of women as leaders.
Although Belgian politics has experienced numerous political conflicts in the post-war period, the Brussels political system has, since 1989, remained relatively stable. This has led some scholars to suggest that Brussels may be experiencing a depolarization of its traditional linguistic cleavages. In this article, we analyze the possible realignment of these divisions and the possible emergence of an identity based on the urban territory. We trace the development of the public administrations at sub-state level in Brussels post 1989 and add new data on the often neglected elite-level bureaucrats and their individual attachment perceptions. This topic is most relevant as the organization and functioning of the public administrations have proven to be one of the major politically and socially divisive issues of the power-sharing agreement. The article draws on published and unpublished documents and interviews with 20 elite-level bureaucrats from four distinct public administrations operating in Brussels. The findings suggest that a regional urban attachment is emerging among the bureaucratic elite; however, this attachment would not prove robust if either community were to feel threatened. The likelihood of unintended policy making, which would have unintended consequences, is quite high given that the bureaucratic elite do not have confidence in the administrative structures of the city. The findings should be of interest to those interested in identification perceptions and to those studying other more fragile environments in and around Europe’s borders that may one day consider adopting the Brussels approach to conflict management.
This article sets out to test the hypothesis that differences in fundamental job characteristics (service vs. regulation) affect discretionary street-level decision-making. The hypothesis was tested by examining whether systematic variation could be found in the moral assessments on which street-level bureaucrats performing different types of core tasks base their decisions. The issue was addressed in a comparative case study comprising three institutions, which differ systematically as far as variables of tasks are concerned. Findings showed that differences in core tasks do affect discretionary decision-making, as divergent moral assessments determine and justify decision-making across different core tasks.
The crisis has impact on Local Government forcing it to be more transparent in management of public resources. This article examines theoretically and empirically the determinants of the levels of transparency in Local Governments based on the agency and legitimacy theories. For the purpose of this study, the analysis is based on the Spanish municipalities over a period of 4 years, between 2008 and 2012. Running a random effect panel data model, our results showed that transparency is associated with economic and political factors. Unemployment rate, gender, electoral turnout, and political strength have a significant effect on the level of transparency. For other variables like investment and fiscal pressure, we did not find significant evidence of their effect on the level of transparency. We conclude that the factors that best explain the variation in the level of transparency in the period of crisis are associated with political factors.
Despite a great deal of research that examines consequences of transparency policies, there have been few empirical assessments of the relationship between transparency and citizens’ perceptions of public sector performance. This study focuses upon the relationship between computer-mediated transparency and perceptions of public sector performance in particular. We hypothesize that citizens’ increased exposure to computer-mediated transparency will be positively related to their generalized perceptions of public sector performance. We also hypothesize that this positive relationship is mediated by citizens’ satisfaction with public service provision. Results suggest that increased exposure to computer-mediated transparency is positively associated with citizens’ perceptions of public sector performance, but negatively related to citizens’ satisfaction with public service provision. Moreover, the positive relationship between computer-mediated transparency and perceptions of public sector performance increases when controlling for public service satisfaction, indicating the presence of inconsistent mediation.
Although some studies highlight the risks to fiscal discipline, others regard legislative scrutiny as essential for fiscal transparency. We consider it necessary to analyze the potential risks and benefits associated with legislative budgetary oversight simultaneously. In particular, this article aims to ascertain whether legislative budgetary oversight is a risk to fiscal discipline as well as a benefit to budget transparency. Using a sample of 75 countries from around the world for 2009, we find that legislative budgetary oversight is not only a risk in terms of decreasing fiscal discipline but also a benefit, as stronger legislative oversight leads to greater budget transparency.
Accountability is a pivotal concern of applied social science. This article asserts that in many situations a full explanation of the sources of accountability requires the application of concepts from sociology and management science, in addition to those from the market-based approaches inspired by economics. The article describes the market-based approach to accountability exemplified by agency theory, applies it to school reform and derives several predictions about the likely success of market-based approaches to school reform, and documents the lack of evidence supporting the contention that programs for school choice will markedly improve teacher work effort and performance (as measured by student test scores). The social actor approach, rooted in sociological and management theories, is introduced and used to describe the pressures and norms operating in the public schools that foster accountability even in the absence of competition between schools for students. The article concludes with some implications for practice and research on public sector accountability.
How can we evaluate government transparency arrangements? While the complexity and contextuality of the values at stake defy straightforward measurement, this article provides an interpretative framework to guide and structure assessments of government transparency. In this framework, we discern criteria clusters for political transparency—democracy, the constitutional state, and social learning capacity—and for administrative transparency—economy/efficiency, integrity, and resilience. The framework provides a structured "helicopter view" of the dimensions that are relevant for a contextual assessment of transparency. An illustrative case discussion of the introduction of Freedom of Information (FOI) in the United Kingdom demonstrates its utility.
How applicable is the bureau voting model to the United States? Although the literature suggests that government employees are more liberal and vote more Democratic, these findings have recently become inconsistent stateside. In addition, there are strong counterarguments to the premises of the bureau voting model. It is hypothesized that bureaucrats are neither more likely to support Democrats nor more liberal. Using data from the American National Election Studies covering a 30-year period, probit and generalized ordered logit models support these new hypotheses. These results suggest that the bureau voting model may need to be refined for the United States.
Government information system failures are filling not only newspapers but also parliamentary and administrative reports. This article deals with a case in which information and communication technologies (ICT)–related failure claimed by the media influenced the parliamentary agenda, and intra-governmental relations. Drawing on a narrative analysis of a Dutch parliamentary commission’s hearings, it argues that the way the issue was initially framed by the media and then adopted, un-problematized, by Parliament steered the direction of action toward specific administrative solutions, thus shaping the landscape of possible organizational alliances. The article recommends a proactive role of parliaments in framing ICT projects.
More than half the U.S. farm labor force is undocumented, and thousands of U.S. employers hire farmworkers through the short-term H-2A visa program. Immigration enforcement and H-2A policy thus have an important role in farm labor markets, but its nature depends on street-level policy implementation dynamics. An interview-based case study in New York State extended literature on street-level bureaucrats by broadening the focus to actors outside government in the context of labor markets. The research specifies employer roles in policy implementation as beneficiaries of policy, de facto policy implementers, and citizens reacting to or attempting to influence policy.
The issue of poverty is exacerbated by the concentration of low-income families in neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage. Public administrators in housing and social services are uniquely situated to address poverty and concentrated disadvantage through an explicit housing with services agenda. This article provides a theoretical and empirical review of issues associated with poverty and concentrated disadvantage from the perspective of subsidized housing provision. The review leads to the recommendation that administrators provide housing with services. The article finishes with an agenda for placing standardized assessments that are connected to evidence-based services within the delivery of public housing.
Administrative reorganization has become widespread practice in modern democracies. Various case studies highlight the relevance of political ideology for bureaucratic contraction, others the role of socioeconomic pressure and institutional constraints. We examine these explanations in a study of the German Länder, which have substantially contracted their bureaucracies since the 1990s. Quantitative analysis of a novel data set of 479 ministerial departments in 13 Länder over two decades suggests that the ideological complexion of governments is a stronger predictor of administrative reform than socioeconomic pressure or institutional constraints. Moreover, interaction models show how socioeconomic and institutional variables condition the effect of ideology.
Since the early 1990s, scholars have expanded their examination of historical context in the development of public administration in the United States, particularly in the area of gender. No one, however, has examined how the alternative, or social-justice-centered, view of public administration survived between its initial period of development and its revival after World War II. This article fills that gap by demonstrating how Anna Lederer Rosenberg, one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s key advisors from 1941 through 1945, maintained the alternative view through her political facilitation and national visibility.
In this article, we investigate whether increased participation offers a way of addressing wicked policy problems. We utilize a natural policy experiment in the form of a 2010 reform of Swedish wildlife management policy aiming to solve longstanding conflicts over predators through increased stakeholder participation in regional Wildlife Management Boards. Using a panel study design containing quantitative and qualitative data, we estimate pre- and post-reform levels of three wickedness-reducing mechanisms: legitimacy, deliberation, and conflict intensity. Despite a substantial increase in participation, we find no evidence of reduced wickedness after the reform.
This qualitative study analyzes an Italian hospital’s endeavor to introduce a coproduction practice and the critical factors that affect its efficacy and efficiency. The empirical evidence shows that the meaningful engagement of the patient can be achieved only by factoring in the socioorganizational conditions of all stakeholders; that no divide exists between organizational production and client coproduction, rather, it is a relationship of interdependence that in turn raises critical issues; and that formalized and effective "practices-in-use" cannot work unless there is strong managerial commitment and enforcement of the new coproduction initiative.
Information and communications technology (ICT) not only improves public service delivery but also enables governments to better engage citizens, called "e-participation." Although efforts have been taken to promote citizen participation online, e-participation utilization remains at a low level. To better understand this phenomenon, scholars have explored the factors affecting citizens’ e-participation usage, such as sociodemographic characteristics, Internet usage, political perceptions, off-line political activities, and so forth. However, the role of e-participation applications’ functionality has been overlooked. Using data from the 2012 European Union (EU) eGovernment survey, this study found that functionality is positively associated with citizens’ e-participation usage and high-level functionality motivates citizens to use e-participation more.
Scholarship on transparency and freedom of information (FOI) conveys an overwhelmingly "political" narrative. Most uses of FOI, however, are private and nonpolitical in nature. This article explores the gap between the literature and empirical reality by means of an "Information-Gathering Matrix," a framework for conceptualizing the motivations, uses, and impacts associated with FOI. Following a broad literature review, case studies illustrate that while FOI uses may be multifarious and prima facie nonpolitical, at least three of the matrix’s four quadrants—from the public to the private and the political to the nonpolitical—frequently tend toward politicization.
Many public administration studies have argued that agency network activity brings about important policy benefits such as informational advantages and stakeholder support. Given the proposition, agency network activity would positively affect congressional delegation because policymaking authority tends to be delegated to the agencies that can achieve appropriate policy outcomes. This hypothesis is examined by several regression tests using data from U.S. federal agencies. Statistical results indicate that the agencies with significant network ties are likely to yield more appropriate public policies and have greater statutory discretion.
Recent research has paid increasing attention to the institutional dynamics of EU agencies in post-delegation but has barely explored the conditions under which patterns of informality shifting institutional power balances are likely to emerge on agency boards. Based on documentary analysis and 60 semi-structured interviews covering 22 agencies, this article examines under what conditions boards’ formal configurations in which the Member States hold a majority are informally altered to the advantage of the Commission. The article argues that functional motivations are present in the emergence of informal rules empowering the Commission, but those rationales are conditional to distributional considerations.
This study is a continuation of previous work that emphasizes an alignment between the internal management (strategy formulation) of public organizations and their environment (strategic stance). As public organizations formulate strategy through strategic planning or logical incrementalism, they relate to their external environments through the strategy stances of prospector or defender. Current research asserts that organizations with a prospector stance perform better when they adopt logical incrementalism, whereas organizations with a defender stance perform better when they formulate their strategy through formal strategic planning (FSP). Our study on the transit industry, however, could not find support to these assertions.
The purpose of this study was to examine the variables impacting on whistle-blowing intentions in the public services of two developing countries, South Africa and Mauritius. In particular, this study considers the barriers to whistle-blowing and the effect of demographic and cultural values on the perceptions of these barriers. The study finds major differences between South Africa and Mauritius with minor differences in regard to gender and education.
Despite efforts to control fraud in public assistance programs, the perception and realities of the problem persist. Serious barriers related to data collection and research methods impede the understanding of how and why fraud occurs, thereby limiting options for improving program integrity. This article argues that based on a complex adaptive systems (CAS) perspective, social welfare fraud can be understood as a collective outcome emerging from repeated interactions among stakeholders during the routinized business processes of public assistance programs. While dealing with fraud, great attention must be paid to how it occurs and persists, not just how serious the problem is or who commits these crimes.
The World Bank has pioneered the concept of "privatization" in developing countries with the aim of creating economic and social sustainability since the 1990s. This study examines privatized universities by focusing on the accountability framework in Bangladesh. Using a multi-method approach (a survey of 1,046 students from all 52 universities in the country and policy documents from 1992-2014), the study reveals that weak macro accountability (specifically, a vague regulatory framework, lack of enforcement, government leniency, and corruption) is a contributing factor in the unsuccessful drive for higher growth of privatized higher education institutions (HEIs). The study also raises a question on the success of the Washington Consensus in a developing country. The findings demonstrate that urgent attention is required from the Bangladesh government and donor agencies (The World Bank, the UNESCO, and the International Monetary Fund [IMF]).
In contrast to the widely voiced notion about a current neoliberal hegemony, the article seeks to demonstrate that the distinctly liberal form of governmental rationality and practice is neither neoliberal, at least not in the conventional sense of the word, nor hegemonic. Rather than a minimal government pursuing laissez-faire politics, liberal government is an ‘omnipresent’ form of government aiming to widen and deepen a particular regulatory game of freedom and security. Important as this form of omnipresent government may currently be, however, it is also limited by the persistence and pervasiveness of the key historical alternatives to liberal government: domination, democracy, and discipline.
Human society can be roughly divided into three spheres and each has different public values. While public values should be at the heart of public administration and social development, they are often significantly weakened by their philosophical ambiguity and immeasurability. This article seeks to clarify the nature of public values, how they are created, and how they can be measured. An open public value account is constructed as a policy tool for assessing as many public values as possible. It is used to examine the public values creation in China and the United States.
Do government employees have more confidence in government than their counterparts in other sectors? The public service motivation (PSM) literature suggests that they should, but this assertion has never been tested. In this paper, we examine how public servants feel about the federal government and compare these feelings with those of employees in other sectors. Although we find that public servants hold some parts of government in higher regard than their counterparts, this finding does not apply to every branch of government. The patterns of confidence in institutions we find among America’s public servants suggest that there is a limit to PSM.
This article focuses on one expression of the relationship between science and policy analysis: the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in the Office of Management and Budget. It has used a classic policy analysis technique—cost–benefit analysis—as the way that the White House will review regulations. This discussion highlights the utilization of the cost–benefit method in the OIRA decision-making process, the roles of various actors in the system, and the response to that use by various policy actors. It illustrates the difficulty of utilizing rational analytical methods in an environment of political conflict.
Even though the changes in governance arrangements of postcommunist countries have received considerable attention from the observers of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region, "transition" as the prevailing paradigm for governing postcommunist societies has rarely been questioned. More than 20 years, it has served as the guiding framework for thinking about and practicing postsocialist transformation. By using Estonia as a critical case among the CEE countries, this research employs Foucauldian discourse analysis and deconstructive reading for exploring how public administration has been constituted by governing postcommunist change as "transition" and the limitations of, and the alternatives to, this approach.
This article discusses how the extension of network governance influences the de facto independence of regulatory agencies. Assuming that agencies gain de facto independence vis-à-vis the government when they experience a substantive increase in their reputation, we argue that agency participation in international governance networks contributes to strengthen agency domestic positions due to organizational learning and the expansion of expert knowledge involved in such interactions. Based on a case study of the Spanish nuclear regulatory agency (Nuclear Safety Council [CSN]), the article highlights how its involvement in international governance networks promoted the agency’s de facto independence during the 2000s.
The article examines international development assistance—aid. Donors assert that experts possess predictive knowledge and project belief in such knowledge into organizational form—the Logical Framework Approach. While such beliefs lack predictive power, as aid operates under multiple sovereignty conditions, no single authority determines truth. Donors ease pressure on experts by accepting variation in intervention logics, yet assert the validity of "single truth" knowledge; knowledge production practices have not basically changed. Belief that what is believed is true, revealed in aid work, illuminates the nature of policy in rich countries and helps explain low confidence in government.
This article examines the applicability of responsive regulation within an inter-agency framework in the financial sector. To do so, the article uses the self-regulatory organization that is responsible for governing Canada’s investment dealers and brokerage firms—the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC)—as a prototype example to illustrate how responsive regulation may be encouraged within an inter-agency framework. While the theory aspires to general applicability, particular consideration is given to its ability to govern multiple agencies. In particular, the article pays attention to jurisdictional boundaries to ensure that inter-agency relationships have some legitimacy in market regulation.
What role do employee features play for the success of different personnel management practices for promoting high performance? Using data from a randomized survey experiment among 5,982 adult individuals of all ages, this article examines how gender conditions the compliance effects of different incentive treatments—each relating to the basic content of distinct types of personnel management practices. The findings indicate that males and females are more similar than different in terms of the effects of incentive treatments: Significant average effects are found for three of five incentive treatments, but gender does not appear to moderate these relationships.
The introduction of choice in public services, and in health services more specifically, is part of a wider movement to introduce consumerism in health care. We analyze how citizens perceive the availability of choice of primary care doctors in 22 European countries and the factors that influence their opinions using multilevel analyses and data from the European Social Survey (Round 2, 2004; 22 countries, N = 33,375). We distinguish between individual factors and structural or country-level factors. We find that perceptions of having enough choice are not influenced by the opportunity to freely choose primary care doctors, the density of doctors in a country, or the level of health expenditure. Instead, these perceptions are influenced by individual attributes, such as personal health circumstances, age, sex, location of residence (rural or urban), and level of satisfaction with the health system.
This article develops a heuristic for comparative governance analysis. The heuristic depicts four network types by combining network structure with the state’s capacity to metagovern. It suggests that each network type produces a particular combination of input and output legitimacy. We illustrate the heuristic and its utility using a comparative study of agri-food networks (organic farming and land use) in four countries, which each exhibit different combinations of input and output legitimacy respectively. The article concludes by using a fifth case study to illustrate what a network type that produces high levels of input and output legitimacy might look like.
In this study, I investigate the factors contributing to gender-based pay disparity in the federal government. T.he data from a Merit Principles Survey and from central personnel files are analyzed by the ordinary least squares (OLS) regression method. I show that gender and minority status are significantly and negatively associated with salary. However, the positive relationships between education and organizational tenure and salary are stronger than those between gender and minority status, and salary. This suggests that pay grade, performance, and seniority may now be more important determinants of salary than gender and minority status. Agency function is also shown to have a critical influence on the salary level of employees: Redistributive agencies that employ more women in traditionally male-dominated occupational categories, or ranks, tend to pay less than other agencies.
This article examines the history and formation of Medicare and Medicaid to determine how America’s two major public health insurance programs came to have such vastly different implementation structures. Drawing upon theories of social construction and path dependence, findings show how the programs were set on divergent paths. This article also explores how the intergovernmental nature of Medicaid has promoted inequities, both between programs and among recipients across states. The findings show how social construction can influence the policy tool chosen and how the implementation structure impacts the individuals whom these programs are intended to serve for years to come.
This article argues that despite the widespread perception of the contrary, it is possible to articulate a classical liberal position on public administration that recognizes and confronts the problems of collective governance in the public domain, as opposed to either circumventing them or imposing institutional designs and policy standards not fully in accordance with the nature and structure of the collective phenomena in case. As such, the article revisits, clarifies, and elaborates a classical liberal inspired perspective on the problem of collective action and public governance, arguing for its distinctiveness while articulating its basic conceptual and theoretical elements.
In the past decade, European countries have contracted out public employment service functions to "activate" working-age benefit clients. There has been limited discussion of how contracting out shapes the accountability of employment services or is shaped by alternative democratic, administrative, or network forms of accountability. This article examines employment service accountability in Germany, Denmark, and Great Britain. We find that market accountability instruments are additional instruments, not replacements. The findings highlight the importance of administrative and political instruments in legitimizing marketized service provision and shed light on the processes that lead to the development of a hybrid accountability model.
The principles of normative nonprofit financial management instruct organizations to minimize overhead and to remain fiscally lean. Although prior scholarship has addressed many of the unintended negative consequences of normative managerial practices, research has not yet explored the impact of the norm of fiscal leanness on the ability of nonprofits to respond efficiently to their economic environments. This research seeks to address this gap and finds that fiscal leanness appears inhibit fiscal responsiveness. Results are derived from a panel of 501c3 public charities filing Forms 990 with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for fiscal years 2004 to 2011.
Local government structural reform programs are often based on the purported benefits of increased scale. We examine this question in relation to the proposed amalgamation program for New South Wales (NSW) by the NSW Independent Local Government Review Panel using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). We find evidence that a significant proportion of municipalities scheduled for amalgamation already exceed optimal scale and that the great majority of "amalgamated" entities will initially exhibit decreasing returns to scale. Our findings thus stand in stark contrast to the Independent Local Government Review Panel (ILGRP) contention that municipal mergers are the optimal approach to capturing economies of scale in NSW local government.
Following New Public Management and Reinventing Government reforms, public sector organizations are expected to pursue values such as efficiency, performance, and accountability, reflecting a "hard" identity as managed organization. By examining the contents of 394 core values retrieved from U.S. federal agencies, this study examines the importance of "hard" values relative to other values reflecting alternative identities. It finds that the agencies prefer to rely on "soft" values such as integrity, respect, openness, and customer orientation to express their identities. The article discusses the implications of these findings for our understanding of organizational actorhood in a public sector context.
This study analyzes whether there are any differences in enrollment and drop-out rates between e-participation and traditional participation in a long-term citizen collaboration project. The theoretical framework is based on networked individualism. Results show that capturing and maintaining citizen interest is a daunting task, even in a sensitive topic that might generate positive and tangible benefits for citizens. The higher levels of accessibility offered by information and communication technologies (ICTs) are not enough to reverse public apathy, and person-to-person contact is more effective to maintain engagement. Based on the findings, some actions to reduce dropout in long-term citizen collaboration projects are suggested.
This article is a critical examination of the dissimulation and the disaggregation of the state in the context of U.S. hegemony. The account builds on dual state theory which posits that alongside the "democratic state," there exists an authoritarian "security state." America’s post–World War II hegemony has been accompanied by the rise of a security state operating in a de facto state of emergency, ostensibly to combat global Communist/terrorist conspiracy. The term developed here to describe this phenomenon is exceptionism. Finally, this article examines the prospect of a supra-national deep state and theorizes about the implications of a tripartite state.
New public management, in its focus on outcomes and performance, provokes a question on whether there is a value-tradeoff between ethics and performance. The new–old creed of administrators have arguably been focused on a need to produce results—to get things done—to the extent that they could sometimes overlook unethical implications of their actions. This happens at a time when ethicists are looking at ways to emphasize non-teleological ethical reasoning, which creates a problem for public administration. This article uses the case of Overtown, a predominantly African American neighborhood near Downtown Miami that was once dubbed the Harlem of the South, to explore the ethics of administrative actions. Administrative actions, often driven by the pressure to get things done, in Overtown were behind the demise of this neighborhood. The article makes the case for ethics testing to accompany any moves to institutionalize managing-for-results in cases of community development, education, housing, health, and other areas that affect people directly.
This article investigates the behavioral consequences of homeowners’ participation in neighborhood affairs in Beijing, China. The research is based on semistructured interviews with homeowner leaders, property managers, and government officials. Participation fosters ethical citizenship by helping homeowners to acquire democratic skills, increase their awareness of property and political rights, and cultivate a sense of community. The development of ethical citizenship motivates homeowners to redefine legal citizenship. Homeowners have begun to take their rights seriously and actively participate in grassroots elections. The interaction between ethical and legal citizenship may carry important implications for future political development in China.
This article focuses on the personal dimension of the identity crisis in public administration and its impact on academic research. Devoid of a socially recognizable secure academic identity, practitioner represents the closest to an authentic identity for public administration researcher. This identification with the practitioner comes at a price and leads to the treatment of "public" as the Other in public administration research. Drawing insights from Said’s treatment of the concept of the Other, various dimensions of the discourses of power and knowledge in public administration which lead to categorization of the public as the Other are discussed.
This article highlights the importance of ethical environment in enhancing organizational performance. It is vital that organizations set ethical standards for their employees alongside providing an environment that fosters trust and commitment, provides leadership, and creates a high quality of workforce to improve organizational performance. To study the impact of ethical environment on organizational performance, we employ elements from André de Waal’s high-performance organization (HPO) framework. Data for this study come from a national survey conducted in four states in the United States, which are classified as at-will employment states: Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Florida. We find evidence that ethical environment plays an important role in determining organizational performance. This is particularly important in the context of at-will employment, where state governments are facing the challenge to maintain employee commitment while improving organizational performance.
As legislative venues are increasingly stymied by gridlock, much policymaking responsibility has devolved to the U.S. states. This article analyzes informational inputs and participation by actors within the rulemaking context, focusing on the level of state rulemaking. Specifically, we explore the rulemaking process in Colorado and North Carolina in two environmental sectors. Using data from documents and in-depth interviews, this study finds that goals of deliberative and open regulatory processes are not met in the cases studied here, in part due to informal pre-hearing processes established by agencies which can be navigated most successfully by the regulated community.
Explanations of politicization tend to focus on historical trends, administrative traditions, and government preferences. Absent from this literature are the actions of bureaucrats themselves. Drawing on theories of employee resistance from organization studies suggesting that changes threatening the financial security and professional identity of employees may be resisted, this article explores whether bureaucrats resist, and seek to deter, efforts of politicization. Through a most likely case study design of New Brunswick (Canada), this article finds that bureaucrats not only resisted efforts of politicization but that such actions also deterred the government from making any further dismissals.
The concept of accountability is defined based on a technical apparatus of rules. The prevailing conception, as described by Dubnick and Frederickson, focuses on control and consequence. They divide the concept into pre factum and post factum arenas, the former encompassing rules of control and the latter, consequences for the violation of rules. This two-dimensional view of accountability neglects the moment of decision and action, which might be referred to as the per factum dimension. Introducing this added dimension to accountability highlights the political quality of the concept by drawing attention to practices and opportunities for contestation.
We argue that philosophical pragmatism explicitly influenced the founding of American public administration. We analyze the case of The New Republic magazine to support our contention. The New Republic was founded in 1914 and edited by two pragmatists—Herbert Croly and Walter Lippmann—and put forth a pragmatic editorial stance that supported administrative innovations in American government that characterized the era. We illustrate the magazine’s pragmatic orientation toward public administration by analyzing the editorials of Croly and Lippmann and the writings of John Dewey, Frederick Cleveland, and Charles Beard—all written during the magazine’s first decade of publication.
Sector switching is an important phenomenon that casts light on public–private differences. Yet our knowledge about its prevalence and trends is limited. We study sector switching using unique Danish register-based employer–employee data covering more than 25 years. We find that sector switching constitutes 18.5% of all job-to-job mobility, and the trend is increasing both from public to private and from private to public. Sector switching is also generally increasing for middle managers, but for administrative professionals only the flows from private to public increase and for top managers only the flows from public to private increase.
Governments apply policies to alleviate administrative burdens especially for small businesses so as to increase their flexibility and viability. The objective of this article is the reduction of administrative burdens. The article presents a European initiative applying a method for measuring the costs incurred by small and medium enterprises on finding information for performing a public service. The method has been applied in five rural areas in Europe. In this article, a Greek case is analytically described. The research results provide guidelines to policy and decision makers for fighting businesses’ administrative burdens of the informational phase of public services.
The article raises the question of to what extent municipalities adopting reforms of decentralization are able to find a stable balance between strategic management and operational autonomy. We performed a case study in a Norwegian municipality with more than 10 years of experience in practicing the agency model characterized by a radical disaggregation and autonomization of functions. Our findings suggest that finding a stable balance seems hard to obtain. Instead, there is a continuous process of "negotiation" going on between the two levels. The risk of sliding back to hierarchy and central rule seems to be more or less permanent.
This article examines the relative impact of internal and external factors on the financial decline of local Arab municipalities in Israel. We employ a unique case study to demonstrate that the negative relationship between local management policies and local financial crises is stronger than any other relationship; in addition, this relationship is expected to hold for other local authorities in Israel and for local authorities in Western countries. The new theoretical approach developed in this study indicates that, with respect to local authorities, the "local management approach" more often explains a financial crisis than other approaches.
Using Kyrgyzstan as a source of data, this article answers the following questions about citizen engagement in budgeting: (a) What are the key challenges to implementing budget hearings in developing countries? and (b) What factors influence the sustainability of citizen engagement? It identifies several barriers hindering the implementation of local budget meetings, which range from simple organizational issues to complex problems—such as lack of trust and inadequate professional management skills. This study demonstrates that administrators and non-profit experts cite different types of impediments. The involvement of donors appears to have a positive impact on engagement practices in developing countries.
Prior research indicates that public employees are more risk averse than private employees. Little is known, however, about the causes of such differences. This study tries to examine the effects of the "self-select mechanism" and asks the following question: Do workers choose their sectors based on their risk preferences? Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey, this study finds that higher levels of risk aversion are predictive of a greater propensity to pursue careers in the public sector. Findings indicate that an individual’s risk preference is the key to his or her career choices. Managerial implications and suggestions are discussed.
The wide use of networks warrants a closer examination of network research in public administration. This article focuses on the methodological issues of network research and examines how social network analysis has been used and can be used to advance network research in public administration. Through a content analysis of 81 network articles, we found that the topics examined through network analysis have become more diverse in recent years. Yet relatively few articles have examined the intersection of policy networks, governance networks, and collaborative networks. The field needs more mixed-methods research designs and more research on the substructures of networks and multilevel networks.
In this essay, we consider the role of Big Data in the public sector. Motivating our work is the recognition that Big Data is still in its infancy and many important questions regarding the true value of Big Data remain unanswered. The question we consider is as follows: What are the limits, or potential, of Big Data in the public sector? By reviewing the literature and summarizing insights from a series of interviews from public sector Chief Information Officers (CIOs), we offer a scholarly foundation for both practitioners and researchers interested in understanding Big Data in the public sector.
How do politicians see constituencies? Various academics have furnished elected officials with effective evidence of activities on the assumption that "better" information inevitably leads to better decisions. I propose we consider official information as seeings. I discuss how constituencies are seen or made sense of in a municipal scrutiny committee meeting in England. Using the notion of "affordance," I will discuss not only how official evidence affords a perspective but also how that perspective is not reflective of the full spectrum of evidence that decision-makers may rely on to perform effectively.
The objective of this article is to provide an initial assessment of Facebook use by Western European municipalities considering two aspects: citizens’ engagement and municipalities’ activity. Data on 75 local governments in 15 countries were collected and tested for both government use and citizens’ engagement. Findings show that the use of Facebook by Western European local governments has become commonplace. The audiences of the official Facebook pages are rather high, but citizen engagement in general is low. Activity levels by municipalities and engagement levels by citizens in general terms are not statistically related to municipality characteristics, Facebook page metrics, or the technological readiness of the population. It seems that channel activity is more a decision on the part of local governments than a consequence of citizen demand. This article proposes a methodology that can be used in future research to measure citizen engagement on social media (SM) platforms. Furthermore, this research highlights the importance that local governments attach to clearly establishing the main purpose of their SM accounts to avoid frustration on the part of citizens that can lead to distrust and reduce the chances that citizens will invest their resources, time, and knowledge in participation.
An important transformation is reshaping once-distinct social structures, such as charitable and religious groups, family firms, and government agencies, into more analogous units called organizations. We use the ideas of sociological institutionalism to build a cultural explanation for the blurring between traditional sectors. In contrast to mainstream theories of power or functionality, we argue that it is increasingly difficult to distinguish between these historically separate entities because of global cultural shifts characterized by a growing emphasis on science, which renders the world subject to systematic principles, and the expansion of individual rights, responsibilities, and capacities. Focusing mainly on nonprofits, our approach explains two important features of contemporary blurring that are overlooked in current explanations: that the practices associated with becoming more like business or government in the nonprofit sector spread beyond known instrumental utility and the demands of funders or clients, and that sector blurring is not simply a transfer of new practices into the world of nonprofits and government. All sectors are changing in similar ways in the current period.
This article explores the differences in the use of the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) system to manage food safety risks in the food chain from farm to fork in the EU and the United States. In particular, this article investigates the current uses and potential expansion of HACCP as a mechanism for the delivery of safe agricultural products, particularly safe produce. Using data derived from semi-structured interviews with regulatory actors in the EU and the United States, this article argues that the different approach to HACCP is a result of differing ideas about the role that it plays in the governance of food safety and the different concepts of the role of regulation in securing safe food. Finally, the article explores the difficulties of utilizing HACCP to manage produce safety risks and raises further challenges that must be met to ensure that HACCP can successfully fulfill its potential as a governance mechanism.
Despite more than 40 years of experience with Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) in the United States, little is known about who participates, how they participate, and whether agencies are responsive. This study explores the role of public participation in the American federal government EIA context, focusing on the different languages used by residents and administrators. Residents of affected geographic areas use nontechnical language to address concern over individual impacts, whereas administrators use technical language about aggregate impacts and focus on justification of decisions, rather than altering decisions based on public feedback.
Human rights obligations require legislation and standards to ensure access to the web. To understand how standards support human rights obligations, this article uses a framework that differentiates the legal or practical use of mandatory and voluntary standards. This article demonstrates how voluntary web accessibility standards emerged from legislation in the United Kingdom, which suggests standardization processes mediate a standard’s use in law. Data from policy analyses and semistructured interviews demonstrate the association among policy actors, social institutions, and the use of a standard in law. This article recommends evaluating the impact of standardization processes in realizing human rights obligations.
Whereas previous public administration studies have focused on middle managers’ roles in implementation, this study contributes to the literature by emphasizing middle managers’ other roles, specifically, upward roles that concern (a) championing alternatives and (b) synthesizing information. We examine whether middle managers are more involved in synthesizing information than championing alternatives and test multiple levers that increase these roles at the individual, organization, and interorganizational levels. This study finds that job security, connections with stakeholders, and autonomous motivation are among the most important predictors. This study calls for taking a broader perspective on middle managers’ contributions to public organizations.
A commitment to social equity is often thought to require that administrators engage in explicit forms of direct policy advocacy but the inter-organizational, cross-sector networks that characterize 21st-century administration offer many opportunities to advance social equity by ensuring procedural fairness. Focusing on key aspects of collaborative governance reveals such opportunities as they emerge in the selection, recruitment, and retention of stakeholders; in facilitating the deliberations and work of collaboratives, and ensuring accountability within the network of partners.
In recent years, challenges in terms of both man-made and natural disasters as well as the lack of resources to deal with such challenges have become increasingly critical to local government. This article adopts an alternative view of strategy-based approach to examine how different strategic styles affect organizational capability in a crisis response. The results of a survey of middle managers in Taiwan’s local government highlighted the relations between strategic styles and crisis response capability. Such results provide public managers with a better understanding of what strategic styles they should adopt to improve their organizational capability in responding to crises.
The so-called "Stanford yacht scandal" is used as a case to examine the public policy origins of bureaucratic red tape. The 1988 erroneous charge by Stanford University accountants of depreciation of the university Yacht to federal research accounts resulted in disastrous audits and then changes to U.S. research policies that adversely affect research universities. The seeds of red tape and organizational disaster were planted in ill-designed public policies and then exacerbated by Stanford officials’ missteps. Overcompliance, misplaced precision, and overcontrol are causes of red tape. A "convergent indicators" approach is offered to help judge when rules have become red tape.
In response to the "natural sprawl" article by Okulicz-Kozaryn, I present a critical reflection on the assumption of studying the city in relation to individual and not collective gains. Okulicz-Kozaryn’s article on "natural sprawl" presents us with a reasonable argument on the benefits of natural sprawl on an individual’s happiness. This response re-visits some of the critical limitations of urban sprawl that are missing from Okulicz-Kozaryn’s "natural sprawl" argument. This response holds that an emphasis on "natural sprawl" and expansion of suburban areas, although it may produce increased happiness to the few, can also result in stratification along social and economic lines.
Although administrative hearings are not formal litigation, the process often resembles traditional adversarial adjudication. There are two parties, one has the burden of proof, both present evidence, and there is a ruling on the legal merits. Substantively, the hearing focuses on eligibility for benefits. Procedurally, the hearing runs like traditional courtroom litigation. Based on direct observation of 45 unemployment insurance claims and interviews with administrative law judges (ALJs), I find ALJs behave differently when there is no legal counsel present. Whereas the law that governs the hearing remains the same, the process for pro se claimant is substantively different.
Nonprofit organizations are now involved in human service provision internationally. However, these organizations perform in variable ways that potentially undermines their public service function. Eldercare is a case in point. Drawing on various strands of organization theory and taking German care homes as an example, this article argues that differences in performance (concerning "input quality") may emanate from a distinctive mode of external governance that is crowding out capacity for quality-oriented internal governance. This is illustrated by evidence from an embedded case study. The findings hint at general problems with a "marketized" devolution of public services to nonprofits.
In this article, I aim to resuscitate discussions about the value of pragmatism for public administration by identifying some pragmatist tools that can transform the structures and processes of the administrative state. First, public administrators, having adopted a pragmatist fallibilism, will be able to make decisions and act in the absence of certainty. Second, the pragmatist emphasis on participatory inquiry makes possible a more democratic administrative state. Third, pragmatism helps define a new role for experts and expertise that can be used to realize the goals of democratic administration.
Could public administration research gain something by analyzing issues, practices, and events in ways "beyond the usual"? Could we learn something by analyzing movies? As public administration researchers, we are curious to see what lessons can be drawn from movies based on chaos theory. In this article, three movies, Chaos Theory, The Butterfly Effect, and Mr. Nobody, are analyzed. Analyzing these movies provides two advantages. First, it illustrates the content of chaos theory in an easy-to-understand format. Second, it links the actions in the movies with those of public officials in the real world, providing ideal models of "chaos management."
Networks have become a widely utilized method for dealing with emergencies and disasters. Researching this aspect of the emergency management process can effectively contribute to the outcome of disaster response and recovery by providing insight into the operations and processes of disaster management as well as ways to better utilize network resources and relationships. This article compares vertical and horizontal networks using the example of two counties in Florida. Understanding these network approaches contributes to efficient emergency management networks, thus strengthening outcomes in disaster response and recovery. The findings offer practical implications for local-level emergency management agencies.
Recent studies have suggested that migrants are highly vulnerable to being trafficked. Malaysia, with its large number of migrants is vulnerable and is struggling to implement its Anti-Trafficking in Persons and Anti-Smuggling of Migrants Act 2007. There is also little information on implementation experience so far. Through in-depth interviews with government bureaucrats and other stakeholders, this study seeks to gain some insight into Malaysia’s policy implementation experience. It finds inadequate coordination, limited resources, poor information flow, enforcement approach, hierarchical control structure, and need for change as the major factors constraining effective policy implementation.
Sprawling and leapfrogging suburbs, as opposed to compact central cities, appear peaceful, clean, and safe. They appear happy and healthy. On the other hand, suburbs look and feel fake, dull, and alienating. Which one is happier and healthier, sprawling or compact areas? I discuss pros and cons of sprawling and compact counties drawing on social and natural sciences. I also perform a simple quantitative exercise—I regress several wellbeing/health measures on sprawl and density at county level. Sprawl is measured with Ewing’s index. Sprawling and low-density counties are healthier in terms of mentally and physically healthy days than non-sprawling counties, controlling for many predictors of health. I interpret it as the advantage of low-density living close to nature. Given rather unaesthetic nature of American suburbia, I argue that if we left more nature in suburbs, people living there would be even happier.
Although routinely criticized for its many flaws, bureaucracy, as a form of organizing, remains perceived as being more efficient than any other currently known forms of administration. In fact, efficiency is often considered as the primary purpose of bureaucratic organization. This article examines the current administrative telos of American bureaucracies. It makes the twofold argument that bureaucracy’s dominant purpose, as a form of organizing, changes with time, and given the contingency of the political and historical developments of the past four decades, administrative efficiency can no longer be freely associated with bureaucratic constructs. It is hypothesized that instilling stability, by shielding public servants and their decision-making from environmental volatility and stakeholders’ challenges, much of which are political in character, has become the current dominant telos of American bureaucracies.
Good governance involves managing conflicting values, leading to the main research question, which consists of three parts: Which public value profiles do public administrators have, which value conflicts do they experience, and which coping strategies are used? Here, previous literature on public value conflicts is discussed first and linked to the literature on street-level bureaucrats and on coping strategies. Then two case studies are presented: a municipality and a hospital. The findings show six different value clusters that administrators adhere to and clarify which value conflicts are typically experienced in various public sector organizations and which different coping mechanisms are used.
This article examines collaboration between Head Start and the Virginia Preschool Initiative to see how collaborative challenges vary given the degree of collaborative activity between programs. Limited collaborative management research addresses how challenges can change with varying degrees of collaborative activity; this research addresses the gap. Collaborative challenges are discussed through a series of three paradoxes, with evidence of three degrees of collaborative activity: cooperation, coordination, and collaboration. Drawing on qualitative interviews, the author reports that challenges differ with varying degrees of collaborative activity and that coordination between programs produces the most challenges.
Assessments are an important instrument in shaping global counterterrorist financing (CTF) policy. However, while CTF policies had an impact on terrorist activity, it is not clear which CTF measures are useful and which are not. Past assessments have had a bias toward expanding the scope and intensity of CTF regulations and implementation because of their focus on output and outcome of measures, rather than on their impact on terrorist activity. The article discusses major features of CTF evaluations and places them into wider frameworks of assessments in high-risk politics.
A national financial collapse can engender a heightened gubernatorial sense of accountability, leadership, and learning. An attempt at theory building on this theme uses governors’ 2009 speeches as an historical artifact and policy document recording the kind of rhetoric they employed during the "Great Recession." A quantitative analysis reveals correlations between gubernatorial characteristics and rhetoric. A qualitative approach yields gubernatorial constructs of accountability, leadership, and learning at a time of crisis. The results offer a foundation for further theory building using cross-sectional and longitudinal data.
Drawing on perspectives from several academic traditions, we argue that sustainability is best understood as intergenerational social equity. When viewed thusly, it is possible to determine what socially responsible organizations look like in practice. After reviewing historic claims and evidence of sustainability, we turn to modern applications of institutionally based sustainability. We then describe sustainability in the framework of an intergenerational social equity model, claiming that the legacies of social and cultural institutions are evidence of sustainability in action. We conclude with a discussion of what it means for an organization to be socially responsible given our understanding of sustainability.
Okulicz-Kozaryn’s article "Natural Sprawl" analyzes the link between happiness and place. This research suggests that suburbanites are happier than city dwellers and that there is an independent effect of sprawl/density on well-being/health. He concludes that people in lower density (suburbs) are healthier. I argue that residential happiness does not depend on place but is based on individual-level factors such as lifestyle, worldview, preference, economics, and opportunity. In addition, the idea of "natural sprawl" is not new but resembles Howard’s Garden City model. Regional planning is a path toward creating diverse housing opportunities within an environmentally sustainable and socially equitable framework.
Images of shuttle launches and earthrise over the rim of the moon are iconic representations of American strength, technical capacity, and the future of humankind. Yet, the agency responsible for these images, NASA, finds itself chronically underfunded, buffeted by changes in externally defined direction, and currently without a clear next mission. This raises questions about the place of the agency in American space science and engineering. Here NASA’s relations with its aerospace contractors are explored to uncover its changing roles vis-à-vis industry, from directive to adaptive to facilitative, and the impact of these contracting relations on agency program definition.
Reputation-seeking can explain some decisions of U.S. federal agencies. However, it has remained unclear whether it could be used in the European context where agencies have proliferated in national and regional governance in the past few decades. This article shows that reputation-seeking can occur at autonomous agencies in the European context. A unique participant-observational study of an international public health agency acting in response to the 2009 H1N1 "swine" influenza pandemic provides bases for this conclusion. It adds empirical support for the proposition using real-time observations of and in-depth interviews on the agency’s decision-making processes.
Government reforms in South Korea, beginning in the 1980s, moved toward deconcentration and deregulation in the 1990s and 2000s. However, the contents of the reforms under the "transformational" presidencies following democratization, which aimed to raise the quality of government and respond to increasing social polarization and political discord, did not significantly reduce state power or depoliticize policy making. Instead, state strength was consolidated through tripartite politicization: the rise of ministers as a third force in policy making vis-à-vis the president and legislature. Under the "post-transformational" presidencies of Lee Myung-Bak and Park Geun-Hye, government reforms can be summarized as bipartite politicization between the president and legislature, as ministerial power has been reduced.
Alcohol-related income generation is compared across monopoly and license off-premise alcohol regulatory models in U.S. states, 1977-2010. An optimum organizational-ownership mix is found when states directly own alcohol wholesale and employ a network of state-owned retailers serving urban regions and private agents serving less-populated regions. Per capita alcohol-related income in US dollars for these optimal systems was $58.82 compared with $26.72 with license systems. This disparity held after controlling for alcohol sales and retail hours of operation. The findings challenge the wisdom of asset divestment as a response to fiscal stress and contradict a central tenet of New Public Management (NPM) Theory.
International volunteering among older adults is an under-researched, yet growing, market. Policy experts and volunteer resource managers have proposed recruiting older volunteers to meet a demand for skilled volunteers that are able to serve for a longer duration abroad. This article utilizes data from the U.S. Current Population Survey (CPS) to assess how well older international volunteers from the United States fit this profile. Administrative implications are proposed as a way to further increase participation of skilled older adults in mutually beneficial international volunteer service.
States and municipalities across the country are struggling to match revenues with expenditures. Sometimes these governments use traffic fines and fees to help balance the budget more so at the city level than at the state level. This article explores the rationale for the issuance of traffic tickets and provides a state-level analysis on the occurrence of tickets and its relation with budget or public safety factors. Utilizing a cross-sectional multiple regression with lags, it was found that public safety concerns as evident in fatal crashes data has a significant and larger negative effect on the issuance of traffic tickets than budget concerns as measured by state credit ratings, unemployment rates, and housing prices.
Nowadays, media and media logic have become important and inherent elements in everyday practices of public administration and policy making. However, the logic of the media is often very different from, and conflicting with, the logic of political and administrative life. So the question of how public managers experience and deal with media attention is more relevant than ever. An analytical sketch of the literature on the relationship between public managers and media provides three main categories of literature (public relations, agenda, and mediatization tradition). These three categories are used to develop statements (so-called Q-sort statements) to capture the way public managers experience their relationship with the media. A group of managers involved in oversight then sorted these statements into order of preference. The research reveals three different groups of managers who show different attitudes to media attention and whom we have labeled as adaptors, great communicators, and fatalists.
In philosophical ethics, value pluralism is the idea, often associated with Isaiah Berlin, that there are many objective, conflicting, even incommensurable values and that this necessitates often tragic moral choices. Several administrative theorists (notably Wagenaar and Spicer) have argued that value pluralism has far-reaching implications for public administration. The cogency of their arguments is, however, questionable. This article critically examines the uses of value pluralism in administrative theory and concludes that its claimed implications are neither valid, nor exhaustive, nor congruent. Hence, the implications of value pluralism for public administration (if any) remain open to debate.
This study classifies U.S. federal agencies into five types, based on Lowi’s well-known policy scheme. It constructs and tests five hypotheses to identify any structural differences in formalization, span of control, headquarters ratio, and personnel mobility between five types of agencies. The five hypotheses were generally confirmed. One important contribution of this study is that it made the first attempt to do hypothesis testing on Lowi’s agency types. Another contribution of this research is in its sub-classification of Lowi’s fourth category, constituent agencies, into staff and foreign defense agencies. According to the data analyses, each type of these agencies had distinctive organizational structures compared with other types. This legitimizes the sub-classification of constituent agencies. Consequently, this study argues that any significant differences in organizational structures were contingent on the type of policy mission pursued by an agency. Thus, civil service reformers should carefully consider various structural elements that are contingent on the type of agency when implementing reforms.
Previous theories on expert involvement have been classically based on the assumption of extrinsic influence-driven motivation. This article aims to construct an expert behavior theory to bridge the gap between intrinsic motivation and behavior of experts by identifying two dimensions, namely, the attitudes toward two relationships, between theory and practice and between experts and officials. These two intrinsic motivations determine the four roles of individual experts, namely, technology communicators, theory demonstrators, idea entrepreneurs, and knowledge brokers. The empirical strategy is based on a comparative study of four experts who were involved in the Wenling participatory budgeting reform in China.
Community-based research (CBR) is an approach used by researchers in partnership with practitioners and community members to tackle complex social problems for the betterment of society. Its application to the field of public policy and management is fairly new, and as a result, frameworks for its application are underdeveloped. This article discusses the rationale for applying this tool to the public policy and management field, and outlines major challenges that exist in its application. This article also highlights key principles of CBR and applies them to a study funded by a federal agency in the United States.
Although transformational leadership and goal clarity have been linked separately to self-efficacy, extra-role behaviors, and turnover intentions, research has not fully considered how transformational leadership and goal clarity work together to influence these attitudes and behaviors. This article built upon previous management and leadership theories by developing a causal model to explore exactly how transformational leadership and goal clarity collaborate to influence self-efficacy, extra-role behaviors, and turnover intentions. Moreover, the model was tested on public sector employees in the United States. The findings showed that goal clarity completely mediated the relationship between transformational leadership and both self-efficacy and extra-role behaviors. Goal clarity was also found to partially mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and turnover intentions. In addition, self-efficacy had a positive impact on extra-role behaviors and turnover intentions. The managerial and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed in the article.
This article examines how the introduction of a mix of state and market-based regulatory mechanisms representing formal and informal institutional elements, respectively, impacts disclosure level of director and executive remuneration in Australia. In doing so, our study steps beyond the simple state versus market dichotomy that the extant literature is primarily concerned with and proposes a symbiotic relationship between the two. The results of our study reveal that both state regulation and self-regulation as bundles of corporate governance can potentially join forces to ease agency conflicts. What is more, certain well-institutionalized organizational practices that guide agents toward self-regulation remain highly relevant and significant, even in the presence of pervasive state regulation. The synthesis of constructs borrowed from agency and institutional theories and its testing in an empirical setting of Australia verifies the significance of formal (state regulation) and informal (self-regulation) institutional aspects in addressing moral hazard agency conflicts. Our research provides insights for public policy makers as to how policies can be developed for good corporate governance. Particularly, in the context of current global economic crises, policy makers would be better off choosing those institutional mechanisms of corporate governance that complement the state regulation with self-regulation for the management and regulation of the modern global economy.
This study determined factors which influenced Canadian provincial (state) politicians when making funding decisions for public libraries. Using the case study methodology, Canadian provincial/state-level funding for public libraries in the 2009-2010 fiscal year was examined. The data were analyzed to determine whether Cialdini’s theory of influence and specifically any of the six tactics of influence (i.e., commitment and consistency, authority, liking, social proof, scarcity, and reciprocity) were instrumental in these budgetary decision-making processes. Findings show the principles of "authority," "consistency and commitment," and "liking" were relevant, and that "liking" was especially important to these decisions.
This article concerns the extent to which corrupt behavior is dependent on the organizational power structure and the resources available for illegal exchange. This qualitative study is based on 42 in-depth interviews with organizational actors in different organizations in Hungary. Four core themes emerged from the analysis of the interviews: (a) isolated corruption at the bottom, (b) the middle level’s own corruption, (c) "technicization" when middle-level professionals and expert groups are used to legalize the corruption of the dominant coalition, and (d) "turning-off controls" when organizational elites intentionally deactivate internal and external controls to avoid detection.
This article reflects on the film The Secret in Their Eyes as a platform to discuss fear of government and fear of the different other as obstacles to attain freedom. Oppressive administrative practices subsume the individual into fear and deep dread and truncate the basic human drive for interrelational experiences. In that context, not only is public space under siege but also sheer human existence. The author argues that parrhesia—free and direct speech or truth-telling—can be the first step toward regaining trust in others under oppressive governmental regimes or administrative situations.
The Nigeria Police Force is widely perceived by the public as the most corrupt and violent institution in Nigeria in a way that is not evidently insincere. In light of the generalization and banalization of police corruption and deviance, it is surprising that few works have addressed this problem that most directly affects the aggrieved Nigerian public. This article critically examines the embeddedness and ramifications of police corruption and deviance in Nigeria. The article is historically anchored and foregrounds colonial and military administrative policies that inculcated a strategy of corruption by coercion in the Nigeria Police Force.
This article challenges the performativity of organizational economics in the construction of "nexus-of-contract" organizations (or market bureaucracies) and inherent frames of instrumental accountability in the public sector. It argues for a duality between instrumental accountability and relational response-ability, and it shows how such a duality is related to a conceptualization of the public organization as a moral community rather than a market bureaucracy. Relational response-ability originates from the interconnected intentions of individuals at local positions. It encourages and channels intrinsic motivation, virtuous behavior, and stewardship. In a duality with instrumental accountability it may prevent a performance management paradox from occurring.
This study explores self-organized voluntary nonprofit collaboration to investigate why and under which circumstances nonprofit organizations participate in voluntary-based informal collaboration. To answer this question, we extend the institutional collective action (ICA) framework to identify the reasons why nonprofit organizations participate in informal collaborative arrangements. Based on data derived from a national survey of nonprofit organizations, we report evidence that the internal organizational conditions, embedded relationships, service areas, and client population of nonprofits influence their participation in informal collaborations.
Suspicious activity reports (SARs) are an increasingly important tool in the law-enforcement repertoire, especially for counterterrorism. In spite of significant problems with such reports, they are experiencing a resurgence that can be attributed partly to the institutionalization of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) "fusion centers," which are taking the lead in vetting and interpreting these reports as they enter into law-enforcement and counterterrorism databases. Based on a 3-year study of DHS fusion centers, this article reviews a range of problems with SARs and argues that robust community relationships are necessary to achieve contextually situated reports that eschew overt forms of bias.
Our methods of governance are shifting. We increasingly rely on an interconnected web of public, private, and nonprofit actors working across organizational, institutional, and sectoral boundaries to deliver public services. Our understanding of these new practices, however, is reliant on models of individual rationality and social behavior developed for hierarchical organizational forms. I argue that collectivist models of decentralized, self-organizing social forms may advance our understanding of modern governance practices and balance tensions in three areas: perspectives on organizations (structure or process), between individual liberty and collective responsibility, and whether increasing freedom or control over individuals enhances organizational efficiencies.
Organizational awareness and responses to workplace bullying is in a state of change and innovation. While employees are gaining awareness, organizations are unable or unwilling to change rapidly enough for employee needs. This paper examines the dynamic between agency (individual influence) and structure (organizational forces) as applied to workplace bullying in a public organization. A case example involving the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is included to explore the organizational impediments, particularly resulting from structure, in addressing workplace bullying.
What determines professional motivations and values of security operatives: sector or profession? Our article aims to answer this question through a survey study among police officers (n = 405) and private security guards (n = 329) in the Netherlands. Our results show that both groups closely resemble each other in how they prioritize motivations and values, although police officers have a slightly more "missionary" and "crime fighting" work ethic than private security guards. Mutual perceptions, however, reveal contrasts: Police officers look down on private security guards, while private security guards look up to police officers. We conclude with theoretical and practical implications of our findings.
This article addresses the role of private property rights in the process of spatial planning. The article considers this process from the viewpoint of the dichotomy of power between the private property rights and public policy. On one hand, there is the private owner, who has the right to decide how to use the land based on the right to dispose. On the other hand, there is the government, which has the right to aim at realizing socially desirable land use based on its role as custodian of the public good. The article investigates which mechanisms are available to settle these interests, such as the binding zoning plan with its regulations and the options for government land acquisition. The article in short presents the integrated approach that is in force in the Netherlands. As this settlement process concerns the relationship between citizen and State, attention is paid to human rights aspects of property. The article addresses briefly the issue of land administration systems; adjusting public powers and private rights at least requires good knowledge of who owns what and how. Without such knowledge, it appears to be difficult for any government to operate effectively, efficiently, and fairly.
Although various emphases have been taken over the years, the dominant preference of administrative reformers in the United States beginning with the early Progressive Era reform movement has been to build a strong, executive-centered, and social science-informed state. Proponents’ "search for order" has consistently been predicated on the idea that the Madisonian system cannot deal with the national domestic and international challenges facing America. This essay argues that reformers’ persistent search for "public" order through federal administrative reform has bequeathed a more private-than public-sector-dominated administrative order because of its focus on bureaucratic rather than democratic administration. This has occurred because of an emergent nexus between progressives, corporate interests, and the social sciences and their professional associations. Moreover, and quite paradoxically, the amplifying and constitutive effects of this business–social science–progressive nexus has made it more difficult to mobilize the citizen support that is critical for building the federal agency expertise that the early progressives and their heirs have deemed essential for effective governance.
Recent debates surrounding immigration policy have underscored the challenges facing local administrators. This article explores administrators’ attitudes toward documented and undocumented immigrants and their beliefs about immigrants’ participation in local government. A survey of municipal administrators was conducted in Arizona. Results indicate that administrators who believed undocumented immigrants are associated with problems for their cities were less interested in having undocumented immigrants participate in local government, and, moreover, that administrators made distinctions between documented and undocumented immigrants. Public safety administrators tended to be less inclined to encourage the civic participation of undocumented immigrants than other administrators.
Many public services are produced by professional workers who deal with cases and clients on the basis of professional knowledge and skills. As groups of workers, they acquired autonomies to structure professional knowledge and skills and to regulate case treatment. During the previous years, professional work has changed. Most often, the "new public management" is seen as the main driver: Service provision is said to be managerialized to make services more efficient and effective. This article rejects this simple explanation and argues that public professional work is affected by much more than managerial reform. It presents an analytical framework for tracing broader societal forces that reconfigure professional work. Professionals are not merely managed and measured; professional work in public services might be (a) reorganized, (b) restratified, and (c) relocated. Increasingly fragmented and dependent professional fields might have to seek new forms of control and new understandings of public professionalism are required.
The Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development emphasizes the e-government process as a tool for promoting budget transparency making all fiscal reports publicly available on the Internet. Nonetheless, the particular approach adopted to New Public Management models may influence different policies concerning the concepts of information quality and transparency. Based on an administrative culture approach, the aim of this article is to analyze whether the new technologies are being used by central governments for improving their accountability and democracy making their budgetary figures transparent for all stakeholders. The results of this study confirm that differences do exist across countries under different administrative cultures.
Despite normative claims that elite foundation boards’ select elite nonprofits, foundations increasingly use community volunteers to allocate grants. There is an assumption that community involvement in grant making leads to better grant decisions. However, no one has tested this assumption and explored whether community members are even making different grant decisions than traditional boards. Drawing on a sample of six funders who use a community and traditional board, their 616 grantees, and 955 nongrantees, this paper empirically tests anecdotes replete in literature, identifying the organizational and financial determinants that influence community boards grant decisions versus those that influence traditional board decisions.
As the founding president of a new republic, which he called an "experiment" in government, George Washington was keenly aware of the importance of "precedents" in shaping "institutions." Following the recommendation of Herbert Simon (1947) who believed that administrative theory should be based on identifying decision premises, this study identifies premises, stated as propositions, which guided Washington in what he called his "public administration" for a new nation. These propositions comprise a coherent theoretical framework, based on Enlightenment thinking and values, for studying and practicing public administration.
Previous research incorporates Habermas’ theory of communicative action with implications of social media for public discourse, yet few studies consider the theory’s relevance and applicability to public administrators. This article addresses this weak link by focusing on the administration legitimacy dilemma. While social media can be useful to public administrators facilitating collaborative interactions with citizens, these platforms are not automatically suited to public participation in governance. Habermas’ theory offers a framework for understanding these possibilities and challenges, as well as adapting social media constructively to administrative practice.
While politicians wage legislative battles about welfare benefits, bureaucratic procedures represent a less visible means to shape access to those benefits. By constructing complex and time-consuming application procedures, the state can effectively create administrative barriers that limit access to benefits. What explains the variation in the level of administrative burden that individuals face? We address this question by examining Medicaid procedures across the 50 U.S. states, identifying different types of administrative barriers. We find that such barriers tend to be lower in states with unified Democratic control of political institutions.
Creative nonfiction writing is used to interpret secondary data and produce a short story depicting events of workplace bullying in the public sector as also being acts of corruption. Creative nonfiction writing enables interrogation of, and vicarious experience of, sensitive, complex, and controversial workplace events. Readers are invited to think, and feel, the events of bullying (and corruption), as well the multiple perspectives involved. For organizations grappling with workplace bullying, understanding the behaviors as also being potentially corrupt will deepen understanding, as will recognition of the possible rationales of those involved in its downward spiral.
Changes in financial reporting systems are relevant to the usefulness of governmental financial reporting in implementing New Public Management (NPM) reforms. The International Public Sector Accounting Standards, published by the International Federation of Accountants, seeks to improve the financial information reported. The aim of this paper is to analyze whether Fair Value Accounting (FVA) could improve the usefulness of governmental financial statements for citizens under NPM reforms. To achieve this aim, this paper examines the opinions of the National Accounting Standards Setters on the utility of FVA in the introduction of NPM models in countries under different administrative traditions. Our results show that FVA could promote successful NPM reforms, enhancing the implementation of the postulates of efficiency, transparency, and benchmarking analysis. Likewise, the administrative tradition could influence National Accounting Standards Setters’ viewpoints regarding the capability of financial information based on FVA to meet the new information requirements under NPM models.
Much of what we know about public service motivation comes from self-report measures. However, self-report questionnaires are vulnerable to social desirability bias due to respondents’ tendencies to answer in a more socially acceptable way. This is a problem as social desirability bias threatens the validity of the measure. This study investigates whether characteristics of national culture influence social desirability bias during surveys on public service motivation. In particular, the impact of social desirability bias is analyzed with two concerns in mind: construct validity and inference validity of public service motivation measures. Experimental survey research (list experiment) is conducted to examine the magnitude of social desirability bias and its associations with national cultures in four countries: Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, and the United States. The results show that respondents in both collectivistic countries (Japan and Korea) and individualistic countries (the Netherlands and the United States) are likely to over-report answers on items of public service motivation, although the magnitude and pattern of this bias is stronger and more consistent in collectivistic countries. This study also finds a strong possibility of a moderator effect in correlational analyses in collectivistic countries, but it is doubtful this effect is present in individualistic countries. Overall, we suggest that the effects of social desirability bias should be investigated in public service motivation research, and social desirability bias should be controlled for in future research.
The sherpa is offered as a helpful metaphor amid the rich and diverse metaphorical landscape describing public administration at the interface between senior public servants and ministers. The sherpa model acknowledges the complexity and nuanced leadership now demanded in the Westminster tradition, offering fresh tools for practitioners to think more critically about their role and how they can improve leadership skills. It also offers theoretical ability to incorporate relevant but underdeveloped factors, such as the environment, into the administrative leadership equation, thus enlarging issues at stake and forces demanding scrutiny, if administrative leadership is to be better understood.
Market forces provide a foundation for the expectations of efficiency in contracting out. However, often the lack of competition in particular industries creates powerful companies that are able to negotiate contracts in their favor, reducing improved performance for government agencies. To study how market power influences performance in service delivery in the transit industry, we examine individual contracts as our unit of analysis. We hypothesize that a vendor’s market power directly influences an individual contract’s operational efficiency. We find that the lack of competition in the execution of contracts is an important determinant of agency performance.
We examine the relationship between the amount of information in a Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA) and the time it takes to write and review the RIA. We find that the longer an agency spends developing the regulation and the longer that the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) spends reviewing it, the more information in the analysis. However, the direction of causality is unclear. Better analyses may take more time to review. Or more review may make analyses better. We recommend increasing OIRA staff, which has advantages regardless of the direction of causality.
The story of medical marijuana implementation in the states provides researchers an opportunity for a unique study of the relationship between political culture and policy implementation. This paper tests the relationship between the utilization of medical marijuana at the county level, estimated supply, institutional design, and the political culture of each jurisdiction. The paper draws on the Institutional Analysis and Design framework and social construction theory. This model supports the conclusion that political culture is a significant part of the policy implementation story.
In 1997, the results of an administrative ethics survey of senior Hong Kong public servants were reported in this journal. Using the same questionnaire in 2011, we assessed the ways in which values have changed in the intervening period. Despite major systemic reforms in the civil service, which has evolved from a classic Weberian to a neo-Weberian bureaucracy, organizational, rather than individual, values generally appear to have strengthened. The explanation seems to be that enhanced classical Weberian organizational values are not perceived to be incompatible with high standards of personal morality. Adherence to familiar Weberian bureaucratic principles also affords civil servants some protection in an environment in which their performance is increasingly subject to critical scrutiny by local politicians, the society, an ever-watchful media, and the Chinese government.
This article explores the development of three features of positivism from the 1800s to the present: the unity of science, the verification criterion of meaning, and the empiricist observation language. The development of these features is demonstrated in the mid-20th century public administration (PA) literature and in the self-reflective literature of the last three decades. Contemporary positivism has been substantially moderated: The verification criterion of meaning has been abandoned, but the unity of science remains a presupposition, and the empiricist observation language remains an important tool. By presenting this intellectual history, some clarity may be added to the philosophical discourse in PA.
A total of 245 rural men and women with physical disabilities were interviewed to assess their access to road transport. The overall level of access was poor for both the men and women with physical disabilities. Poor environmental conditions and terminal facilities, unfriendly vehicles and behavior of transport staff, and travel safety and security threats were the barriers that prevented them to access routes. The findings indicate that without having a clear understanding of the transport-accessibility challenges at transport-planning levels and adopting equities in practice, the promotion of disability rights in local transport would be impossible in developing societies like Pakistan.
This article explores the different understandings of intentionality as applied to the San Francisco cable car transportation employees. We argue that part of doing work requires a person to act and choose, meaning foreclosing on some possibilities while attending to others as an intentional expression of freedom. We draw a parallel between cable car operators and public administrators and suggest that each has to do more than just learn a set of skills traditionally depicted as knowledge acquisition. They must also become skillful by developing a feel for the work and a greater appreciation for the meaning of their craft.
This article presents a Governance Typology comprising philosophical and practical theoretical elements which compose four ideal-types found in dominant Western political theory, what we label Institutional, Holographic, Atomistic, and Fragmented governance types. Then a fifth synthesis type is articulated, Integrative Governance, which is based on relational process ontology derived from alternative sources. The article then makes the argument that Integrative Governance is fitting in terms of the contemporary context and leading edge theory and addresses important critiques of the other governance types. In closing, the article affirms Integrative Governance and argues it is a more fruitful grounding for global governance and a more sustainable future.
Researchers have recently taken an interest in the accumulation and use of fund balances by local governments. Nevertheless, there is no consensus on the ideal percentage of savings governments should maintain to deal with unforeseen circumstances, and indeed little is known about the level of savings set aside by local governments. This situation raises questions about ethical and financial management practices of officials. This article discusses budgetary transparency through the lenses of utilitarian and Kantian ethical perspectives and examines three case studies that highlight the financial and political risks associated with the lack of transparency and the misuse of funds.
Lay participation in health care decision making lacks an adequate analysis from an organizational perspective. This article aims to develop conceptual devices to analyze policies and practices and the ways in which these could be further developed. By recapping established frameworks and drawing on theories of professional organizations, four participatory roles and their potential to adapt organizational decisions to internal requirements and external challenges are elaborated. While individual patient participation is widely acknowledged, there is still a lack of systematic approaches to the roles of significant others, patient groups, and the broader community and their implementation within health care organizations.
This article analyses health care reforms in the United Kingdom following the introduction of New Public Management (NPM) theory–inspired reforms. NPM has taken root deeply in the United Kingdom. This article looks at its impact on health care markets on the performance of health care organizations and on patients. It further seeks to address whether NPM prevents wastage and opportunism in health care. And finally, this article seeks to confirm whether rationality and accountability are greater under NPM or not. This article concludes that NPM reforms have failed to deliver on their own goals. There have been significant undesirable side effects and misfits between policy announcements and NPM implementation. Still, NPM adoption in health care has contributed to changing the Anglo-Saxon model of capitalism.
Challenges have been made to validate "classical" forms of management. This study facilitates suggestions to view organizational theory from a design perspective. Affirming how Luther Gulick explored design, tests of a construct were used to substantiate POSDCORB as a framework. Integrated within are elements of linguistics and Alexandrian patterns. An instrument development model was used to approximate POSDCORB as it demonstrated acceptable content validity, as well as construct validity and reliability. Having explored a proxy, models were established using multivariate data. The study provides framework-theory-model scenarios, evidence to indicate the adoption of institutions, and element support.
An essential question for American public administration scholarship is to what degree does (and should) our constitutional heritage influence our approach to administering the public sphere, and has this changed over time. Much scholarship addresses these questions from a normative theoretical perspective. This study investigates whether the normative claim made by the constitutionalist scholars, that the U.S. Constitution should guide public administrative practice, is actually born out of the practice. A longitudinal content analysis of Office of Management and Budget Circular A-76 from 1966 to 2003 provides evidence that the Constitutionalist Public Administration Paradigm is the predominant public administration paradigm in all the Circulars.
The concept of "wicked problems" has attracted increasing focus in policy research, but the implications for public organizations have received less attention. This article examines the main organizational and cognitive dimensions emerging from the research literature on wicked problems. We identify several recent approaches to addressing problem complexity and stakeholder divergence based on the literatures on systems thinking, collaboration and coordination, and the adaptive leadership roles of public leaders and managers. We raise some challenges for public management in some key functional areas of government—strategy making, organizational design, people management, and performance measurement. We argue that provisional solutions can be developed, despite the difficulties of reforming governance processes to address wicked problems more effectively.
This study adopts the diffusion of innovations model as a research framework to examine adult learner perceptions related to workplace e-learning effectiveness. Recent training reform efforts focusing on e-learning in Taiwan provide an opportunity to explore e-learning effectiveness using questionnaires. The results show that the perceptions and attitudes of adult learners toward workplace e-learning are positive, and relevant factors that affect learner-perceived effectiveness and e-learning expected values are identified. The implications of analyzing e-learning innovation in public sector training and the recommendations for future e-learning research for staff development initiatives are addressed.
The main objective of this study is to determine the role of partnerships in the university sport sector as a mechanism of collaborative entrepreneurship. To reach this goal, a qualitative approach was adopted, with the case study being a Portuguese Institute of Higher Education—University of Beira Interior. As data collecting instruments, interviews and documentary analysis were used, and the data-treatment technique was content analysis. The results obtained lead to the conclusion that university sports partnerships can be understood as collaborative entrepreneurship, in that they join the interests of different institutions in carrying out common projects of social value and intervention, helping universities to integrate with, and open up to society, and both internal and external stakeholders. In light of these insights, this article is a contribution to understanding the importance of partnerships as a form of collaborative entrepreneurship in the university sport sector. Some theoretical and practical implications are also presented.
Networks are developing alongside traditional bureaucracies as viable entities for addressing wicked problems. This alternate organizational model requires that administrators learn to manage and lead in more horizontal power-sharing structures. Public administration scholars trace the rise of networks in the United States back to the 1990s, yet the settlement women of the Progressive Era established a managerial and organizational precedent for using democratically anchored governance networks to affect social change. This article examines the work of the settlement women and explores how contemporary network managers can adapt and apply valuable but frequently overlooked managerial lessons from the field’s history.
Public services are increasingly delivered through hybrid settings of state and non-state actors. A key characteristic of such settings is the interaction between these actors. Different interactions may have different impacts on the outcomes of the particular settings. Yet to date, this key characteristic has received limited attention in scholarship. This article addresses this knowledge gap by presenting an exploratory comparative case study of two very similar hybrid settings that differ in the type of interaction between state and non-state actors.
This article asserts that more purposely designed physical workplaces could contribute to performance improvement by leveraging human capital and management capacity in public organizations. It provides an initial survey of the literature on workplace design by introducing a synthesis of available research drawn from environmental design, organizational ecology, social psychology, architecture, political science, and business and public administration. Based on the literature review, I developed a model of organizational performance that underscores the importance of "place" variables, such as space arrangement and indoor environment. The model implies that physical workplace has a significant impact on affective, behavioral, and performance outcomes in the organization. The article concludes with implications for theory and practice in using workplace strategy for organizational excellence.
Community and business interests are set in opposition, rather than in a harmonious balance, in the 2005 landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. New London. The narrative of eminent domain, through the lens of Kelo, highlights these conflicting values. The case presents a local government that used its power of takings to attract Pfizer, the pharmaceutical conglomerate, to build a plant for production of the little blue pill, which symbolizes private interests in this case. The community’s dissension of taking an individual’s private property for use by another private entity centered on a pink house, which has come to be known as the symbol of eminent domain abuse. This narrative is explored through in-depth interviews with public administrators experienced with eminent domain, community grassroots organizers involved with the case, and relevant articles from the local newspaper. A key finding of the study surrounds similarities between the perspectives of those people involved in Kelo and administrators throughout the state of Connecticut, the birthplace of the case. Although a nation built on the notion of the right to hold private property, the case suggests that in an era of late capitalism, business is of utmost importance to the community regardless of citizens’ desires in the United States.
How do the incentives offered to street-level bureaucrats influence the value of equality in society? To investigate this question, we consider as a case study the incentives offered to tax officials in Israel that encourage them to intimidate ordinary citizens during tax audits and use uncertainty and asymmetry of information for their own benefit. We demonstrate that such practices lead to social injustice and an increase in gaps between income groups. We then offer suggestions at the individual and organizational level for ameliorating these problems.
Researchers as well as practitioners often elevate collaborative governance as a necessary condition for effective responses to extreme events. This research has a dominating focus on large-scale catastrophes and disasters, whereas little attention is devoted to less serious emergencies. Another void concerns performance measurement. Addressing these gaps, this study investigates plausible explanations for collaborative activity and outcomes in response to extreme winter conditions in Sweden. Analysis of a survey of Swedish public managers suggests that, in this case, collaborative action is associated with preparatory actions and disruptions affecting other organizations. The analysis generates conflicting findings regarding underlying explanations for collaborative outcomes.
In this article, I examine the effects of the increased transparency and reporting requirements on the decisions of local education agencies (LEAs) to draw down federal dollars allocated to state programs in nonmission areas. Data from LEAs and program expenditures are used to develop a model detailing how transparency impacts the decisions of LEAs in two states in drawing down funds from a federal grant program. Findings suggest that rather than the theoretical expectation that managers act in an anticipatory manner, managers are more concerned with immediate financial needs.
While material gain continues to be a leading motivator for corrupt acts, this study shows that social status and kinship responsibilities should also be considered possible precursors to corruption. This finding has important implications for constructing an appropriate understanding of corruption, designing anticorruption policies, and achieving ethical governance in developing democracies.
Using a longitudinal case study, we analyzed the centralities and roles of the actors in an urban governance network. The results of our network text analyses and social network analyses of newspaper articles show that the director of the business improvement district, the city council, and mayors were the most central actors in the governance network. Our thematic content analyses of the policy-related actions of these actors show that while the council and mayors played their prescribed roles, the director’s roles were more diversified than what his position requires. We discuss the implications of these findings for urban governance.
The underlying logic of enterprise policy is that there are impediments to change in economic systems that can be traced to the path-dependent behaviors of economic actors that prevent them from exploring new knowledge and new ways of doing things. Enterprise policy involves firm-level interventions delivered by distributed networks of business advisors coordinated by knowledge intermediaries. These metagovernance arrangements are able to disrupt the path-dependent behaviors of organizations. The logic and benefits of enterprise policy are explored through reference to public administration, strategic management and evolutionary theory, and three case studies.
Besides serving as a bellwether in national politics, Ohio illuminates governance issues when public administration functions in highly partisan states. Our analysis of democratic governance emphasizes the role of integrative institutions, those driven by normative public administration. We argue that Ohio has diminished governance capacity because the state lacks a system of integrative political institutions. Thus, the two major parties control all aspects of state government, including its public administration. A case study of Cuyahoga County reform illustrates the adverse effect on citizens when partisan dominance of Ohio’s political institutions overpowers the state’s capacity for integrative governance.
This article argues that Brazil’s success in responding to the AIDS epidemic rested in the government’s pursuit of a reversal of decentralization, which entailed the government’s delegation of policy-making autonomy, funding, and discretionary fiscal transfers to the national AIDS program. AIDS bureaucrats achieved this by establishing close partnerships with social health movements and AIDS nongovernmental organizations advocating policy ideas with a historically proven track record of success while resembling similar social health movements in the past. This partnership, in turn, provided AIDS bureaucrats with the legitimacy and influenced needed for policy reform.
Crisis inquiries are intended to serve as instruments for restoring legitimacy. This intended goal has led to particular legitimacy-enhancing institutional choices in the design of these ad hoc institutions. This research utilizes a national panel study to test the effect of institutional attributes of a crisis inquiry and the content of its report on its legitimacy, and the effects of the inquiry findings on public opinion regarding the inquired issue. Our results show that only some institutional attributes predicted the legitimacy of the inquiry findings, whereas the content of the report was strongly and consistently associated with report legitimacy.
This article explores an integrative approach for dealing with wicked problems. Wicked problems not only require alternative action strategies but also alternative ways of observing and enabling. Four governance capabilities are essential: (a) reflexivity, or the capability to deal with multiple frames; (b) resilience, or the capability to adjust actions to uncertain changes; (c) responsiveness, or the capability to respond to changing agendas and expectations; (d) revitalization, or the capability to unblock stagnations. These capabilities form the basis for achieving small wins in wicked problems. We illustrate our argument with examples from sustainable food production of the Common Agricultural Policy.
In this article, we present a perspective on the interaction between formal and informal institutions in spatial planning in which they transform each other continuously, in processes that can be described and analyzed as ongoing reinterpretations. The effects of configurations and dialectics are often ambiguous, only partially observable, different in different domains and at different times. By means of analyses of key concepts in planning theory and practice, this perspective is illustrated and developed. Finally, we analyze transformation options in planning systems, emphasizing the limits of formal institutions in transforming formal/informal configurations, and stressing the importance of judgment and conflict.
We leverage economic theory, network theory, and social network analytical techniques to bring greater conceptual and methodological rigor to understand how information is exchanged during disasters. We ask, "How can information relationships be evaluated more systematically during a disaster response?" "Infocentric analysis"—a term and approach we develop here—can (a) define an information market and information needs, (b) identify suppliers of information and mechanisms for information exchange, (c) map the information exchange network, and (d) diagnose information exchange failures. These steps are essential for describing how information flows, diagnosing complications, and positing solutions to rectify information problems during a disaster.
The primary question in this study is whether the inequality observed in rural and urban giving patterns is equitable. Practitioners and policy makers have expressed concern about equity in foundation giving, but these concerns are often conflated with equality measures. The focus of this article is to disentangle equity and equality and then propose—in the absence of equity standards in philanthropic literature—three equity standards that can be used by scholars, practitioners, and policy makers to assess the spatial distributional equity of philanthropic grant making. In an illustrative application of the equity standards to grants made in 2005 by foundations in the state of Georgia, it is determined that rural communities receive an equitable share of philanthropic grants and grant dollars in the state.
Controversy surrounds structural reform in local government, especially efforts aimed at involuntarily reducing the number of local authorities to secure scale economies. We examined whether scale economies exist in local government outlays by analyzing the expenditure of 152 New South Wales councils. Initially, council expenditure is characterized by scale economies. However, given the correlation between population and population density, it is important to determine whether the influence of population on expenditure is due to variations in population density. When areas are decomposed into subgroups on the basis of density, the evidence of scale economies largely disappears.
This article applies and builds upon the network leadership models introduced by Provan and Kenis to the case of the British Columbia Network for Aging Research (BCNAR). We specify a particular type of shared leadership model and term this a Targeted Shared Leadership (TSL) model based on the governance structure of BCNAR. Key features include six coleaders who are selected on the basis of representation of five major universities (typically in its gerontology center) situated in the five provincial health authorities in British Columbia. Several network characteristics are introduced and then applied to BCNAR to assess effectiveness of the leadership structure. Innovations in research grant capacity support, communication, mentorship and training of new gerontologists, and knowledge translation are used to specify the effectiveness of the leadership structural dynamics of BCNAR. Potential applications of this shared leadership model for other networks are discussed.
There has been much debate about the change Barack Obama represents. This article considers this question by using Michel Foucault’s concept of governmentality to explore the underlying governmental rationality of his administration’s policies and management practices. Obama’s governmentality is examined via the Open Government Directive, arguably the central initiative of the administration. The article concludes that this governmentality may be viewed as a mutation within neoliberalism, which the authors call info-liberalism—one that deploys a novel, integrative conception of social government. Info-liberalism is examined in conjunction with the contemporary usage of the term governance to analyze more broadly the dynamics of government and citizen participation today.
A growing number of state welfare agencies are using the Internet to communicate with potential and current clients. Although public management benefits are clear, little is known about client perspectives. This mixed-methods research project examines the topics of application security, reliability, appropriateness, and ease of use, and personal experiences of potential users to understand opinions of online welfare applications. Focus group findings highlight direct benefits, such as speed and ease of use, and indirect benefits, such as holding caseworkers accountable and avoiding unpleasant office conditions. Study participants also identified exceptions like emergencies and applicants with special needs. Despite mixed feelings, many participants preferred online applications to in-person, worker-led eligibility interviews.
This article presents, through the example of health care systems, a theoretically founded analysis of learning processes in the context of reform implementation. Following a critical assessment of the two most prominent approaches to knowledge management—mechanistic and organic—we propose another approach, which consists in coordinating the learning of interdependent actors. The potential of this approach is illustrated through an empirical case study of the implementation of a Quebec program to combat cancer.
Public officials are vested with authority of the state, and institutions such as courts crystallize this blend of formal power and relational dynamics. We probe how gender affects the interpretation of authority by using simulations of traffic court. Observers evaluated the professional demeanor of the judge. Results indicate that judge gender makes a difference in how professionalism is rated, gender of the citizen makes a difference in how emotive expression is interpreted, and the interaction of judge and citizen gender affects how the judge’s communication is evaluated. We conclude that gender contextualizes power by moderating its perception and interpretation.
In recent decades, Western democratic governments have encountered coordination challenges in the face of increasing levels of complexity. This article examines how the widespread penetration of new information and communication technologies is implicated in this situation. Attention is drawn to how information is no longer just a resource but also a generative power. While the new informational dynamics entail greater capacities for instrumental manipulation, they are also recursive and produce emergent effects. These new dynamics introduce a novel set of coordination and control challenges that mark a significant departure from industrial modes of governance and organization.
Applying a neoinstitutionalist perspective, the article analyzes administrative research in Finland. The results pinpoint contradictory official microinstitutional regulation influencing the research albeit moderated by flexible implementation, and recent institutional weakening in the status of the research field. Institutional trade-offs obtain between the limited global scholarly contribution of Finland’s administrative research and the domestic legitimation it has enjoyed so far. The characteristic radical institutional changes have comprised measures for the academic upgrading of teaching and research disciplines. Besides invigorating the global contribution of Finland’s administrative research, the results suggest the rehabilitation of public administration as an academic field in the country.
Public private partnerships (PPPs) have evolved as a strategic response to public sector resource deficits and for pooling technical, managerial, and financial resources from the private sector. In this article, we identify the key factors necessary for a collaborative management strategy and analyze the structural and operational issues of two infrastructure projects in Australia. This article explains how a PPP offers a different set of strategic options to deal with complex micromanagement issues and argues that the success of PPPs depends on the processes and actions used to cocreate managerial social capital, building mutual trust by sharing risks, responsibilities, and experience.
There is a substantial gap in knowledge of the practical application of comprehensive "best practice" public policies and how these policies are actually implemented. This research examines implementation of a comprehensive best practices gang reduction policy across three cities. Action research case study methodology shows that explanations for diverse implementation arose from each city’s ecological constitution, which is a necessary antecedent to categorization according to Matland’s policy implementation typology. This study affirms the use of an ecological perspective and supports the use of Matland’s typology in a collaborative and comparative public policy context.
Many organization theorists have recognized the Hawthorne studies as path-breaking demonstrations of the influence of social and psychological factors in the workplace. We provide evidence that important implications of the Hawthorne studies can be applied to the federal workforce. Our analysis shows that social relations and participative management style have stronger influences than physical conditions on public employees’ perceived performance. This result is congruent with summary translations of the lessons of the Hawthorne studies: "Attention is gratifying!" and "The attention apparently raised morale, and morale raised productivity." The present study indicates that the different approaches of management will show different effects on organizational performance according to the levels of performance.
Scholars have provided great theoretical insight and empirical understanding to the concept of representative bureaucracy, documenting the changing makeup of the civil service and demonstrating the importance of representative bureaucracy toward democratic governance. Yet, important questions remain. What specifically does bureaucratic representation mean? Is descriptive representation necessary for policy representation? What characteristics are important? How do we measure representation? Finally, are there any negative effects of representative bureaucracy? This article provides an overview and analysis of the literature focusing on how scholars define and measure representative bureaucracy. Efforts are made to emphasize achievements and highlight areas that need attention.
This study reviews research themes and methods used in information technology (IT) in government and e-government research. Although IT/e-government studies (including inward aspects of IT applications in government and e-government studies) continue to increase, they are not comprehensively understood as a subfield within public administration. Based on Rosenbloom’s three competing approaches to public administration (managerial, political, and legal), we investigated the major research themes of IT/e-government studies in public administration. We analyzed 248 IT/e-government articles published in six major public administration journals from 1965 to 2010 to examine IT/e-government research trends in terms of research themes and methods.
This article provides a theoretical framework to advance the understanding of collaborative organization through integrating extant theories of political economy. Eight propositions are advanced from theories of rent seeking, commodification, administrative capture, cartelization, transparency, risk, institutional logic, and transaction cost. These propositions are applied to a recent multisectoral collaborative, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Because of the innate diversity that exists among institutions, collaborative organization constitutes a hybrid organizational form through which regulatory penumbras, or gray areas, emerge. Political economic conditions can arise in these penumbral areas, as they offer organizations the opportunity to operate within diminished regulatory environments.
Drawing on different theories of democracy, this article distinguishes three dimensions of democratic legitimacy: political accountability, voice, and due deliberation. The article operationalizes each form of democratic legitimacy and then looks at how these various forms influence the outcomes in governance networks. The authors test this with a survey conducted in the first half of 2010 among respondents in environmental projects/water management projects (n = 166). The analysis shows that democratic legitimacy in general has a significant positive effect on outcomes in governance networks and that voice and due deliberation have a much stronger impact than political accountability.
This article uses a constructivist approach to scrutinize embedded actions of situated agents of governance to explore the governing of activation services in Israel. It probes beliefs, discourses, and practices of meso-level regulation administrators and street-level workers to analyze the emergence of a new stringent and disciplinary activation mode. Ultimately, this activation mode reconfigured the "social contract" between the state and its unemployed citizens via intensive intimacies: a conflicted microspace governed with little discretion and imbued with a reformative vision of state–society relations. The article demonstrates how situated agents’ meaning-making is essential to examining shifting governance forms and their political ramifications.
The article explores the features and charts the principle theorizing of regulatory sociability from collaboration rather than intervention, whatever the interest-based motivation behind transforming crisis, toward orderliness. A key theme is the role played by corporations in facilitating and benefiting from sociability. A particular explanatory focus on the way in which corporate culture can change from predatory jurisdiction shopping to embracing mutuality of interests in the context of environmental sustainability is employed. The article concludes with a discussion of how, as compulsory discipline increases, it may produce compliance but at costs for regulatory sociability. The alternative regulatory paradigm is one that moves to resolve the antimony between desire (profit) and reason (sustainability) in a manner that relies on and endorses the constituents of collaboration. Collaborative regulation, the article suggests, can arise out of crisis and be justified through desires for orderliness without compulsion. But for collaborative regulation to be sustainable, it must complement certain positive "orderly" aspects within political economy. The analysis determines some observations concerning the shape and shaping of collaborative regulation in an atmosphere of more pluralist knowledge-based (disciplinary) engagement involving trust, comity, and sustainability.
With direct or indirect reference to neighboring countries, this article presents an investigation into how changes in South Korean emergency management culture have evolved via three components, namely, (a) emergency and its impacts, (b) emergency management education, and (c) technological development against emergencies, during three periods: the 20th century (1900-1999), the decade from 2000 to 2009, and the decade from 2010 to 2019. The major tenet of this study is that South Korean culture, initially and later, changed rapidly with the coherence of the above-mentioned three components during the periods covered, going through the stages, in chronological order, of emergency numbness, emergency awareness, and a more rational response. Thus, Koreans need to wisely maintain the momentum of this change by learning from the three stages toward achieving the goal of emergency management.
This study examines the effects of capacity-oriented and institutional-based factors on the proliferation of prison privatization by extending the first generation of empirical research. This study found that correction expenditures, prison capacity, and regional identity are factors that significantly affect the magnitude of prison privatization, whereas political pressures, government ideology, and unionization were found not to have a significant influence on the growth of private prisons. The results imply that, once adopted, prison privatization became institutionalized over time and suggest that state governments should develop well-structured evaluation systems for private prisons to ensure and maintain effective correction management.
The article presents a framework of nonprofit human resource management (NHRM) that emphasizes the context of nonprofits, organizational and employee characteristics. Drawing on contingency theory and social exchange theory, the article examines the multidimensional contingencies in the environment of nonprofit organizations and the characteristics of employees that underlie NHRM. Three underlying principles and five models of NHRM are presented to explain the dimensions of NHRM. The concept of social alignment, implications for nonprofit management research, and practice are discussed.
This study examines the extent to which Goodnow’s ideas about public administration were informed by Hegelian political philosophy. Hegel’s reflections on the characteristics of the state and public administration came to Goodnow’s attention from such scholars as John Burgess, Francis Lieber, Lorenz von Stein, Johann C. Bluntschli, and Rudolph von Gneist. Hegelian philosophy helped Goodnow to deal with the intellectual challenges of the progressive era. The article concludes with a discussion of Hegelian political philosophy as a source of inspiration for contemporary administrative ethics.
Some of our oldest and most powerful myths focus on sacrifice as a means of gaining power, strengthening relationships, and binding a community together. The oldest of these myths emphasizes blood sacrifices as the most powerful for this purpose. Our current American myths emphasize nearly the opposite: that success can be obtained without sacrifice. This article examines the implications of this fundamental shift on civil society. The author takes the Akedah—the Old Testament story of the binding of Isaac—as a central point in the evolution of the sacrifice myth. In particular, the author explores the evolution of "sacrifice" from ritual blood offering in a religious context to that of labor undertaken in a social context.
Remedial law involves the use of litigated reform and injunctive relief to bring misfeasant state and local bureaucracies in line with federal law. This article highlights the need for further scholarly engagement with remedial law. It also indicates that within each stage of the remedial process lies a series of important research questions, making the area fertile ground for the very type of administrative expertise and agency-centric approaches that are lacking from our scholarly discourse. Attention to remedial law would not only strengthen the management of rights-driven reform but also contribute to the ongoing legitimacy of the public administration field.
Two ongoing debates in regulation research concentrate on public-interest versus private-interest theories, and actor-centered theories versus institutionalism. The first controversy is about the origins and goals of regulation, and the latter is about the analysis of regulatory processes. A theoretical framework that combines these four concepts is suggested. Four patterns of regulation are presented; each addresses a regulatory goal as well as a regulatory process. Each pattern is associated with a different type of regulator: the selfish, the manipulative, the combative, and the coordinating. The author argues that by employing institutional considerations and tools, the coordinating regulator best serves the public interest.
This study explores the relationships between career and psychosocial mentoring, and the employee outcomes of affective organizational commitment (AOC), job involvement, and turnover intention. The relationships between psychosocial mentoring and the employee outcomes of AOC and turnover intention were significant. Building from affective events theory, the authors found that AOC mediated the relationship between psychosocial mentoring and employee turnover intention. The study emphasizes the importance of emotion and affect by showing that employees who experienced positive mentoring events at work exhibited higher levels of AOC, which in turn led to reduced turnover intention. The implications are discussed.
In the era of "activation," which is characterized by the decentralization and individualization of social services, welfare caseworkers play an increasingly important role in shaping the policy outcomes of the welfare state. In this article, it is argued that to theoretically accommodate the complex institutional and systemic environments in which today’s caseworkers operate, the street-level bureaucracy approach introduced by Lipsky should be married with institutionalist theory, thereby laying the groundwork for a micro-institutionalist theory of policy implementation.
The Government of Bangladesh with the help of international development agencies has been trying to develop good governance through effective people’s participation with the aim of realizing effective outcomes from aid-assisted development projects. This research was conducted to explore how theories of people’s participation could be understood and adapted to support effective implementation of development programs through good governance in Bangladesh. Findings from case studies, including the interviews of different stakeholders responsible for ensuring participatory governance, reveal that existing structural, conceptual, and cultural gaps hinder the proper implementation and interpretation of the theory of participatory governance in rural Bangladesh.
Transgender-inclusive nondiscrimination policies create a quagmire for human resources to successfully implement. There is a dearth of knowledge about the extent, features, and aptitude of policies to prevent discrimination against transgender employees. This study analyzes all 154 localities that prohibit discrimination against gender identity or expression in employment, as of July 2011, to explore their scope, the capability of implementation agencies, and safeguards provided to employees. The results indicate that the extent of the nondiscrimination policies is broad and potentially benefit most citizens; however, insufficient power is delegated to implementing agencies and safeguards are not the norm.
Large-scale emergency response requires management of collaborative networks that stretch across government agencies and levels, and that include nonprofit and private organizations. Management of such collaborative networks has been recognized as a research area in need of further study. Inter-organizational complexities associated with these collaborative networks give rise to unanticipated contingencies that compound issues directly associated with an emergency itself. Planning for such response is therefore intrinsically limited, and emergency managers must bridge the gaps via articulation practices in real-time. In this paper, the authors draw on empirical data to develop a conceptual framework characterizing dimensions of inter-organizational complexity and domains of response coordination through which emergency managers articulate large-scale response efforts. The framework is illustrated with examples of state-level emergency managers articulating threads of networked response efforts concurrently through vertical and horizontal dimensions of inter-organizational complexity, and logistical, jurisdictional and governance domains of coordination. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Why do similar e-government initiatives, implemented by different nations but aimed at achieving similar policy goals, produce different outcomes? To answer this question, this study examines institutional arrangements for e-government development during the Bush administration in the United States and the Roh Moo-hyun administration in Korea. The results of this study demonstrate how different institutional arrangements for e-government developments in terms of the concentration of authority based on differing legal frameworks and the development of diverse and powerful managerial tools for control and coordination contributed to producing different outcomes with regard to building Business Reference Models (BRM) in the two nations.
Achieving diversity in the workplace has become the antidote for what ails many organizations. Specifically for public organizations, although many genuinely pursue diversity to achieve public good, some use diversity for more questionable means. An exploratory study on local governments revealed that women and minorities, relative to White men, are disproportionately assigned to manage diversity programs. Using the research on groups, a theory of multiple marginality was developed to explicate the rationale(s) for these programs’ overrepresentation of women and minorities that further marginalizes these already marginalized groups. The adverse effects, the policy implications, and future research are discussed.
Inconsistent regulatory objectives may cause persistent noncompliant behavior among regulated actors. Yet, the authors know little about when, where, and how inconsistencies get solved by regulated actors. The authors tracked the norms and interventions of multiple regulatory oversight bodies trickling down the hierarchy of three utility companies. The authors interviewed and observed managers, planners, operators, and staff studying their responses to regulatory inconsistencies from the perspective of value conflict. The authors identify several patterns of coping behavior across the three companies. In conclusion, the authors argue to account for coping behavior in the regulatory mind-set and they recast how coordination may further improve the effectiveness of fragmented regulatory regimes.
Financial reports under New Public Management (NPM) programs can provide an incomplete picture of government finances. Post-NPM reforms could help overcome this weakness through the use of aggregate financial measures. This article focuses on the effects of the agencification process analyzing the differences between individual and aggregate measures of government financial performance in the Spanish local government. In general, the results show there is greater compliance with post-NPM postulates, although this does not mean that NPM and post-NPM management models cannot coexist. The use of aggregate performance measures could help bring about this improvement in controlling public agencies and, therefore, make public sector entities more efficient.
This research assesses how state and local factors combine to influence the adoption of performance measurement for local service contracting nested in state contexts over time. Using a multilevel linear growth model to analyze local survey and official data, the findings demonstrate that local adoption of performance measurements nested in state contexts changed significantly; local contract management capability are significantly linked to the adoption of performance measurement. State contexts have a large impact on that adoption as well. The findings, which may have been unobserved by previous studies, suggest that local practices are indeed embedded in state governance across time.
Recent studies on disaster resilience policies focus on government and administrative shortcomings that prevent affected communities from improving their life circumstances. This article offers to break this cycle of disadvantage through greater utilization of community capacity building among disaster-affected groups that meet social justice principles in various regional settings. It is suggested that the central role of public administration is raised in developing empathetic relationships and facilitating collaborative action and a more resilient outcome. For this purpose, the author addresses an alternative model of disaster administration that follows a community-driven resilience process aimed at fostering well-informed, competent, and active participant communities.
This article explores the nature of long-term interactions between bureaucrats and interest groups by examining two behavioral logics associated with stability in public policy making. In addition to the implicit short-term strategic choices that usually feature in resource-exchange explanations of interest group access to policy makers, this article shows that bureaucracy–interest group interactions are likely to be dictated by routine behavior and anticipating future consequences as well. By drawing on survey and face-to-face interview data of Dutch senior civil servants and interest groups, the analyses reveal that a practice of regular consultations, the need for political support, and a perceived influential position together explain why bureaucrats maintain interactions with interest groups. The combination of these behavioral logics adds important explanatory leverage to existing resource-exchange explanations and shows that organizational processes as well as long-term strategic considerations should be taken into account to fully explain bureaucracy–interest group interactions.
This study posits a theoretical framework for understanding the role and value of agency input in presidential-legislative policy making. The author asserts that by using agency input for policy development, presidents instill their proposals with a degree of bureaucratic objectivity, expertise, process transparency, and agency support, which aids their legislative passage while lowering the extent of changes made to policy substance in the process. To test his hypotheses, the author conducts binary and ordered logistic regression analyses using pooled cross-sectional data across 12 administrations from 1949 to 2010. The author finds that agency input serves as a key component for increased presidential-legislative success.
Gender continues to shape organizational life in profound ways. Theorizing about gender in public institutions has been scarce. This article is an attempt to reinsert gender in our research agenda. First, macro-level theories of gender in organizations are discussed; then, the literature in public administration is surveyed. The author contends that the theory of representative bureaucracy provides a tremendous theoretical platform for understanding gender’s sociocultural forces as well as normative avenues and prospects for change. Such an approach will move us beyond description (i.e., lack of representation) to a better understanding of how gender is deployed and acquires signification in organizational life.