Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory - current issue

Politicians, Managers, and Street-Level Bureaucrats: Influences on Policy Implementation

May, P. J., Winter, S. C. — 2009-06-19

This article addresses the influence of politicians, managers, and the dispositions of street-level bureaucrats in shaping actions at the frontlines of policy implementation. We investigate these for the implementation of employment policy reforms in Denmark. Our findings show a large percentage of caseworkers emphasizing actions that are consistent with the national employment reform goal of getting clients into jobs quickly. The influence of politicians and managers in bringing this about is relatively limited in comparison to the influences of caseworkers' understanding of policy goals, their professional knowledge, and their policy predispositions. Our main contribution is an unpacking of the political and managerial influences on caseworkers' policy emphases. We find direct effects and, more notably, indirect effects that operate on the influence of caseworkers' perceptions of policy goals and their knowledge. These findings provide a more nuanced and positive assessment than much of the implementation literature of the way that higher level policies are translated into actions at the frontlines.

Interdisciplinary Problems and Agency Boundaries: Exploring Effective Cross-Agency Collaboration

Daley, D. M. — 2009-06-19

Interagency collaboration is frequently described as a pivotal element of environmental and public health problem solving; yet, there is little systematic evidence to document the conditions under which interagency collaboration is effective. If, as is widely believed, collaboration can promote comprehensive problem solving, then understanding the determinants of interagency collaboration is fundamental to improving environmental quality and promoting public health. This article examines factors promoting or inhibiting effective working relationships between environmental agencies and state and local public health departments in Wisconsin on a range of environmental and public health policy problems. Data collected using a web-based Internet survey of agency personnel are analysed. The results suggest that previous collaborative experience is important for public health departments at the state and local level, and structural incentives to collaborate are systematically linked to effective interagency collaboration.

Characteristics of Innovation and Innovation Adoption in Public Organizations: Assessing the Role of Managers

Damanpour, F., Schneider, M. — 2009-06-19

Studies of the association between innovation characteristics and innovation adoption at the level of organization are scarce. This study develops direct and moderating hypotheses for the relationship between innovation characteristics, manager characteristics, and innovation adoption in public organizations. The hypotheses are tested using survey data on the adoption of 25 innovations in 725 local governments in the United States and data from a panel of experts. The findings suggest that both innovation characteristics and manager characteristics influence the adoption of innovation; however, they do not reveal significant moderating effects of manager characteristics on the relationship between innovation characteristics and innovation adoption. The implications of the findings are discussed for further research on innovation adoption in the public sector.

Collaborative Performance Measurement: Examining and Explaining the Prevalence of Collaboration in State and Local Government Contracts

Amirkhanyan, A. A. — 2009-06-19

Viewing collaboration as an imperative for public managers, scholars are calling for a better understanding of its origins, prevalence, and impact on organizational performance. The objective of this study is to explore the prevalence and the determinants of collaboration pursued in the course of monitoring government contracts. The theoretical framework proposed in this study explores the effect of several categories of collaboration determinants pertaining to government agencies, contractors, contractual relationships, services, and markets. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews administered to 69 state and local contract managers as well as nonprofit and for-profit contractors in five jurisdictions. Qualitative analysis identifies a variety of collaborative strategies used by agencies seeking vendors’ input and by vendors proposing and negotiating performance monitoring arrangements. Regressions analysing the determinants of collaboration suggest that the latter is more often pursued by nonprofit contractors and vendors with a unique expertise and higher resource dependency. Governments with advanced in-house professional capacity and willingness to collaborate are also more likely to rely on the contractors’ input. Meanwhile, high service measurability, long-term relationships, and dynamic markets reduce the likelihood of collaboration. This study suggests that collaborative performance evaluation presents both challenges and opportunities for effective contract implementation. The responsibilities of monitoring officers appear to extend beyond specifying and enforcing performance standards—they require the skills and motivation to empower contractors and to learn from their input and the professional capacity to evaluate their claims.

Integrating Job Stress and Social Exchange Theories to Predict Employee Strain in Reformed Public Sector Contexts

Noblet, A. J., Rodwell, J. J. — 2009-06-19

This research examines the organizational characteristics that contribute to employee wellbeing in public sector agencies that have undergone substantial organizational change. Two studies were undertaken, the first involving 2,466 police officers working in a state-based law enforcement agency, whereas the second comprised 1,010 occupationally diverse employees working in a State Government authority. The research was guided by a theoretical framework that begins with a model underpinning many large-scale job stress investigations—the job strain model (JSM)—and is expanded to incorporate widely used social exchange variables (i.e., psychological contract breach and organizational fairness). The results of hierarchical regression analyses from both studies confirm the value of the JSM. There was also strong support for extending the JSM to include the breach and fairness variables; however, proposed interactions between job demands and organizational fairness failed to add to the explanatory value of the model. The implications of these results particularly for public sector organizations that have undergone extensive reforms consistent with New Public Management are discussed.

A Political Consequence of Contracting: Organized Interests and State Agency Decision Making

Kelleher, C. A., Yackee, S. W. — 2009-06-19

We argue that contracting opens a pathway for organized interests to lobby public managers. Using multilevel modeling techniques, we test this proposition with data from administrative agencies in the American states. We find that interactions between organized interests and managers increase in the presence of contracting. We then demonstrate that the influence of organized interests over key state agency decision making is driven, in part, by whether an agency contracts out for public service delivery. The findings suggest the presence of an alternate pathway for organized interests to access and influence government decision makers. Moreover, these results complement previous studies, which primarily highlight the potential economic benefits of contracting and hold important normative implications for our understanding of government responsiveness in an era of decentralized governance.

Diversity in the US Federal Government: Diversity Management and Employee Turnover in Federal Agencies

Choi, S. — 2009-06-19

Diversity scholars have argued that demographic heterogeneity in work groups is associated with decreased job satisfaction and organizational commitment of employees. As a result, employees in the diverse work groups tend to show higher probability of turnover. I examine how diversity affects job satisfaction and turnover intention of employees by analyzing the sample drawn from the Central Personnel Data File and the 2004 Federal Human Capital Survey. More specifically, the study focuses on the moderating and mediating effects of contextual factors on turnover intention of employees. To test models, I used the hierarchical regression analysis methods. The results show that job satisfaction partially mediates the moderating effects of diversity management and demographic context on turnover intention of employees. The findings of the moderating effects of contextual factors are somewhat mixed. Although effective management of diversity positively moderated job satisfaction in racially heterogeneous groups, it did not significantly affect turnover intention. In addition, ineffective management of diversity decreased turnover intention in racially diverse agencies, countering my expectation. The results suggest that more variables should be controlled to achieve an accurate pattern of the effects of diversity and contextual factors on turnover.

A Generic Multiple Constituency Matrix: Accountability in Private Prisons

Bergsteiner, H., Avery, G. C. — 2009-06-19

Public and private sector organizations and their constituents are subject to numerous, often competing, accountability pressures. Guidelines are lacking on how to identify and depict the extent and nature of multiple constituency (MC) relationships. This article identifies limitations of five existing MC schemas. A proposed new MC matrix integrates seven accountability dimensions identified from the literature. The new matrix depicts potential accountability relationships and their nature and functions as a normative and diagnostic tool. The utility of this matrix for normatively depicting multiple accountability relationships and diagnostically monitoring accountability performance is illustrated by reference to prisons run by private operators.

Juggling Conflicting Demands: The Case of the UK Financial Ombudsman Service

Gilad, S. — 2009-06-19

This article builds upon current scholarship regarding regulatory enforcement to analyze and theorize the little-researched context of public bodies' handling of consumer complaints against firms. The analysis is based on a case study of the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), which is a British public agency that handles consumer complaints regarding the retail selling of financial products. The study documents and seeks to explain the FOS' and firms' interaction and their choices between cooperative and adversarial strategies. It finds that the FOS' interaction with firms oscillated between cooperative informal conciliation and adversarial standardized determination of complaints. Firms resisted informal conciliation of complaints when concerned that their agreement to redress an individual complainant might be interpreted by the regulator (the Financial Services Authority), or the media, as entailing compensation awards to a large number of other customers in similar circumstances. Equally, the ombudsman was inclined toward an adversarial, precedent-bound approach to complaints when facing external risks to its autonomy and reputation. These findings form the basis for the formulation of hypotheses regarding the strategic interaction of other third-party complaint handling schemes with both private and public service providers. Furthermore, the findings stress the importance of analyzing regulatory encounters as multiactor games in which firms and regulators interact amid conflicting demands and uncertainties posed by other actors and institutions in their environment.

Innovation's Three Rs

Eimicke, W. — 2009-06-19

The Greening of the U.S. Military: Environmental Policy, National Security, and Organizational Change

Cohen, S. — 2009-06-19