Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory - recent issues

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

Institutional Design and Information Revelation: Evidence from Environmental Right-to-Know

Whitford, A. B. — 2009-03-15

How governments design institutions for the revelation of information depends on how the costs and benefits are distributed across affected groups. In this study I examine the incidence of different kinds of constituencies and how governments give citizens access to information that affects them. A number of important studies have sought to understand the effect of such rules on the revelation of private information and policy outcomes, but we know little about the sources of those rules. Do the rules coincide with constituencies that benefit from their existence? Are they absent when strong constituencies can avoid bearing the costs of the rules? Using data on community "right-to-know" protections regarding environmental hazards, I compare the incidence of the benefits and costs of these design choices in the context of rules that reveal information and charge the cost of information revelation to the regulated community. The models show that the incidence of right-to-know protections depends on the presence or absence of constituencies that would enjoy their benefits or bear their costs. However, organizational costs limit the ability of affected constituencies to obtain institutional designs that reflect their interests.

Agency Theory and Beyond: Contracted Providers' Motivations to Properly Use Service Monitoring Tools

Lambright, K. T. — 2009-03-15

This article uses agency and stewardship theories to explain different motivations for contracted providers to properly use service monitoring tools. To examine different motivations for proper tool use, seven case studies were conducted on early childhood programs in three communities in Upstate New York. The case studies specifically focused on the reporting forms that the early childhood programs completed. Data sources included (1) interviews with government agency and contracted provider employees, (2) content analysis of key documents relating to the service monitoring tools, and (3) attendance at meetings between government agencies and contracted providers on the service monitoring tools. This article finds support for both agency and stewardship theories.

The Use of Multiple Informants in Public Administration Research: Data Aggregation Using Organizational Echelons

Enticott, G., Boyne, G. A., Walker, R. M. — 2009-03-15

Surveys are an important methodological tool in public management research. Multiple informant surveys are held to have considerable methodological advantages over elite surveys (the practice of surveying a top manager, e.g., a chief executive). Although in principle multiple informant surveys can provide a more accurate organizational picture, problems of data aggregation arise in practice. To promote better use of multiple informant surveys, this article reviews approaches to aggregating organizational data. It provides the first empirical test of echelon methods of data aggregation for public management research. We find significant differences between echelon aggregations, elite surveys and unstandardized forms of aggregations (e.g., a simple mean). These results support our argument that careful theoretical and empirical analysis of multiple informant surveys data is required to provide valid and reliable measures of organizational properties.

Results-Model Reform Leadership: Questions of Credible Commitment

Dull, M. — 2009-03-15

Few problems common in management reform are more prominent or more vaguely conceived than is leadership. Advocates and observers broadly agree that leadership is a critical factor where reform takes hold. Yet, in scholarship assessing the results-model management reforms proliferating in public organizations during the last decade and a half, leadership remains an elusive concept, rarely subject to empirical scrutiny. Applying the logic of credible commitment drawn from the study of institutional political economy, this article models leadership commitment as a factor shaping organizational responses to reform. Quantitative analysis of data drawn from two Government Accountability Office surveys of agency managers administered during the implementation of the Government Performance and Results Act provides evidence regarding the impact of leadership commitment on perceived credibility results-based reform and reported use of performance measures. The article concludes with a brief discussion of reputation-based credibility and the skepticism many government managers hold toward reform.

Municipal Performance: Does Mayoral Quality Matter?

Avellaneda, C. N. — 2009-03-15

This article presents the first empirical study in a Latin-American country on the effects of managerial quality upon municipal performance in education. Using 6 years of data from 40 Colombian municipalities, I assess the influence of mayoral qualifications—education and job-related experience—on the percentage of the eligible population actually enrolled in school. After considering other political, economic, and demographic factors, the findings show that mayoral qualifications are associated with greater school enrollment. This positive influence, however, decreases under external constraints, such as the presence of illegal armed groups. The findings should apply in any setting where the provision of social services is decentralized and where the mayor also plays the role of city manager, performing both political and administrative functions. The study has implications for countries struggling to eradicate illiteracy as results show that mayoral human capital enhances educational performance.

At the Discretion of Rogue Agents: How Automation Improves Women's Outcomes in Unemployment Insurance

Wenger, J. B., Wilkins, V. M. — 2009-03-15

Automation curtails the discretion of street-level bureaucrats in several ways: bureaucrats have little control over the input of data by claimants, management has increased opportunities for monitoring, and given the possibility that clients will deal with multiple bureaucrats, coworkers can now identify "rogue" agents. Some clients of a bureaucracy may benefit from the introduction of automation when the agency is biased against them. We test this claim by examining the recent introduction of the telephone claims in state Unemployment Insurance offices. Using state-level panel data from 1992 to 2005, we estimate the effect of filing a claim via telephone rather than in person. If street-level bureaucrats in this agency used their discretion to disentitle and punish clients who they deem "undeserving" of the policy benefits, then the introduction of automation could increase unemployment insurance (UI) payments for clients. Indeed, we find that telephone claims filing increases the number of women receiving UI benefits while having no effect on men. We posit that this finding is due to the elimination of the bias women previously faced when they entered a UI office.

How Do Perceived Political Environment and Administrative Reform Affect Employee Commitment?

Yang, K., Pandey, S. K. — 2009-03-15

Political support is an important environmental factor in public management, and over the past few decades, the implementation of results-oriented reforms has become highly influential as well. However, few studies have examined the impact of these two factors on employee attitudes and behaviors. This article proposes that the extent of results-oriented reforms and political support from elected officials—as perceived by managers—has a significant influence on managerial practice and normative commitment to the organization. Using data from a national survey of state-level human service managers, we test and find support for a model positing that managerial perceptions of political support have a direct influence on the implementation of results-oriented reforms, organizational structure, and internal communication. We also find that more extensive results-oriented reform efforts are positively associated with goal clarity, communication adequacy, and flexible structures and that normative commitment is affected positively by goal clarity and negatively by bureaucratic structure.

Green Tape: A Theory of Effective Organizational Rules

DeHart-Davis, L. — 2009-03-15

Public management scholars over the past decade have shed significant light on ineffective rules or "red tape." This article takes a different approach by conceptualizing a theory of green tape or effective rules. The theory argues that the probability of rule effectiveness depends on the combined presence of (1) written requirements, (2) with valid means-ends relationships, which (3) employ optimal control, (4) are consistently applied, and that have (5) purposes understood by stakeholders. A study of city employees provides the data for theory development and testing. The resulting theory emphasizes technical proficiency and stakeholder cooperation in effective rule design and implementation.

Power-Influence in Decision Making, Competence Utilization, and Organizational Culture in Public Organizations: The Arab World in Comparative Perspective

Al-Yahya, K. O. — 2009-03-15

This article proposes and tests an integrative model of multiple associations between power-influence sharing in decision making, work-related outcomes (WRO), and organizational culture in public sector organizations in Saudi Arabia. The analysis is based on a survey of public administrators (n = 390). To date, little research has successfully addressed these conceptual linkages, especially in public sector organizations. The structural equation model analyses show that participative practices are significant predicators of effective utilization of competence (knowledge, skill, and ability). This in turn has an impact on perceptions of WRO including information sharing, decision quality, predictability and acceptability of authorized decisions by employees, job satisfaction, and motivation. The results also suggest that elements of organizational culture have some impact on both decision making and perceived WRO. The study has profound implications for organization development and leadership, particularly in bureaucracies in transition. It is essential for public organizations to understand the importance of human capital utilization and complexity of adjusting decision processes, as well as organizational norms at various stages of capacity development.

Race, Bureaucracy, and Symbolic Representation: Interactions between Citizens and Police

Theobald, N. A., Haider-Markel, D. P. — 2009-03-15

Our understanding of representation by government employees has increased considerably in the past 30 years. Scholars have found that represented groups benefit from representative bureaucracies and conclude that this benefit is a function of active representation. However, due to the aggregate unit of observation used in most of these studies and the outcome measures that are typically used as dependent variables, we argue that there are other forms of representation that can explain these finding. We contribute to the existing research in this area by focusing on symbolic representation and conduct our test using individual-level data from a national police-citizen contact survey. We hypothesize that citizen perceptions of legitimacy regarding police actions are shaped by the interaction of citizen race and officer race. Our results suggest that symbolic representation does occur—blacks are more likely to perceive police actions as being legitimate if there are black officers present. Additionally, whites are more likely to perceive police actions as legitimate if the actions were conducted by white officers.

Public Management Mentoring: What Affects Outcomes?

Bozeman, B., Feeney, M. K. — 2009-03-15

Few research studies focus on public managers' mentoring, and few mentoring studies include any outcome measure other than reported satisfaction. Our study examines diverse outcomes for a broad-based set of public managers, including not only satisfaction but also the number of employees supervised in the current job, whether the most recent job was a promotion, and whether the protégé is now a mentor. We argue that these may be particularly important outcomes in the public sector due to the common basis of promotion in numbers supervised and due to the special need to develop protégés into mentors. Our findings show that mentoring outcomes are predicted by attributes of the protégé, the mentor, and the mentoring relationship and by the degree and type of social capital focus of the mentoring.

Institutional Determinants of Collaboration: An Empirical Study of County Open-Space Protection

Smith, C. R. — 2008-12-16

Collaboration is an increasingly important topic in the public administration and management literatures. A preponderance of studies focuses on how managers can build trust between the government and collaborative partners by means of behavioral attributes and managerial skill. In this article, the author suggests that stable institutions and local government structure facilitate collaboration by allowing public managers to more credibly commit in a policy arena. Using county data on open-space policy, the author finds empirical support for the proposition that county form of government, along with rules governing debt accumulation and administrative commitment, increases the breadth of county collaboration in open-space protection.

Conceptualizing and Measuring Collaboration

Thomson, A. M., Perry, J. L., Miller, T. K. — 2008-12-16

This article conceptualizes and measures collaboration. An empirically validated theory of collaboration, one that can inform both theory and practice, demands a systematic approach to understanding the meaning and measurement of collaboration. We present findings from a study that develops and tests the construct validity of a multidimensional model of collaboration. Data collected using a mail questionnaire sent to 1382 directors of organizations that participate in a large national service program provides the basis for a higher order confirmatory factor analysis. The model that emerges from this analysis demonstrates an overall close fit with the empirical data and the high, standardized gamma coefficients estimated in the model confirm that five key dimensions contribute to an overall construct of collaboration. The primary purpose of this research was to stimulate interest in measurement of collaboration and refinement of the model. As such, we present a detailed description of the analytical process, identify areas that affect interpretation of the data (such as possible selection bias), and propose areas for future research. We believe this effort to conceptualize and measure collaboration offers a foundation for further research.

Centralization, Organizational Strategy, and Public Service Performance

Andrews, R., Boyne, G. A., Law, J., Walker, R. M. — 2008-12-16

We test the separate and joint effects of centralization and organizational strategy on the performance of 53 UK public service organizations. Centralization is measured as both the hierarchy of authority and the degree of participation in decision making, whereas strategy is measured as the extent to which service providers are prospectors, defenders, and reactors. We find that centralization has no independent effect on service performance, even when controlling for prior performance, service expenditure, and external constraints. However, the impact of centralization is contingent on the strategic orientation of organizations. Centralized decision making works best in conjunction with defending, and decentralized decision making works best in organizations that emphasize prospecting.

Examining Perceived Honest Performance Reporting by Public Organizations: Bureaucratic Politics and Organizational Practice

Yang, K. — 2008-12-16

The credibility of performance information provided by government agencies to their stakeholders is critical to performance-based accountability and policy learning. However, the public administration literature has rarely paid attention to the determinants of honest performance reporting. This study draws on the multi-actor principal-agent model and examines how bureaucratic politics (external and internal) and organizational practice (participation and culture) affect an organization's performance reporting. Based on survey data from Taiwan, the results show that supportive external environments and harmonious internal environments are likely to enhance stakeholder participation and innovation culture, which, in turn, encourage honest performance reporting.

Evaluating the Expectations Disconfirmation and Expectations Anchoring Approaches to Citizen Satisfaction with Local Public Services

James, O. — 2008-12-16

Expectations disconfirmation and expectations anchoring are two increasingly influential approaches to understanding individuals' satisfaction and dissatisfaction with public services. This article assesses hypotheses from these approaches for two local public services in England provided by local authorities: overall public services from the authority and household refuse collection services. Consistent with the expectations disconfirmation hypothesis, performance minus expectations is positively related to the predicted probability of satisfaction and negatively related to predicted probability of dissatisfaction for both types of service. However, the relationship is not symmetric between satisfaction and dissatisfaction, the predicted probability of dissatisfaction falls more rapidly than the predicted probability of satisfaction rises as performance increasingly meets expectations. The expectations anchoring hypotheses receive support for dissatisfaction and partial support for satisfaction, with a general expectations relationship evident for overall services but only evident in the case of very high expectations for waste services. The findings suggest that expectations need to be taken into account alongside more conventionally understood factors in using satisfaction surveys as a performance measure, especially if performance is not potentially to be overestimated in areas with low expectations or underestimated in areas with high expectations. Managing expectations, as well as perceived performance, may be an effective strategy for local authorities to raise satisfaction, although this may not be seen as desirable.

The Role of Procedural Justice in Public Personnel Management: Empirical Results from the Department of Defense

Rubin, E. V. — 2008-12-16

This article examines the relationship between federal employee perceptions of procedural justice and work satisfaction rates, turnover intentions, and the degree to which employees trust their managers. As the federal government considers reforming the civil service system, including changes to the procedures used to discipline employees and resolve grievances, understanding these relationships becomes particularly important. Analysis of Department of Defense data from the 2002 Federal Human Capital Survey indicates a significant, positive relationship between procedural justice perceptions, satisfaction rates, and trust in management. Likewise, a significant and negative relationship exists between procedural justice perceptions and turnover intentions. Interestingly, given similar levels of procedural justice perceptions, managers exhibit lower levels of satisfaction and trust and higher turnover intentions. This study provides an important benchmark for Defense and other agencies that are redesigning personnel systems and serves as a caution against implementing systems that employees may not view as either legitimate or just.

Making Implementation More Democratic through Action Implementation Research

Mischen, P. A., Sinclair, T. A. P. — 2008-12-16

Public administration scholars often associate increased public participation in policy implementation with the advancement of democratic values. Likewise, scholars engaged in the various forms of action research (AR) promote their efforts as a means to democratizing the research process or contributing to improved social outcomes. Despite these common interests in participation and democracy, there have been few attempts to apply AR methods to policy implementation problems. Drawing on Matland's conflict-ambiguity matrix, we develop a framework for matching particular AR methods to specific policy implementation contexts.

Escape from the Iron Cage? Organizational Change and Isomorphic Pressures in the Public Sector

Ashworth, R., Boyne, G., Delbridge, R. — 2008-12-16

Institutional theory suggests that organizations pursue legitimacy by conforming to isomorphic pressures in their environment. We extend previous research on institutional theory by distinguishing between two definitions of conformity (compliance and convergence) and by taking a comprehensive view of the organizational characteristics that might be subject to isomorphic pressures. This framework is applied to change between 2001 and 2004 in the internal characteristics of 101 public organizations in England. We find substantial evidence of compliance but more limited support for convergence. Furthermore, the impact of isomorphic pressures was stronger on organizational strategies and culture than on structures and processes. Thus, the relevance of institutional theory to change in the public sector depends on the definition of conformity that is used and the organizational characteristics that are examined.